My, but isn't London big?
When Amy told me she wanted us to backpack in England, I immediately corrected her: “You mean vacation in England.” But no, years of watching me wander off with my Kelty and return weeks later bleeding and destitute had stirred something in her; she wanted to backpack Europe.
Even after we bought the plane tickets and booked the hostels, I doubted Amy’s commitment to the backpacking part of the trip. She irons her socks and panties and has, on more than one occasion, hidden my car keys until I agreed to let her press the wrinkles out of my jeans. She requires five plump pillows and the steady hum of a fan for adequate sleep. And she takes lengthy, steaming showers twice a day.
Hostels are the exact opposite of her: wrinkled, dirty clothes; flat, grungy pillows that you really shouldn’t dwell on; and tepid showers that require you to push a button for more water every seven seconds.
In the weeks leading up to our departure, I reminded Amy that as full-blown adults with successful careers we could spring for actual hotels and suitcases, but she refused to even contemplate it.
Our flight to London was not exactly an auspicious start to the trip. Much like my grandpa, I can sleep anywhere, any time. Add two Tylenol PM and a beer to the mix, and I can count on eight uninterrupted hours. Before the landing gear was up on our plane, I was out. I awoke on the descent, refreshed and ready to face the Underground; Amy hadn’t slept for a moment and had been too afraid of the snippy flight attendant to mention that her television didn’t work. For nine hours, she’d stared at the seat in front of her without blinking.
Despite all that, she met London with the breathless glee. Customs, currency conversion, train platforms, ticket machines, red buses, courteous reminders painted on roads to tell you which way to look before stepping into the street, odd turns of phrase, phone booths, troubadours: she drank them in.
We visited the British Museum, the National Gallery and The Natural History Museum. We took a double-decker red bus tour and a Thames river cruise. We shopped at Piccadilly Circus, visited The Houses of Parliament, the London Eye, Buckingham Palace, London Tower, Tower Bridge. We strolled through Russell Square and St. James’s Park.
Samuel Johnson’s claim that when a person is tired of London, a person is tired of life is only exceeded in stupidity by the old adage “Let a smile be your umbrella.” It’s not that a person runs out of things to do in London, but that a person runs out of energy to continue doing them.
The city always spits me out in four days, usually accompanied by blood or tears. This time, it almost caused both because on the day we were scheduled to take a train to Bath, Amy decided that we must go see the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace.
Until that moment, Amy had handled the backpacking thing splendidly, but the simple fact is that to see the Changing of the Guard, we would have to hump our backpacks onto the Tube, change stations, get on another train, walk half a mile to Buckingham Palace, stand in a crowd, walk a half-mile back to the tube, cram ourselves onto a train at the busiest station in London, and risk being thrown out before we reached Paddington. This she could handle, except her Kelty was over-packed by at least 50 pounds. So maybe it was doable if I carried it?
On our way down the Underground escalators, Keltys in tow, there was a note written on a white board: “Delayed service on the Central Line due to a person under the train.”
Londoners are nothing if not honest.
We lucked out at the Changing of the Guard because while the London police are very serious about protecting the poor besieged queen inside the gates (“Oi! I’m not going to tell you again to climb down off that statue of the Queen Mother, Sir”), they are still quite English (“Budge up so this bloke in the wheelchair can move to the front row, yeah?”) Amy and I got to stand right behind the guy in the wheelchair.
After the ceremony was over, a little English boy about four-years-old said loudly to his mother, “Right, when do we see the queen?”
I slept better on the train to Bath than I had ever slept in my life. Maybe it was the swaying or the fact that I could feel my toes for the first time in days. It was 90 minutes of bliss, and if ever I become a genuine insomniac I shall move to London and ride the trains all the time.
The thing that always befuddles me outside of London is how everything in the United Kingdom closes at 4:30 p.m. You could be walking down a street bustling with commerce at 4:29, and within literally 60 seconds all of the shop windows will be dark and the roads will be empty.
Bath for many people is about Roman history, but to me it’s all Jane Austen. Jenn and I spent one hurried night in Bath years ago, making it into the city as the split-second transformation from living to dead happened. We ran through the streets and caught the woman at the Jane Austen Centre closing the door. I very nearly had to cry to get her to agree to let us purchase a map. We had to leave the next morning at dawn.
This time, Amy and I visited the Centre, paid to listen to talks about Jane Austen’s life, took a walking tour of Austen’s Bath, strolled along the paths her characters took in Persuasion and Northanger Abbey, took water in the Pump Room, danced in the Assembly Rooms and even whiled away an evening in our hostel playing a choose-your-own-adventure game called Becoming Elizabeth Bennet.
Not once did Amy complain about the cramped living quarters or the shared showers or the way we had to use a credit card to break into the front door of the hostel or how the hairdryer wouldn’t work or even the way the electricity seemed to go and off at its leisure.
She studied the map until she knew it by heart and set all of our beverages in the window sill to keep them cold.
When Amy’s parents picked us up at the airport in Atlanta, Amy’s dad hoisted her backpack off the luggage belt. He made to put it on, but even after 22 hours of traveling and eight days of not sleeping, Amy was still determined to follow-through on her commitment. Her dad helped her slip the straps over her shoulders and then pushed her back up when she started tilting backwards.
Since we’ve been home, she’s washed and ironed everything in sight, and I noticed this morning that even Scout smelled like her perfume. I promised Amy that our next vacation will be at a luxury spa, a place that only allows rolling suitcases and rumple-free clothes.
