After a quick breakfast of fresh-squeezed orange juice and an almond croissant at the Patisserie on Gloucester Road, I tube over to Green Park to take pictures of Buckingham Palace, and then walk along the Mall through Admiralty Arch into Trafalgar Square. Somewhere along the way I realize just how much I appreciate the British aesthetic. Buses should be red and taxis should be black. Why do we in America not know this?
I am thoroughly impressed by the hustle and bustle of Trafalgar Square and am delighted to find Old Nelson fresh and clean and free of scaffolding. The view down Whitehall towards Big Ben is as wonderful as my guidebook claims. I snap more pictures and begin to wonder how long the 1 GB storage card in my camera is going to hold out at this rate. I grab my only real bargain of the entire trip from a nearby convenience store—a 40p bottle of water—and retrace my steps back to Horseguards Parade for the changing of the Queen’s Life Guard at 11:00 AM. The crowd is small, the horses and their riders lovely, and the action nearly imperceptible. People wait, then murmur and shrug, not quite sure if what they saw was what they were supposed to see, and then disperse.
I head back to Trafalgar Square and call my family on the cell phone and tell them it is time to do the “webcam thing.” This I discovered some months ago and resolved to stand in the square in view of the camera while I waved to the folks back home, the picture of which they would save on their computer for posterity. And so here I am, a grainy, indistinct mass standing in the center of a traffic island in Trafalgar Square, half a world away. We all think this is cool.
I head to the National Portrait Gallery and rent an audioguide tour, which takes me through a lively tour of England’s Kings and Queens. Then, I walk to the nearby church of St. Martin-in-the Fields for lunch at their Café in the Crypt. It sounds a bit strange to me and I pause to think about the tombs of those on which I trod, but alas I am hungry and head quickly for the food—a mushroom tart and cucumber salad.
In the afternoon, I rent another audioguide, this time for the National Gallery. This one is much less interesting, but the art is impressive all the same. On leaving Trafalgar Square, I walk up Charing Cross Road and buy my nephew the latest Harry Potter book in paperback, then across into Covent Garden for dinner. There is a “Punch and Judy” show and street performers pretending to be statues—quite successfully! I drop 50p into a hat and one of them springs to life and blows me a kiss. I enjoy a traditional Cornish pasty and chips al fresco along with a single bottle of diet Coke, and find myself missing the unlimited refills we enjoy in the states.
By 8:00 PM I feel completely knackered, but I am motivated to “power through” by late hours at the Victoria & Albert Museum near my hotel. Some of the galleries are closed, but the 15th and 16th century stained glass windows are a thing of beauty. I am glad I came.
The Independent Traveler 