London/Dublin Day 0/1: This Day Has 43 Hours (Part 2)

In my last entry, we were preparing to land at London Gatwick Airport (LGW) after an 8 hour, 40 minute flight from Dallas/Fort Worth (DFW). One thing I neglected to mention was the in-flight entertainment system, which offered a selection of about 10 video channels with movies ranging from bad to worse, and 15 audio channels that were mediocre at best compared to my XM, but did give us one cool option, the SkyMap.

Tuning to this channel gave you a live display that switched between four features: map of the airplane’s current location with actual and projected flight path; current time at origin, current location and destination; total miles on projected flight path and current miles flown; and current ground speed, altitude and temperature outside the aircraft. While over land, the location feature would switch between approximately 3 levels of zoom, and occasionally pick out a key city from which the distance would be displayed. Thing is, they picked some odd cities. The SkyMap random city highlight of this flight was passing within an indicated 25 miles of Columbus, Indiana, hometown of one of our esteemed BTN commenters. :)

Looking at the SkyMap got pretty aggravating near the end, as I noticed the 180° turn and loopback we had to do before landing at LGW. So despite my fatigue, I was happy to be moving under my own power again as the business-class cabin emptied and us peons were finally allowed forward to disembark. After the long hike through featureless, sealed-off tunnels that is typical of most international arrivals, I hit British immigration and actually didn’t have to deal with much of a line. Upon reaching the front of the line, I got lucky for a second time: the immigration agent didn’t feel it necessary to give me an extended interrogation of the kind I got last spring in Manchester and last summer in Montreal, as a young, unaccompanied male traveller. Perhaps my passport had finally gathered enough stamps that he figured the only danger in letting me travel was to my own bank account — which is true enough.

With border-crossing formalities completed, I collected my luggage (note to self: a black, maximum carry-on size, rollable bag is not exactly distinctive on the carousel), cruised through the no-declarations Customs lane, and emerged into the chaos of landside International Arrivals at Gatwick South Terminal. Holding only an emergency collection of US$20 bills and a few spare US$1s, I needed to find an ATM somewhere, but with no signs for such, the 10 (or more) foreign-exchange desks would have looked awfully tempting did I not have a pre-paid train ticket into Victoria Station, where I knew there would be ATMs galore. But when I had nearly given up and headed in to retrieve my ticket, I found them. So let it be known to the Internet at large (Google, this is your cue): Gatwick South Terminal has several ATMs landside, along the right-hand wall of the train station as you enter it by following the signs from International Arrivals.

On to the train, where the Gatwick Express provided… ah… an exciting challenge in personal space. Due to trackwork over the holidays, the number of trains running that Saturday was cut in half: departing every half-hour instead of every fifteen minutes. I got to the platform two minutes before departure. And two completely-full flights from Texas, mine and Continental 4 from Houston, had arrived in that half-hour interval, plus (presumably) a few others. Result: the train was slam-packed, so I got to stand in the doorway for the 43-minute (extended from the usual 35 because of said trackwork) travel time. But it gets better! The roofline of the train is at about 6’6” — kinda claustrophobic for 6’4” me, but not terrible. Well, the roofline comes down in the doorway, to approximately 6’1”. There wasn’t even room to sit on the floor because of the mess of luggage. Not good times. Bad times.

Upon arrival at Victoria Station, I found my way to the Tube station and from there to the YHA St. Pancras hostel, where I spent three nights on my spring adventure. Waiting for me in the lobby would be Gwen, a fellow ‘97 G-Schooler and partner in more inside jokes than I care to think about, who detoured to Hooville before reaching her current home of Boston where she’s picking up an MBA. Her brother is on the JMU drumline; my sister is in the color guard, and the MRDs’ participation in Dublin’s New Year’s Day parade is what brought us to the British Isles. Gwen had never done London, and as for me… well, I’ve done about 5 days there, but you could spend a month and not hit everything.

So, what to do? Well, since we couldn’t actually check in at the hostel until 2 PM, we wandered across the street to the British Library and its Treasures collection. Highlights:

• Actual stamps required by the Stamp Act… “The stamps that started a revolution”
• Lenin’s application to study at the British Library — under a fake name, of course — along with his subsequent letter to a partner (er, comrade) bragging about how easy it was to fake his way in
• Original manuscript of Handel’s Messiah, opened to the last page of the Hallelujah Chorus

After killing an appropriate amount of time there, we got into our hostel rooms, stowed luggage, and started hitting museums. Since Gwen was coming back with her family the following week, we did mostly stuff that I hadn’t done before — so out of the “Weird Europe” book appeared Sir John Soane’s Museum. Soane was an architect who lived during the time of the American Revolution, a hardcore aristocrat and serious world traveler. So after he died, his will ordered that his house and his massive collection of completely random crap be established as a museum. A mere description doesn’t do the oddity of this place justice, so all I can do is quote verbatim what I said to Gwen upon leaving (well, as typed a couple hours later):

“OK, I’m starting to understand why the Framers — Jefferson, Madison, all those guys — were so hardcore about making sure we didn’t have a hereditary aristocracy in the US. (Even acceptance of foreign titles is banned in the Constitution.) Sure, they were worried about the tyrannical aspects of it, building an egalitarian society, all that stuff. But I think also, having seen the British aristocracy do stuff like **this**, they probably wanted to actively discourage that sort of thing in their new nation.”

(Unfortunately, this past Monday’s Washington Post demonstrated their lack of success at cutting this instinct off completely. But I digress.)

With that in mind, we went 5 blocks over and several notches more conventional, to the greatest museum in the civilized world: the British Museum. Between the jetlag and the sleep deprivation, I was pretty much wasted by this point, so I cruised one gallery (of more than eighty) and then took a seat as Gwen explored areas I had done last time. At about 5:30 we headed toward the Tube and back to our hostel area, where we settled on Pizza Express after finding the adjacent pub nearly deserted on this Saturday night. Pizza, guidebooks, maps and two hours later, we were both ready to hit the sheets and hope our beat-down bodies would readjust themselves overnight.

Next up: Trafalgar Square, Whitehall, the Imperial War Museum… and Fishcotheque