Trip Report: Old Familiar Faces

We're home. The dogs, relieved and more than a little vengeful, have been fetched from their pricey hostelry, I've been back to the office, and today I'm taking advantage of a post-flight sore throat to stay home and try to get rested and organized.*

Evening in One City, Morning in Another

On our last evening in Cairo, we went downtown.

Destinations (From the Correspondence of a Lady of Quality)

Oddly enough, I found this on the breakfast table at our hotel...

Simple Joys

Do you have somewhere of which you are fond quite out of proportion to its objective merits?

And Away We Go

We hear the UK's rather festive this time of year; we decided it might be a good idea to check it out first-hand.

Birthday Girl: The Music (Wo)man

Courage comes in such unexpected forms...

Victory!

May 8, 1945 may have been V-E Day for much of a war-weary world, but for at least a few happy Londoners, it would seem that it was also TV Day.  While the boy on the right is achieving a sort of Talullahesque insouciance, his companions are clearly indulging in what our pal the Professor refers to as "booger drag."  Perhaps it was rationing, and they just couldn't get hold of a decent pair of heels...

At Liberty, at Last

Well, here's the latest from the Itinerant Invalid:  after a full day of bureaucratic wrangling yesterday, I was finally able to get the go-ahead from the Powers Medical and Adminstrative who have for the past two weeks controlled our lives.  Presuming all goes well for the rest of the day, this evening Mr. Muscato and I will resume our interrupted journey home.

Because we started out coming through London, we're being sent back that way, which means a layover.  I doubt that we'll take in much of the Games - I mostly want to stock up on goodies from Boots, in truth, and possibly score a final good pub dinner - but we're thankful that the predicted Apocalyptic Olympic Hotel Shortage never took place, so we'll be once again ensconced for a night in the very convenient hotel near Marble Arch that was our base on the trip out.

Thanks to all of you who've been thoughtfully inquiring as to our well-being.  This has been an interesting experience, if nothing else my first glimpse of what lies ahead.  It is sobering to be, for the the first time of any seriousness, inhabiting a body that refuses to do more or less what you want it do, that takes on, as it were, a seemingly malevolent mind of its own.  We are being sent off with an array of new prescriptions, strict instructions, and further referrals.  Whatever.  As long as they get us back to our own house, our own bed, and the doubtless frenzied attentions of the infinitely missed dogs, we'll cope.

A Walk in the Park

One of the things that Mr. Muscato and I do when traveling is split up and have little day adventures on our own, as his tastes run more to shopping and people-watching (i.e. sitting in low dives) and mine, wonkily, skew toward museums and brisk walks.  After nine years, it's amazing enough we're still speaking; our travel patterns are one of the reasons why.

In any case, after a nice pub breakfast, we went our merry ways. I took the tube, since even my passion for walking has its limits.  It's been a while since I did the underground, and while I've always admired London's ability to maintain upholstery on public transport (how long would that last in Manhattan?), I was particularly taken with the gentle warning woven right into this seatback.  This seat, it indicates, is reserved for ladies who either expecting or gluttonous, or who are either clutching their spawn or being pawed by a koala, or for gentlemen who are either infirm, or who are about to launch into a tap routine.  I find it shocking that perhaps my favorite class of Londoners, old ladies, are so thoroughly ignored.

I made my way to Kensington Palace, where I was particularly pleased to see that the statue of Queen Victoria, by her formidable daughter Louise, Duchess of Argyll, has been ugraded to a pedestal and moat.  It previously sat on a squat and rather battered little plinth, where it was regularly assaulted by schoolchildren and even had, if memory serves, several broken fingers.  I think she and the Palace both look grand.

Sadly, however, the dear old place has recently been renovated from top to toe, and it has fallen into the hands of that most dread of bunches, Museum Interpreters.  Well, they have interpreted the place up the wazoo, and what was formerly a lovely, quiet, and backwater-y sort of place has been hyperthemed, kid-friendlied, and filled with things like "evocative" sculptures (apparently made of department store mannequin parts and copper baling) hanging from the light fixtures. All labels have been removed, replaced by a "storyline" in each area that's meant to bring home all the intrigue and glamour of palace living.  Well, when it comes to Queen Anne, that's a stretch, so they've really had to go town about it all.  It would be nice to know what paintings and furniture one is looking at, rather than having ghostly voices whispering from the corners and mood lighting that would embarrass a discotheque in 1978, but even so I was till able to enjoy a surfeit of Winterhalters and Lelys, and to admire a lovely pair of gloves belonging to the Duchess of Teck, mother of the late Queen Mary.

I believe this regal gentlemen, looking rather pained by it all, is Charles I, but heaven knows nothing at the Palace would tell you that...

Back outside, I wandered across the Park back toward our hotel.  Living in the Sandlands, it is truly amazing how much one can come to miss, without realizing it, things like grass studded with tiny daisies.  When that grass even boasts a feather or two from Her Majesty's Swans, installed in the nearby Round Pound, one's joy is complete.

Another of the joys of London is that it's entirely possible, in the middle of one of the greatest metropolises on the face of the earth, to occasionally feel like you're deep in the country.  I snapped this just shy of a block from the Bayswater Road, but it might as well be Hardy country or some such.

So we're enjoying, each in our own way, our trip.  Tonight, my Dear Sister arrives to join us.  Tomorrow, we embark on the next phase of our adventure...

London Pride...

Yeah, I'm a sap for all things English.  Who else could get choked up thinking about the Blitz while taking a bus tour?

Highlights so far: astonishing fish and chips at a little local off the Edgware Road.  The exhibition of portraits of the Queen at the National Portrait Gallery (Annigonis!  Beatons!  Even a Snowdon or two!).  Excellent Chinese (something almost unheard of in the Sandlands) down toward Soho.  And pubs, pubs, pubs, many full of the most attractive gentlemen.  And of course, statues of lions.  This one stands on the South Bank, looking histrionic.  I can't tell if his expression is more Burden of Empire or Forgot my ATM PIN, but he's pretty beguiling, no?

And We're Off...

First stop - London!  We'll even be reaching it, at the last stage, by Underground, if the Heathrow Express counts.  Next time, I'll have to take the wisdom of vintage travel posters for my guide and plan to arrive in an opera cloak decorated with life-savers...