European Public Transit Has Earned My Love Forever

Today, I finally started my adventure in London! Yesterday was spent in a rush of finalising plans, information, tickets, packing, etc, and then this morning Grant and I woke up bright and early so that we could leave the house by 6:30am. We had to walk down to the Gare (the train station), and our train was leaving at 7:06am.

We ended up being about 15 minutes early, and found the train easily enough. When we got on and sat down at first, though, the lights were out in the car. It was kind of creepy and weird, so Grant checked it out and we moved down to a different car. That one had little eight-seat compartments rather than the usual seats, so the two of us took a car together, put up the arm rests, and mostly slept on our way to Orléans. It was kind of funny; at one point when we were both almost asleep and the train was going decently fast, a TVG passed us going the opposite direction and it sounded like a dragon howling past right by our heads! Grant screamed, and we both bolted straight up! We were a little confused about what the train was doing when we sat in Orléans for a long time, and a couple of women joined us in our car since the train was filling up more. Getting to Paris was pretty uneventful, except that we were about 12 minutes late; which is unheard of in the French train systems.

Once in Gare Austerlitz in Paris, we found the Métro to take us to Gare du Nord, where we were going to catch the Eurostar. We were briefly above ground, and managed to see the tops of the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame, but that was the extent of our Parisian experience. I'm really going to have to go back; I missed it even just from the Métro itself.

The Gare itself wasn't that hard to navigate, although I hadn't really thought about the security necessary since we were going to another country. We had to fill out a card for non-UK residents. Then we got our passports stamped by the French border patrol (my first passport stamp with a train on it!) and had to talk to the British border patrol about 5 feet further on. The X-ray and stuff was ridiculously simple, and then we were through to the boarding lobby. Grant had had some kind of mix-up with his ticket and was scheduled to be on the 12:13 train rather than the 11:13 with me, but we talked to the desk and they got him on the earlier train, although not in the same car. I was in Carriage 1, the very first on the train. There were a couple of French girls sitting beside and across from me, a British girl across diagonally, and there was a Spanish couple with their two young boys across the aisle. The father was cute; he kept trying to mind the two boys, calling them "mi amor" and stuff.

The Eurostar was pretty nice, as trains go. Grant and I both realised that when we didn't know whether we'd crossed the Channel yet all we had to do was see which way people were driving on the freeways. I was expecting the Chunnel to be more of a big deal, but it was basically just a long black tunnel; I honestly didn't even notice we were through until I looked up from my book and everything was grey and misty and *so* typically obviously England. The Eurostar was also about 15 minutes late (we had bad luck, I guess), but we still managed to get out of the St. Pancras station, cross over and find King's Cross, and meet up with my Aunt Roxanne's friend Katie in front of the appointed Burger King. Grant and I both got some British pounds from the ATM, got some lunch (mmm, traditional pasty with beef and potatoes and onions...), and went with Katie to the Underground.

Katie is American, but her new husband Allan is from Scotland and works in the Royal Air Force, so she moved to London after their wedding. She very graciously agreed to let me and Grant spend a few days with her during our vacation, and she seems to be purely adorable and sweet. I went ahead and bought a 7-day pass for the Underground, since I'm planning to ride it everywhere the whole few days I'm here, and it's just simpler. Katie showed us how to take the Northern Line (which is actually one of the more confusing, since it splits and meets up and splits again) up to her house. It's an adorable little two-bedroom apartment (I'm sleeping in the guest bedroom and Grant agreed to take the air mattress in the living room) where there's apparently mixed civilian and military housing. We also got to meet Mazzie, who is Katie's wiener-dog mutt. I'll have to take pictures of her before I leave, because she is adorable.

After dropping off our luggage and settling in a bit (and I changed, because it was pouring down rain and I was soaked), the two of us headed off on our own again to see a little bit of the city. We went to Embankment, which is right on the bank of the Thames, and took brief little pictures of the London Eye and Big Ben. The main reason I wanted to go was to see Cleopatra's Needle, which is an Egyptian obelisk that was taken from Egypt when the British defeated Napoleon and now sits in the center of London. We took a couple pictures, but it was very cold and rainy, so we quickly headed back down into the Tube. We went up to the theatre district, near Leicester Square. On Monday we'd decided that it would be fun to see a show, but before it began we walked around a bit. It was amazing to see all the lights and posters for all the various shows that are playing: Lion King, Phantom of the Opera, Wicked, Les Misérables, Billy Elliot, and a hundred others.

For dinner we decided on a little Italian restaurant. It was really small and close, but cute. Grant got a pizza, and I had Penne Marco Polo, which was penne pasta with duck and mushrooms in a plum sauce. It was really, really good, and really sweet, which was interesting. I also tried something called Fruitisa, which was some sparkling pomegrante juice, and that was okay. What absolutely made the restaurant, though, was the dessert. We split a piece of cheesecake with red berries and sauce on top, and it was absolutely the lightest, sweetest, most heavenly piece of cheesecake I have ever tasted; and the berries were sweet and tart and added just the right touch of flavour.

After dinner, we headed back towards the Wyndham's Theatre, which was where our show was. The website had said that you come out of the Tube station and the theatre was right there, and they weren't lying; you could basically walk 5 steps from the station awning to the theatre awning without even getting wet! The show we went to see was called "An Inspector Calls," and is a British play about a well-off British family whose dinner party is interrupted by a strange Inspector Goole, who shows up and starts asking questions in regard to the suicide of a working-class girl, Eva Smith. We had considered going to something more well-known, but a friend of mine who's in theatre told me that the best thing to do in London was to see British theatre, rather than a show that you could see any time back in the States. It definitely paid off, too! The theatre itself was obviously a little old (there was a renovation fee included in our ticket price), but it was elegant and the seating was perfect. We were in the very last row in the very top balcony, but we could see and hear everything just fine.

The show itself is extremely different. It kind of plays tricks with your mind, and you're not really sure what to believe at certain points. They had magnificent effects, though; the stage was built so that half of it was this huge mechanised cutaway house, which could open up so that you could see the inside, and had a staircase that moved up to lock in place and connect it with the rest of the stage. At one specific part in the play, they used pyrotechnic explosions and the mechanics made the house fall down, and it was really startling and a little terrifying for a second. The plot is really twisty, and it's definitely not what you might expect it to be. I left at first going "what the...?" and it wasn't until I'd really thought it over a bit more that I decided I actually liked it quite a lot. The actors were fantastic (in my, admittedly very limited theatrical opinion), especially the Inspector himself.

After the show, Grant and I took the train back to Katie's house, where we got to meet Allan for the first time. We sat up and talked for a while, and then they told me how to use the internet here. Now, I need to go to bed. Tomorrow we have even more things planned, and I need to get some sleep!