Planes and Blizzards: A Recipe for Disaster

Yesterday was my first attempt to fly home for Christmas, and it (of course) coincided with the Great London Blizzard of 2010.  It ends with me stranded here in my apartment in London with Heathrow Airport shut down at least until Monday.  It's a shame that I love to travel so much, since I seem to be cursed with setbacks.

First of all, let me just say that London Heathrow during the holiday rush is bafflingly complicated.  There are way too many people who don't know what they're doing (I'll count myself as one of them) and not enough staff to go around.  Arriving at Terminal 3, there were so many people crammed tightly into indistinct and meandering lines that it was impossible to sort out which line was which.  What you had to do was pick a line that looked promising and ask the people around you which line they thought it might be. You would then get several opinions, but a majority opinion would be taken as an authority on the matter and this would lead to an exodus of the rest of us for other lines to start the process over again.  It was like an interpretive dance of confusion.

Once I got through security, all seemed to be going well.  There were a few cancellations on the flight board, but they were all morning flights, so I assumed that the runways must still have been icy from the night before.  I sipped on a coffee in the main waiting lounge and waited for my gate to open up.  My stomach was beginning to unclench from the chaos of check-in and I was soon to be ( I thought) in the air and on my way home for Christmas.  Then, on my way to the gate, I passed a window.  My heart sank.  It wasn't just snowing, it was blizzarding- buckets and sheets of snow in giant, picturesque and artificial-looking flakes that swirled unrelentingly in every direction.  More snow than I've ever seen at one time in my life.  I stood there staring at it with a sinking feeling of foreboding thinking that this couldn't be good.

However, the staff at the gate seemed to be optimistic as they welcomed me to my flight.  I have to confess that the gate system at Heathrow seems unnecessarily complicated.  Getting in (initially) is easy enough.  You show your ticket and passport to the member of staff who gives it a cursory glance, tears your ticket and waves you into the gate which is cordoned off with plexiglass walls and contains nothing but seating and a Coke machine.  Once you're there, there's no getting out easily except in cases of emergency.  Most of the time, I'm sure this system works fine as there's usually only about 30 minutes to wait until you board the plane.  In our case, though, we waited for 30 minutes, then an hour, then two hours with no word on when/whether we would board.  Many people (myself included) waited as long as they possibly could for a restroom before giving in.  To leave the gate and go to the restroom (which was about 10 steps from where I was sitting, with a glass wall in between) you had to relinquish your passport, and when you returned you were subjected to a baggage and purse inspection and a security pat down (very thorough- they even checked the insides and bottom of my shoes and the soles of my feet).  I couldn't help but think to myself that if a terrorist did somehow manage to make it past the initial airport security, they might conceivably be able to get onto a plane just fine unless, God forbid, they had to use the restroom.

After all that, it was announced that the runways would close until 4 pm and that a decision would be made then about flight status.  Until then, we would need to wait in the main lobby and watch the flight screen (from which our flight soon mysteriously disappeared) for more information.  Once there, we were all left to fend for ourselves and information was hard to come by.  Security staff didn't seem to know any more than we did and the information counter was abandoned except for a handwritten paper message to follow the emergency exit signs for more information if our flight was cancelled.  So we waited.

There should be an anthropological study of stranded passengers at airports.  It was fascinating how people made the best of the situation.  There was not enough seating for everyone, so travelers and families piled luggage and coats into temporary camps in corners and corridors and Heathrow became a refugee village.  Provisions were shared, information acquisition became a communal effort and new friendships were formed ("Mummy, this is Olivia and she's from AMERICA!").   In one corner, a baby who was just learning how to craw butt-scooted back and forth between three families who obviously had never met one another before but now clapped encouragingly for the laughing baby as they passed him back and forth.  A man with a toddler played Follow-the-Leader through the aisles of a store.  Santa, leaving his post in the shopping area, made his way among the groups of families cheering up the bored and disgruntled kids.  Any horizontal space large enough was covered in coats and softer bags and made into makeshift beds where some people actually slept (a heroic accomplishment given the noise and the chaos).  And then most of the flights were cancelled.  We were given a number to call to reschedule and told to leave.  You can imagine the chaos that ensued when that many people all tried to leave at the same time.

Then, to top it all off, the Tube was having major problems with signal failures due to the cold, which led to major train delays, massive pileups on the platform, and way too many people on one train.  Imagine the circus act where tons of clowns squeeze into one tiny car, then add large/heavy/numerous luggage.  It was like a combined game of Twister and Tetris and hilarity ensued any time someone in the center of the train had to maneuver over, around, and under other people and their assorted luggage to get off the train.  One lady, completely blocked in by a pile of bags that could not easily be moved, was physically lifted over it by a couple of helpful men, and her suitcase crowd-surfed from hand to hand overhead to join her on the platform.  On the positive side, it was the first time I've ever seen human interaction and smiles on the Tube.  Fun stuff!

Anyway, I'll get home eventually (perhaps) and meanwhile I have another interesting saga for the travel journal.

Bath: It's Wet! (It was raining)

Anyone who's ever read Jane Austin knows of Bath.  It's where gentile Georgian ladies in empire-waisted gowns go to take the cure, sip sulfur water for their health, and spend their evenings dancing at balls and hunting for wealthy husbands.  That, and the fact that it is named for its famed Roman baths was all that I knew of Bath before my weekend getaway from London.  As a history geek and Classicist, that in itself was enough of a draw.  But my sister-in-law put it on my must-see list, so I found myself on train, in the rain (which I thought was appropriate, if less than picturesque), on my way to Bath. 

From London, Bath is only 90 or so minutes away by train, and you pass though oodles of picturesque countryside on the way there.  I only had the day to spend, so I intended to hit the highlights and ended up wishing for more time in this lovely, picturesque little town.  Unlike London, Bath is easily walkable and accessible on foot, and after a quick walkabout to orient myself, I stopped  at Bath Abbey and the Roman Baths which are catty-corner from one another in the same square.

I am fascinated by cathedrals and always stop in when I see one here in Europe.  Like many other English cathedrals, Bath Abbey has an incredible history.  The site has been occupied by Christian religious institutions since the 7th century A.D, and may have been built atop earlier pagan temples.  The first crowned "King of the English," King Edgar, was crowned here in 973, and the current construction was built in the 12th and 16th centuries and restored in the 18th century.  Don't miss the angels ascending Jacob's Ladder to heaven on the west front.  Legend has it that a 15th century Bishop of Bath, Oliver King, had it constructed after he visited the Abbey, found its monks more interested in earthly delights than the kingdom of heaven, and had a dream of the Heavenly Host ascending and descending a ladder.

Just around the corner from the Abbey is the famous Roman Baths, and you can smell the sulfur and minerals from the moment you walk into the modern construction on street level.  The ancient baths themselves are below ground, and still run with hot, bubbling, steaming mineral waters, millennia after their discovery, and the bath's construction in the 1st century A.D. by the occupying Romans.  During Roman rule, Bath was known as Aquae Sulis "the waters of Sulis" and dedicated to the Celtic goddess, Sulis, a mother-goddess equated by the Romans to Minerva.  The Museum provides an excellent audio-guide of the baths and the Roman artifacts found at the site,  and you can even taste the sulfur-y waters at the end of your tour.

Steam and bubbles rising from the surface of the water at Bath

After my tour of the baths, I stopped by Sally Lunn's for tea.  Just a couple of streets away from Bath Abbey, Sally Lunn's flowery window boxes and bright red sign can't be missed, and my sister-in-law had told me that it was her favorite place to eat in all of England.  I was sold.  I had the traditional tea with Sally Lunn's famous bun, reportedly a 17th century recipe, served with jam and clotted cream.  If you're like me, the words clotted cream are a bit off-putting to say the least.  It sounds revolting, and possibly unsafe.  But don't let the name throw you off. Clotted cream is quite possibly the single best gastronomic invention of mankind.  It is super rich and creamy and tastes as if butter, whipped cream, and frosting were having a delicious menage-a-trots in your mouth.  Seriously, it's sinful.  I only have a picture of the aftermath, because I was too busy having a flavor orgasm in the moment.  It's that good!

After tea, I made my way to the Royal Crescent, a semi-circular row of houses at the heart of Georgian Bath.  Number 1 is a museum, furnished and maintained in the manner of an 18th century resident.  Nearby, you can tour the Bath Assembly Rooms and Fashion Museum, where the fashionable Georgian ladies and gentlemen (Jane Austen and Charles Dickens among them) would gather for balls, concerts, and gambling.

On the way back to the train, I stopped at Pulteney Bridge, spanning the Avon River, and lined with shops.  You can take a one-hour river tour here, but I (wet and tired) declined the opportunity, and took the train back to London.

A Foodie's Paradise and a Macabre Compendium of British History: Borough Market and Westminster Abbey

This week, I thought I'd write about a couple of places where I couldn't take pictures (either because of the masses of people or because photography was not permitted).

Borough Market:
Borough Market is a foodie's heaven.  If you can't buy it, you probably shouldn't eat it, but some things that you can buy you may not want to.  Borough Market is several blocks of homemade, fresh-cooked, just slaughtered, organic or otherwise just plain good food.
It's best to go when hungry because there are tons of vendors cooking food that smells amazing, and even if they can't entice you to buy something, you will be plied with plenty of samples of olives, cheese, bread and jam, honey, fresh-squeezed juice and a thousand other things at all the stalls.  After slurping down a cup of potato leek soup, I went back for seconds of fish stew and then grazed at the rest of the stalls until I couldn't physically eat any more.  SO GOOD!

I'm fairly sure that I came across every type of meat product a person could possibly imagine (and some you that you might not).  At the fish stalls, whole fish stare at you with glassy eyes next to rows of squid with their tentacles dangling over the side of the table like decorative fringe.  At the meat stalls, not only can you buy fresh, bloody hunks of beef, lamb, veal, chicken etc., but also whole, un-plucked duck, pheasant, or rabbit which hang neatly by their necks in rows on the wall.  I also saw a pig's head complete with mouth ajar and lolling tongue.  I'm not sure whether this was for sale or merely for decorative effect. :)  I also found a booth selling exotic meats, just in case you're in the mood for a little kangaroo or ostrich.

In addition to these, you can find heaps of fresh vegetables, pies, sweets, breads, herbed fresh-churned butter, and and a host of other things I can't remember anymore.  I didn't even see it all.
On the way out, I found a chocolaterie and had a European-style hot chocolate, which was nothing like the watery, slightly chocolatey hot milk you get in the States.  I also bought some chocolates (overpriced, but worth the splurge) that would make your toes curl up.  It's that good.  Screw Hershey's chocolate bars.  WE have no idea how to do chocolate.



Westminster Abbey:
Oh how I wish that you could take pictures inside Westminster Abbey!  There is simply more to see inside than any one person could see in a single visit, and more to be remembered than can be remembered.

A first impression of Westminster Abbey is that it is OVERWHELMING.  It's as if, in the many centuries since it's construction began, it was decided that there should not even be an inch of wasted space.  And there's not.  Every niche, every corner chapel and tomb, is liberally gilded and carved, and tombs, dedications, and sculpture cover the walls and floor with not a hand's breadth between them.  Everywhere you look you are confronted by frolicking cherubs, saints frozen in scenes of divine rapture, noblemen and women lying serenely on coffins, their hands clasped in perpetual prayer.  In a more sinister vision, a man shelters his terrified wife as the skeletal menace of the Grim Reaper stalks her with sickle raised to strike.  I remembered a book I had read in which all the sculpture in a cathedral come to life, move about, and complain of their neighbors and the terrible things they had seen in their hundreds of years.  I imagined what it might be like if that scene happened here.  It would be earsplitting, a cacophony, as there are probably more sculptures than tourists.

I've seen the tombs of centuries of England's kings and queens from St. Edward the Confessor, who began construction of the Abbey sometime between 1045 and 1050, to Henry VII, entombed with his wife behind bronze gates and with his family clustered about him.  Elizabeth I and Mary Tudor (Bloody Mary) are buried side-by-side with a inscription about sisterly devotion (although they were political rivals and had no great love for one other in life).  I wonder what Mary would think if she knew that only her sister Elizabeth merited an effigy on their tomb.  I doubt that she would be pleased.

As you walk though the chapels, you tread upon the memorials of hundreds of people who have been interred beneath the floors of Westminster Abbey.  I wonder if they would have chosen that particular honor if they had known that millions of tourists would shuffle over their monuments every day without a glance, until the stone was worn away and the inscriptions unreadable.

On the opposite side of the high altar is the Poet's Corner with the monuments, effigies, and memorials of dozens of English writers such as Shakespeare, Chaucer, Jane Austin, the Bronte sisters, and Charles Dickens.  I was also surprised to learn that among the esteemed men to be buried at Westminster Abbey were Sir Issac Newton and Charles Darwin.  It's easy to get overly sentimental when writing about the Abbey.  It's like a time capsule of all of English history, all at once, where an 11th century king can be found under the same roof as an unknown WWII soldier.

Throughout the two hours that I spent at the cathedral, my eyes (exhausted from the constant assault of images and from reading hundreds of inscriptions) were drawn again and again to the simple beauty of the Gothic vaulted ceiling high above me.  Its elegance kept me grounded amongst the macabre spectacle of the tombs.   From a historical perspective, there is little in London to compete with Westminster Abbey.  It is impressive!

Pictures: Borough Market, Buckingham Palace, and Hyde Park