2: London All Day, London Into the Night!

I got up feeling really refreshed, had a good breakfast in the hotel and charged out to meet the day. I had seen a sign for “hop-on-hop-off” bus tours over at the train station and it’s what I usually do when I get to a city so I can get my bearings. I still had my London bearings, so this was about people and city watching.

Those who know me, know that I chat with EVERYONE when I’m traveling (in a good way). I got the guys at the newsstand to tell me which bus line was their favorite and they loaded me up with maps and directions. I met this fabulous 73 year-old woman from Alberta under the bus stop (it drizzled all day long). She was doing the same thing I was but the next day she and her companions were headed to Southampton to get on a British Isles cruise. She was an intrepid traveler and a delight. We waved goodbye as we set off in our different directions and she had most certainly gotten my day off to a bright start.

Since I was starting from Kings Cross Station, the first places we passed were my old friends from my first visit over, back during my Austin College days. Bloomsbury, British Museum, Leicester Square, SOHO. We even passed the Royal Imperial Hotel where all us college students stayed. I wondered if it still had legendarily ugly carpet. The area has changed remarkably in the last 12 years but it still had a familiar feel to me. We walked a lot of miles in these neighborhoods back in the day.

I decided to “hop off” at Lambeth Square in southwest London and take a walk to the Imperial War Museum (IWM) to see if they had any new information on my grandfather’s regiment during WWI and I suppose to remember him a little bit — and honor what he went through before he left England for Mexico in 1920 and then up into Texas where he and my grandmother met, married, and had their family. When I knew him, he was quiet and gentle. This unplanned stop was also me trying, I suppose, to reconcile the incomprehensible violence he was in for five solid years with the gentleness I knew in him in his later life. For the record — after what I saw in the WWI exhibit from the British POV — I can’t make the leap. I hope to talk to my uncle when I get home and ask him. I look forward to the conversation. After my short trip to the IWM, I walked back to Lambeth Square through St. Mary’s Gardens and hopped back on, rode back to King’s Cross, changed clothes at the hotel, and raced out again!

I went to SOHO and met an old co-worker from Austin who has been living in England over 20 years now. We were in a Dutch pub called De Hems in Chinatown, which was a fabulous place to reconnect (along with a couple other folks from our company) for a few hours. We had lots of laughs and caught up. After drinks we went for pho around the corner and spent some more hours talking about business and how to save the world. It was so good to see my old friend again and to see how well he is doing. He hailed me a cab and we parted ways in the rain. I was in a cab zig-zagging through the Theatre District at 11:00pm jet lagged AF but having a ball. My cabbie and I had a chat about football when I asked him what the score was in the Tottenham game earlier. He said, “Well, I don’t rightly know because I’m a West Ham supporter and it’s m’ job to hate Tottenham.” I. LOVE. THIS. PLACE.