Travel Journal 5

(Scroll down to the beginning of the September 29th posts, in order read the journals in order. :) )

(my apologies for the weird characters appearing in the text. I cut and paste these entries from my word processor, and apparently Blogger doesn't like that very much. I'll try to edit them.)

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September 3rd, 2005 Balham, London

We visited Cafe Moka again this morning. We’ve nicknamed the young Indian man “Trevor”, because he reminds us so much of our good friend in Wenatchee. We sipped our latte’s and chatted with “Trevor” while we watched people commuting to work through Balham.

‘Trevor’ asked us where we were heading today, and we told him that we were going to check out Portobello Street Market. His eyes widened and he nodded approvingly. “I’ve only been there once, but it was great stuff!!” We couldn’t wait to experience it for ourselves, and so we bid him a good day, and trekked on towards Victoria Station via the train at Balham junction.

I braced Larry for the prospect of riding the Tube today, since we had skirted around doing so for the past two days. But after showing him on the map the distance between Victoria Station, and Notting Hill…he agreed to give it a go. So, purchasing our day Travel Cards, and after sorting out which line we needed to be on… we were off.

Now I can see why everyone grimaces about the Tube during summer. It wasn’t even 9:30, and it was already stifling hot! But, after an achingly long time(and somewhat claustrophic for Larry), we arrived at Notting Hill Gate.

What a great part of the city! We instantly followed the flow of people down to Portobello Road, and were greeted by the sight of a ‘living statue’ on the corner. She was completely dressed in white, draped from head to toe in elegant rags… and was slowly moving in the most graceful poses. We spent awhile snapping pictures of her, before heading down to the stalls set up on either side of Portobello.

Truly the most amazing street market I’ve ever seen! Of course, there was lots of bric-a-brac, and cheap tourists trinkets… but the overwhelming thing was the amount of ancient (to us!) antiques, set out in bargain bins! Hand painted prints from the late 1700’s, on sale for a steal at 20 GBP. Old leather footballs (real American style footballs), baskets of old crooked keys, and rows of first edition books such as Dickens’ “David Copperfield”. Larry drooled over that one for quite a bit, and we struck up a conversation with the old book dealer who was sitting nearby. His eyes lit up as we asked him if we could look at the book, and he told us to help ourselves. Can you imagine?? This book would be under glass, lock and key in America… and here we were, carefully leafing through it’s fragile pages.

Larry and the book dealer talked about Charles Dickens for some time, expounding on his brilliance, and his genius at making money. The book dealer confessed that his ‘second home’ was in New York - and that the moment he hears the taxi drivers honking their horns, he knows he’s home. I had to laugh at this, for that’s exactly how I feel whenever I hear Big Ben chiming the hour in London.

We wandered further down the road, and after a few twists and turns… we realized this market literally went on forever. Since the street was looking like a cattle drive, we decided to call it good, and head out for something to eat… but not before I bought a beautiful scarf, rich in gold and copper threads, with beadwork sewn on in paisleys.

We settled on a noisy café called “Tom’s”, which turned out to be delicious. We both had the “Tom’s Toasty”, which was a toasted panini with ham, cheese, and rocket. We washed that down with iced tea and brewed lemon lime soda, and then we were stuffed, happy, and ready for more exploring. But I had to force myself to bypass the fairy cakes on display up front of the restaurant. Their pink icing was practically screaming my name.

We trudged back towards the Tube station, but were briefly sidetracked by a peculiar yellow car parked in a parking lot. It had one wheel in the front, two in the back, and looked like a hybrid Pinto. Larry snapped pictures of this oddity, and spotted it’s name. “The Super Robin”. Heh! I’d love to see what Ralph Nader would think of one of these.

So, we found our way back to the Tube… this time we boarded the District Line, rather than the Circle Line. Larry decided he preferred the District Line… and the phrase of the day became “Cheer Up, Chicken!” Don’t ask why.

We reached Tower Hill, and were awed by the first views of The Tower of London as we came out of the tunnel from the Tube. We weren’t going to be touring it, as it was in the middle of the afternoon, and the crowds were swarming. But we wanted to just admire it from afar for awhile. The first thing that really caught our attention was the ancient Roman wall that was still preserved out behind the Tower. Originally built around 200 AD, it was astounding to imagine the hands that laid the stones in place to build that wall.

We circled around and ogled the front of the Tower for awhile, taking refuge in the shade. A welcome breeze stirred up, just as we saw an old sailboat heading towards Tower Bridge. It was then that we were treated to the sight of seeing Tower Bridge lifting for the passage of sailboat. Of course, we snapped pictures, and then wandered toward St. Katherine’s Docks afterwards. Yes, we were typical Americans, and went to the Starbucks there… but I have to say, the place was full of people, and they all appeared rather ‘local’.

We rested in front of the Dickens Inn for quite awhile, being amused by the pigeons on the cobblestones, and trying to recover for the trip back home. We walked a little further to the actual locks, full of boats waiting to be let in, and were able to chat with an aged gentlemen who worked as the maintanance manager at the Tower of London. He was very complacent about the fact that he actually lived there, and said he was just waiting for retirement so he could head out of London. I was pretty certain at that point that we weren’t going to score any special passages into the Tower through him!

We finally decided to call it a day, and made our way back to Victoria Station, where we caught our train to Balham. We walked into the courtyard of The Coach House, and found our hosts dining outside with their grown children. Lots of greetings and pleasantries all around, and then we retired to our quarters, where I promptly collapsed on the bed and passed out (cheer up, chicken!). Larry took a shower, and then snoozed awhile, listening to the chatter of our hosts below in the courtyard.

I woke up a couple of hours later, refreshed and ready to head out to dinner. We settled on “Ferarri’s” - an Italian bistro, where I had a penne pasta dish wish savory salami, and a Mandarin Cosmopolatin. Larry had Lasagna Classico, and a ‘Cool Cucumber’, which was a drink that really did have a cucumbery taste.

With a slight buzz going on, and our belly’s full, it was time to head to Sainsbury’s, where we collected our wicked chocolately Mars Delight bars, Sainbury’s miniature lemon pies (YUM!), and other really bad snack food. We certainly have enough to keep us stocked in crap food for the rest of our stay here.

But, I confess I have now developed a nasty addiction to those mini pies. Ohhh yes. Yum.