London, Day 5
Hi readers. Jenny and I are sitting here enjoying some “official” Champagne at the moment, courtesy of my co-worker who couldn’t take the bottle with him on the way to his interim destination. He received it as a gift for speaking at the work event I was attending, and he promptly gave it to us to share. Yay. 🙂
Jenny and I just got back a little while ago from the fireworks at the Thames Festival. We started off today with Mass (Roman Catholic, of course) at Our Lady of the Rosary near us in the Marylebone area. It was literally only a couple of blocks from us, so it was an easy walk. Interestingly, there are only a few churches that survived the Reformation, survived World War II, *and* reverted to Roman Catholicism after it was permitted again in the mid-19th century. One of those, St. Etheldreda, is the only one that I could find that was near a Circle Line stop. The church was originally built in the 13th century. It had a long and tumultuous history after the Reformation in the 16th century. It had previously been part of the estate of the Bishop of Ely, who had massive palace-like grounds that included the church. Through a series of Bad Things(tm), including a 300+ year-old property dispute, the church was the only building left from the estate, and was up on the auction block. Parliament had only recently officially permitted the practice of Roman Catholicism again. There were two RC groups trying to bid on it. The one who won ended up doing so almost by mistake–the other group thought that the agent bidding on the church was theirs, and so they stopped bidding themselves. The church went through some massive restoration at that point, and again after World War II. It is still an active church, buried among other buildings built up around it.
Unfortunately, we couldn’t make that one. They had a 9AM Mass, but the trip to get there would have required an exceptionally early start, and we just couldn’t do it. Instead, we opted for Our Lady of the Rosary near the hotel. The parish was founded in the mid-19th century, but the current church was built in the 1960’s. It isn’t all that bad inside, actually. Its exterior definitely looks like a typical 1960’s London brick building, but the inside is not the gaudy mess that one might expect from that time period. It looks rather nice, actually, though it clearly is not “old”.
After Mass, we came back to the hotel to change into jeans and have some quick breakfast, then decided to head out for a few relaxing afternoon events. First up was a trip to St. James Park. Jenny had been there, but I hadn’t been there yet. We intended to walk through the park on the way to see St. James Palace and the remains of Whitehall Palace (the only remaining building is the Banqueting Hall–the rest of the Tudor-style wooden palace burned to the ground in the 17th century). From there, we were going to attend Evensong at Westminster Abbey.
Well, by the time we got down to the park, it was getting close to the time that we would want to be at the abbey church, so we walked along the park towards the church. The service started at 15:00. Evensong is seated in the Quoire section, forward of the main seating section and in front of the high altar, right inside the Lantern. This was incredibly cool. I had hoped to attend this particular service, as it also included the granting of surplices to the new choir members from the abbey school, as well as acceptance of choir members into the abbey choir society. The organ and music were phenomenal. The service was really quite cool. It had that feel of something quite old but still relevant. There were lots of different types of staffs (I always thought that was “staves”, but all of the spelling things are yelling at me about it, so I’ll go with “staffs”) used. I don’t understand the meaning for each one, but different ones were used to present the two different classes, then there was one used to escort one of the ministers (I don’t recognize their clothing details, so I’m not sure what his rank was, but he gave the final blessing–he may have bee the dean of the abbey school), one used to escort one of the ministers for the two “lessons” (we’d call them “readings”), one used to escort the preacher for the sermon, and what looked like yet a different one to escort the celebrants and choir out of the church. I couldn’t understand all of them. They also had guys in red cassocks with military medals on them that were part of the celebrant party, but I don’t know who they were. They didn’t do anything other than process with everyone.
This was a great experience. We got to sit and experience the abbey church up close and personal, and we had a great time. It was also free, so double-cool. If I was not a Roman-variety Catholic for so long, I would seriously consider the Church of England. 🙂
We had initially intended to also hear the organ recital at 17:45. It was only about 16:30, though, so we actually had to exit while the staff prepared the space for the organ recital and subsequent evening service. We got another look at many of the memorials and areas of the church on our way out, and it was good. After we left the church, we decided that we were getting a little tired. We wanted to see the fireworks at 21:45 that were part of the Thames festival, so we headed over to St. James Park again to grab a bench and watch people and wildlife. Jenny worked on some writing stuff, and we both watched people for a while. The wind was picking-up, though, and it was getting chilly, so we both put on the sweatshirts that we had with us in case we got cold.
We were getting a little hungry after a while at the park, so we walked up to the “Inn the Garden” restaurant that was inside the park. We had a great dinner. It was a little on the expensive side, but not too bad. Also, since it was the only “big” meal that we had all day, it worked-out well for us. There was a self-serve and take-away section that I had intended to visit, but I walked right past it without noticing. I thought it was closed. We sat at the restaurant side, where things were somewhat more expensive. Oh well. It was quite good, and we enjoyed ourselves. We had to sit outside, though, and it was getting even colder.
When we were finished with dinner, we started to walk down to the Thames. We were on the Westminster side of the Thames, and intended to stay there, near Westminster Station. This would provide a good view of the fireworks (if the internet was to be believed), and a quick exit via Westminster Station on the Underground. We found a bench and kept each other warm for a couple of hours of people-watching along the river. Soon enough, we heard Big Ben toll 21:00, then heard the 21:45 bells, so we grabbed a spot along the wall. At 22:00 the show began, and it was absolutely fabulous. It was only about 20 minutes long, but there was a lot of pyro in the sky at one time. There were typically at least four big shells going off at once, with a multitude of smaller shells and/or jets/sprays at the same time. Awesome.
We headed down to the Underground, only to find out that the only line we could use from there to home (the Circle line) was running what they called “major” delays. It turned out that we had to wait about 20 minutes for a train to arrive in our direction that would take us where we needed to go. It was practically empty, too, which was odd. Good for us, though, and it got us home quickly.
Once off the Underground, we wandered up to the nearby grocery to get some soup-in-a-cup to enjoy with our Champagne (ha ha, yes, I’m serious), along with some hummus and diet coke. On our way into the hotel, we stopped at the bar to get some ice (no ice machines here), dumped the ice into the bathroom sink to cool our bottle, and enjoyed our soup. Now it’s getting time for bed.
Tomorrow, we’re scheduled for the Chunnel train at 14:30 or so. The current guidelines after the fire last week are to show up at the correct time for the train, and they’ll accommodate us as soon as they can. Our transfer is an anytime ticket for any train from Brussels to Rotterdam, so we should be OK there.
Tomorrow morning, we’ll finish packing and then be on our way to stop #2: Rotterdam.
jonathan
