London.
Monday 16 July. From our hotel in Paris we took a taxi to the Gare du Nord as did not fancy negotiating the metro with all our luggage. The Eurostar left on time and we had a smooth trip through the flat French country side so familiar from our canal trip, through the tunnel and finally to London Waterloo where we took a black cab to our hotel in Norfolk Place near Paddington Station. After checking in and delivering the bags to our small and rather dingy room we set out for a walk, first to Paddington to refresh our memory of the Heathrow Express and buy tickets for the next day. We then found our way down to Hyde Park where we followed the road over the Serpentine to Kensington. The weather was fine and warm and we were actually looking for a café when we spotted a banner on the Royal Albert Hall advertising the BBC Proms. Since we had not visited this famous venue before we went along for a look and ended up booking for the concert that evening!
We eventually found a café in the South Kensington area and had a late lunch then went to take the tube back to Paddington…what a shock: £4.00 for a one way, one-zone ticket! We decided to take the all-day tickets for £5.10 each as we intended to use the tube to get to and from the concert. (Compare this to a carnet of 10 tickets on the Paris metro for €11.10 and very long rides on the LA buses for $0.25 each for seniors.) The trains were still packed with passengers and yet the London papers were full of news that MetroNet, one of the “privatized” underground contractors, had gone broke. It does make you wonder where the money was going.
The visit to the Proms was a great success as unplanned events often are. The hall was over 50% full which was not bad for a Monday night with a fairly esoteric program. The line-up included a symphony orchestra and full choir from Rome with the Swingle Singers and 4 top operatic soloists. The first offering was a modern composition by B….. which involved the Swingle Singers murmuring into microphones to the accompaniment of the orchestra blasting away in a disjointed fashion with lots of percussion! After the interval was Stabat Mater, a sacred work by Rossini in 12 parts, describing the crucifixion and the reactions of various biblical characters to the tragedy. The choir and the soloists were excellent even though the soprano was a last minute replacement due to sickness. There was a long ovation at the end but you could not stage an encore with this kind of music. Eventually we made our way back to South Kensington, took the tube to Paddington where we had a light supper at Garfunkles, and so to bed.
Tuesday 17 July. In the morning we breakfasted on some fruit in the room while we doing some ironing and repacking our bags. After checkout at 11:00 we dragged our luggage to Paddington station and boarded the first Heathrow Express, early, but we figured we would be better off in the airline lounge than hanging about in town. This was just as well because for no properly explained reason the train stopped for 30 minutes in the middle of nowhere and was actually passed by the next Heathrow train! Some of the passengers were getting quite hot under the collar. Then when we arrived the 10 minute walk to the Air New Zealand counter at Terminal 3 turned into a marathon as we were directed back out of the building, through a maze of construction works and back in at the other side. Signs explained that “We are Building a World Class Airport”, Yeah Right. The weather was threatening and we were lucky to get through without being rained on.
Our temper was restored however when we got to the counter and found our upgrade request had been successful and we would have the new lie flat sleeping pods. Facilities at the United lounge were minimal, with no food available but we were soon settled in on the aircraft. It felt a bit strange not sitting next to each other but the comfort and service were great. There was a long take off delay due to an aircraft which had broken down and had to be towed out of the way, however this gave us an opportunity to make the most of the extra glass(es) of free champagne.
During the flight I watched 2 movies: “Black Sheep”, a Kiwi splatter saga in the early Peter Jackson genre and “Chinatown”, a noir classic directed by Roman Polonski (before he got into trouble with the US authorities) staring Jack Nicholson, Fay Dunnaway and some great old cars and LA locations. We touched down at LAX pretty much on schedule, after an excellent flight.
