Clara, Hyde Park & Kensington - Friday 14 May 2010

Friday was another one of those half-rainy days. In the morning I stayed in doing housecleaning, researching UK train travel and such. I'm off to Manchester next Friday, and I was having a bit of trouble figuring out what to do about train tickets. The tickets are much cheaper online than buying them from a person at the station.  But I don't have a printer here to print the online tickets, and had already been told that the library won't allow me to connect my laptop to a printer there. So I did some more research.

Clara
At 3:00 I had a date to meet Clara at Paddington Station, a place I hadn't yet seen. Clara is a woman with whom I used to work, but only by phone. She works at Abbott Diabetes Care in Whitney. We've talked and been in the same meetings on the phone, but never actually met each other. She was coming into town to meet friends for the evening and she was kind enough to put a couple of hours into her schedule beforehand for me.

Paddington Station
Paddington Station is huge, with both Underground and Rail trains coming and going. There is shopping and a whole food court inside the station, and thousands of people milling about.  This time I had the energy for it and thoroughly enjoyed people watching. Favorite sight/sound: a couple of women in their mid-60s, one of them definitely from Scotland, came and sat at a table near where I was waiting. The Scottish woman blew her nose in the longest and most melodious manner I have ever witnessed. It was like listening to a kazoo orchestra--I had a grin from ear to ear, and I'm sure people who might have been watching me thought I was daft, smiling so widely at nothing in particular.  Also while at the station I asked about buying tickets and the wonderfully helpful people told me there are kiosks at which one can put in an online confirmation number for a ticket already purchased online, and the kiosk will print the ticket then and there. How cool! Exactly what I need.


Hyde Park
Clara arrived at our meeting place by the statue of Paddington Bear, and we took off on what turned out to be a lovely long walk in Hyde Park.  I think it's the largest park, outside of Hampstead Heath, which is like a huge regional area akin to Tilden. But for inner city parks, I think Hyde Park is the biggest.

Me at One End of Hyde Park, With an Expanse of Greenery Behind Me

Hyde Park is known for its Serpentine Lake, on which you can paddleboat, row, and see many kinds of wild and not-so-wild birds.

A Heron Was Kind Enough to Pose for Me

 Perfect Picture of a Swan, Don't You Think?

 And Here She Is with Her Cygnets

 Can You Tell How Many Ducklings are Sleeping Here?

Aside from the birds, and the water, it's the open space that makes this park such a pleasure. London is a big, vibrant, loud, constantly moving city. Traffic everywhere, huge buildings, massive amounts of people, all moving and talking and thinking and exchanging energy. It's mostly kind of gray, you know, what with the clouds hanging low and the pavement and the buildings. There are gorgeous brick buildings, too, but in the main I'd say so far there's a whitish-gray feel to everything. But in Hyde Park there is green. Lots and lots of green. And large areas to rest your eyes on distance with no buildings, billboards, or buses in the way.

Lovely Open Space of the Serpentine at Hyde Park

A Quiet Bit of Green and Water in the Middle of the Big City

I really love the parks in London. Truth to tell, I'd been kind of worried that I would be overwhelmed by the size and intensity of such a large city. Even though I live near San Francisco, I don't live in the city itself, but in quiet, charming, small Alameda nearby. And San Francisco is not that large a city. So I was anxious that London would be too much for me. But so far, in the 9 days that I've been here, I've been to three large parks and seen a few smaller, neighborhood ones, and they've completely calmed my worries. In just a few minutes' time I can be in a lovely green space, with birds and squirrels (gray ones; it seems they've almost completely taken over from the red ones). My Earth sign heart is happy, and my love of adventure and ethnic diversity is, too. London has it all!

I'm On Vacation!
Clara and I walked around for close on two hours. We talked about work, and I realize how happy I am to be taking a break from all the chaos and confusion going on in our division.  It was a good conversation for me in that, because it was really one of the first times I actually felt like I was on vacation. What with all the dramas here and at home, and trying to find my way around this new city, I hadn't really relaxed much or felt detached from having to get things done. But talking with Clara about work reminded me how much crazier my life was when I was still working, and it gave me a sense of perspective on things. Yes, I had and may still have some things to arrange and take care of here, but all of that is temporary. Clara will go back to work on Monday, but I will only go to school. I can't tell you just how happy that made me. To realize, as it were, that I actually am on a long break, studying what I want, seeing new things, experiencing a new city, and meeting new people. Expanding my mind, my world, my outlook. I will forever keep the association of that happiness with Hyde Park, and with Clara, too. So thanks to you, Miss Clara!


At the end of our walk in the park we passed by the memorial to Prince Albert. Clara was funny; she warned me that the statue is completely over the top, with a mish-mash of styles and symbolism. And she was so right! Even from far away it looks like there's a golden Buddha sitting under a Christian cathedral with classical Greek statues on the four corners. When you get closer you see that the Buddha is actually Prince Albert, and the Greek statues contain elephants and camels, among other things. It's quite amusing (although maybe it's a bit unpatriotic to say so).

Prince Albert Memorial at the Edge of Hyde Park

Directly across the street from the memorial is Prince Albert Hall, which is a lovely building with a domed top. Clara likes to go to classical music concerts there, and apparently the acoustics are so good that even people not normally drawn to classical music are moved by the performances there.

Albert Hall

 We saw some more of those baby elephant statues. In fact, I'd just read that morning in the paper how the last one was being installed today, and it just so happens that it was right there at the Albert Hall. 

Baby Elephant with Old Maps Decoration

Baby Elephant Statue in Bright Blue

Kensington

We left the park and headed to Kensington High Street. Kensington is a posh area, with department stores, boutiques, and even a Whole Foods grocery store. I was surprised to see Whole Foods there, and Clara said she'd heard it was quite expensive. I laughed and told her how we call it "Whole Paycheck."

There were lots and lots of lovely buildings, too, and poor Clara had to stop every few yards so I could capture yet another one with my camera.

 Bearded Gods on a Building in Kensington

I need to study architecture so I can tell what style building I'm looking at. This one was stunning, especially with the dormer windows on the roof--eleven of them!

Dormer Windows on Roof of Kensington Building

More Exquisite Buildings in Kensington

Wow! One thing that's so very different about London than San Francisco, or any city in the US, is how old it is. There are buildings from so many different periods here, sometimes all bunched together into one row, creating a melange of styles and colors. I suppose even if I did know enough about architecture to label these, it would still make me somewhat dizzy--all that history, all those layers. 

Just think about what has (or might have) happened in this one street--Medieval priests and troubadors wandering through the neighborhood.  Oxcarts full of people dead from the Black Plague rumbling off to mass graves. King Henry the VIII and his break from the Catholic Church causing riots in the streets. Queen Victoria and the British empire on which the Sun never set. Skies blackened with the smoke of factories. Young boys marching off to fight in the fields of Flanders during WWI. Music halls and theatres cropping up. Automobiles replacing horse-drawn carriages. The horrible bombing Blitz of WWII, when people ran out of these buildings into Tube stations. The influx of so many cultures after that war. Then the whole revolutionary period of the 60s and 70s; I'm sure there were flower children wandering these streets singing folk songs and trying to end the cycle of war after war. Stock brokers and power mongers, protesters, and soup lines, now posh stores and banks. All of that crammed into a row of mish-mash style buildings...

A Hodgepodge of Styles and Colors

I certainly don't claim to know much about the history of this great city, but the little I do know, and much that I don't, comes flooding into me as I walk around, as I see buildings that have stood for many hundreds of years. This is something we just don't have in the US, except in very old places like New Orleans, which predate the Anglo settling of my native country. 

I wouldn't say I'm a big history buff or anything, but I'm definitely grooving on being around all these artifacts of time, different times, and especially when they're all together, next to each other. It's as if the linear nature of time is somehow transcended, as if Victorian and Edwardian ghosts inhabit the same street as those of Churchill's days, Tony Blair's and Gordon Brown's. All the ghosts are here, curtsying, or waving their lace handkerchiefs, or walking past you without making eye contact, or smiling at you and holding out a flower and a hit of LSD. I think one could fall into a trance and stay on one street corner all day, watching the parade of many pasts and many presents filing by, some of them saying "Oh my, isn't that building simply grand?"


Soon the walk and the day were over. Clara and I grabbed a quick bite to eat in the Kensington High Street Tube station, which is actually an upscale shopping mall. Then we went our separate ways. After such a long walk, I was tired, and those 65 stairs up to the flat seemed to loom above me. After the first week, I'm still panting by the time I get to the top, but the first two floors seem less painful than when I originally arrived. So there's some progress.