East Along the Thames

I just got back to Belsize Park and am sitting down to blog again today for two reasons: (1) Spooner and his flatmates are all out at an event at school, so I have the place to myself, and (2) I have to be out early tomorrow morning to meet a Flickr mate at the Angel -- we're going to Abney Park Cemetery in Stoke Newington.

Soon after I left the house this morning, I realized that my spreadsheet, containing all the important info about where I was going, how to get there, what time things were open, etc., was on the floor of the guestroom. I was off the grid. Flying without instruments. But I freaked out only for a few minutes and went on with the plan that I had in my head.

Sunshine! Blue sky! The best weather I've had yet (it's been grey, but not a drop of rain). My explorations were all east of Tower Bridge. I started out at Tower Hill tube station, walked around the west and south sides of the Tower, and then walked around St Katharine Docks. The highlight was seeing Dead Man's Hole under the bridge -- a place where bodies were dumped into the Thames from the Tower -- but the tide was low and I just had to imagine the water taking the corpses out to sea.

Next, I walked over the bridge and down Shad Thames to the Design Museum, where I stopped in for a quick look at the shop and use of the loo. I debated going in to see an exhibit called Under a Fiver (stuff that costs less than five pounds), but I pressed on and walked along the Thames Walk through Bermondsey to Rotherhithe. I walked past many old wharf buildings (warehouses) that have been converted to luxury apartments, and many purpose-built luxury flats. "Luxury" is the operative word here -- this area has gone from a rat-infested, disease- and poverty-ridden area to prime real estate. I did see one block of council housing with nappies hanging up on the balcony.

At Canada Water, I got the tube to Canary Wharf and walked over to West India Quay to go to the Museum in Docklands, where the major exhibition now is Jack the Ripper's East End. It was a bit more about Jack the Ripper -- and less about the East End -- than I would have liked, but I did learn a bit about poverty, health, policing, etc., in that area in the late 1800s. Most interesting were the household-by-household maps of economic well-being in that time period. As you can imagine, there's significant overlap between the most abject poverty and the places the Ripper's victims lived or their bodies were found. And there was some overlap with what I'd seen on the walk about Jewish radicalism in the East End that I'd done on Monday.

The sky was still blue and the sun still shined when I left the museum, so I took the DLR to Greenwich and rode on the Greenwich Wheel. It's a Ferris wheel, with enclosed pods, that's smaller -- and cheaper -- than the London Eye. I liked it, and I might even be brave enough now to go on the Eye ... on another visit.

While I was in Greenwich, I did a quick loop through the Greenwich Market, where I bought some vintage buttons, and walked around St Alfeges church.

Travel tip: When you find a good loo, make a mental note of where it is so that you can do a pit stop there when you're next in the area. I knew that there were nice loos at the Design Museum and the Information Centre in Greenwich, so I stopped at both, and I'd been to the Museum in Docklands before so I knew to plan a pit stop there. On this adventure, I found fairly nice public loo near All Hallows by the Tower as well.

Pedometer reading: Just over 20,000 steps, 8.21 miles

Expenses:

• £2.40 for two rolls, a clementine, and a beverage (eaten throughout the day -- this kept me going just fine)
• £5.60 for the Museum in Docklands (I had a 20% off coupon that I got online)
• £7 for the Greenwich Eye
• £3 for Greenwich Market purchase
• Topped up Oyster with a tenner
  

Brilliant!

What a difference a year makes. This year's arrival day was a complete 180 from last year's -- the key worked in the lock on the first try, not a drop of rain, and I had a pal to meet up with so I didn't have to wander around in a disoriented and jetlagged state all by myself. After a nap and a shower, I met one of my Flickr mates in St Pancras Churchyard, then we went to the British Library and the Wellcome Collection. No trouble figuring out the bus, didn't get lost, had a good time -- couldn't be better. Saturday and Sunday were equally brilliant days. Spooner and I went to Kew Gardens on Saturday to see the Henry Moore sculptures. They looked fab in the natural setting, but after walking around and looking at over 20 of them, I had to say "No more Moore. Let's get snacks." We had tea at a very old-timey English tea room, where Spooner and I argued about how to use silverware (he's trying to learn how to eat like a Brit, i.e. use his knife to shovel food onto the back of his fork.) I tried to tell him that his ancestors left the persecution and damp of this isle so that he could grow up in freedom and eat like an American. We covered large sections of the East End on Sunday -- Bunhill Fields, Shoreditch, Brick Lane area, and eventually the Isle of Dogs. We saw a ton of street art, walked through Columbia Road Flower Market, looked at the old Huguenot houses in Princelet and Fournier Streets, found El Chivo and Banksy graffiti in dark alleys, bought stuff at UpMarket, took the DLR to West India Quay, went to the Museum in the Docklands, and came home exhausted. All along the way, I saw things that I'd seen in pictures in Guess Where London -- it was really freaky to see things I knew, but had never seen in real life, and I even often remembered who took the photo. Now it's Monday morning and Spooner has gone off to work, leaving me on my own for the whole day. It's cloudy and damp for the first time since I got here -- much more like what I expect of London weather. I'm heading to Kensington today to go to the V&A and to walk through Holland Park. Tonight is the meet up at a pub in Waterloo with the rest of my Flickr mates. I'm really psyched to be meeting them. Hope they like the gifties from America.

An Unresolved Journey

I had a bit of a problem with my Oyster card today. As Spooner would say, I "didn't understand the system." I knew how to use it on the Tube: when you enter the station, you tap the Oyster card on the yellow touch pad at the front of the cattle shoot. The gate then opens and a screen tells you how much money you have left on your card and/or how much will be debited for this journey. In order to leave the station at your destination, you must tap your card at the exit cattle shoot/gate. If you transfer to a different line at a station, you don't have to touch your card. You only use it when you enter or leave a station.

So, I had no problem taking the Jubilee line to Canary Wharf. It was my transfer to the Docklands Light Rail to go down to Greenwich where I got screwed up. I got off the tube and followed the signs to the DLR, assuming this would be like other transfers, but before I knew it I was going through a cattle shoot and I was outside. The signs to the DLR pointed me through a plaza, across the street and down a block. When I entered the DLR station, I looked for a cattle shoot but didn't see one. Signs pointed to an up escalator, so up I went and found myself on the platform. Thinking something wasn't right and maybe my Oyster couldn't be used here, I went back downstairs to look for a ticket agent, but there was just a ticket dispenser machine with nearly incomprehensible instructions and some indication that Oyster cards were okay on the DLR. Back up the escalator to the track, where the train was arriving and I got on.

When I reached Greenwich, I saw a sign that said that failure to tap Oyster card when entering and exiting would result in a £20 fine. Yikes! Then I saw the yellow Oyster tap pad mounted on the wall. I tapped and I exited.

Periodically as I walked miles and miles, uphill and down, around and through Greenwich and the park, I worried about my Oyster card and whether I'd be stopped as I tried to get on the return train. Worse yet, I worried that I'd be alright today but would be docked the £20 when I took the tube to Heathrow at the crack of dawn tomorrow. Maybe I could get Spooner to switch Oysters with me, so he'd get stuck with any fine when he next used the card. This probably isn't a realistic plan.

Dead tired, I got back on the DLR in Greenwich at around 4 p.m. and was thrilled that no alarms sounded when I tapped my card to enter. Exiting the DLR station on the other side of the Thames, I then noticed at least half a dozen wall-mounted tap pads that I must have walked right past on the way in this morning. Still mildly worried about the whole thing when I entered the Canary Wharf tube station, I saw a ticket window with a real person and decided I should get over any of my usual shyness and ask for assistance.

"I think I did something wrong with my Oyster card," I told him. I explained that I'd missed a tap on my DLR ride.

He read my card and said, "Yes. It seems you have an unresolved journey. I'll take care of that. No extra money will be taken off your card."

Whew! I got on the tube and rode to St. John's Wood where I met Spooner.

My journey on the DLR may have been temporarily unresolved, but I'd say that, on the whole, my trip to London has been fully resolved. I've done nearly everything on my high priority list (the Pearly Harvest Festival, Brighton, a few new markets, some Banksy sightings, dinner with Jamie H-B), and much of my medium priority list (Charles Dickens' house, a return to Frognal in search of the house with topiaries, a few new museums). I've had some favorite Brit foods (fish and chips, Indian take-away, tuna and sweet corn sandwich) and found some excellent new ones (Wagamama noodle dishes, veg burgers at Red Veg, veg pie and mushy peas, HobNobs digestive biscuits). I took a ton of pix, some of them pretty good. And I got around just fine on my own, despite my little Oyster screw up.