Sunday

Almost every place I visited on Sunday could fill its own post.  For the sake of brevity, though, it's all getting lumped together, as it was for me.

I woke in the morning and headed for the nearest Underground station, where classical music was playing, I supposed to placate people hungover from the night before.  An otherwise-empty carriage took me to Westminster.  When I emerged the sky was blue overhead with hardly a cloud to be seen.  There were barely any people queued up for the London Eye, and, since my parents had asked the day before if I'd been on it yet, I figured this was the best possible time for it.  So I took my place in the queue before the ticket office had even opened yet and bought a ticket, before standing in another short queue to get on the wheel.  (I recorded for posterity in my notes that I'd shared the gondola with American Eddie Redmayne, which is easy enough to explain and understand, and that in the queue I'd seen Foreign Cyberpunk Young Dudley Dursley, which is slightly more cryptic and bizarre.)  Had I had to wait any longer than I did, or had the weather not been as nice, or had I less time to kill before other things opened, I wouldn't have done it, but circumstances were aligned perfectly.  It is only under these conditions that I would recommend the Eye.  It was pretty neat to see the city slowly getting further away, and the movement of the wheel was almost imperceptible.

That unexpected thing achieved I took public transportation to north London.  This included transferring from the Underground to a bus.  At first I felt a bit lazy doing that, since I only took the bus a stop or two, but when I saw the steepness of the hill I felt better about my decision.  To reach Highgate Cemetery I walked through Waterlow Park, which abuts the eastern section of the cemetery.  I knew that I wanted to visit at least one cemetery on my trip, and based on photographs I'd seen online Highgate seemed the obvious choice.  It's one of the Magnificent Seven cemeteries built in London in the Victorian era, and is separated into an eastern and western section.  After paying the entrance fee you can wander Highgate East at will, but it's necessary to take a tour to see Highgate West; however, the ticket for the West side tour includes entrance to the East side.  I feel it's worth the £12 combined ticket.  Tours leave every half-hour or so, and though I bought my ticket in time for the 11:30 tour all of the tours until 1:00 were already full, so I went through the East first.

One could easily live undetected back in the far reaches of Highgate East.  That's actually my new life plan.  Despite the fact that the cemetery seems to be jam-packed, there is still apparently room to be buried there, if you can afford it.  I must say, though, I'm not sure what constitutes a burial plot there, because there is hardly any room to spare that's not already occupied or used for a path.  Douglas Adams is buried there, as is Karl Marx, whose stone includes a large pedestal topped with a huge head staring down at everyone--the stone reads 'Workers of all lands unite,' and Marx's glower seems to add 'Or else.'  There are headstones there of every shape and size, ones made of the usual stones but some made of slate or even wood, and many of them covered in ivy or tilted precariously.  It's terribly picturesque. 

More money has gone into the restoration of Highgate West, so it's less ramshackle.  It is, I believe, a bit smaller than East--or at least it seems so, as you're not free to walk around it on your own it certainly seems smaller; it's definitely hillier.  The West also features more mausoleums, some of which were planned around a theme.  The two big ones are the Egyptian Avenue and the Circle of Lebanon (right).  The crypts in the centre of the Circle form a huge pot that holds a cedar of Lebanon, which has grown usually large because of its sheltered location.  We were able to enter a large crypt where some of the vaults had not been sealed, and saw rather old caskets that were still mostly intact.  That was a little odd and creepy.  I was also surprised to see among the old graves that of Alexander Litvinenko, the former KGB agent and defector who was poisoned in 2006.  One of the best things about the tour of the West was that our guide, Angie, clearly loves the cemetery and loves sharing it with visitors.  Her enthusiasm heightened my appreciation for it.

Upon leaving Highgate I made my way to Camden Town, just a few Tube stops south.  I wanted to see the canal lock, and the area was supposed to have cool markets and things.  What I found was that everyone in London was there.  It was awful.  I should have anticipated this, as it was Sunday afternoon and a long weekend to boot, but for some reason I didn't expect it.  A lot of the stands set up seemed to be selling tacky, generic souvenirs, and while some of the food stalls smelled appetising, there were so many people crammed into the area that it wasn't worth trying to get a closer look.  I did manage to cross a bridge over the canal when a boat was preparing to go through the lock; getting to see that was the only thing that redeemed this part of the day.  The boat sailed into the lock, the man climbed out and swung the gates shut behind it, and the water level sank until it was the same as the lower part of the canal, at which point the woman opened the gates and then embarked again before they left.  During this time there was a horde of young women outside one of the canalside restaurants, shrieking for some celebrity, but I never did figure out who.

After fleeing Camden Town I was more determined than ever to ride a boat to Greenwich.  It took a while to get there; the Tube station I'd come to was exit-only during certain hours, and the next-closest one was so full that there was a crowd of people waiting outside to get in.  I chose to keep walking rather than wait for a train there, figuring that I'd happen upon another station eventually.  Along the way I paused to buy and eat a snack, and eventually made my way back to Westminster.  The queues for the Eye were long and the sky was overcast, making me even gladder I'd gone up when I did.  I got a water bus ticket right by the Eye and hopped on, sitting at the stern.  The ride really was refreshing and passed lots of great edifices, including the Tower and Tower Bridge.  If, however, you want more leisure to see the sights along the way, there's a slower tourist water bus that would probably be worthwhile to take.

By the time I got to Greenwich some attractions were beginning to close.  This wasn't awful, as I wasn't especially invested in visiting any of the museums.  Being greeted a statue of Sir Walter Raleigh was gratifying, and upon reflection it would have been interesting to see what the museum had related to his life and voyages.  I would have liked to have seen the chapel, but a wedding was in progress and thus it was closed to visitors.  Luckily the Painted Hall at the Royal College was still open.  The Hall is insanely ostentatious, very Rococo, but quite well executed, as one might expect.  The trompe l'oeil work on the columns would indeed fool a casual observer, and I appreciated the mirrors provided to study the ceiling without doing damage to one's neck.  After wandering around the college for a while I ended up at the bottom of the hill on which the observatory stands, looking up at it and thinking, 'I'm going to have to go up there.'  And so, fuelled by spite more than anything else, I lumbered my way up the hill.  It wasn't as long a climb as I'd expected, but it was steep; I took a break or two under the guise of taking some pictures.  At the top I was rewarded with a view of London that I must admit was worth it: the college buildings at the foot of the hill, London in the near distance to the left, a building I think is the O2 Area to the right.  I'd thought that there was a place at the observatory where you could stand in both hemispheres at once; the only thing I saw like that was a line on a wall that was in a sort of alley, with a crowd of people waiting to have their pictures made there.  I decided I wasn't going to try to mush in there, so I descended the hill.

Then I had to figure out how to get back to central London.  I thought about getting the water taxi back, but a single ticket was nearly £8, which seemed a bit steep.  I knew that there was some kind of rail somewhere in the area, so I wandered around for a bit trying to find a place to get on, to no avail.  There was, however, this strange cylindrical brick building with a domed top that looked very clearly like some kind of small public building, a restroom if nothing else.  When I entered there were stairs going up and a very large lift that descended some distance; at the bottom I walked through a white-tile-lined tunnel that sloped gently downward for the first half and gently upward for the second half.  At its end I reached another lift that led to another cylindrical building.  And that's how I crossed the Thames underwater.

I'd say that all of the things I did and saw on Sunday had things to recommend them, and I wouldn't entirely discount any of them under the right circumstances.  My problem was that I ended up doing too much in one day, and wasn't able to enjoy all of it because I got too worn out.  If I had the day to do over again I would probably skip Camden Town altogether; that would have given me more time in Greenwich, and I might have been able to take the slower boat.  As it is, I'm glad I saw the thing most important to me near the beginning of the day, when I had the energy to really appreciate it.