Day Four

Crossing the Channel and on to Paris

(I almost subtitled this "Invading France," in respect to our unruliness, but I thought that might be in poor taste. I like France.)

We left London early and boarded our coaches for Dover to the southeast. The buses drove onto the ferry and we got off to hang out. I was doped up with Dramamine because I've had some problems with motion sickness in the past, but it was fine this time. I'm highly glad we took the ferry and not the tunnel. I'm not copasetic with really long tunnels, especially not ones underwater. I didn't used to mind, but then I started thinking about water pressure and things like that.

There'll be bluebirds over
The white cliffs of Dover
Tomorrow, just you wait and see

Dover is known for a few things. One is the ferry crossing/Chunnel; another is that many swimmers across the English Channel leave from or arrive in Dover. Both of the previous are because Dover is one of the places in England closest to France. In good weather you can see England from France and vice versa; and during the wars people in southern England could easily hear explosions on the Continent. The other thing is the white cliffs. The cliffs are white because they're made of chalk--although they and the sky and the water were pretty grey-looking when we were there.

The crossing went fine. The bad part was that we were too late for breakfast but too early for lunch, but I bought some candy bars (four for 99p) and a Fanta. Soon thereafter we got back on our buses and rolled out. We stopped at a rest stop to wait for one of the other buses and got some food, including honest-to-goodness frites.

Not many people were impressed with the outskirts of Paris--there were a few comparisons to Tijuana, which I can neither confirm nor deny, never having been to Mexico--it can't have been worse than the Bronx.

We ate dinner at Restaurant le Saulnier, where we had quiche lorraine, chicken cordon bleu, potatoes, and crème caramel. It was just as good as one would expect from a Parisian restaurant. At our hotel 45 minutes away we had an orientation meeting before bed.

It doesn't seem like we did a lot, and admittedly I slept a while on the bus. But bracing sea air is not to be scoffed at. And we ended the day in the City of Lights.

EDIT: At the time I wrote this, I didn't remember exactly what day one important story happened, but a check of another journal said it was today. When we were eating in Restaurant le Saulnier some of my close group were acting goofy--laughing and tapping on their glasses with silverware. Apparently such behavior was not acceptable, because the local coordinator came over and scolded us, saying, among other things, "This is a nice French restaurant!" We simmered down, but not without cracking up. For the rest of the trip we would turn to each other at random times and say, "This is a nice French restaurant!" and it was always good for a laugh.

Tomorrow: café life, a concert, et le Musée du Louvre

Day Three

Still London

We went first to Westminster Abbey. I liked it, although it was different than I had expected. Elizabeth and Mary are buried there, and the coronation chair is there. Poets' Corner is especially cool, but I totally missed Chaucer's memorial, and now I feel like an idiot because now me and Chaucer are tight. Poets' Corner also has memorials to, among others, Shakespeare, Keats, Shelley, Burns, Kipling, and Olivier. Shakespeare's pose was quite jaunty in his statue. I didn't take any pictures inside because I try to limit my photography in active places of worship.

They're changing the guard at Buckingham Palace--
Christopher Robin went down with Alice.
Alice is marrying one of the guard.
"A soldier's life is terribly hard,"
Says Alice.from "Buckingham Palace" by A.A. Milne

From there we had some "free" time--free as long as we were in a group and had at least one chaperone with us. A bunch of us went to see the changing of the guard. Clive took us to where the ceremony begins, at St. James' Palace. For part of that summer the Australian army and navy were guarding the queen, and that's who we saw. We followed the army band and the sailors down the Mall to as near as we could get to Buckingham Palace. We also saw some Horse Guards, and some of the iconic beaver-hatted guards. As far as I know, no one went up and harassed them.
We had lunch at McDonald's--not my choice, they gave us meal vouchers--and it took us a bit for the gang to get sorted, but some of the adults and one of my friends and I went to the National Gallery for an hour. It was a good choice. The National Gallery is on Trafalgar Square. It has a good collection, including famous Impressionists, and many British artists. There was a huge painting of a horse that I remember quite vividly. My two favorite paintings at the Gallery are "Seaport with the Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba" by Claude Gellée and "Saint Mary Magdalene Approaching the Sepulchre" by Giovanni Girolamo Savoldo. There's a version of the latter at the Getty, too, that I saw not long after we got back to the States. In the one in the National Gallery Mary is wearing a beautiful silver cloak. It's amazingly detailed, and the light is perfect on the folds of the fabric.

Trafalgar Square with Nelson's Column. And pigeons.

From the National Gallery we walked to the British Museum, where there was construction going on and thus no air conditioning. I really wanted to see two things: the Book of Kells, and the Rosetta Stone. After we wandered around for a while, my friend asked where the Book of Kells was; apparently it wasn't there, although the guard was a little hard to understand. But we found the Rosetta Stone! where I was mistaken on two counts. The first was that it was a lot larger in person than it is when you see it in textbooks. Honestly, in the books it looks like it's not that big, but it's probably a foot and a half wide and three feet tall. The second was that it was in a glass case, unlike two years earlier when my brother visited and touched the Rosetta Stone when no one was looking. I'd really wanted to touch it, and was wickedly thwarted.

Outside the museum we met up with the rest of the group and then broke off for further endeavours. I went back to the hotel with one group, which then split into walkers and Tube riders. The walkers made it back twenty minutes before we Tube riders did.

That night when we were in our room before bed we were watching TV and I thought I heard thunder. When I looked out the window there were fireworks near the horizon. Some English boys walking in the square outside called out hellos, and other kids from the group stuck their heads out their windows and talked. It was really pleasant, and a nice end to a nice day.

Tomorrow: the Channel and salut Paris!

Day Two

London

The first thing we did on our first full day was go to Wesley's Chapel for our choir's concert. It was very nice, and I imagine to sing in the chapel of one of the premier British theologians, John Wesley, was quite an experience. It was nice listening to the choir, and it was the first time I heard one of my now-favorite songs, "How Can I Keep from Singing?" by Robert Lowry.

After the choir's concert, we had a tour with Clive, our tour guide. Clive was very British and really cool. Many tour guides carry umbrellas that they can hold up as a signal to their groups; Clive's was Burberry plaid. As we walked through a park, one of the girls was talking about theater, and Clive recited "Why Can't the English" from "My Fair Lady." It was really endearing. We saw St. James' Palace, Buckingham Palace, St. James' Park, and distant views of Big Ben, the London Eye, and Westminster Abbey. We also saw Charing Cross, and Clive told us the story of how it got its name. This is the story as I remember it:

During the 14th century Edward I was king of England. By all accounts he was a hard man, bordering on cruel, but his wife Eleanor was good, and her influence helped Edward be more humane. Because of that, people loved her. Eleanor died in Lincoln, and there was a procession with her body from Lincoln down to London. In every town the procession stopped Edward had a cross put up. There were originally twelve crosses for the twelve nights the journey took. The last cross is Charing. The story claims that Eleanor was so well-loved that the word "Charing" comes from the French chère reine, or dear queen.

Even if it's not true, it's as good an explanation as any, and it's a sweet story.

This was the day of our first concert, too. We played at Victoria Embankment Gardens, not far from the river. Once our concert was done and we'd packed up, we listened to another group perform while we ate our box lunches. And that was when I first had a real cheese sandwich. I tell you, this was truly a life-changing trip.

In the afternoon we went to Covent Garden. Of course we went in the Doc Martens store, which was part store and part shrine to famous people's shoes. I ought to have bought some shoes. Although there are modern stores there now, in some ways Covent Garden is just the same as it was circa "My Fair Lady." In fact, when we got home, I came across a picture of a drawing of the Garden from the 19th century, and it wasn't all that different from what I saw. But that paled in comparison to the Space Cowboy.

Imagine an Australian man in a coat and bowler hat on a unicycle. Imagine he takes off the coat and has huge wings tattooed on his back. Imagine he takes off his coat, puts a coathanger through a hole in his nose, and hangs the coat on it. Imagine he starts juggling knives while on the unicycle. Imagine he then puts on a blindfold and juggles knives on the unicycle. I was, as you might gather, amazed. Perhaps it doesn't sound as exciting as I found it, but he was funny and brave and possibly insane. A few weeks after we got home I saw him on TV.

That evening we went to the West End to see a show called "Buddy" about Buddy Holly. Our group loved it. It was full of music that I grew up listening to and the stories behind the songs and the bands; it was energetic and bright and vivacious. Although Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper lost their lives on the Day the Music Died, the show managed to both pay tribute to that sad event and end happily. We left the theater singing "That'll Be the Day."

Tomorrow: Westminster Abbey, fuzzy hat guys, and cultural institutions.

Day One

Gatwick, Windsor, London
After a long flight we arrived at Gatwick airport. It was morning in London. This was back in the olden days, so they gave us breakfast on the plane, but many of us bought snacks from an airport shop when we got there. And that was the first time I had a Cadbury Flake (43 pence). Almost immediately after we got our luggage I put my windbreaker on top of my suitcase; in the process of pulling my suitcase the jacket fell off, and I didn't notice until we were nearly at the coach pick-up area. Luckily for me, one of the band directors picked it up, so I didn't have to retrace all my steps.

There were at least a hundred of us, excluding directors and chaperones, so our group was on several coaches. The Blue Bus carried everyone from my school and kids from four or five other schools. Our bus was driven by Alex, whom we grew to love, fear, and respect, often all at the same time.

Once all our luggage, instruments, and selves were loaded up, it was off to Windsor. I was sitting near the front of the coach, and though I knew that British drive on the opposite side of the road, it was entirely different being in a coach traveling speedily down the motorway and feeling like you're going the wrong way. My not-very-thorough journal says, "It was a nice drive because it was all green and there were rivers and ponds and horses and cows and sheep. ...and then Windsor was off on the left, all huge and very impressive."

Windsor is home to one of the royal residences. When we visited, however, Her Majesty was not in residence. We didn't have a large amount of time there, so we didn't go into the castle, but we did have a good look around the town. There's a big statue of Queen Victoria near the castle, and plenty of tourist-trap stores. My friends and I took the obligatory pictures with a red phone box, getting it out of the way early. We saw a place called Uncle Sam's American Restaurant that I now wish I'd gone over and read the menu to.
We passed a church with a monument in the front, and I took some pictures of it. I've forgotten what church it is now--I want to say St. Michael's, but that could be completely wrong. I did write down what the monument said:

1914-1918
Remember with thankful hearts the men of this royal borough whose names are here and elsewhere recorded. Brothers in arms, jealous for the common good, faithful unto death--they left the issue in your hands. Remember and be strong. They live on--brothers in love to all citizens of the heavenly city. Remember and be glad.

Remember also for good. Those who by sea, land and air laid down their lives.
1939-1945
Their names are inscribed within the church. Their memory lives that we who come after them may remember the debt we owe to them and fail them not.

(Some of the punctuation may not be entirely correct; it's hard to read in the picture.)

After a while we headed back to the coaches and went on to London, or, as the Romans called it, Londinium. We got settled into our hotel, the Barbican, which had two slow lifts and a tiny room for three people. We had our welcome- to- England- and- here's- what's- what dinner then; afterward we went out to look around. I went with a biggish group and we took the Tube (aka the Underground, aka the subway) to Piccadilly Circus. On the Tube I saw a guy with a bleached mohawk wearing a "Mind the Gap" shirt. Piccadilly was not as crazy as I'd imagined it to be; but there was someone playing the bagpipes when we got there. We wandered around, looking in store windows, and on the ride back we left behind a couple of girls from our school. They caught up eventually. I'm glad it wasn't me.

There were angels dining at the Ritz
but Berkeley Square was yet to come

When we got back to the hotel to turn in I got ready for bed and watched some TV, including lawn bowling on channel 14. It was a long day, but any day when you see a pub called the Stick and Weasel can't be all that bad.

Tomorrow: more London, including Covent Garden, Clive, and "Buddy."

Europe

Eight years ago I went on a band trip to Europe. We left on July 15 and came back at the end of the month. Every year in my head I celebrate these days by thinking about where we went and what we did and how much fun it all was; but now that I've a blog, I can typey-type-type about it for people to celebrate with me. So for the next two weeks or so that is what we shall do here, with pictures and all. Unfortunately, this was before I had a digital camera, so I have to scan the pictures and thus they may be of lesser quality than we are used to here. You have been forewarned.

Eight years ago today I was on an airplane. For a long time. And a month from today I will also be on an airplane for a long time. But that's a story yet to come. Sit back, relax, and wait for the next sixteen days of European goodness to come your way.

Independence

Betsy Ross' house, Philadelphia, summer 2006

World War II memorial, Washington, D.C., November 2005

Washington Crossing the Delaware by Emmanuel Leutze, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, November 2005

Macy's fireworks from FDR Drive, July 4, 2006

At first it's no more than a haze on the horizon. So you watch. You watch. Then it's a smudge, a shadow on the far water. For a day; for another day. The stain slowly spreads along the horizon, taking form, until on the third day you let yourself believe, you dare to whisper the word: Land. Land. Life. Resurrection. The true adventure. Coming out of the vast unknown, the immensity, into new life. That, Your Majesty, is the New World.
Sir Walter Raleigh in "Elizabeth: The Golden Age"

Happiness

This is it.

San Diego Highland Games