Places I didn't get to in London...and other meanderings

We were in London for about 5 1/2 days and I feel like I/we just scratched the surface. (L. was here in 1999 for about two weeks--give or take, so she'd seen more).

I wanted to see a Premier League football ground "in the flesh," or should I say, "in the brick." There are none in central London: none in Westminster, none in Soho, none by Waterloo. By the time I felt comfortable enough navigating the Underground, I ran out of time. I thought about getting up insanely early on Thursday and taking the tube from St. James's Park to the Fulham Broadway stop in Fulham to see venerable Craven Cottage, a small ancient ground that intrigued me when I watched Fulham play a match on television last year. Thursday was also the day we'd planned to go to Kew Gardens, which is way out in Richmond about as far as one can get on the Underground heading west (unless one's destination is Heathrow). I knew that if I arrived back late from Fulham and held up our trip to Kew, it wouldn't go over well. My compromise was going to be Chelsea, but that didn't seem much more feasible. Add on top of that I just didn't feel excited about crawling out of bed at 5:30 AM. So, seeing a real football ground will need to wait.

(I did, however, see the Lord's cricket ground in St. John's Wood. I'm not as big on cricket as Premier League football, but Lord's was still neat to see).

As a big fan of The Kinks, it was a thrill to see Waterloo Bridge and Waterloo Station (though I didn't actually enter Waterloo Station, I did walk across Waterloo Bridge twice). I could imagine the "Waterloo Sunset" characters of Terry and Julie meeting at Waterloo Station "every Friday night" and then "cross[ing] over the river" where they feel "safe and sound." But in truth, I felt more like the narrator who, though he is alone, insists that as long as he gazes at Waterloo sunset, he "is in paradise." It was too early in the day for me to see the sunset, but I did see the "dirty old river" Thames from the bridge and it was as powerful and moving a moment as I could possibly imagine.

Though I would have loved to visit Muswell Hill and the Archway Tavern (that feature prominently in Kinks history), that was far too distant from Westminster to venture to on this vacation. Quite frankly, I am not sure they would equal Waterloo Bridge in emotional resonance anyway.