A farewell to London

September 30: London is doing its best to make us happy to be leaving tomorrow, as the high winds and rain rage outside. Our next destination…Barcelona, where the five-day forecast shows sunny skies and 73 degrees! We can’t complain about the weather we’ve had in London though. The first few days of our stay were gray, but the better part of our three weeks here brought blue skies and moderate temperatures. Yesterday was beautiful but chilly. Today is miserable. And tomorrow at 9:30 am, we board a plane to sunny Barcelona.

Jonah and I kept ourselves busy after returning from our road trip on Thursday night, eagerly awaiting Jeremy’s return from Uganda yesterday, Monday. On Friday we went to our morning music class at the city farm, where a fellow American’s daughter was kicked out of class for, well, being a kid. She didn’t want to stay seated in her chair, preferred to be dancing in the middle of the room, and that’s not proper music class etiquette apparently. Thankfully, Jonah starts off a bit on the shy side in these classes so feels compelled to stay near me. That, and he loves sitting in little chairs, so he’s quite content to stay in his little seat even when it’s actually time to be up and dancing about. He also loves watching the teacher play her guitar. “Mo, mo,” he calls out, asking for more of the guitar.

In the afternoon, we went to the Science Museum (free!), where there’s an amazing permanent exhibit for toddlers with different areas of play, including big building blocks, dress up, different play/club houses, and a fabulous water feature where kids put on little waterproof jackets and help move boats along, open locks, and change the water flow in the canals. He was in heaven! After tinkering around with the locks and canals for a bit, he spent most of his time collecting the boats at the bottom of the water pool. I’m afraid he’s picked up his mother’s tendency for orderliness… (This trait has its upsides in that he is quite helpful in putting crayons back into bins, scissors back into their holders, etc. He also likes to help clean up by wiping a little towel on the floor in our flat.)

On Saturday morning, we went to the Imperial War Museum because it was a bit chilly outside, and in the afternoon, we met up with our friend, David, at a park in the northwest part of London (about an hour from our flat by tube and bus), where Jonah enjoyed yet another amazing playground and a lovely lake with ducks, geese, and coots. We had cake and coffee at a little café, where David tried to encourage Jonah to talk more quietly at our outdoor table, which I found extremely amusing. Needless to say, Jonah didn’t quite comply.

On Sunday morning, we took the bus to St. James Park, first stopping off to walk around the Parliament building and Westminster Abbey. At the park we stumbled upon a massive Canadian geese convention where there was either much disagreement among the participants or impassioned conversation. There were some geese fights too, which kept it lively. We brought an old half loaf of bread to feed the geese and ducks and were instantly surrounded by dozens of them. Jonah was quite pleased. When we left the park, Jonah said, “Bye, bye,” to the geese. That afternoon, we went to the playground at Kennington Park, where Jonah enjoyed the big slide again and again. Despite the somewhat-hard plop on his butt at the end, he loved it. Jason and Jamie met up with us at the park, and we strolled around the neighborhood for a bit.

On Monday morning, Jeremy came home! He got to the flat at about 8:30 am, having taken an overnight flight from Nairobi. We went to Franklins (our favorite neighborhood café) for their delicious breakfast, lattes, and smoothies before heading to Kennington Park, where Jonah showed off his mastery of the slide (in addition to driving the red bus, shown in a picture from an earlier blog entry). While Jonah napped that afternoon, I took a tour of Buckingham Palace’s nineteen state rooms and garden. The palace opened to the public only about 10 years ago and only provides tours during the two months each year when the Queen resides in Scotland. The bottom line on the palace is that I really, really hope that one day Jeremy and I get to attend a state dinner with the Queen (or King, as the case may be).

For the first time since the palace was opened to visitors, the summer tours included a viewing of the ballroom where the Queen hosts dignitaries for official state banquets, which the current Queen has done 97 times. Decorated with fine china and solid gold candelabras, salt and pepper shakers, and utensils, the state room was breathtaking. I’ve done my share of palace and castle tours, and this is a must see. Another highlight was learning about and seeing the secret door that the Queen uses to get from her private quarters to one of the public receiving and entertaining rooms. Roughly one quarter of the palace is the Queen’s private residence, one quarter is for the keeper of the palace, one quarter comprises offices for those who work at the palace, and one quarter is used for public events. The tour also takes you through the palace garden, which boasts a wildlife sanctuary on an island that even the Queen can’t enter.

After the tour, I walked through Hyde Park and down Brompton Road to do a little shopping, including a quick peek into Harrods, one of the most upscale and over the top department stores around. I decided to check out the kids’ section because I’d read somewhere about their cool toy area. In the clothing section, I found a jacket for little girls that cost 650 pounds (that’s $1300!!!). I’m pretty sure it was a fake fur jacket, but I didn’t want to go digging for the tag to confirm this for fear of doing something to it that required me to buy it, which I, of course, would have made Jonah wear at $1300!! (I guess there’s always Ebay.) In the toy area (which wasn’t that fantastic, aside from the fact that it was filled from floor to ceiling and a ton of square footage with stuffed animals), I found a huge stuffed dog (not real, of course) for 230 pounds ($460). Yikes. Then I strolled down to the Science Museum from Harrods, where I met up with Jeremy and Jonah.

It being erev Rosh Hashanah, we spent last night at a dinner with our cousin, Putzi, and her family from the other side. It was nice to be with family, but we missed our family back home too. Today we went to The Liberal Jewish Synagogue (that’s really its name) in St. Jonah’s Wood to attend a tot service. Along with all of the Jews we saw on the street going to synagogue, there were many Muslims walking to the nearby mosque to celebrate the last day of Ramadan. It was nice to see people of different faiths going about celebrating their holy days alongside one another. At the tot service, there must have been about 45 other kids under four. We sang songs, heard stories, colored, and ate apples, honey, and challah. Though Jonah had been quite cranky this morning from being up so late last night, he loved the little service. He sat in my lap during story time and the singing. (It’s truly one of my favorite moments, when Jonah is standing and backs up into me and sits down.) He loved being around the other kids and playing with the crayons and scissors. He actually most liked taking the crayons out of the bin, handing them to me, Jeremy, and other parents, and putting them back in the bin. With the scissors, he liked collecting them all as people turned them in and putting them back in the block, sharp point down.

The day-to-day spontaneity of this first month of sabbatical has been quite refreshing. Our calendars back home tend to be booked on what seems like an hour by hour schedule, but here we tend not to have many plans, decide what we feel like doing on the weekends when we wake up, or make last minute plans with one of our few friends in the area. It’s been a nice change. And now we feel ready to go do this in another country (minus the friends, unfortunately), not just because we want to leave this rain but because we’re ready for a new scene (and for Jonah to have his own room again so we don’t have to tiptoe into the pitch black bathroom so as not to wake him up in the hallway!). We’ve loved being in London to explore new places and have time with good friends and family, but it’s time to move on.

Before I say farewell to London, I have a few random observations to share... They don’t use paper towels here. In fact, only a small handful of public bathrooms I’ve visited have had paper towels. Most use hand driers. I don’t know what the environmental trade off is there, but I’ve always wondered about it. Most bathrooms in people’s homes have electric towel warmers. We’ve never used the one in our flat. It’s always seemed like a waste of energy and unnecessary. Outlets here all have on/off switches, which Jonah happens to love and spends much time switching on and off. Speaking of outlets, there aren’t any in bathrooms except for the size of an electric razor plug, which is different in size than the standard plug here (which, of course, is much bulkier than the plug used in the states). Jason tells me it’s because they’re concerned people will electrocute themselves. On the other hand, they don’t seem to be concerned with the liability associated with having absolutely scalding water coming out of faucets. Our hot water heaters back home are set at a lower temperature without a doubt. Kitchen sinks don’t have garbage disposals (annoying), and most people don’t have clothes dryers (maybe it’s a space issue…we’ve lucked out because Jason has an unusually large flat so bought a dryer). People recommend you “mind the gap” rather than “watch your step”. They get “cross” rather than “mad”. And they push their babies in “prams” rather than “strollers”. (I’ve taken to saying “buggy” because I think the word “pram” sounds totally bizarre, and I don’t think everyone would know what I meant by stroller. The first time I heard the word “pram” I thought I was having a brain synapse issue.) As I’ve mentioned before, I love their use of the word “brilliant”. Very few people wear sunglasses here. Maybe that’s because it’s so gray much of the year, but I find that weather to be most fitting for sunglasses. The taxis are black, gangster-looking cars, not yellow. And they’re definitely taxis rather than cabs.

Well, tomorrow it’s off to Barcelona. I have plenty of things to pack to get us ready, so I’m done here!

Picture descriptions: Science Museum; St. James Park; Jonah with a guard at the horses' quarters near St. James Park; the backyard and view of Buckingham Palace