Day Fourteen: Bus Tour of London

Early this morning we joined the other International Exchange Program (IEP) students for a bus tour of London organized by the school.  Our tour guide was fantastic, and the tour was informative and fascinating.
 Often we passed things that Richard and I had already seen, but received new information. I'm just going back and updating the blogs that are relevant, so I have them accurate, but for those of you who are interested, some of the more interesting items are

1) The Lions at the four corner's of Nelson's Column in Trafalgar square that were so hot to the touch are made up solely of melted down French canons, captured at the Battle of Trafalgar.
2) The statue of the fat naked man on a horse in Trafalagar Square is actually one of Napoleon himself, confiscated from one of his Villas during the war, and now displayed in a very 'British' style of mockery.

I've only included in this blog the items from the tour tha that I am unlikely to make a special extra trip to see again in person or in more detail.

*As we whizzed by them all onboad a bus, any picture you see that doesn't have me in it, was downloaded from the internet as a visual illustration for your convenience.:)

One of the first neighborhoods we passed through was the exlusive Mayfair district, home of the most expensive housing in London.  Owned by the Duke of Westminster, along with a great many other things, Mayfair is the home address of only the very, very rich. (And often very famous). Grosvenor Square is also located in Mayfair (but I DO plan to return there, so more on that later). Also in Mayfair are hotels like the Connaught and the Grosvenor, where you can book yourself a Royal Suite for a mere £32,000 pounds a night.

Close by Grosvenor Square you have some of the more famous gambling houses like Jacks, where, in one of the most infamous tales of rich people stupidity, one wealthy gentleman lost 11 million pounds in one week of gambling. The shops in Mayfair are all very exclusive, and many of them in buildings more than 150 years old, still with the original terra cotta facing. They sell the haute couture of London (a french term meaning high dress-making, or high sewing, and American's use as synonomous with high fashion). We pronounce the first word as 'ot' (like dropping the h on the word hot).  Our guide was the first Brit I heard say it, and his English pronunciation of haute (sounding like 'oat') was so different it took me a bit to even comprehend the phrase! lol. 

The Saudi Arabian Embassy is found in an old Mayfair Mansion that dates back to the Regency Era of London, when it was a single family dwelling.

After Mayfair we found ourselves in St. James passing the Pall Mall, (again, a term for those Regency-era novel readers that is probably meaningless to the rest of you) which today is lined with the exact same establishments that were there 100+ years ago - Clubs for Gentleman.  (NOT to be confused with Gentleman's Clubs, which have nothing 'gentile' about them at all, but are a euphemism for strip clubs and skanky prostitutes. )

The Pall Mall in St. James

 A Gentleman's Club, like the famous White's at the intersection of St. James and Picadilly is where the upper classes went to smoke their cigars, play cards, and make silly wagers. (A classic scene from a gentleman's club can be found in the film Amazing Grace, where William Wilberforce objects to the wagering of a slave as personal property). Not just anybody was allowed to become a member of these clubs, your name had to 'put up for entrance' or suggested by someone who was already a member, in this way maintaining the clubs' exclusivity.

White's Club

Also of interest is the Maggie Jones restaurant.  Apparently the Princess Margaret, now-deceased sister to the current Queen, was quite the party animal.  Her whole life, it would seem. And rather than being shocked, the staid British seemed to have loved her for it.  One of the pubs she frequented whilst getting 'jolly-well-sloshed' was her namesake, the Maggie Jones.  (Every time she would make a reservation for one of her wilder party's, Maggie Jones was her pseudonym of choice).

For all you readers of historical books and viewers of historical films, this location might be of interest to you.  Somerset house, the home of the British Lords of Admiralty for more than a hundred years as well as many other government offices. It was to Somerset house the brave Nelson was called before being given the orders that resulted in the victory and Trafalgar., etc. etc.

And the final building from the tour we cruised by I'm including is not so much beautiful or lovely, but rather home to a bit of fascinating history. It is a Burberry's storefront. Now a trendy fashion leader among upper-class clientele, it's a kind of pricy store with very classical clothing trends. Think, Talbots, maybe. However, the reason I found it fascinating has to do with the man who founded it.  While in the north of England he noticed that the peasants wore a thick smock, made of a type of cloth that both kept them warm, and shed the rainwater rather than absorbing it.  Commercializing the cloth and turning out more fashionable garments, he started the very first Burberry's. When WWI came along, he donated large amounts of his outer-garments to help warm the soldiers who were fighting in the trenches of Europe. At the end of the war, the returning soldiers continued to wear their warm, water-resistant 'trench coats,' starting a fashion trend that would soon give it's name to an article of clothing that is today an essential part of the male wardrobe.

Fun Facts about London I Learned from Gary the Tour Guide

• There are 440,000 students in London attending the various colleges and universities during each school year. 
• Every day during working hours, 330,000 people find their way to their jobs in the London Financial district
• London itself within the city boundaries is less British than it is foreign. 6 of every 10 babies born in London hospitals in 2010 had at least one foreign parent. (London truly is the most 'cosmopolitan' city I have every lived in. While riding the tube you have absolutely NO idea when the person next to you opens their mouth what language is going to start coming out! Farsi, German, Slovakian, French, Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Afrikanse, Swahili, Italian, Spanish, etc etc). It's Sooooooooooo Fascinating!

British Dictionary: New Words I Learned from Gary the Tour Guide
Upmarket: Meaning an area of town, or of industry that is more prosperous and/or expensive
Posh: Something that is expensive, overtly fancy, and/or snobbish
Wars of the Roses:  Apparently I've been missing an 'S' in my American history education!
HMS Belfast:  Is correctly pronounced the HaitchMS Belfast
Southwark: An area of town I have been ignorantly referring to as South Wark is correctly pronounced "Suth-urk."

We paused mid-tour for a quick stretch of the legs at St. Paul's cathedral.  I grabbed a sandwich, and happily took in the magnificent cathedral, upon whose steps that memorable Mary Poppins character crooned "feed the birds, tuppence a bag."

Richard took some of my sandwich, ostensible to 'feed the birds.'  However, I soon saw that his idea was more along the lines of 'tormenting the birds.' Honestly. I can't take him anywhere.

The bus tour ended at the British Museum.  Some of the other MBA students said they were going to stay and go through it, so Richard and I thought we'd join them, just to be sociable. And discovered that on a scale of 1-10, he and I are actually very compatible in our museum habits.Apparently, there are two types of people in museums, the 'cruisers' and the 'sponges.'  The cruiser glances at exhibits and displays, remarks on how cool they are, and moves on. The sponge looks at each item, reads each plaque, and moves through the displays in a slow, methodical process, so as not to miss something really interesting!!

All along Richard and I have been thinking that, based on the subject matter, we were a cruiser-sponge pair! (we just alternated turns).  But oh NO!. It is NOT SO. We are BOTH very, very much sponges. Yeah, verily- we are turtles! Snails, I say! Is there anything slower than a snail?! Well, in comparison to these MBA exhibit cruisers, that's us!

So- we'll be going back to the British Museum some other day. On our own. The experience did gain us a new inside joke though....whenever we have to rush by something at breakneck speed we laughingly refer to it as 'like an MBA student in the British Museum.'  And it was good opportunity to put each other's habits in perspective...anytime I think Richard is going by something too fast (or vice versa) we just thank God for our spouse and think of how it might be married to someone else! 

After the museum we went back to the campus for Richard to finish a paper, and packed up in time to head to Victoria and try and score some student rush tickets to Billy Elliot. No such luck. So we scrambled for plan B and tried to locate one of the restaurants in Victoria from my Map of Wonder that I had been wanting to try. Well, we did locate it, it was just closed on Saturdays. However, the evening was not a complete failure, because check out what we did find!

The Goring Hotel near Buckingham Palace. A standard room with a queen bed for the night will set you back $530, or you could just get a suite for $2600.  Nice to know we're doing so well.