Sunday, November 12th had me up early in Harrogate to make my last visit to the Majestic’s spectacular free breakfast. I was hopping the direct LNER train from Harrogate to London at 11:15 AM. It was Remembrance Day in the UK, their equivalent to our Veterans’ Day, but they treat it much more solemnly than we do. There was some kind of parade or special event in Harrogate, with some of the main streets blocked off. I made my way to the station and hopped on my train, settling in for another three-hour trip to King’s Cross Station.
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Click here for Part 01 of my UK Photo Diary!
I made my way from King’s Cross Station to Bankside, via the Tube. Both the train ride and my Underground travel were pretty smooth. It was an on-again/off-again rainy day, no great downpours, but what I imagine to be normal for London. After I checked into my hotel around 3:00 PM, I took a walk along the South Bank, down almost to the London Eye, to check out BFI Southbank (BFI = British Film Institute). I’ve never seen a movie there, but I absolutely love their monthly schedule booklets, and I was lucky enough to pick up two of them, the October/November and December issues. The books have been upgraded to a new vertical format with better paper … and they’re a great bargain because they’re FREE. If I lived in London, I’d practically live at BFI Southbank, I reckon.
Something new down that way was the neon lights attached to some of the trees … better photos of that later in this post. I also checked out the book stalls under Waterloo Bridge and the small Foyles bookstore that’s down that way. No book buying yet, though … that’s reserved for Day 2. On the way back to my hotel, I stopped in the Tate Modern. I’m going to confess something here: I’m not that big of a museum guy, I’m more of a museum gift shop guy. Tate Modern has a number of shops—including one that’s almost exclusively books—that I always like to browse through, so I made my first pass through there on my first day in London. (That big cloth-like hanging piece is part of an exhibition called “El Anatsui: Behind the Red Moon.” You can read all about it here.) After my shop-browsing in the Tate, it was back to my cozy room at Hilton Bankside and a good night’s sleep, one of the very few I experienced on this trip.
Monday was beautiful … sunny but chilly and a bit breezy. Southwark is my Tube station of choice, about a 10-minute walk from hotel. I got out at Tottenham Road Station and immediately got lost, finding myself on a street seemingly full of guitar shops. My first stop was Foyles, the beautiful bookshop on Charing Cross Road, followed by Forbidden Planet (on Shaftsbury), and then Gosh! Comics on Berwick Street in Soho. I then made my way through Piccadilly Circus to what I call my London “mothership:” Waterstones Piccadilly, the largest bookstore in Europe, where I bought a stack of books (see below).
On a side-note: That little train shot in the bottom row up above is of the Thames Line train that went by my hotel room window. There was an accompanying, soft “thunk-thunk” sound every time one went by, mercifully muffled by the thick windows, but just barely loud enough to act as almost white noise. I found it very soothing and the view spectacular. But maybe that’s just me …
From top to bottom (left column, Foyles, then Gosh! in the top two rows, followed by Waterstones Piccadilly and Hatchard’s (also owned by Waterstones) in the middle. The Foyles in Waterloo station on the next to the bottom row, and then some of the books I bought.
Now kiddies, let me tell you of my love for both UK books and bookstores …
At some point, UK book publishers must have gotten together and decided this is what a paperback looks like, because—for the most part—all UK paperbacks are of a uniform size with the same paper. They’re what we call “trade paperbacks” here, as opposed to the smaller, narrow “mass market” ones, which don’t seem to exist in the UK. The UK books are also incredibly cheap (I think), usually priced at 8.99 or 9.99 (that’s in pounds) for a book that would sell for about double that in the USA (that Cunk on Everything book is available in the US in a small hardbound edition for $30.00; I paid 8.99 for the paperback … it’s the same book). Oh, and they’re non-taxable. One drawback is crappy paper, but it’s consistently the same crappy paper in each book. And the covers! The covers are absolutely spectacular, especially when compared with their US equivalents. I just find everything about the UK book buying experience superior to buying books here in the states, even though there are some incredible bookstores here that I love dearly (Powell’s in Portland, OR, Elliott Bay in Seattle, WA, The Strand in NYC, The Last Bookstore in Los Angeles, Vroman’s in Pasadena, CA, Warwicks in La Jolla, CA and Verbatim Books in North Park, San Diego.) If London was just a short train ride away, I’d go book shopping every week.
Night comes before day on Day 3, because … well, to be honest, I had a crappy Tuesday (Day 3) in London. I wasn’t sleeping well and I felt I had very little energy, so in the daytime I … (see below) and after that I came back to my hotel and took a short nap, which did wonders for my energy level. i went out for a walk along what’s known as “The Cut,” a street famous for both the Old Vic and the Young Vic theatres. I also took a walk through Waterloo Station which is close by, and then strolled all the way up Southwark Street to London Bridge Station, all this walking taking place around nightfall. It tired me out enough to get a better night’s sleep, thankfully, and the rain that at times was heavy during the day had finally petered out.
So here’s what happened earlier on Day 3: My day began with a visit to Covent Garden (not shown, but will be in my Christmas Decorations edition of my UK Photo Diary, coming soon) to see my friend Jeannine, who publishes the lovely magazine The Covent Gardener. We are basically Instagram friends, but we met last year when I was in London and we hit it off, so it was nice to visit with her again. I admire her magazine immensely; it’s beautifully illustrated and she does an amazing job putting each quarterly issue together.
I had made a reservation for myself at Sky Garden for lunch. My friend Laurel and I visited their in 2022 and had a great meal, and I was hoping to duplicate that (sadly, sans Laurel), but it was not to be. While the rain was a repeat for me (second year in a row that “Terrace is closed due to inclement weather” sign was up), I also had a problem with my meal. I just wasn’t feeling that great, so I went back to my hotel and took a nap, which refreshed me. When I woke up, I felt refreshed enough for a walk, and that’s when I took the photos above this Sky Garden section …
Wednesday was another bright, sunny, beautiful—if a bit chilly—day. It seems like the days were alternating when it came to rainy/sunny, which is fine. I even used the umbrella I brought, thus justifying its existence in my luggage. I went a number of different places on this day, including back to Covent Garden. I once again stumbled across the Agatha Christie sculpture, managing to take some decent photos of it (er … her). I had watched Lucy Worsley’s excellent three-part Christie documentary on the plane coming over (it just premiered on PBS here in the states this past Sunday), and while I’ve never read an actual Agatha Christie book, I did love Worsley’s biography of her. I think the giant flowers pictured in the bottom row above are from near Covent Garden, but I’m not sure. Oh, and the dinosaur bones are from the Natural History Museum, which I nipped into to check out their gift shop before I went next door to …
I love the Victoria and Albert Museum, better known as the V&A, but the thing in it this year that I found most fascinating was this tree—still burning off Autumn—in the Museum’s inner courtyard. It was the most photogenic tree I’ve encountered in a long time. As I mentioned earlier, I’m more of a museum gift shop guy than a museum one, although I have spent hours roaming the V&A in the past, including their incredible 1960s exhibition years ago. But that tree! Oh, be still my beating heart. I almost hoped for a “I went to the V&A Museum and all I got was photos of a tree” T-shirt in one of their gift shops, but alas, it wasn’t to be.
On Wednesday night, I had made a reservation on one of the double-decker bus tours to see the London Christmas lights. More on that later, but here are some shots of my walk along Southbank where I caught the bus, including better shots of those neon trees I mentioned up on Day 1. More on the bus tour when i get to the Christmas Decorations post in a couple of weeks!
Next time: The last four days of my London trip!
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