HE SAYS: Sir Roy Strong wrote in his history of Britain that the UK had become one large consumer theme park. He was right. The country’s most venerable institutions – historical, political and cultural -- have been reduced to a form of mindless infotainment requiring no effort or exertion by the public. History is no longer a process to be studied, it is a series of canned or staged events to be sampled with a hot dog or beer. Like watching Lady Jane going to the block….Get your hot dogs and cold beer, here. But people no longer understand the origins of an historical the event, or why it occurred. Consumerism is the new democracy.

Our Air Canada flight was the normal transatlantic run, except that there was a marked decline in the quality of AC service, as evidenced by the cold pound cake and watery coffee for breakfast. AC used to rank in the top three for the quality of its international service. The plague is more fun. Unless you are a shareholder in AC, fly anybody else. Blessedly, we finally arrived at Heathrow to begin our five week tourist marathon.

Our first week in London was fantastic - utterly charming; it was pleasantly exhausting, but genuinely marvellous. Both Eleanor and I had been to Britain before, Eleanor in the mid-1970s, while I had done my doctoral studies at the University of Warwick in Coventry in the early 1980s. But boy, have times changed. In 1980 a pint cost L 1.85, today in 2011 a pint costs L 3.80.
I’ll briefly summarize and recount some of the high points of our recent adventures in a thematic fashion, rather than chronologically. As well, I’ll try to put some of tourist activities into historical perspective, although we jokingly had certain theme days.

In the first instance, we often forget how recent modern Britain is in terms of its geo-political formation. Wales was incorporated in 1536, the Act of Union with Scotland in 1707, and Northern Ireland, after an ugly civil war in 1922.

Impressionistically, London is a highly integrated, multi-cultural city. Britain, unlike Canada, is a country, not a collection of ethnic communities. Here in central London, there is a high proportion of Arabs, Pakistanis and Orientals. Their status covers the entire socio-economic spectrum, but without a doubt there is a good deal of serious ethnic money, esp Arabic and they don’t hesitate to flaunt it in stores like Harrods, while the locals go the M&S (Marks and Spencer).

In reality, the prices faced by tourists are much better than we expected. But then we don’t live here. We were told that most “real Londoners” live in the east end, not trendy central London. But on the crazy side, dresses at Harrods for my new princess granddaughter ranged from L 150-300 (or C$225-450); but the niftiest thing at Harrods was a real leather motor cycle jacket for a 5 yr old which cost a cool L 1, 100 (or C $1, 500). And a man’s tie at Harrods cost L 135 , while at M&S it as more like L 16. Gas prices are staggering – about C$9 per gallon !, compared to about C$ 5.20 in Canada. And according to this morning’s Guardian, med school tuition has now just gone up to $40K per yr. But I digress….

We began our trip with the obligatory red London hop on/ off bus tour. Ordinarily, this is great fun (in any other city we’ve been in), but, of course it rained. This after all is Britain. In the afternoon it cleared and we took the bus to the iconic landmarks of Big Ben, the Parliament Buildings, London Bridge and the infamous Tower of London. If one really must be incarcerated, the Tower of London is the way to go – it was a hotel-prison, or a prison-hotel.

Actually, the Tower gets a bad rap. In reality, only 41 people were executed there. This compares with the 60,000 !!! people who were publicly executed across town at the Marble Arch. In the late 18th century the British criminal law had 1,200 !!! capital offenses. The British have a sense of superiority because they think that have a veneer of civility and civilization, but it is just that – a veneer. Just ask the Indians, Irish, or Kenyans…or even our own native people in Canada.

But this veneer of British civilization goes just so far. In terms of tolerance, the entire history of Britain down through the Georgian period in the mid- and- late 1700s, is marked by the most blood curdling religious violence, esp between Catholics and Protestants in terms of who was to reign. Indeed, it can be argued that the entire history of Britain and the evolution of its institutions is the result, to a greater or lesser extent, of religious discord. (As a historical footnote, the first polgrom against Jews occurred in Britain around 130.)

At the Tower of London we also saw the Crown jewels. They are as obscenely ornate as they are beautiful. In total, if sold, the jewels could easily pay off or retire all of Britain’s national debt. The only thing more obscene are the artifacts and art collection in the Vatican.

In the afternoon we took a relaxing cruise along the Thames from the Tower to the London Eye. Eleanor badly wanted to go on the London Eye (as opposed to the H or J) and it was something of a joke since I suffer from a very real sense of vertigo. She had been needling me and turned it into a dare, but it really was Eleanor’s way of guilting me for all the art museums and symphonies that we were going to attend.

Friday was one of our designated culture days. In the morning we tackled the Tate Britain art museum, considered by many to be one of the best in the world. We deliberately focused on the great British artists Constable and Turner, with their highly romantic and nationalistic view of land-and seascapes. Later that afternoon we went to see Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well at the reconstructed period Globe Theatre. This was truly a complete entertainment experience in every way. Later that evening we went to a spectacular West End play, A Woman in Black, which was a psycho-drama thriller which literally had the audience shrieking.

The next day was another designated culture day. We went to the British National Gallery and the Queen’s Gallery. The National Gallery indisputably is one of the top 4 art galleries or museums in the world today. In order to maximize our time in the most efficient manner, I had identified the top 10 paintings that we should see. The Rokeby Venus by the great Spanish painter Velasquez certainly was my favourite, both for its painterly technic and intriguing technical questions.

That evening we feasted at the Simpson-Strand, the well- known London roast beef house. The food was marvellous, tender and juicy. For dessert Eleanor had a tart with clotted cream that had the consistency of ice cream, while I had a cheese board with unpasteurized delights. A marvellous port made the cheese taste like velvet. These desserts were like directly injecting cholesterol into the body.

The following day we spent the morning touring selected exhibits at the refurbished or new British Museum, one of Britain’s great centers of learning. I had spent a few days there in the early 1980s doing research in the reading room and remembered it fondly, if for no other reason that Marx (Harpo, of course) had spent years there doing research for Das Capital. Librarians at the time told me that there was some dispute as to where he actually sat. Unfortunately, the new British Museums has fallen victim to the new fashion of infotainment curatorship. Basically, the British Museum, like the Museum of Civilization in Ottawa/Gatineau is nothing more than a Walt Disney theme park.

Fortunately, that afternoon, we were able to recuperate from the shock by indulging our baser instincts at Harrods for High Tea. It was a once in a life time experience which was thoroughly enjoyed. After High Tea we walked off our indulgence with a 40 minutes trek to the 8,000 seat, round auditorium at the Royal Albert Hall. That evening there was a performance of Haydn’s The Creation, strongly influenced by Handel’s Messiah, which was done with a series of choirs totalling about 800 people who had never previously met or practiced together. It was genuinely a musical experience of a life- time. Stupendous! As an aside, I should mention that one irritant here is that at all musical and theatrically performances one has to pay about C$ 7-8 for a playbill, whilst they are free in Canada.

All-in-all London was an exhausting, but exhilarating beginning to our British vacation tour. Tomorrow we are up very early and join our tour for real as we head towards my old stomping grounds in Coventry in the lower midlands near Stratford. Stay tuned….

SHE SAYS: What a fabulous week! Before we left Canada, Richard and I drew up a list of all the things we wanted to do in London. We booked theatre tickets online, and also used the internet to make reservations for dinner and afternoon tea. The good news is that we’ve accomplished almost everything on the list and had a wonderful time doing it. The bad news is that if we eat as much on the rest of the trip as we have in London, we’ll each need to pay for two plane seats each to get home!

When Richard and I travel, we always try to spend our first day in a new city trying to do as much sight-seeing as we can. If there’s a company that does hop on-hop off tours, we use them. They give a great overview of the city and give you the chance to get off, see a place in more detail, and then get back on the next bus to finish the tour. Also, they give you a clear idea of where everything is located so you can find your way around for the rest of your stay. Here, the Hop on-Hop off companies throw in free boat tours along the Thames as part of the package.

So on our first day, we took the double decker bus tour right across the city to the Tower of London and spent a couple of hours there, touring the place and checking out the Crown Jewels. Then we took the tour boat back to Big Ben and Westminster Abbey. Our plan was to walk through the abbey, but the line-up of people waiting to get in snaked out the gates and half-way up the street. A cabbie we mentioned this to later told us it’s been like this since the royal wedding last week; tourists who would never have dreamed of visiting Westminster in the past now had to see for themselves where the wedding had taken place. With all the other fabulous sights to see in London, we just weren’t prepared to stand in line for 3 or 4 hours. Luckily, Richard and I have both visited it before, so it wasn’t such a huge disappointment- especially since it was free when we visited years ago, and it now costs 16 pounds!

We switched to Plan B: a walk across the bridge to see the city from yet another perspective at the top of the London Eye. It’s like a giant ferris wheel with glass-enclosed capsules instead of seats. Each capsule holds up to 25 people, who can either sit on benches in the centre or stand up and walk around to look at the city as the wheel rotates. A complete rotation takes half an hour, so there’s plenty of time to appreciate the fabulous view of the entire city. It really hurts that Richard would think I bullied him on to the Eye to pay him back for all the miles we walked in art galleries on this trip! The truth is, it was to pay him back for other things, as well, including the two white-water rafting trips on the Ottawa River and the catamaran ride in Cuba. After the Eye, we walked along the waterfront until we couldn’t walk any more, hopped on the tour bus and continued the tour.

The next afternoon we headed for Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. What an experience! The theatre may be relatively new, but it’s as close as they could get to replicating Elizabethan theatres, complete with an open-air stage, a standing room only pit around the stage and hard, (very hard!) backless wooden benches for those who were willing to pay extra not to have to stand for 3 hours. The cast was great, and the whole experience was fantastic. Then it was off to Covent Gardens for dinner and another show, “Woman in Black”, which has been playing in London for over 20 years but which we had never heard of. It’s an eerie ghost story with only 2 actors (3 if you count the ghost). The ads claim that it’s your own imagination that terrifies you, and they’re right. I’ve never heard so many screams!

When I was a teenager, my father visited London on business and was taken to Simpson’s on the Strand for dinner. He talked about it for years as the place where he’d had the best roast beef he’d ever eaten…unless my mother was listening, and then he’d add, “Except for my wife’s, of course.” The restaurant has been around for almost 200 years, and Picasso, Churchill, Agatha Christie, and many other people seemed to think as highly of it as my Dad did, so we thought it might be worth a try and we were right. Huge roasts are wheeled to tables on what they claim are antique trolleys, and the meat is carved at the table. Richard described my dessert, but the clotted cream that came with it was indescribable! It’s fattening, I know, but it was so good that I ate as much as I possibly could. There was still about 2/3 left of the mound they’d served me. I hated to waste it, so I applied the rest directly to my hips, where it would have ended up anyway.

Our next indulgence: afternoon tea at Harrods’, with the 3-tiered plate of fancy sandwiches, scones, and a variety of cakes…and of course, more of that wonderful clotted cream. True confession time: Last Christmas, 3 of my favourite females took me to tea at the Chateau Laurier in Ottawa for my birthday, and as delicious as everything was at Harrods’, they don’t do teas any better than the Chateau does, except for that fabulous clotted cream.

We packed an incredible amount into the last 5 days and walked for miles doing it. Now we’re packing up to join our tour around Britain; we leave right after breakfast tomorrow morning, and to tell the truth, I’m looking forward to being able to sit for a month!