A Touch of the English
When I joined Whitehill Technologies in 2006, I was told that I should be prepared to do some travel for work, including international travel. Within a few months of starting, I took my first business trip to Pittsburgh, PA in the US. In the entire time that I worked in the consulting department, I never did get any international travel. When I joined the team I am on now in 2012, my first remote assignment was to London, England. It took 6 years for me to finally get a trip over the pond, but after that first visit, I went back about 6 or 7 times. The last time I was there was in October of 2015 so when I was given a two week assignment there in April, I was excited to finally return but at the same time a little disheartened. It meant that I would be away from home for three consecutive weeks.
I have an amazingly supportive wife and kids who know that I love my job and travel is a part of it. My work assignments are usually a week at a time and it’s rare that I have 3 or more trips booked back to back. This was the second one this year that was going to be 3 weeks back to back and the last one was really hard to handle. I liked the idea of returning to London but was not looking forward to being gone so long. Thankfully I had something extra special to look forward to on this trip.
During all of those previous visits to London, my wife never had the opportunity to come with me. This time however I would be staying in London over a weekend and it seemed like the perfect opportunity for her to come experience what it’s like there. She would join me halfway through my second week in England and head home during the middle of the third week. Having her with me over that weekend made being away from home for that long less difficult to handle.
If you’ve never been to Europe, London especially, the first thing you need to know about the hotels room is that they are typically very small. The room I had in Bristol was barely large enough to fit my bed and shower. Knowing I would be here for two weeks I opted to stay at the Doubletree Docklands just across the river from Canary Wharf in London. All the hotels were expensive and filling up quickly because the London Marathon was happening while I was in town. At almost $300 CDN per night, I got what I could and was happy I had anything at all.
The cool thing about staying there was that the hotel has their own dock and ferry service over to Canary Wharf. So every morning I would get up, get dressed and head down to the dock to take my morning commute over to the other side. As a guest of the hotel, passage is free, otherwise it would have been about £3.50 per trip (about $5).
The wife came in Thursday morning and I met her about halfway between the dock and the DLR train station on my way back to the hotel. We went back, dropped my stuff off, then headed to the other side of town to go visit Piccadilly Circus. I had been there a few nights before and thought it would make a nice spot for her to see some of the core parts of London.
If you don’t know what Piccadilly Circus is, you’ve definitely seen it at least in a movie or TV show. It’s London’s own version of Times Square in NYC. There’s a few large billboards and a center area where lot of people hang out. Just down the street is an M&M store, Lego Store, theaters, souvenir shops, and even a casino. One of the first things that Tamara said to me about London was how much it felt like NYC to her. I had never thought of it like that because NYC is so known for its tall buildings. But when I looked at it from her perspective, it did seem to have a bit of that same feeling as the big apple.
We wandered on down to the LEGO store and picked up a few things for the kids. We even wandered into this one little souvenir shop which sold marijuana cookies. It was the first time we had ever seen that kind of thing for sale in a regular store as it hasn’t been legalized back home yet. We pondered buying a box and bringing it home but knew if we got caught there’d be hell to pay.
From there we took a detour and wandered through Chinatown. It was very much the same as any other Chinatown from any other city with the exception that all of the restaurants in this section appeared to be pretty high end, or at least not your mom and pop chicken ball shacks. Popped into a bakery and got a few little sweets then kept on wandering around. That night we called it a day and headed back to the hotel.
I had to work the next day so Tamara did some exploring of the city on her own. Eventually after my day work day was finally over, I went back to the hotel, met her, we got on the DLR and headed over to Thai Square. I am lover of Thai food and any time I am in London, I always come back to this same place. A colleague of mine had introduced me to the restaurant years ago and I have been coming here ever since. When I brought my mother-in-law over with me during a trip, I took her there as well and we she enjoyed it as well.
We finished our dinner and went for a walk that night. I took the wife down towards Tower Hill and showed her the Tower of London as well as Tower Bridge. We ended up actually going for a walk across the bridge, and west on Tooley St towards London bridge. It was a nice warm night and an easy walk despite the fact that we were a bit tired. As we walked along the street we spotted a walkway that headed towards the river so we made a detour and stumbled up on a place called Hay’s Galleria. It was a collection of little shops and restaurants and had a pretty wicked looking ceiling with long columns and arches. We made our way to the other side and eventually ended up walking along the Thames river towards London Bridge. We eventually made it to Blackfriars, got on the tube, and headed back to the hotel.
Since Tamara was going to be here for a few days, she picked up a London Pass. For a single fixed price, she got admittance to a whole ton of attractions within the city for 4 days. I opted to get a single day pass and the first thing we did together was go see The Tower of London.
The Tower of London is actually this massive castle in the middle of London right near Tower Bridge. There’s a whole ton of history around it and despite having been to London many times, I had never been there. Tamara wanted to see the Beefeaters, which I had never heard of. He took us, and a pile of other people, on a small tour of part of the castle which made for an interesting trek around the area. Great sense of humor and a ton of knowledge on the place. Along with them, we also got to see the regular Tower of London guards which I am sure you have seen on television. You can get pretty close to them but I opted to stay back and not bother the guy who I am sure was baking hot in the 25 degree weather that day.
We also did another crossing of Tower Bridge but this time we went up top to see the observation deck, for which Tamara was took chicken to stand on the glass floor. We then got to see all of the history through the underground portion of the bridge as well. Again I had been to London several times but never bothered to take the tour of the grounds.
As the day went on, I opted to take us to another part of the city for a tram ride. A few years back I had stayed in London for the weekend after a work trip to attend an MCM London Comicon where I met some folks from both Haven & Warehouse 13. On my way there, I took the Emirates Air Line which is a little tram that goes from one neighborhood to the other. I remember how nice the view was and as long as you had an Oyster card (their subway card) you could tap on and take the tram for a ride. I thought it would make for a nice view of the sunset as the day was winding down.
We stood in line waiting as the tram was loading other passengers but folks kept waiting and waiting to get a car for themselves. We opted to not care and just jumped the line to get on a car regardless of whether someone else was on it. Everyone else wanted a solo car but we just wanted to go for a ride.
We took a nice ride over and back taking a few really great photos from the air while the sun was going down. Due to the location of the tram however, a big portion of central London gets blocked in the photos by the giant O2 complex (which you can now walk on top of apparently). Still though, great shots and we enjoyed the nice wind down for our evening.
Sunday we headed over to The Shard. The building itself is actually only about 6 years old as London is not known for it’s high-rise buildings. Like most high attractions, the best part of going up on this was the view. But we had an additional bonus with this particular day as it was the day of the London Marathon. You could clearly see the large number of runners going across Tower Bridge from The Shard. In fact, when we left the hotel, we walked over to a different train station and the actual marathon route went by our hotel.
We spent about an hour there taking in the views, snapping a ton of photos, and Tamara even enjoyed a glass of champagne. But we eventually decided we wanted to try and get to Buckingham Palace. That didn’t quite work out the way we had planned.
Turns out the finish line of the marathon was actually at Buckingham. So when we got to Trafalgar Square and headed west towards the palace via the mall/gardens, it was quite clear we were not getting anywhere near there quite yet. The crowds had filled the whole area and St James’s Park was completely filled, and blocked off in spots, with people, runners, marathon crew, and pretty much anyone you can think of.
We eventually decided that we’d come back after supper when the marathon was all done. We hit the tube and traveled west a few stops until we got to Earl’s Court. This was away from most of the touristy type stuff so we snagged some food at a great burger place called Byron’s, and the wife got her picture taken with a surprise.
I’m usually the sci-fi guy. Tamara tolerates some of the stuff I watch but she’s not really ever been the science fiction type. However, a few years ago she went on a binge watching spree of Doctor Who. It’s a show I have heard about time and time again but just always thought it looked a bit too weird for me and never bothered watching. Tamara however watched all of the seasons on Netflix and became a good fan. I found the one and only blue police call box in London and took her there to get her photo taken. In what was the most surprising turn of events is when we walked into the souvenir shop behind it and it was filled with Doctor Who stuff, she totally fan-girled out. I had never seen her get so excited about sci-fi stuff and she knew everything they had there. It was a bit of a surreal moment actually.
On our tube ride back, I asked Tamara if she wanted to try the palace again. We were both exhausted but given that limited time left, we made the detour and it ended up being quite the show.
We got to the palace, took some pictures and wandered around. Eventually however Tamara noticed that a young woman had decided to go for a swim the fountain. She had taken her shirt and pants off and started bathing right there in the fountain. A small crowd of people formed and no one seemed to be doing anything. Both Tamara and I reported the woman to the police and before we knew it, they were there talking to the woman.
Long story short, it was some kind of protest. She told the story about how her child had been taken from her and she wasn’t leaving until the queen came out and helped her. She said that she had been deemed mentally unfit to take care of her kids and so she wanted the queen to get her kid back.
The cops never drew a weapon, never yelled at her, and maintained a calm attitude about the whole thing until eventually she did give up and get out. She was escorted by police out of the area. It was quite a way to finish the night.
The following day Tamara did a pile of sight seeing on her own while I taught a class of one student. By the end of the day I was pretty beat so we checked out Hamley’s, which is a European toy store, grabbed some food at a pub, and called it a night. Tamara went home the next morning and I followed on Saturday.
This was the first trip I had ever had where I was away from home for three weeks straight. When I got home, the next week was pretty rough. I can tell you that having my wife there during that short window of time certainly helped me get through being away. I came to realize that I don’t think there’s any way I could take a job that had me away from home for so much time. I’m glad my assignments are typically only a week long then I get to come home.
But looking back on this trip, it was nice to finally get to show Tamara a city of such rich history. It has an old city feel mixed with new city traffic and rushes but is definitely not like being back home.
