 Unfurling
like a sequence of frames in an English television
show, think The Vicar of Dibley, the views from our
carriage on board the Stanstead Airport Express train
into London's Liverpool Street Station seem oddly
familiar.
Manors and churches composed picturesquely
across the verdant landscape gradually form clusters
that thicken until we reach the great brown-brick
metropolis of London, about 45 minutes away.
Five years ago, British working visa
in hand, I decided not to enter the United Kingdom,
worried that the notorious costs of visiting the Monarch
would mean reigning in a planned six month trip into
two months. But recently, an opportunity to travel
to the Western European nation of about 51 million
people came to pass, and while the costs of living
in the famed capital city, London can be high, there
are also countless ways for guests with less to spend
to experience the city and its many offerings.
Knotted with villages, historical
sites, galleries and museums around the River Thames,
London is said to have been founded more than 2,000
years ago by the Roman consul Brutus of Troy. Seeping
through accretions of brick and mortar that appear
to stretch as far as the low-rise horizon, the city's
history is palpable.
Possessing only scant knowledge of
the city, we decide that the safest spot to start
our visit is on the London Underground, better known
as "The Tube", itself an awe-inspiring structure
and the world's oldest below ground public transportation
system.
"The life of the city flows
through these arteries, channels and conduits. Lifting
the lid on this subterranean world can be a fascinating
insight on what makes a city function", write
Jackson Hunt, Andrew Scoones and Meghan Fernandes
in their introduction to the 2008 exhibition catalogue
Underground: London's Hidden Infrastructure.
Amid vast unseen networks of underground
tributaries, catacombs and platform-cum-air-raid shelters
among other things, The Tube brings us to London Bridge
Station, one of the main terminals for out-of-town
train services and the departure point for London's
famed south-eastern district, Greenwich.
Discovering London's Underground,
affectionately known as The Tube. (JP/Ying-Ian Dann)Discovering
London's Underground, affectionately known as The
Tube. (JP/Ying-Ian Dann)
Twenty minutes along the line, the
maritime town's Royal Observatory, the setting of
the creation of Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) comes into
view. Eyeballing skyward from atop the contours of
Greenwich Park, the observatory, which was established
to assist with Britain's seafaring activities in 1675,
has been UNESCO-listed since 1997.
Seen to be of huge historic and scientific
value, the monumental time machine -- where days officially
begin and the Eastern and Western hemispheres are
defined by the Prime Meridian -- also has great cultural
value, perhaps even notoriety. "I hadn't realized
it was such a colonizing machine," observes our
companion, Bianca, referring to the tactical precision
and scope of early maritime exploration.
Drawing swarms of onlookers, the
English inventor John Harrison's four meticulously
engineered and crafted prototype time-keepers tick
fastidiously inside their glass cabinets. Winners
of the British Government's coveted "Longitude
Prize" of 1714, offered for the design of an
effective Longitude measuring device, the legendary
clocks seem to attest to the urgency of Britain's
expansion at the time.
Also the distinguished subjects of
American author Dava Sobel's 1995 novel Longitude:
The Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest
Scientific Problem of His Time, it seems that despite
their sometimes touchy subtext, the devices still
inspire awe.
Night arrives, London's sky lit like
an aurora by the city below, and we head back into
The Tube. Emerging soon after, our arrival in Chinatown
is signaled by the pulse-raising glow of up-sized
fairy lights beaming one another through a chorus
of walkers, rickshaws, bicycles and autos; cinema
after cinema, entertainment complexes and eateries
extending as far as the eye can see.
At once brilliant and a little disconcerting,
Chinese imagery spills across several city streets
rendering a picture of Hong Kong, the pawn in early
Sino-British relations, which was handed back to China
at the end of Britain's negotiated 99 year lease on
July 1st, 1997. But just another part of the city's
complexity, our attention is soon diverted by signage
on a Chinese Medicine shop window reading "Massage
here". After some well deserved respite from
the all-go city, it's time to hit the hay.
Long before arriving, we trawled
the internet for low-cost lodgings and among a list
too long to count; we stumbled upon The Wardonia Hotel
in King's Cross, which had garnered a bunch of great
reviews and proved to be spotless, cheap and right
in the center of town.
We are roused early the next day
by the summoning hum of the city and make our way
to Brick Lane, a long time migrant and low-income
area of East London that has morphed in recent years
to form the setting of innumerable art galleries,
bars and cafes.
London's modern buildings (JP/Ying-Ian
Dann)London's modern buildings (JP/Ying-Ian Dann)
With its vibrant village atmosphere,
it's a great place to grab a coffee before setting
out for the day. A little more familiar with the city,
following the previous day of Tube rides we continue
on foot; our moseying tourist tempo revealing by contrast
the quick pace of the city and some of the local rituals;
resting on a deck chair in "Green Park",
perhaps the most seductive.
Meandering on, we chance upon the
River Thames and a bunch of the must-see sights that
dot its Northern promenade. Perched, set-like over
the waterway; Tower Bridge, seemingly named for its
two grand structural towers joined by a delicate fretwork
of suspension cable, is perhaps one of the city's
most elegant structures. Built in 1894, the crossing
is one of dozens bridging the city's North and South
banks.
A little further along, we reach
the unmistakable Tate Modern Art Gallery, an immense
former Power Station, which was reopened as a gallery
in 2000 after a refurbishment by the prolific Swiss
architects Herzog & de Meuron. A city within a
building, the gallery is laden with education programs,
talks and symposia creating unconventionally upbeat
qualities for a museum, boasting some of the 20th
century's seminal ideas in art, architecture and performance.
Commissioning temporary art installations
by some of the world's most adept contemporary artists,
the sublime ground level "Turbine Hall"
was recently the subject of Colombian artist Doris
Salcedo's work. An insidiously snaking fault-line
was cut into the gallery's concrete floor, revealing
glimpses of the historic building's underbelly; just
one more reminder of London's brimming history. Galleries,
museums, historical sites and events abounding, London
is a living Museum. | 
