London exhibition trip

[dolorosa_12]

Matthias and I got back from London about an hour ago. We had a great time, but the Saturday portion of the trip was beset by an almost comical calvacade of chaos. (It's worth noting that we planned everything over a month in advance, with military precision — National Rail website and Google Maps open, planning every event with ample time in mind.) In list form:

The restaurant where we were booked to eat on Saturday night sent Matthias an email at 6am on Saturday saying that 'due to circumstances beyond our control,' they were 'closing permanently' as of Saturday.

When we opened the National Rail website to check that our train was still running (something we had checked and confirmed, as trains on this line on weekends are not always a given due to various pieces of track work), it showed no trains going to London at all. After some trial and error entering different start and destination points, we realised we'd be able to go to Cambridge North, then get on a train going to London Liverpool Street, get off at Tottenham Hale, and get the Tube on to our original destination. But this was going to make us late to our first booked exhibition at the British Museum.

I tried to phone the British Museum to check if being late would be a problem, but their phone box office is only staffed Monday-Friday.

Every seat on the train filled up at Cambridge North, and by the time we got to Cambridge main station, which was packed with a scrum of people wanting to go to London, all available standing spaces were filled. At each new station, I could see the crowds of people (for whom this is normally a very uncrowded train in to London) visibly spotting how full the train was and their faces falling in horror. We got later and later as more and more passengers tried to Tetris their way in at each new station.

We ran through the Tube, then found our way partly blocked by the weekly protest about Gaza, which I'd forgotten always started around Russell Square.

The British Museum had massive snaking queues to get through security. (Our original itinerary had us arriving there about forty-five minutes early, with time to get through the queue, which we knew would be long on a Saturday, drop off our bags, and amble into the first exhibition.) By the time we made it in, dropped our bags and coats in the cloakroom, and got to the first exhibition, we were half an hour later than intended.

We then whipped our way through the two exhibitions at absolute breakneck speed, so that we wouldn't be late to our lunch reservation (where I had had to provide card details when booking, so I knew they would charge me if we didn't show up). Half an hour per exhibition wasn't really enough time, but I'm impressed we managed it at all!

Lunch and the next exhibition at the Tate Modern were both fine, and happened as planned (I was particularly pleased that we managed to walk from Bloomsbury to the Tate, make it inside before it started raining, and emerge about an hour and a half later to find the rain had moved on, just in time for us to walk for forty minutes to our hotel! I now return to the ongoing chaos:

I always have a list of restaurants lined up that I want to try, so when we got the email cancelling our previous reservation I had another one in the list. This one didn't take reservations at all, but said that if no tables were available, you could get a drink at their bar or give your number to waitstaff and they'd phone you when a table became free, but I had forgotten that a) this was a stupid thing to risk in Soho on a Saturday night and b) that this place had become massively overhyped on social media, so when we got there, there was a queue of about fifteen groups lining up outside the door — no chance even to get inside and get a drink as promised! — and it was about to start raining again.

Some very quick work with my remaining list of restaurants and I managed to snag a booking for a place at 6.30pm at a pasta restaurant I had wanted to try. The only problem — at that point it was 6.25pm, so we sprinted down the street in the rain, and made it there in time to take the reservation.

And then they accidentally gave my dinner to a woman at the table next to us, and her dinner to me! This was rectified in about fifteen minutes, but it was definitely the crowning glory in a day that was characterised by chaos from start to finish.

Sunday, in contrast, was calm and lovely — breakfast in a little cafe with views of the Thames, the Lee Miller exhibition at Tate Britain (spectacular — if you have the ability to be in London before it closes, go if you can), where we inevitably bumped into a former colleague of Matthias and her husband, lunch in a sort of upmarket food court a minute away from Liverpool Street Station, and then a much less crowded train ride home.

I'm glad we went, but that was a lot more everything than I had expected! And I still haven't managed to try the hyped viral Thai restaurant in Soho...

Comments

[raven]

Oh my goodness, what a saga! And I do remember those packed trains. There's a running gag in MASH where the PA announcer says something like "Due to circumstances beyond our control, lunch is now being served". Your day out sounds a bit like that!

[dolorosa_12]

"Due to circumstances beyond our control, lunch is now being served"

Yes indeed! In the end, we met each new drama with laughter, because honestly, what else could we have done? Other than eating in our original (or second-choice) restaurant for Saturday's dinner, everything we'd planned to do happened, so I count that as a success!

[rekishi]

if it rains it pours, I guess?

glad you made it back <3

[dolorosa_12]

Yes indeed!

I am very glad to be back too!

[rekishi]

<3

[yarnofariadne]

Saturday sounds like it should've been set to the Benny Hill theme! I'm glad Sunday was calmer.

[dolorosa_12]

100 per cent! And yes, Sunday felt positively peaceful (even if our return train had football fans on it for the first twenty minutes or so, which is normally something that makes me grit my teeth).

[ashelterofpages]

Oh goodness, that is so much. I hope you had enough high points during your trip to counter all that chaos.

[dolorosa_12]

The Nigerian modernism and Lee Miller exhibitions were incredible, and lunch on Saturday was fantastic — plus the hotel was lovely! So all in all, I'm taking it as a positive (if stressful) experience all around.

[vriddy]

Oh wow, someone really had it after you on Saturday!! Congrats on making it through the day at all, glad you could manage most of what you wanted to do even if not in the most ideal conditions.

[corvidology]

I miss the chaos of London. Yes, I'm serious.

I miss the chaos that leads to discovery wonderful new unexpected things... but then I've probably been away for too long.

I'm glad most of the trip still worked out just fine and was fun! ♥