Time to Say Goodbye

Samuel Johnson, the Londoner who compiled A Dictionary of the English Language once said, ‘When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.’

Over the past four years, David and I have strived to enjoy all that London offers.  I'm proud of what we've been able to accomplish and be part of, not only in London, but England and elsewhere.

We have taken advantage of every opportunity we've received to travel around Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.  We have created massive to-do lists and spent evenings and weekends ticking things off by eating out at the hottest new restaurants or booking tickets to sold-out shows.

About a year ago, we bought a guide book called Tired of London, Tired of Life:  One Thing a Day to Do in London.  Since then, I've been maniacal about getting off the beaten path and making an effort to do all 365 things listed in the book.  We've managed to do a lot (but not all 365!), including:

Visiting the HMS Belfast moored in the Thames across from the Tower of London.  The Royal Navy Cruiser is now a museum that gives visitors insight into a sailor’s life onboard the ship during its Arctic journeys and on D-Day as it supported Allied troop landings.

Attending The Sound of Music production at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre during the height of summer.

Silently walking through Denis Sever’s House in Spitalfields near Christmas-time to get a better understanding of how people lived and celebrated the holidays in the 18th century.  

Singing Christmas carols along with hundreds of other Londoners during St. Martin-in-the-Fields’ Carols by Candlelight concert in December. 

Enjoying a midnight snack of reuben sandwiches in the American Bar at the Stafford Hotel.  

The hotel, in St. James, was the base for American servicemen stationed in London during WWII.  

The wine cellars below the hotel have a history dating back 360 years, and were used by the men as shelter during the Blitz. 

The Junior League of London held a wine-tasting fundraiser last fall in the cellars with Master Sommelier Gino Nardella.  After drinking lots of wine and exploring the hidden passageways full of vintage bottles and WWII memorabilia, we went above-ground to the American Bar.  

The bar is full of unusual items donated by American visitors.  The first is said to have been a small carving of an eagle.  Now the room is covered in flags, model airplanes, signed photos of celebs, baseball caps, etc. etc.

Viewing the 25,591st performance of Agatha Christie’s Mousetrap at St Martin’s Theatre near Covent Garden.  Mousetrap is the longest-running play in the world, and yet, audiences have managed to keep ‘whodoneit’ a secret.  I was shocked to learn the killer’s identity!

Drinking a pint of French cider at the French House in Soho, the bar where Charles de Gaulle wrote his famous speech, A tous les Francais.  Today, the pub has no TVs and music, and allows no cell phones, making it an ideal place for a good pint and good conversation.

Checking out travel guides at Daunt Books in Marylebone or browsing the selection at Hatchards on Piccadilly, the oldest bookshop in London.

And finally, catching the last tube home after a night out on the town.  Transport for London is finally agreeing to run a 24-hour service on the weekends, but this is not going into effect until 2015.  Of course, the minute we leave London, they open a Five Guys Burgers and Fries in Westfield and start to run the tube full-time during the weekends!

David and I also did a lot of things that were not part of the book or any to-do list.  These were things that we just happened to stumble upon while wandering through the city, reading Timeout articles, or talking to friends.

We discovered Electric Cinema in Notting Hill one night after grabbing Jamaican food at Boom Burgers on Portobello Road.  We had been to the historic Coronet theatre before, pretending to be Julie Roberts and Hugh Grant in Notting Hill, but Electric Cinema is much better!  The theatre offers its guests plush couches or snug armchairs, cashmere blankets, top-shelf drinks, and food from the Electric Diner next door.  We loved it so much that we went two nights in a row!

A few months ago, I met the women of my book club for afternoon tea at Sketch, a restaurant near Oxford Circus.  The restaurant is not famous for its food or tea, but for its bathrooms.  They are continuously voted one of the must-see, strangest bathrooms in the world.  So after many, many cups of tea, I needed a potty break and made my way upstairs… 

There, I found about a dozen egg-shaped white pods beneath a technicolor ceiling.  Half of the room was doused in pink light and the other half blue, to delineate the men’s side of the room from the women’s.  Within each egg/pod, there was a toilet and some kind of alien music with a man in the background talking gibberish.  It was odd.  Very odd.

For some reason, the British Library is not mentioned in Tired of London, Tired of Life.  As much as I love books, it took me more than three years to finally visit the library.  And it is so much more than a library.  Besides housing thousands of books and various reading rooms, the library contains numerous other treasures like Beethoven’s tuning fork and the original sheet music to Symphony Nine.  The first-ever print of Alice in Wonderland is surrounded by other first editions.  There are Beatles lyrics scrawled on the backs of birthday cards.  As its highlight, the library houses the Magna Carta. 

Though David and I never made time to see a play at Shakespeare’s Globe, we were given the opportunity to visit in April as part of the Junior League’s Spring Masquerade Ball.  We dressed in our finest, donned our masks, and headed to the Globe for the ball. 

It was also David’s birthday that evening (along with a few other guys we knew), so our friend had this themed masquerade cake made for the birthday boys.

We danced all night, but I thought the coolest thing about the party was the fact that it was under the Globe in a museum full of costumes and props. 

After so many amazing experiences, we are sad to leave London.  We will miss the ease of travel out of Heathrow to exotic destinations around the world.  We will miss the diversity and history of London – like walking down the street with a huge new skyscraper on our left and a 700-year-old church on our right.  We will miss not having to worry about driving and getting stuck in traffic.  We will miss the seasons (yes, even the colder, wetter months in the winter when we can curl up on the couch with a cup of tea and digestives and watch terrible reality TV).  And most of all, we will miss our family and the friends we've made.

Beautiful Summer day crossing the blue Bridge near Buckingham Palace

Walking Kirby around our neighborhood, admiring the Spring cherry blossoms

It is mixed emotions, however, as we’re really looking forward to moving back to Texas, too.  There, we will be first-time home-owners and we cannot wait to make our house a home.  We can’t help but look forward to all of the conveniences of America – from driving ourselves around instead of being delayed due to train signal failures or tube strikes, to having a dryer to dry our clothes, rather than line-drying everything.  And a dishwasher!  We went three years hand-washing dishes and I can tell you, that is no fun.  No fun at all.  And because everything is bigger in Texas, we cannot wait to have more space!  Instead of using our third ‘spare bedroom’ as a closet, we will have real closets and real spare bedrooms for guests!  We will have a yard for Kirby and a pool to keep cool in.  And most importantly, we will have our friends and family close.

So on that note, it’s time to say goodbye to London, the city we've grown to love and call home.  We are looking forward to the future and all it has to offer, back in America.