Four Days In London Without a Jacket

There are, to be sure, no jokes to be told when it comes to London weather. The sky paints quite the charcoal overcast, and though the sun likes to peek its head out to say hello from time to time, the wind and the rain tend to dim its smile. This is my long-winded (hah) way of saying that I spent four days in London without a coat. The only real importance this holds is to lay the groundwork for the adventure that I am about to tell you.

Day 1: April 17th, 2024

Our first day in London - and when I say “our,” I mean my best friends, her friancé, his mother, his friend, and myself - started fairly slow. Blame jetlag, blame the free champagne on the flight over, blame the disorientating feeling of knowing that your home is across the ocean. Any of these would suffice. The slow start was spent with the first few hours taken up by sleep. Lovely, lovely, restless sleep that did ultimately nothing but get me through the rest of the day. A day that was set aside for one attraction: The London Eye.

The London Eye was a pleasant way to start the trip, being an observation wheel that overlooks part of the River Thames, and many other historical structures like Big Ben (a.k.a. Elizabeth Tower), St. Paul’s Cathedral, and Parliament. Despite its height, it was a relatively calm experience, as it never felt like it was moving but lasted less than thirty minutes in all of its entirety. We were taking baby steps into the new country. Obviously.

Westminster stood just below us, noble and dazzling in the afternoon light, while Big Ben took the helm, elegant in a way that befits a queen. On the other side of us, St. Paul’s Cathedral could be seen in the distance, reaching towards the sky. We not only learned that St. Paul was the church where Princess Diana and Prince Charles were married, but that its dome shape was designed to look like a pineapple. The pineapple was said to have symbolized luxury, prosperity, and hospitality since the fruit was so expensive to obtain at the time of the cathedral’s building. The latter of the two facts was brutally shot down by a local taxi driver who assured me that I was but a young tourist who had no idea what I was talking about. I was still unsure of the facts, so naturally, I googled it. I discovered pineapples were intricately sculpted around the cathedral to convey the same symbolism, so maybe I wasn’t that far off.

V for Vendetta also came up quite a few times on the London Eye, specifically when my best friend noted that one of the big scenes in the movie was set in the Houses of Parliament. I had never seen the movie, but I went along with the conversation until her fiancé’s mother declared: “Oh my god, I love the actor in that movie. Like. Love.”

“Who is the actor?” I asked.

“The short guy.”

Oh, the short guy. Of course. (I googled it (Not sponsored)). “It says here that the lead in the movie is Hugo Weaving.”

“No. His name is Tom,” his mother declared.

“Tom.” I deadpanned. “Short Tom. Tom Hardy.”

“Yes.”

“That’s not him.”

“No, it is. He splits into the monster.”

Again, I had never seen this movie before. Horrified, I looked at her for several silent moments. “Do you mean Venom?”

“Oh. Yes.”

This conversation just so happened to lead us to the end of our London Eye adventure. We ate at a rooftop bar called The Aviary that night. There were only two things I distinctly liked about this place. One, they made a killer Old Fashioned, and two, they served us up what was possibly the best running joke of the entire trip.

After we ordered drinks and an appetizer charcuterie with dried meats and olives, we were set to order dinner. The fiancé’s mother watched as my best friend and I requested the gnocchi, and her fiancé and his friend got the cod dinner. Not liking any of the options on the dinner menu, she asked if she could order a cheeseburger off of the bar menu, simply wanting that with a side of fries. Our waitress nodded affirmatively and went to put in our order, and thus, we waited for our food.

The two gnocchi plates came out first, garnished with tomatoes and parmesan. The boy’s plates came out shortly after. And then we waited… and waited… and waited. Until a girl came out to the table with the last plate: a cheese… board.

The confusion here was simple enough. The waitress overheard the word cheeseboard as opposed to cheeseburger. And once she was made aware of the issue, she did her very best to get the right meal out promptly. Unfortunately, the fiancé’s mother was still only sitting there with a plate of fries and a glass of white wine for most of the meal. A small misunderstanding could have happened like this anywhere, and it was easily rectified. That was, at least, how we viewed it at the time. But little did we know that a joke was born on that night, and we were only a day away from discovering why.

Day 2: April 18th, 2024

The following day was an eventful one. The group woke up early to head to a must-see exhibit in the heart of London, very close to where we were at the London Eye just the day before. That’s right, we booked Shrek’s Adventure, or as we’ve come to know it, the fever dream.

Safe to say that what we were expecting was akin to the Harry Potter set tour, where we’d learn about the making of the movies, and perhaps see some sets and props brought to life. I expected a life-sized scale of the onion carriage to greet us upon arrival. But expecting was the key word here, and our expectations were both so undeniably wrong and yet so overwhelmingly low.

Shrek’s Adventure was a peaks and valleys experience that immersed us in a way that we had never seen nor felt before. First, we boarded a “bus” that was set for Shrek’s land. The bus, of course, did not move but sat us in front of a screen that took us through a portal of time and space to land in well, either Shrek’s swamp or Far Far Away, I wasn’t sure. On the way, however, our bus crashed into one of Rumplestiltskin’s favorite witches / betrothed and ultimately ended up killing her. This was a big no-no as one could imagine.

Thus the experience following our bus incident led us on a chase away from Rumplestiltskin to find Shrek with the hope of leaving the world that we just arrived in. Oh, and before we got on that bus? We were told we had to sing and dance to the tune of “I’m a Believer” by Smashmouth to get the adventure started.

After the incident, we were led through a series of scenes by very real actors, each one no less authentic than the other. We met characters from the movie, like Fiona, the Ugly Step-Sister (portrayed masterfully), and the Gingerbread Man, each of which recited their lines, escorted us to the next door, and gave us an ingredient that would be used to open the new portal should we ever find Shrek. This may not sound as exciting as it was, but picture a world filled with Shrek characters portrayed by live actors who had to deliver three minutes worth of dialogue, all cheery and professional, and I’m still hungover from the plane ride twenty-four hours before, haven’t eaten, and didn’t know I’d be interacting with real-life human beings.

I’m pretty sure we met Felonious, and he had Pinnochio on a dart board. That’s not to mention that the cast set us loose in an actual mirror maze that seemed to have no way out. It reached the point to which Sleeping Beauty of all people had to come and find us to deliver us on our way. There were no real donkeys. Oh, did I say fever dream? We did meet Shrek at the end of the tour, but as we were all thinking, at what cost?

Once that experience was over, and we collected our Shrek ears, we went to eat at a cute little spot called Slug and Lettuce. We had our mandatory meal of Fish and Chips and some decadent drinks to wash them down with. I got the Gold Digger, which contained, vodka, vanilla, passionfruit, prosecco, and a garnish of gold leaf on the top. My best friend had a pirate-themed drink (on brand for her), which was a mix of spiced rum, pineapple, passionfruit, grenadine, and an extra shot on the side, adorned with a Jolly Rodger and palm tree garnish.

Following lunch was a red bus tour around London. We got to see some sites we may not have had the chance to see otherwise, like St. Paul’s Cathedral and its intricate architecture, the Monument, erected to commemorate the Great Fire of London (1666), and Tower Bridge. Fun fact, the Great Fire of 1666 was said to have ended the Bubonic plague in London since it killed a majority of the rats and fleas in the city. This was not refuted by a local taxi driver.

What was most impressive, however, was the driving we experienced along the way. Our driver made sure that we hit every bump on the road, and felt every drift of the tires along cobblestones, tight turns, and near-death experiences with pedestrians. To put this into perspective, we were on the top row of the bus, in the front seat, meaning we saw and felt everything. We watched our driver speed up when bicyclists darted out in front of him, only to slam on the brakes at the last minute to avoid hitting them. He narrowly missed side-swiping cars at almost every turn, and if he leaned just a little farther to the left, he would have hit every bike trying to overtake his bus. At one point, he pulled up to one of the many stops on our route and avoided hitting a man by only an inch as the front left tire ended up on the sidewalk, just where the man had been standing seconds before.

When the group filed off the bus to see Buckingham Palace, the fiancé’s mother exclaimed loudly, “You, Sir, are a wonderful driver!”

My mouth was hanging open, my heart could not stop pounding, and my best friend gripped my hand in solidarity. “He almost hit ten people,” I looked aghast.

“But he didn’t.” And so, our new criteria for driving in London were developed.

Buckingham Palace, was, unfortunately, a short trip. We had planned to see both Buckingham and Kensington Palace on the first day, but we were so jetlagged that sleep seemed far more important at the time. We had time to walk around the gardens, though, and we did see the guards march up and down the grounds. The Victoria Monument stood just in front of the Palace, the detail just as exquisite as the rest of the residency, something that I hadn’t even thought of seeing when we exited the bus.

However, the other reason for us spending such a short amount of time at Buckingham was looming over us, and it came time for us to head to Whitechapel for a Jack the Ripper Tour.

This easily became one of my favorite experiences of the trip, and for someone who isn't normally interested in serial killers or crime history, this was saying something. The tour itself took place mainly around Whitechapel, where Jack the Ripper had lived, but we also walked around parts of London that he and his victims may have inhabited, like pubs, flats that were once used for brothels, as well as locations that were said to be scenes of his crimes. That in itself was chilling, but the overcast leading to a darkening nighttime sky, and the cold breeze set the somber tone almost immediately.

Our tour guide was unbelievably good at her job. She was passionate about the history behind Jack the Ripper in a personal way, which made going along with her in the rain enjoyable. I wanted to hear as much from her as possible. She was also funny when she needed to be, knowing that the subject was heavy, and yet she didn’t take any dignity away from the victims in being so. It was also made very clear that this was not a ghost tour, and that we’d be reviewing events that may have led to fictional speculation, but had once been very real. I dedicated a full paragraph to our tour guide’s praise because I would have disassociated from the subject if not for her well-curated delivery.

With that being said, a lot of the history that she went over was about Whitechapel and the poverty levels of that area during the late 1800s, along with the increase in sex work and violence at the time. The victims were obviously at the forefront of the tour as well. It was explained that because Whitechapel was so poverty-stricken, women would often take to sex work as a means of securing their housing for the night. This was where cheap lodging houses came in. Although sex work was dangerous, it seemed that sleeping on the streets of Whitechapel was even more so at nighttime, and thus, they needed to pay for safer, though no less discomforting lodgings. The reason why this mattered, of course, was because the victims of Jack the Ripper - like Elizabeth Stride, Annie Chapman, and Mary Ann Nichols, among others - were all female sex workers.

So, she went over the reasons why these women worked the streets, creating a connection to how they would have wound up in the vicinity of Jack the Ripper in the first place. Then, she went into detail on each specific murder, starting with the first victim, Mary Ann Nichols. Her throat was slashed, and her body was found lying on the cobblestone ground. The murders only got worse after this - the women were cut up, mutilated, and split in half from the bottom up, if not described in far more brutal ways.

This led to speculation as to who Jack the Ripper may have been. One theory suggested that Queen Victoria’s grandson, Albert- who was known for his sexual escapades- could have committed these crimes by utilizing the advantages of the crown. And yet, many believed he wasn’t even in London at the time of the crimes. Queen Victoria herself was an avid journalist who wrote about luncheons she’d spent with him out of London, giving him an alibi.

Aaron Kosminski was another name brought up most frequently by our tour guide. He was a Polish barber said to be schizophrenic, with deteriorating health and violent tendencies. By far, he was the most popular man behind the Jack the Ripper culprit speculation case. Some believe the killings may have stopped when he was put away in an asylum.

One of my favorite topics that our tour guide covered was the typical costume of Jack the Ripper. He was known to be wearing a top hat and a coat with a turned-up collar. However, she made it clear that this was not the typical dress for people living in Whitechapel, as most were impoverished, and this outfit was, in fact, too expensive for this part of London. Jack would have stuck out like a sore thumb had he been wearing this throughout Whitechapel. Our tour guide believed that the reason why Jack not only got away with so many murders but got away so quickly was that he was able to slick back into the streets of London undetected, a man living amongst the crowd. Thus, top hat and lapels would have pinned him as a suspect almost immediately. With the murders never having been solved, however, the tour took on an extra level of creepiness that stuck with me most of the night, though I came away from this far more informed than I originally had been.

After the tour, we went back to our hotel, changed into sweats, and met at the hotel bar for dinner and drinks. I tried a pilsner from Camden, while my friend’s fiancé kept up his with his chagrin of Old Fashioneds, and his mother went with either a Pinot Grigio or Sauvignon Blanc.

Flashback to the night before when the waitress from the Aviary unknowingly supplied us with the best joke of the entire trip after she gifted the fiancé’s mother with a cheese board as opposed to a cheeseburger. I’d been holding on to this moment tight.

My best friend had decided to stay up in the room that night. She was suffering from an ear infection, hadn’t handled the cold London air all too well on the tour, and ultimately needed to catch up on some sleep to get her through the next day. So four out of five of us sipped away at our drinks, sent food up to her, and ordered our own dishes. Her fiancé, his friend, and I all ordered cheeseburgers. Simple burgers with the works - lettuce, tomato, onion, and pickle. His mother ordered, yes, a cheeseboard.

Let’s try this again, I thought.

Time went by, and eventually, the bartender came up to us. “It shouldn’t be too much longer on your meals.”

We nodded, possibly too caught up in our conversations to care that the food was taking a while.

A few minutes passed and our three cheeseburgers were brought out, each with a pile of hot fries, and a tray of condiments.

“The other burger should be on its way,” Our bartender nodded over in our direction.

“The other burger?” The fiancé looked up, confused.

The bartender now looked confused as well. “Yes. You ordered four cheeseburgers.”

“Oh,” I said. “It must be the one you sent up to the room.”

“I didn’t get her a cheeseburger,” he shook his head. “I got her a sandwich from the café. That’s why I got up.”

The fiancé, his friend, and I all looked to our left, all in synch, to see his mother sipping her wine, and picking at a couple of my fries.

“What?” She asked.

“Oh no,” I whispered.

“Was I wrong?” the bartender came over to us.

“I believe my mother ordered the charcuterie,” the fiancé told him. “Not the cheeseburger.” Notice that he had chosen to use the word charcuterie here. So after the bartender rushed to fix the problem, a plate of salami, prosciutto, and other meats came out, with sliced Gherkins pickles as a garnish on top.

“This is not what I ordered,” his mother shook her head.

“What?” the boys said.

“Oh. No.” I sagged in my seat.

“I ordered the cheeseboard.” There was, in fact, a different cheese board on the menu that was different than their selected meat charcuterie. However, a server informed us that the chef could not make that board while also reaching to take the meat charcuterie back to the kitchen.

And so, for the second night in a row, the fiancé’s mother was left to eat fries for dinner, washed down by a glass of white wine. One night, she ordered a cheeseburger and got a charcuterie, and the next, she ordered a cheese board, and never even got the burger that was put in for her.

She ended up eating just fine for the rest of the trip, though we never let her live this down.

Day 3: April 19th, 2024

The rain would not let up the next day. To say that this was normal for most of our time in London would have been a lie, yet, it was just as cold as usual, and unlike the past two days, most of our morning was spent outside.

Our morning looked like this: we woke up, took a fifteen-minute Uber to Euston Station where we met our tour guide for the day, and then took another twenty-minute train ride to a bus stop. At the bus stop, we stood in the pouring rain, waiting for our bus to take us to our destination. I specifically waited with only a flannel jacket on over my sweater. It had no hood, nor was it water-resistant in the slightest. Then, to say that we had to fight to make it on the first bus with our tour group was an understatement. Our tour guide had to hoard us through the crowd like little shuffling penguins in the Arctic to get us through.

To add a disclaimer, I was completely aware that it was my fault I didn’t bring a jacket to one of the wettest places in Europe but for some little, unknown reason, that didn’t make it any better.

However, the sky did clear up almost completely when we got inside of our destination.

I may have forgotten to mention just where our destination was. Like a beacon, the sun shined down upon us once reached the Warner Brothers Harry Potter studio tour.

The tour was something we almost didn’t do. For one, it was one of the most expensive experiences on our itinerary, and two, it almost didn’t fit into our itinerary in the first place. But I was glad we did it. The tour was light-hearted and familiar, something I desperately needed since I wasn’t faring too well with the time change or with being so far away from home. Harry Potter was, of course, a huge part of my childhood, and it was a nice distraction from how I was feeling to be immersed in the making and magic of the movies.

Once we entered, the crew said it would take upwards of three hours to finish the entire tour. It took us about an hour and a half. We did skip some of the more detailed, time-consuming experiences. For example, we didn’t ride the mechanical broomsticks, and we didn’t take a ride on the Hogwarts train. These attractions seemed to be where most of the crowd was, and with a time constraint, we couldn’t risk waiting in a line to not finish the rest of the tour.

The first set we saw was the Great Hall. It was exactly as I’d seen it in the movies. The four house tables were lined up in a row, all set up overlooking the dias where Dumbledore would give his welcoming speeches to the students. In front of the professors’ table were the costumes for Professor Dumbledore himself, Professor McGonagall, and Professor Snape. We could see the fabric and design up close, as well as the scale of the actors to one another. The tables were aligned with silver plates and goblets, while the walls were adorned with statues of winged animals and chandeliers. There were more costumes as well, like that of Made Eye Moody, Hagrid, and Professor Flitwick.

As we continued our tour, we came across props and costumes. There was a display of the outfits worn at the Yule ball. Hermione’s pink dress and Victor Krum’s Durmstrang suit were outfitted among Harry’s dress attire and Madame Maxine’s tall dress. There was the Tri-Wizard cup shining blue, Sylizar Slytherin’s basilisk door to the Chamber of Secrets, and Twelve Grimmuald Place’s Black family tapestry.

The sets consisted of the first-year Gryffindor common room, Hagrid’s Hut, Potions class with Snape, and an interactive Forbidden Forest (among many others), alive with fog, animatronic spiders, and the sounds of various creatures running amongst the trees.

One of the best attractions was a mini rendering of the Hogwarts Castle equipped with every detail the film explored. There was the boat house leading to the Snape scene in the last movie, the greenhouses in the back of the castle, and the lights dazzling throughout the interior to show that school was in session.

Truth be told, we were on a mission for most of the tour. Halfway through was said to be a concession selling Butterbeer. Sweet, butterscotch-y, foamy, and refreshing butterbeer. We drank it out in the courtyard that overlooked the Dursley’s home- which housed many elements from the first, second, and third movies. Like the flying Hogwarts acceptance letters, and Aunt Madge being blown up like a balloon in The Prisoner of Azkaban. Then there was the greenhouse, an interactive experience that allowed tourists to pull out their very own screaming mandrakes as if they were in herbology class.

Lastly, the final segments focused on the making of the movies. From concept sketches, to face moldings of the goblins, and information on animation and CGI, it was cool to see how not only the cast brought these characters to life, but also the crew. The lifelike basilisk head was not amongst one of my favorites. No reason why.

Dinner that night was at another rooftop restaurant called Aquashard. It overlooked the city of London with wall-lined glass windows surrounding the room, giving it a clean and clear ambiance. We all sat down and ordered a drink. My best friend went with a Cosmopolitan, her fiancé, an Old Fashioned, and his friend a cocktail with absinthe. The fiancé’s mother and I started with a South African Sauvignon Blanc.

Then, for a starter, I chose to keep it light, so I went for a dish of green olives. While the others ordered crispy squid and steak tartare.

Our entrees were brought out shortly after. I had switched to a red wine to match my filet. It was served with a tater tot, and topped with grilled onions. For sides, the fiancé’s mother and I shared cheesy cauliflower and mashed potatoes.

Then, dessert for me was a trio of chocolate from the Dominican Republic. There was each an egg of white chocolate, dark chocolate, and milk chocolate, all individually paired with different jellies, sauces, and garnished gold leaf. My best friend and I, of course, had to finish with tea. It was soothing, and a nice way to spend our last night in London, reminiscing about the lack of food her fiancé’s mother ate, and what was yet to come on our next adventure.

We slept well that night, the comfort of a good meal and hot tea having been in our bellies.

Day 4: April 20, 2024

Our last day in London was a short one, as we were expected to catch the Chunnel to Paris at three o’clock.

I had two business matters to attend to before that.

One, I wanted to go back to Westminster to take a picture in front of the red phone booths near of Big Ben. That was an easy endeavor.

And two: we had to find Abbey Road to take the famous crosswalk picture. Surprisingly enough, this was not an easy task. Abbey Road was a busy street that had cars driving up and down it. Most of these drivers were most assuredly sick of seeing tourists and had places to go. So taking the picture turned out to be a feat in itself, and only the fiancé’s friend got a chance to put himself in the shoes of the Beatles to replicate the cover of Abbey Road. That being said, it wasn’t a big deal, and I still got to see the spot, which was more than enough for me.

Once that was over, it was time to venture to the Chunnel and head to our next destination: Paris, France.

Four Days In London Without a Jacket

Bienvenue à Paris!