London

I spent my first day in London atop a double-decker bus on a sightseeing tour. [It brought back a lot of memories -- I worked as a guide on one of those for two summers in Toronto.] I learned a lot of interesting things. For example, did you know that the word “hangover” comes from the time in England when public executions were popular (and carried out by the court)? All the townspeople would come, drink, watch someone get hanged, and drink some more. It was a big party (as public executions often are), but the next day, they’d all wake up with horrible post-hanging headaches, or "hangovers". (This sounds like a bad joke but it’s true!)
The next morning I watched the changing of the guard from St. James Palace to Buckingham. Normally I don’t much go in for pomp or circumstance, but I have to admit it was kind of fun to march beside the band as they made their way down the mall. And their music selection was rather surprising: it was the theme from Hawaii Five-O! (Watch the video if you don’t believe me.)
I took a river cruise down the Thames – great view of the city that way. St Paul’s Cathedral (where Prince Charles and Princess Diana were married) was one of the highlights. I also made it to evensong [a short worship service featuring the choir] at Westminster Abbey, which was quite gorgeous. There are a lot of very famous people buried there; I saw the markers of Charles Darwin, Isaac Newton, and the composers Edward Elgar, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Benjamin Britten and Henry Purcell. That is a lot of history when you consider that Purcell, for example, died in 1695!!
I spent a glorious few hours at the Tate Modern (Museum of Art). The building used to be a power station and much of the original fixtures have been kept, so it’s an interesting space. The exhibits were fantastic! I saw a lot of inspiring works. My favourite was a display of electrified kitchen utensils. Pick one of those babies up and you’d be electrocuted! (Which comes close to the level of suffering I sometimes feel in the kitchen...) The artist, Mona Hatoum, said “Being raised in a culture where women have to be taught the art of cooking as part of the process of being primed for marriage, I had an antagonistic attitude to all of that.” No kidding.
Something I did not try in England was any of the plethora of meat-flavoured “crisps” [chips] Britons seem to love. Neither the “honey roast ham”, “sausage”, “roast beef and onion”, or best: “roast ox”, really appealed to me. At all.