The scenario: I've just stepped off a 22 day cruise in Southhampton. I'm a day away from turning 59. I still have a couple of days vacation left. What to do?
More like where to start. Obviously the first step was getting to London, a short 1.5 hr train ride away. I've been many times and consider it to be NYC with wrong side driving. It's got all of the kinetic energy of my favorite city with the added challenge of not getting flattened by a big black taxi.
The cruise and its nine shore days (which became eight shore days, thanks to Capt Asshole) had taken all the planning energy out of me so I arrived in London without much of an agenda beyond "it's my birthday, I'm gonna do shit I like".
For example, I love free walking tours. I love street art. Combine
both of those things and I'm all in. The fact that we were staying in the funky Shoreditch neighborhood where a lot of the art was located only served to make this more of an obvious choice.
The tour was a nice mix of old familiar artists and learning about cool new ones.
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That Banksy guy
We even got to meet one of the neighborhood's more prodigious artists. Back in 1917, Adrian Boswell had the idea of spray painting heads of broccoli and pinning them to local walls. Unfortunately, one man's whimsy is another's drunken late night snack. A couple of poisonings later, the authorities asked him to kindly stop doing that. At that point, Adrian could have given up on the broccoli biz entirely but instead he doubled down and started crafting them out of plaster. Thus his broccoli empire was born.
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I'm not going to lie. It took me two visits and a lot of deliberation to choose the right broccoli. All I will say is that one of these is now sitting happily in Miami.
What's better than a free walking tour? How about two free walking tours. We continued with the
Jack the Ripper tour. This is something I'd always wanted to do but had never gotten around to it. I kind of expected a kitschy affair, possibly led by a guide in some sort of Victorian costume. What we got was so much better. After meeting across from the Tower of London, we follow the trail of bloodshed.
Most of the locations we visited were very different from what they would have been in 1888 yet the guide did a beautiful job of recreating the scenes. What I appreciated most was that the stories, all five of them, were told from the womens' point of view. He portrayed them as fully realized human beings with hopes and dreams, not just the victims of one of history's most notorious serial killers. They are commonly remembered as sex workers but our guide made convincing arguments as to why this may not have been the case. They were all certainly destitute and several were unhoused, which was reason enough for the people of that time to label them as "prostitutes" but the evidence doesn't really back this up.
Part of the fascination with Jack the Ripper is the fact that there is no definitive answer as to who he was. He committed five gruesome murders in 1888 and then simply stopped for reasons unknown. Was he arrested for something else? Was he killed? Did he simply leave town? Our guide posited numerous suspects, ranging from a
Polish barber,
HH Holmes (or "Devil in the White City" fame) to even
Prince Albert Victor (grandson of Queen Victoria) but conceded that it is unlikely we will ever know.
One of the few surviving links with that period in time is the
Ten Bells Pub, which is believed to have been frequented by two of the victims, as well as the Ripper himself. There is similarly no way to verify this but I can attest to the fact that they do have a solid beer selection.
Add to that an earlier
pub visit for vegetarian bangers and mash- a must do for me whenever I am in the UK- and my birthday's eve was hitting all the right notes.
The actual day was spent doing yet another thing I love...visiting shit I hadn't seen before. There was a stroll through the
Leadenhall Market, which was a typical covered passageway but was on the way to our next stop.
There was a visit to
St Dunston in the East, a chill garden set in the ruins of an ancient church. Getting cooler....
From there it was a short walk to the
Sky Garden. This one was so new to me, I had never even heard of it before. Open since 2015, it is the city's highest public garden set in the top floors of a 37 story skyscraper. In theory, any one can get in for free via a timed entry ticket system. In reality, you need to plan weeks in advance and be online the second new tickets are released. Seeing as this was my "winging it" weekend, this was a bit of a problem so I played the only card I had, my birthday privilege. After a quick scan of my ID verifying that I was in fact a newly minted 59 year old, we were permitted entry.
It was rainy- because London- but the 360 views were impressive, as was the whole layout of the indoor space.
But the undisputed highlight was the evening's adventure. Much like the Ripper tour, I've always wanted to see a show on the West End, but circumstances always got in the way. But not this time, dammit. I was squeezing every drop out of that bday lemon.
The only obstacle was choosing a show. I wanted to see
Operation Mincemeat but it was sold out and attempts at the lottery came up empty. A lot of the shows were ones I'd already seen on Broadway (ie Hamilton, Book of Mormon, the Producers) or were aimed at children. This narrowed it down to
Ralph Fiennes in Grace Pervades or
Titanique. On one hand, Fiennes is good at anything he does...but it was a play, not a musical and might be too serious for the occasion. Option B was the retelling of the Titanic from the perspective of Canadian pop singer, Celine Dion. Problem there is I truly really do not like her music. At all. She appears to be a lovely person but I am convinced that the term "caterwauling" was conceived with her in mind. A good friend would call and leave "My heart will go on" on my answering machine as a way to torment me. Could I sit through an entire show of her music? Real question that I asked ChatGPT "Can I still enjoy this show if I detest Celine Dion's music?" Chat said yes and that combined with earlier recommendations led to my choosing Titanique.
Final verdict: I fucking loved it!! The cast was phenomenal, both vocally and comedically. It was silly, campy fun and everything I could have hoped for. I even feel like I learned a valuable lesson. Turns out, I don't even hate Celine's music. It's just her voice I can't stand.
The next day, there was nothing left to do but fly home after almost a month of cruising and carousing. Fun had been had, new countries visited, friends were made but this 59 year was tired and in need of a nap.
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