Scott's "A Tale of Two Cities" - Chapter Five: Hit the Road, Jack

Saturday (May 13) was the Jack the Ripper walking tour for my British Studies class. That morning we had to wake up early to grab breakfast and pack a lunch as our coach buses left for London bright and early at 8am.

The bus dropped us off at the Tower of London. Outside the Tower Hill subway station we met up with our teacher and the tour guide for our tour. In my British Studies class, we had been studying the Whitechapel Murders (perpetrated by "Jack the Ripper") which terrorized London in the fall of 1888. Our walking tour took us around through the Whitechapel neighbourhood and the surrounding area to see the sites of a few of the murders, and to a few other historically significant spots. Of course, the cityscape has changed dramatically in the past century, so a couple of times we encountered a "the body was found where that office building is standing" situation.

It was pretty interesting, though, to see where everything took place after we'd spent a couple of classes learning . The tour guide did a really great job of blending some history and a lot of background information into his story; he also provided a number of grisly details. So that was great. We also walked through Spitalfields Market, which is like a gigantic St. Lawrence Market (for those of you familiar with Toronto), and ended up at the Aldgate East subway station where we were released for free time.

Since the automated ticket-vending machines at that station were broken, Maureen, Kate, Megan and I walked down to Aldgate (proper) station and hopped on a train to Piccadilly Circus. When we got off the underground, we entered the Trocadero (which is like a giant downtown shopping mall) to find washrooms. I must admit I still haven't entirely gotten used to the concept of pay-as-you-go toilets. However, it was worth the 20 pence, as on our way out of the mall we stumbled across a children's Postman Pat ride. I was ecstatic, understandably, as I've been unable to find anything either (a) Postman Pat, or (b) Thomas the Tank Engine themed since I arrived in Britain. It was an especially proud moment since most of my friends here are not familiar with Pat, and probably thought me crazy when I was complaining earlier about not being able to find him anywhere. Naturally, we had to take pictures. Postman Pat's black-and-white cat is clearly visible behind me:

So, we left the Trocadero and, through a navigational error (and not really knowing what Piccadilly Circus was), we missed Piccadilly Circus completely. Anyway, we went east to Leicester Square Gardens, where we stopped to have our bagged lunch. After that we stopped off at the Ben and Jerry's shop for some iced cream. Shocked by the prices, I foolishly purchased the smallest size which turned out to be like half a scoop. I was mocked mercilessly. And it still cost me $4.

We had to drop Kate and Megan off at the British Museum, as they had another field trip for a different class in the afternoon. With that objective in mind, we headed north along Charing Cross Road as it sounded famous/familiar to me. It seems to form the eastern boundary of SoHo, and was full of neat little artsy stores, dozens of theatres, and a number of adult bookstores. When we hit Oxford Street we headed east, where we found this really cool store that's been selling only umbrellas and walking sticks since 1830. We spent a bit of time browsing; as you may or may not know, I really want a walking stick. Sadly, though, the good ones were a bit out of my price range. The store is pictured below:

We still had a bit of time to kill before the girls' field trip, and we saw a sign saying that Covent Gardens was only 6 minutes away. So, we followed the arrow south down Shaftesbury Avenue in an attempt to find it. We were foiled, however, when the street curved west leading us back to Charing Cross. By the time we'd realized what had happened, we had to head straight to the Museum, which we reached in fairly short order. The British Museum itself is an absolutely fantastic building; it's very similar to the government buildings in Washington. It's also enormous. I'll attach a picture below:

After dropping our friends off at the museum, Maureen and I walked back west along Oxford Street, which is apparently a posh shopping district. I didn't see much that was particularly interesting (or not available in North America), but we did go into Marks and Spencer where I purchased a guidebook for Paris. Hopefully it'll come in handy.

From there we decided to wander through SoHo, in an attempt to find some cool little stores. We found a couple of places worth stopping at, the best of which was a store called Scribbler. It was a store that sold greeting cards almost exclusively, and it was filled with a wide range of the most colourful, random, explicit, offensive, and wildly profane greeting cards I've ever seen. Maureen and I probably spent 45 minutes in there just laughing hysterically to ourselves. Sadly the cards were fairly expensive, which prevented me from purchasing the dozen or so that I wanted to. We also stumbled across a small "red light" district. Like the tourists we are, we tried to take pictures of all the funny signs, and then got yelled at by the bouncer from a strip club.

After that we made our way to Trafalgar Square, which was absolutely amazing. We didn't have time to go look at all the statues, and I was saddened to discover that Nelson's Column is undergoing repairs (it's totally covered with scaffolding). We also saw Canada House, which is a beautiful building on the west side of the square. I'll have to go back and check out the inside, since my friend Fraser has told me it's quite nice, and it apparently has the best non-pay-as-you-go public toilets in London. I'm attaching a picture of it, too. I'm not sure if you can tell, but it says "Canada" in gold letters on the portico:

Across the square from Canada House is South Africa House, another gorgeous, large building. This made me feel kind of bad for Uganda, as Uganda House appeared to be a rather non-descript storefront just south of Nelson's Column. Anyway, by that point we were starting to run out of time, and we headed off to Cleopatra's Needle, our standard pick-up spot. Maureen knew a weird way of getting there, and we walked through this cool concourse under what I'm guessing are the train tracks to Charing Cross Station. Regardless, we made it back on time, and rode our coach buses back to the castle.

The next day (Sunday May 14), I slept in quite late, and then spent most of the day trying to find anything I could do (laundry, editing other peoples' work, blogging, etc.) to procrastinate and delay writing the paper I had due on Monday for as long as I could.