April First – looking back at March
Well, March is spectacularly blank. It’s not that nothing happened but it’s been a bit of a whirlwind and I’ve committed the sin of writing posts in my head instead of in here. Again. So I’ll start here and I’ll fill in some blanks retroactively if there’s too much for a page! Since it’s now April, I’d better get started.
Krish needed a new Canadian passport. The laws have changed and anyone who is a Canadian citizen must travel with the Canadian passport to enter Canada. We set off one day for Canada House but just two stops away from our destination, Krish realised he forgot his photos! My sense of humour prevailed and we went instead to have lunch and wander around Covent Garden.
The following week back we went. Much more successful. Everything was dispatched and paid for and we were on our way. Word came just three weeks later that we could come pick it up.
When I was a child I loved Trafalgar Square. I still love the view from there. Admiralty Arch and then the view down to Westminster. The square, however, has become tiresome. Without the pigeons it’s lost its charm. They’ve pedestrianised the area closest to the National Gallery too and somehow instead of making it more accessible, it’s made the traffic terrible and the jugglers and sellers and increased crowd have given it a sleazy carnival feeling.
It’s interesting, though, that children and youth still love to climb onto those lions and sometimes paddle in the fountains. They can’t miss the pigeons since they have never known them to be there.
When we picked up the passport, we thought it would be fun to walk along the river path to Pimlico and check out the area as we looked for lunch. Walking down Whitehall, I thought we’d see lots of protesters at Whitehall, Downing Street, and outside the Houses of Parliament but we really didn’t. It was surprisingly calm. Although I still can’t get used to the fact that Downing Street is now a gated fortress, there were only a few tourists lingering outside. With the Brexit date only a day away, I was quite astounded.
What it says on the tin
Along the river, there’s the usual collection of old and revered buildings, like Nobel House, but there’s also a huge amount of change across the river.
Over a decade over, when I was new to London, I had a chance to stay in Pimlico to take over an online yarn business. E-commerce was quite young and things worked a bit clumsily but I did receive shipments, process orders, wrap up packages, and mail them off. A huge amount of work, in fact! The person I was taking over for was staggered by my bill. She had never thought about the actual hours that all involved since, living right there all the time, she just integrated it into her week. It taught me something about why an online purchase can be expensive.
Pimlico is posh and it’s also full of small hotels. We walked through the streets lined with white pillared homes, noticing how different it looked and felt than our East London area.
We planned to go to the Tate Britain but we’d walked quite a bit and were hungry so kept going. Another day! We talked about going back and also about visiting the renovated area of Battersea Power Station. Something to look forward to.
Years ago we used to go to a Turkish restaurant that we really enjoyed and their flagship location was in Pimlico so we headed there. I’ll skip to the bottom line. Expectations were high, prices were too, the food was blah. You can’t see how small this plate was but there was a tablespoon of each mezze, along with a dry and bland falafel (top left). I liked the beetroot though £10 for this tiny plate. We also had some liver, called a starter but more than the two of us could get through. Not bad but we agreed that Nandos, at half the price, was far tastier. It would be nice to get a great meal and sometimes I wonder where to go to get it!
What we did notice was how much Victoria had grown and changed. The station was as it always is – a holdout against the improvements other stations had made. All around it were the modern office towers and the renovated bus station.
You didn’t explain the lack of pigeons, which I assume is mainly due to the hawks. There must be other places where they congregate if someone needs a pigeon fix.
no pigeons is because their poo is acidic and was corroding the various things london would like to keep – fountains, lions, and good old nelson. hawks were used to scare them away and many were killed. it’s not clear if they still use hawks but the cost is quite high. banning pigeon feed was the most effective. when people were feeding the pigeons they kept coming and brought their buddies, when the feeding stopped they found other snack bars.
All the old glass topped stations I’ve been to relatively recently have been 1000% cleaner than I remember them from the 60s. I suppose that’s a combination of less dirty engine emissions and more emphasis on cleaning. I don’t know if there are more or fewer trains and passengers now than there used to be.
agreed!