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A royal treat in London

Famed institutions, shopping, entertainment and a hoary past... this metro clearly has a royal edge over other cities, says APARNA KARTHIKEYAN

TOURIST SPOTS GALORE Tower Bridge on the Thames

Yes! We've been to London to look at the Queen! Only, sigh, she wasn't there to welcome us in, offer us a cup of tea in her celebrated tea-service, show us her Corgis and Tupperware containers in which she stores her Muesli (I've been dying to know if its true!)...

But at least, her official London residence, a.k.a. The Buckingham Palace didn't disappoint us — steeped in history and tradition, the grand-staircase, the huge rooms, with their magnificent collection of tableware, furniture, paintings, portraits, sculptures... only a string of superlatives would do justice to them all!

The Buckingham Palace in London

Of course, getting in to the palace wasn't all that simple... for there was this mother-of-all-queues, which, on a typical blustery London day quickly got annoying. (Given that the State Rooms of the Palace are opened to the public for only a couple of months every year, August and September, there is, but naturally, a considerable crowd!) After a longish wait for our admission time, followed by the airport style security screening, phew, it was finally our turn to `ooh' and `aah' at the 19 choc-a-block-with-artwork football fields. Ok, ok, State Rooms.

That's the thing with London — it's clearly got a `royal' edge over most other cities, and the royalty is revered and ridiculed in equal measures! Almost everything has a `royal' prefix — the mail, gardens, theatres... (Why, even the headache one gets from the royal queues is a royal pain!) To get the rest of our royal fix we headed over to the Tower. Via, of course, the Tower Bridge. And, perhaps, just to enthral us further, it made a big show by drawing itself all the way up to allow a tall ship to pass through (a rare sight, I'm told!) The Tower, up close, looked not unlike any other fortress, hiding its intriguing, notorious history well behind its ramparts. But the signposts — Traitor's gate, Bloody tower — served as chilling reminders of a cruel past. Hard to miss, of course, were the ravens, mere cousins of our common crow, but what a royal life in comparison — strutting around as if they own the place, personally cared for by the Yeomen Warder called the Ravenmaster. Oh, a word about the Yeomen Warders, otherwise known as the "Beefeaters" — not only is their costume simply outstanding, but so are their guided tours. And they're usually game for a photo-op, making for a very personal memento! Of course, we couldn't come away without a peek at the Crown jewels (yes, the Kohinoor is very much there, busy dazzling visitors!). But apparently, this isn't just an exhibition, for the royalty frequently uses some of the gleaming tureens and dishes on display — a little `In use' card drew attention to those pieces, which the Queen or her distinguished guests were even then eating out of!

So much to see

The Big Ben

Even if it isn't quite the centre of the universe (as was once believed), London still manages to retain its position as the Mecca for tourists. There is simply so much to see — understandable, given London's hoary past — and quite impossible to explore over a mere weekend. (Unless, that is, you've got hold of Hermione's time-turner, and are able to be at two places at the same time!) There's the Westminster Abbey that's certainly attracted even more attention since the Da Vinci Code, the Houses of Parliament, the London Eye (famous for its queues, rather than its panoramic views), Wimbledon, renowned for its strawberries and cream, and, oh yes, tennis...

Forget boring old statistics, and figures — just look at the tube-network, and you get an idea about the incredible horizontal spread of the city. The highly complex tube-network, fanning out like a delicate mesh of capillaries, makes every first-timer wail "I'm-never-going-to-figure-this-out"! The sheer thrill of going down a steep escalator, right into the bowels of the earth (well, the tube-station), the first sight of a train's headlight breaking through the inky black tunnel, the thronging multitudes, some strap-hanging, some nail painting... to get a whiff of London (literally!), you've got to do a tube ride!

Of course, there's more to London than just the venerable Victoria or the newly revamped Jubilee Line (parts of which, by the way, looks like something out of a sci-fi film. Truly futuristic!) There are too many monuments, too many institutions, that one can hardly write about them on one side of a foolscap paper; nor even two. For how can one recap the moment when Big Ben strikes the hour and everybody in the vicinity (well, at least the tourists) freeze mid-step? Or the sight of all those devotees of Madame Tussaud who wait patiently for hours, all for a darshan — of their favourite demi-gods? The long-suffering shopaholics queuing in the pre-dawn hours for the start of the Boxing Day sales in Oxford Street (bearing an uncanny resemblance to our own Ranganathan street in the run-up to Christmas!), strictly-for-window-shopping Bond Street, the Globe theatre (for Shakespeare addicts), all those bridges across the Thames, the piers, Trafalgar square (where Diwali is celebrated under the auspices of the Mayor, with great fanfare), St. Paul's cathedral, all those museums, theatres, gardens and parks... whoa! I'm breathless. You've got to experience London, preferably all the four seasons to truly get a taste of the city. And before you get worried, the `four seasons' bit is actually easy — with some bad luck on your side, you're very likely to start off on a warm, sunny morning, which swiftly turns wet and windy, and ends bitterly cold. Yeah, well, welcome to London.

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