From London, St. Pancras Station to Rye in East Sussex

Allie and LT are now safely tucked away in their Jesmond Dean Hotel, half a block from the St. Pancras International Train Station--a tall Victorian fantasy that looks like a Scottish castle out of Harry Potter, and which was, in fact, used in all the Harry Potter movies as the station from which students departed for Hogwarts.  In addition,  the neighborhood is quite familiar because nearly 28 years ago, in order to satisfy the residency requirements for getting married to Elizabeth in England, LT had to live 3 weeks in a B&B on Argyle Street, right across from the train station.  And then, five or six years ago, when LT, Eli, Hill, and Allie visited London, they all actually toured Argyle Street and visited the "Registrar's Office" inside the 6 story government building on the corner of Argyle Street, which house the small, official, legal office where LT and Elizabeth were married.  So, in a way, Argyle Street is just as important in the "Wooster St" Thomas chronicles as the High Street in Rye is in the annals of Grandma's Phyllis' Alexander family.  But,  perhaps, the narrator is getting ahead of himself and had better return to the beginning of the day.

Allie in front of one of the Thorpe houses in 19th century .

LT had another fine full English breakfast, packed his bags and was down in the lobby of the Falstaff fifteen minutes early when Allie stepped through the door with her black backpack and stylish blue duffel bag.  We said "au revoir" to the hotel staff and walked two quick blocks to the train station and were lucky enough to catch a train to Rye ("Change at Ashford International").  We arrived in Rye at about 10AM.  It was a beautiful day, with blue sky and just a few puffy blue clouds on the horizon.  We walked across the street from the train depot, up two mildly steep streets and were on the "High Street."  Aunt Phyllis Ann had emailed us exact addresses, so we knew to turn left and walk south towards the very end of the High Street, towards # 5, which was the Thorpe house, and which is now a spicy Indian Restaurant.  Right across the street (again thanks to PAN's--Phyllis Ann Nordstrom--email, we knew to look for two more Thorpe houses, # 114, which was a high fashion boutique called "Bird" and # 110-111 which housed an trendy antique store and a store which sold soldier memorabilia--small model soldiers from the Napoleonic wars, WWI, WWI, etc.  It was really inspiring to be walking at the end of the street where Grandma Phyllis' grandparents lived and worked.  The houses are are the very end of the High Street,  (it's actually called "East Cliff") and right next to #114 are several benches where folks can sit and admire the view out over the Romney Marsh and even glimpse the English Channel. 

The churchyard around St. Mary's in Rye.

Next, LT and Allie walked north on the High Street and turned right on East Street and walked (again uphill) straight up to St. Mary the Virgin Church.  We toured the cemetery which surrounds the church, but couldn't read any of the grave stones, even though PAN had sent us pictures of where to look for the Thorpe graves.  But, since it was a bright sunshiny day where ghosts certainly would not dare to appear,  we thoroughly explored the place, peering at every stone.  To be honest, most of them were covered with more lichen than legible writing.  Since it was still not 12:00 Noon, we next visited the 13th century Ypres Tower, an ancient square Saxon structure, commissioned by Henry III.  The tower had great views of the Romney marsh and the navigable River Tillingham which leads to the English channel.

LT sips some Chablis in the Mermaid Tavern in Rye

At 12:00 Noon, LT and Allie adjourned to the Mermaid Inn, one of Rye's most historic buildings and the site of smuggling from the 1200's to the 1800's.  They sat in a corner by the window, overlooking another view of russet red brick houses, black slate roofs, and winding streets.  LT ordered the full Dover Sole, with buttered spinach, and the cheese course for dessert.  Allie more prudently selected from the Vegetarian menu, and had the mushroom, artichoke, spring herb salad (with a truffle egg. Hi, this is Allie again, making last minute edits and additions to the blog entry.) and a fricassee of woodland mushroom and artichoke. 

Allie at the top of the Bell Tower of St. Mary's Church in Rye

After lunch, they walked back to the church at the top of the hill and paid 2.50 pounds each to mount the 83 tiny stairs to the top of the square belltower above the church.  At points the ladder/staircase was so narrow that LT--despite his slender, bicycle-riding reduced waist-- had to move sideways in order to ascend.  The view from the top was awesome in all four directions.  We could see the train station where we had arrived, the contours of the High Street, the bulk of Henry James's "Lamb House" (our next destination) and again the Romney marsh, where flocks of spring lambs were grazing, and the River Tillingham running out to the sea.

LT and Allie in Henry James house.

At 2:00PM, LT and Allie were the first to enter Henry James's house.  LT had visited her in the 1970's and he and Eli had again visited the famous home of the "master" of English novelists in October of 2010, so this was LT's third visit to the house where the subject of his Ph. D. dissertation had lived and written for 18 years.  They toured the "oak" room filled with photographs, the dining room, where James had fed and entertained Joseph Conrad, H. G. Wells, R. L. Stevenson, Stephen Crane, and also walked out into the gardens and lawns.

LT poses near a fountain in James's Lamb House

By this point, Allie was close to breaking the Lamb House rules (this is Allie again, by the way! Hi.) and curling up on one of the roped off sofas, so the father-daughter duo decided to head back to Canterbury and set off for London and the Jesmond Dean Hotel. They took a train from Rye to Ashford, and then from Ashford to Canterbury. After that, the two split up, Dad to get the luggage, and Allie to get a ticket to London for herself. Although she had to deal with a surprisingly snobby ticket seller, Allie got her ticket quickly, and was able to meet up and help out LT with the bags at Falstaff. They got on their train (high speed to London, no changes, oh yeah!) and within an hour, Allie and LT were in London! They checked into the very nice JD Hotel, dropped off their bags, and then headed back to St. Pancras International. Why St. Pancras, the imaginary readers of this blog ask? Well, Allie and LT were pretty wiped out by this point, and decided that buying food from Marks and Spencer's was better than wandering around London looking for a restaurant. For dinner, they bought a chicken ceasar salad, smoked salmon, green olives, pesto pasta salad (apparently, throwing in tomatoes and baby spinach into cold pasta makes it a salad, who knew), and a teeny tiny bottle of wine (no, I'm serious, it was only a little larger than the remote!) They returned back to JD and ate, and Allie finished off her dinner with a couple of Samoa Girl Scout Cookies (THANKS MOM!) Dad wrote most of this blog and went to bed, while Allie decided to stay up and add photos. Tomorrow, adventures in London!

LT in Lamb House garden 34 years earlier.

Spring Vacation in England

LT in front of the Falstaff Hotel in Canterbury

After much anticipation and planning, LT left on his spring trip to visit Allison in England.  He flew from LAX to Heathrow on Wednesday, April 13th.  By luck, he got a seat in the exit row of a big B-777 and had plenty of room to sleep on the overnight flight.  Next morning, he arrived at Heathrow at 12:00 Noon, took the Heathrow Express which got him to London Paddington Station in 15 minutes.  Then he took the tube from Paddington to St. Pancras and bought a ticket to Canterbury West.  Luck was again with him, because as soon as he purchased the ticket and followed the seller's directions upstairs to platform 12 ("Turn right after Starbucks," were his directions), and he was able to hop on a purring train that was about to leave.

Less than one hour later,  after smoothly racing through the green fields of southeast England--lots of trees blushing with their first green, or white and or rose colored leaves--he arrived in Canterbury West.  He wheeled his 32 pound suitcase two blocks to the Falstaff Hotel by the West Gate of the historic city, checked into his room, and called Allie.  They arranged to meet the next morning.  Fulfilling a dream he had held since last October, LT returned to Zizzi's on the High Street for an early dinner of huge, tasty green olives, spaghetti carbonara, insalada mista, and "Mela Croccante" (apple/hazelnut dessert), all washed down with a large glass of Valpolicella.

At that early hour, the restaurant was totally empty, and LT had an enjoyable time talking to the owner Tony, a Brit who lived in southern California for 10 years, who later took LT on a tour of the upstairs renovations to the historic building which dates from the 13th century, and Lucy, the Slovakian waitress with a delightful accent who made sure LT's wineglass was always full.  LT walked around the historic city center for a bit, shivering in the chilly British spring weather, and then returned to the Falstaff.  Room # 6  seemed freezing, but he found the heating control, turned it up full blast, and in no time at all the cozy room, with its wooden armoire, Shakespearean-themed pictures and thick Elizabethan-beamed ceiling was very comfortable.  In no time at all, thanks to the good food, wine, and transatlantic flight, LT fell asleep, but since he was in a new time zone, it seemed as if he woke up every hour or so until midnight.

The Falstaff dates from the 14th century, so every time anyone takes a step anywhere in the building, the ancient wooden beams creak a bit.  They assure guests that there are no verified accounts of real ghosts, but still, it can be a bit unsettling to wake up in the middle of the night, in a new hotel, and hear stairs creaking somewhere in the building.  Despite these distractions, LT slept pretty well after midnight, and got up at six to get ready for his first full English breakfast at 7:00AM--scrambled eggs, sausages, hash browns, prunes, plums, yogurt, cranberry juice, a warm croissant filled with chocolate and, of course plenty of tea.  Since Allie was to arrive at 9:00AM, he took out his Kindle and read more of "Ulysses" (60% finished, hooray--and nearly finished with the "Circe" chapter!!) until Allie opened the door of the hotel.

The Bell Tower of Canterbury Cathedral

Allie (that's me. Hi!) talked with Dad on the phone once he made it to the Falstaff, but was unable to join him for dinner at Zizzi's due to an interview with a potential employer on Skype.  The next morning, however, after wolfing down the last of the Cheerio's and a cup of tea, she went to the Keynes College bus stop around 8:30 AM, and took the number six into town, where it stopped almost right in front of the Falstaff Hotel! She met LT there, and after dropping off her laptop there, she and Dad went into the city center and visited the Canterbury Cathedral. Aside from one or two early bird tourists like themselves and some employees tuning the organ, the cathedral was pretty quiet. They saw the funeral accessories of the Black Prince of Wales, and the original resting place of Thomas Beckett, which is marked by a very interesting, but creepy-looking, sculpture made out of nails. Eeek! Photographs would have been taking, but unfortunately, they don't allow flash photography inside the church. Woe is us. However, the father-daughter duo did take some photos outside of the church and on the walk back to the Falstaff, which will hopefully be up on this blog soon! Which brings us to the present (10:25 AM), where Allie and Dad came back to Falstaff and started their new blog. Up next: Whistable and Birdie's!

Later: LT and Allie have returned from Whitstable (once again, this is Allie. Hi! I'm not entirely sure why we're writing in the third person here, but why break the pattern?) [Actually, the subtle changes in narrative perspective are dad's subtle way of helping Allie get ready for her exam--later on in May-- covering "modernism"and its crucially important stylistic innovations in narrative point-of-view].  Since neither of the two Thomases have a car here, much less know how to drive in the English manner, they took the bus from Canterbury to Whitstable. It costs 5.50 pounds for the All Day Explorer Pass, around eight dollars American . The trip was pretty short, maybe less than twenty minutes -- hooray for public transportation!

LT and the owner of Birdie's in Whitstable

Once Al and Pup arrived in Whitstable, they promptly got lost for about five minutes or so ("We're lost, this is Sea Street!" "Well, Harbour must be close by then. Seas have harbors, don't they?" "...") while looking for Birdie's, a seafood restaurant in town. They were able to find it, fortunately, and the two had a lovely two-course lunch. Escargot and bouillabaisse for the Pup, and anchovy salad and panfried steak with salad and fries for Allie. After talking with the owner Philip  (who apparently remembered that Dad not just from the last time he went to Birdie's but also from two favorable reviews he posted on Yelp and Travel Advisor),  and taking pictures of the food and the owner, the father and daughter duo navigated back to Canterbury, taking the number 6 straight to the entrance of the Falstaff.  They sat in the upper deck of the bus, right in front and, on the narrow, winding English roads,  it was like being in a Disneyland ride, as the driver wove in and out of traffic queues,veered to the left to avoid oncoming traffic, and swerved right to take advantage of small openings in the traffic.

After an exhilarating ride, the 6A deposited the traveling duo right outside the door of the Falstaff.  They went inside, got the hotel key, went up the stairs and down a couple of short, uneven, hallways (where every five feet the level changed and the floors benignly creaked), unlocked the door, turned on the laptop, clicked the Firefox icon, and started writing this addition to their first blog post. Tomorrow, they have plans to take an early train to  Rye, where they intend to visit the ancestral homes of some Alexander ancestors and the Henry James "Lamb" house, lunch at the Mermaid tavern,  and then zip back to Canterbury and take a fast, smooth train to ...London for the weekend!