Dearest Rachel –
After the last few cruises, I’m starting to wonder whether I should even bother with trying to go into details about a city before arriving at it. If nothing else, the one place I got the most out of – and was most surprised by – in the last few years of travel was the one place (Malaysia, and Kuala Lumpur in particular) where I didn’t have the time to both looking up regarding its history and other particulars.
Besides, to try and describe London would be like trying to describe New York; everybody already knows everything there is to know about it, and then some. You could argue that Tokyo, while a similarly large, world-class city, is still exotic enough that some people don’t know all that much about it here in the anglosphere, but London? Come on. There’s always somebody reading over your shoulder that knows more about the place than I do; I’m not even going to try to claim sufficient knowledge to match other. And that’s not even taking into account how consulting with ChatGPT can give you all sorts of information about the place – both real and hallucinated, don’t think I don’t know about that – that one never thinks to ask about, and that Daniel and I will never have time to delve into in the brief amount of time we’re here (and awake).
The best I can do about describing this elephant is to go through the footage of our family’s first trip to the place (complete with narration in both the London Eye and the river ride on the Thames):
Or, how about our second day in town, covering the Tower of London, a scene in Covent Garden, and your ride on the trampoline in front of a downtown museum?
Daniel reminds me that we were here more recently than that, back in 2013. And that’s quite true, but we were between cameras in those date; the camcorder had disappeared in the clutter of the house, while we hadn’t started using iPods (let alone iPhones) in earnest yet. Without much in the way of footage, there’s not as much to remember that particular trip by.
The irony is that we probably won’t have all that much time or energy to really see the sights of the city this time around. Sure, we’re arriving right at the crack of dawn and all that (and that because we literally can’t get in any earlier, as the city is apparently under curfew), but after a seven or eight hour flight in which we won’t have gotten much, if any, sleep, how much are we going to be able to actually do?
With that being said, the history and culture aren’t going to be things we’ll have the opportunity to take in before we just find ourselves running out of steam. Although, considering that we have to check out of the hotel and be back on the Tube to the airport before eight or so, calling an early night might not be a bad thing. But it does mean that, even if I were to do research on the city, it would be rather wasted for us. We’re going to be too involved in just getting around to write down stuff that could be found on Wikipedia or through ChatGPT.
Look, I may well yet do a dive into the history and attractions (such as there may be for city tourists like ourselves) of Nuuk and Qaqortoq, for instance, but considering that we’ve been to places like London (and Reykjavik, and Glasgow – albeit only incidentally with regard to the latter), I’m not sure how necessary this is to go over their particulars. Especially since there’s so many folks who know more about the place than we’ve had the chance to take in.
For the moment, though, I think I’m about to nod off, so I’m going to sign off for now. Keep an eye on us, honey, and wish us luck; we’re going to need it.
Letters to Rachel 