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experiences

Speaker's Corner
The very northeast corner of Hyde Park is the traditional spot for public soapboxing in London. Anyone with a grievance to air,political theory to espose, cause to champion, or alien abductors to warn us about can take the stage (or rather, climb atop a crate) and harangue the passersby. The busiest and best time is Sunday morning.

A Morning at Parliament
If you thought the snide British hosts on reality shows were nasty, you ain't seen nothing like the kind of bile, outlandish insults, and centuries-long grudge matches that play out daily in sessions at British Parliament. It's free to come watch these right proper MPs (Members of Parliament) scream obscentities and question each other's parentage as they discuss the issues of the day. Quite entertaining. C-SPAN should parobably train a camera on these guys (it'd be a heck of a lot more fun than the yawn-fests our U.S. Congressmen conduct).

Members of the opposing parties (left-wing Labour and right-wing Conservative) sit facing one another in two long sections of fancy, bleacher-style seats—and there's a damned good reason these bleachers were arranged so as two be two swords' lengths apart.

Parliament is in session from mid-October through July. The insanely nutball quotient of inbred aristocrats was dealt a severe blow a few years ago when the government finally decided to thin the ranks of these heriditary Lords (who make up the upper house of Britian's Parliament), so the show at the House of Lords (Mon-thurs 9:30am-1pm) isn't nearly as much popcorn-crunching fun as the verbal brawl that often takes place in the House of Commons (Mon-Tues 2:30-10:30pm, Wed 9:30am-1:30pm and 2:30-10:30pm, Thirs 11;30am-7:30pm, Fri 9:30am-3pm). Admission is free; line up at the St. Stephen's entrance.

Breakfast at the Fox & Anchor
The Fox & Anchor pub sits at 115 Charterhouse St., down a sidestreet from the flank of London's massive butchery market. the pub has a special exemption to the local liquor license laws which allows it to serve beer at breakfast to hungry, early-rising meat cutters (it costs about $12, but it'll last you through to dinner, trust me—eggs, bacon, sausages, beans. fried bread, a tomato, unlimited tea, and of course a pint of bitter).

Ride the Tube to Greenwich
Now that the Jubilee extension has been completed, all it costs is a Tube ticket to get out to Greenwich, the village whose Mean Time sets the world's clocks and whose Prime Meridian divides the Earth into East and West hemispheres. The original clipper ship Cutty Sark sits moored by the ferry dock, unintentionally the world's biggest liquor ad, while nearby sits the Gipsy Moth IV, the yacht in which Sir Francis Chicester completed the first solo round-the-world in 1966-67.

You do have to fork over admission to get into the Cutty Sark, but since December 2001, the Royal Observatory (that's where they keep the famous clock and the Meridian line—well, the marker for it—along with historic scientific devices), and the National Maritime Museum (see the coat in which Nelson was shot, bullet hole and all) are admission free, as is admission to the Royal Naval College, a vast Christopher Wren building of 1696 (Nelson's body lay in state in Thornhill's impressive Painted Hall), which is only open 2:30 to 4:45pm.

Shagged out from sightseeing, you can sun yourself, play frisbee, or just plain nap on the vast sloping park below the observatory, full of grassy lawns and spreading shade trees. The village of Greenwich itself is fun to wander and filled with some great pubs, though it's a trot down the Thames-side promenade to the best of them, Trafalgar Tavern, a rambling place with a small terrace overlooking the wide river and tall seats inside set against the bay windows (Dickens set the wedding feast in Our Mutual Friend here).

A Day on Hampstead Heath
Ramble an old growth forest just a Tube's ride north of the city center, enjoying the genteel manor house at its center, the restaurant-filled trendy village at its edge where many inernational celebrities live quietly, and the countryside pubs scattered throughout the Heath itself, including one with a garden where sprouts a tree upon which once perched a nightingale to which regular patron Keats once wrote a famous ode.