there's only one thing to do in London for a night

Covent Gardens tourist knick-knack bazaar

It was a pain in the rectum finally getting to London, but we had at last made it. Through the last minute visa pickup at the DHL office, to the speeding drive to the airport, and finally the sigh of relief sailing through the air. There was also of course the fear about transit, especially due to the lack of it on Christmas Day, but that would sort itself out. When we got to the Z Hotel on the Strand, entering our room with glasses of complimentary mulled wine in hand, we knew that it would be all right. But then I do usually get that feeling with mulled wine in hand. The Theatre There’s a competition between London and New York, about which is the best city for theatre. And really, the cards are all out on that one. But if there’s one show that must be seen in a person’s life, and one show only, then it really is "The Phantom of the Opera" at Her Majesty’s Theatre, where they’ve been doing it to perfection for the past 30 years. The play to this day is frequently sold out, so buy tickets a few months in advance if you want to sit together. Her Majesty’s is right at the edge of the theatre district, known as the West End or Theatreland, which is home to some 30 theatres, most hosting very long-run, often Andrew Lloyd Webber, productions, like Phantom, Les Miserable, Cats, Jesus Christ Superstar, and Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap. I especially love the Gonzago Can-Can in the last one. But if you’re a true theatre aficionado, it’s not necessary to catch a show here. London is full to the brim of underground theatres. You only have to go a spitting distance to find one, or if looking for something a dash bit tourist while still being local, check out the hipster district, Camden.

"No pictures please," an usher to the right seems to be saying

Her Majesty’s itself is a landmark, having shown premieres by George Bernard Shaw, J.B. Priestley, and even Bach and Mozart’s premiers to a British audience and is under a constant fee-on-your-ticket-storm of restorations. It was built in 1705 and earns its name by being actually owned by the monarch, as the land is literally a crown estate. So the title isn't actually a misnomer. A series of fires burnt down reconstructions of successively grander theatres until finally, the present one was rolled out in 1897. The walk from the Strand to Her Majesty’s is a right bit scenic walk, going either down the avenue to Trafalgar’s Square or up through Covent Gardens, both must-see destinations for any first time visitor to London. Covent Gardens It’s the premiere over-priced shopping district necessary for any newcomer to hit up while in London. It’s full of beautifully tailored pedestrian streets and most closely resembles a giant outdoor mall. But some gems are hidden there, like the Battersea Pie Station, one of the better places to grab a famous London meat pie, along with the place where I bought my latest hat, to adorn my expensive-fancy-hats-I-will-eventually-no-doubt-lose collection. Covent Gardens was once the fashionable fruit-and-vegetable bazaar for all the nobility and clergymen to show off their latest corset or mustache wax. But by the 1700s, it had declined into being a red light district--naturally, with all the corsets laced up tight--until Parliament decided to clean up the area a bit and return it to glory.

A street in Covent with lots of bookshops

Covent and the neighboring Soho (more on that next week) are probably also the best places to catch some street music. Here there don’t seem to be any laws on noise—not like Prague’s latest draconian acts—and anyone and everyone seems to be allowed to set up a performance. From nutty preachers with megaphones, to jugglers, to bands with full on PA systems. Even in the dead chill of winter, the place was alive and merry. If you’re looking for the real traditional hyped up “British pub”, then this is the place to get to, where there’s over 60 places serving 8 pound a pint beers and not a chav in sight. But they’re nowadays a far cry from the underground boxing rings of the days of yore and are now mainly just filled with tourists and Poles trying to be British. Let me know in the comments if some bona fide drinking holes are still lining those gilded alleys.

Atheist Christmas markets are all the rage

Finally rounding out the tour on our way to Her Majesty’s was a stop at Leicester Square, which livens up during the Christmas season with a Czech-themed Christmas market, where they sell mulled wine and Czech beers. We didn’t stay long there since we’re exposed to the real deal, so we quickly shuffled off and found a Costa Coffee. Not the best coffee, but it’s something you have to drink when in London because it’s from London. It’s equally as ridiculous as drinking Starbucks in Seattle or McDonald’s in a manure collection pile. Trafalgar Square Arriving at the theatre a bit early meant we still had time to round out one more tourist site, the main square of the city. Its most famous event was Bloody Sunday, where the British contributed a thousand bullets to the Irish cause and the Irish got back at them with U2 being played by every bloody pub’s cover band for an eternity after. Well played, Micks.

Trafalgar Square purdied up for Christmas

The square is named for Lord Horatio Nelson, who defeated Napoleon’s navy at the Battle of Trafalgar, earning him a spot in memoriam on top of a giant column, which sits in direct line of sight to Buckingham Palace. Nelson was unduly lucky in a great bit of naval battles, having his arm and leg shot off by cannonballs in the past and finally, death by musket at Trafalgar. Finally, our night ended in public view with the Phantom show, which was attested to be one of the most incredible performances my wife had ever seen, and indeed the same goes true for myself. The singing, the scripting, the choreography, and the set design were all top notch. But then if you’ve been doing it for 30 years and your monarch owns the place it better dang well be. Need more to read? Why not read about our New Years time here? And be sure to give us LIKE or share over on the Facebooks.

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getting around in London

The Tower Bridge during Christmas in London

Arriving to any city can lead one into a flying fluster of fun trying to figure out the details of transit. Each city works entirely differently, as it seems each model was developed quite independently, not caring about what works and doesn't work in other cities.

I remember in Kiev, it was normal to pay for the transit on the bus, but in Lwow, I got a fine for trying to pay for the ticket the same way—though perhaps that wasn’t a fine and was rather a bribe, I’m not overly certain to this day. But the point is, it all goes down differently from city to city, and London is no exception to that. Especially on Christmas Day, but more on that later.

Gatwick to London Gatwick is something of the red-headed stepchild of Heathrow. It’s a bit overlooked, it’s a lot smaller, and it gets a lot of the cheaper flights, though nowadays a lot of those flights go to Stansted, so I’m not overly sure why Gatwick remains in existence.

It gets those cheaper flights because Gatwick is a bit further out than Heathrow. And when I’m saying “a bit”, I’m using the classic British hyperbole, because really, Gatwick is way the heck out of town. The best way is by train. Those tickets are easy enough to buy at the airport, where the vendors can also hook you up with an Oyster card. The quickest way to Victoria station is to get on the 30 minute Gatwick Express, or if you’re going to the Strand, then hit up Thameslink. Any of the local lines will take you over an hour to get there because of all the stops. If you’re feeling a bit sadistic or if you’re traveling on Christmas, then there’s the National Express Bus service. We discovered that this is the only service open on Christmas, so that was grand. Expect 1.5 hours to 2 hours with that, and a much heftier weight from your wallet being lifted away. The motto can basically be, “Worse service at a greater price.” London transit The metro map looks something like a cross between a Jackson Pollack painting and my last night spaghetti dinner. Whoever designed it must have been tripping on something to do with strawberry fields, because it makes relatively less sense than the Beatles song I just made an allusion to. And the thing is expensive as all hell. Best to just skip it. Locals use the Oyster card, which can cost you up to six pounds for every ride on the metro and comes with a 5 pound refundable deposit. Better to just stick to bus rides when you need them, which only cost one pound fifty. And the buses are fun and double decker, with great views of an all-around beautiful city. Even better though is that London is a pretty flat city, so just wear your walking shoes.

Skip the metro and take the bus, ride the top floor for great views

What I discovered though one day before going to London was that you could buy an Oyster visitor card, mailed to your house. The visitor card makes everything nearly half off, and caps the metro at six pounds fifty, so it’s an insanely huge savings if you’re planning on traversing the city by leaps and bounds. The only trick is that you have to order it and have it sent to your house ahead of time. It’s impossible to buy in London, and not even at the airports. So order ahead. Christmas and bicycles London shuts down at Christmas. Literally. It’s clearly an attack on the holiday led by their Muslim mayor, and they overly recognize the most Christian holiday of the year in a clear attempt to undermine its popularity.

The attack on Christmas continues with massive pagan trees littered everywhere

Every mode of transit is gone. It would have made me rethink our flight schedule had I known it would have proven so difficult to get to Gatwick, since one, trains were closed, which meant that we had to take the National Express bus and two, the bus left from Victoria Station, which meant we had to get to Victoria. A bit of a tedium to do without transit. Also, to sell back our Oyster card, we had to give up the public transit thing on Saturday before the visitor centers closed. What we discovered changed our trip though. Bicycles. There are bicycle drop-offs almost everywhere throughout London. And you can rent a bicycle for twenty four hours for a rate of two pounds. You just swipe your card and take your choice of any red bike you'd like. What’s even cooler though is that you can lock up your bicycle at any of those drop-offs and pick up a different bicycle, as many times as you want during that 24-hour period. It’s traveler gold.

About to park the bike at Westminster Cathedral, then take another one somewhere else

So imagine, Christmas Day, no transit. It means there are no hordes of buses. And since most people are at home with their families anyway, and there’s no reason to go out since just about every pub and shop are closed, then the roads are practically empty. And bicycles are cheap. Freedom! That last day there, we put our backpacks on, pulled the bikes out of their slots and coasted through the city, letting the cold wind and spitting rain whip through our hair. Another view of Big Ben? No problem. A ride through sleepy scenic Belgravia in search of the occasionally open Starbucks? Also no problem. It sure as heck beat walking, especially with bags and after walking for three days straight. Also, by the way, no lockers at the train station or bus station. Both do have a luggage drop off which doesn’t work on Christmas, making things that much more fun for the traveling tourist. A Gatwick Christmas Our way back was crowned with a near empty bus--or is that near full in British English?--and the realization that Gatwick was only open that day to cater to about 4 flights. One of which was ours. The place was otherwise a graveyard. But it made me feel a bit thankful and a bit pushy. Really, they could have just not sold flights on Christmas and let all these people go home. If our flight hadn’t been available Christmas Day, we probably would have chosen a flight for the next day without complaint. But still, thanks to all those staff who spent their hours of holiday cheer at a nearly empty airport, just to cater to our flight and a 3:00 am to Kiev.

The bustle of Gatwick on Christmas Day

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the UK visa fandango

Big Ben and Parliament

Big Ben and the home of the British Parliament behind it

Us Americans take our passports for granted. We can travel to most countries of the world without a visa, and oftentimes without even filling in a form about where we’re staying or why we’re there. It’s probably the main reason I’d rather not give up my citizenship, even though I haven’t lived Stateside for 8 years. Granted, with citizenship also comes a constant fear of the IRS and wondering how much I should care about Obamacare requiring me to buy American insurance—and then not caring after my umpteenth Czech beer and impending liver failure.

I’m long of the opinion that a lot of our immigration worries would actually be resolved if we made immigration easier and not harder. Freedom of movement has long been the pillar of economists on every side of the divide.

In Capitalist theory, as everyone from Smith to Friedman has noted, without freedom of movement the workers are left without a point of market negotiation. The serf who was tied to the land had to accept the abominable conditions enforced by his master, regardless of the humanity of it. He had to idly watch his wife get raped or his children conscripted, else there would be no land, no job, no food and they would all suffer, starve, and die. By being able to relocate to a manor or job-provider who can offer better employment terms, it gives labor a huge bargaining chip.

Foreign banks and local prisons

Without freedom of movement, labor is enslaved. Remember that when thinking about immigration, because one day, for your job, you might have to emigrate, and you will be all the hypocrite for it. In fact, Americans do have to move around lots, from city to city and state to state. Imagine having better opportunities across the globe, wouldn't you move?But back to the subject at hand.

The British immigration system. It has taught me that government services run by the government, might not be such a bad idea. Privatization just means charging everyone more money, milking a failing system, and pissing everyone off in the process. The British care so much about illegals immigrating into their country, that they’ve actually outsourced the visa process to a private company, called TLS Contact, part of the Teleperformance Group. The Teleperformance Group ironically has a board made up of Frenchmen, Portuguese, Chinese, and people of other nationalities and citizenships. Normally I wouldn’t think much of that in any large, multinational corporation, but when you are outsourcing your visa process and border security to a group that has no borders, nor concern for your borders—except in the aforementioned serfdom situation—then I think a red flag should be raised. Especially when this was the primary mover and argument for the government to depart from the European Union, while doing a bit of the above in regards to privatization.

The Tower Bridge

Here was what we went through, dealing with TLS.

My wife, not being from the EU or the US, had to apply for a visa to get into Britain for the holidays, since Britain has opted out of being in the Schengen wanting control of their own borders—an ordeal made even more ironic that the point of contact for their visa service would be for a non-British company. As we live in Prague, the process was that much stranger. TLS’s office is open “every fortnight Wednesday” in Prague, though they don’t define which Wednesday and which fortnight of the month. Is that the second and fourth Wednesday or the first and third? The British government requires that you apply for the visa up to three months in advance, and that you can't do it sooner than that. Fine. But the TLS website didn’t show any openings to put in the application at their office, and you can’t mail your own application to the British Embassy in Poland, where all applications in the Czech Republic are processed. Additionally, instead of showing all openings in a three-month window, they only show openings for maybe one month out, opening one random day at a time, as though the system refresh were being run by a drunk monkey. Remember, that’s just for two days a month. I’m not sure who came up with their scheduling system, but it’s clearly some cynical bastard who hates calendars and computers. We had to check the system every day to make sure one of those two days didn’t randomly open up and other people jumped onto the schedule, forcing us out. We only found out about this weirdness because we called the “customer service” line. On the Teleperformance website, they claim to take pride in their customer service, which is weird, because it’s clearly modeled around the same service a giant steaming mass of elephant dung might provide. “You need a web browser to make an appointment, madam,” the customer service lady said. I might add that you have to enter your credit card number and pay for this excellent customer service. “Yeah, we have one.” “Then there is no problem, madam.” This is clearly the TLS line that means, “We designed a wretched system and couldn’t give a witches third titty about it.” Then my wife went to the TLS office and found out about their scheduling system from a different frustrated customer, who explained that you just have to check back every single day and hope by some Christmas miracle you’re lucky. Which is what we had to do. Over and over again, until we were able to apply for something exactly 10 working days before our vacation was scheduled, so really, half a month. Working day 10, one day before our trip, came, and the passport still wasn’t in our hands. So we called TLS’s Polish office. “Sorry, it’s a 15-day turnover.” The website clearly says 10 working days. 10 working days.

I should call my credit card and block those charges at this point. Let that all sink in. The whole process. And think maybe why our country and the UK have an illegal immigrant process, if this is merely the painstaking retardation people have to go through to have a holiday.

The Shard on a day of typical weather

To get reasonable hotel deals and flights, you want to plan a vacation months in advance. If you want legitimate tourists coming into your country, I would think you’d want the type of people planning things. But then you push them to the edge. You make it so they are either suicidal gamblers like myself, who went ahead and bought everything months in advance, or you make it so that people are forced to buy everything within those last few days, which they don’t even tell you the correct amount of days.

By some Christmas miracle, we got the passport though. We drove to the DHL office next to the cargo terminal ourselves to pick it up. Then off to the passenger airport. Everything just in the nick of time. I know there are differences between immigration and tourism. Do you think it should be easier or harder for tourists and/or immigrants to get in to your country?

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