Sisterchicks Go Brit! (16 page)

My eyes traced the rest of the verse that I had just copied. “They will be my people, and I will be their God, for they will return to me wholeheartedly.”

The last word caused me to stop and press my lips together.
Wholeheartedly
. Did I love God wholeheartedly? Did I serve Him wholeheartedly?

I knew the answer, but I didn’t speak it aloud or allow myself to ponder it. I didn’t want to think about it right then. I never intended for this trip to turn into a spiritual retreat.

With polite and reverent motions, I closed the Bible and placed it in the bottom drawer with my T-shirts. Long ago I had learned that God’s Word was quick, powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword. I knew that was true. I just didn’t feel ready to be sliced and diced. Not here. Not now.

Without saying it overtly, I told God that if He was thinking of doing a makeover on my heart, I wanted to wait until I returned home. While I was in England, I preferred that all the old furniture in my heart and mind stayed right where it was. That way I could come and go as I pleased, and even when the lights
were turned off, I knew where everything was so I didn’t bump into any of my issues.

I picked up the remote control and figured out how to turn on the television. Flipping through the channels, I found a fun chick flick I hadn’t watched in a long time. Nothing like a lighthearted film to take my mind off anything I didn’t want to think about.

“Kellie, you’re not going to believe what’s on TV.” I fluffed the pillows on my bed, settled back, and transferred my focus to the movie.

The first commercial break caught me off guard. Everyone in the advertisement was speaking with a British accent. It felt strange to watch a familiar movie in which everyone spoke with an American accent, just as if I were watching the movie at home. Then came the commercials, and I remembered where I was.

Kellie emerged from the tub and enthusiastically joined me in watching the silly movie. We were on vacation, and we could watch whatever we wanted without any competition for the remote control.

The movie had a lulling effect on us, and we ended up going to bed early without eating dinner. We were too comfortable to go back out and almost too groggy to eat.

Both Kellie and I were awake before six the next morning. We were ready to eat then and took advantage of the free meal included with our reservation by ordering the complete English breakfast and asked to have it delivered via room service.

While we waited, I took my turn in the luxury bathtub and realized how rarely I set aside time to soak in the tub at home. True, my bathtub was nothing like this deluxe one, but that didn’t matter. Being submerged in the warm water and surrounded by the vanilla and lavender scent of the provided bath gel was heavenly. I decided to make an effort once I returned home to enjoy a scented bath at least once a week, whether I thought I needed it or not. Showers had other powers and ministering benefits. But they weren’t a substitute for a bath.

Our food arrived minutes after I emerged from the tub feeling like Queen Esther after one of her royal perfuming soaks. Now it was time to dine like a queen as well. A rolling table was set up for us between our two beds. The warming lids were lifted, and Kellie and I stared at more food than either of us thought we could eat. We did a thorough evaluation as we tried a little of everything in front of us.

The bacon was flat and wide and nothing like our crisp American version. The two fried eggs were less cooked than we were used to yet not runny. A small scoop of baked beans came on the plate alongside half a broiled tomato. Unusual by our breakfast standards, but all of it was delicious. We also had orange juice, tea, and a bowl of some sort of flake cereal with a pitcher of whole milk. We had so much food it didn’t matter that the bread was more toasted than we would have preferred. Instead of eating the toast, we opted for devouring the small buns dotted with bits of orange. They came to us warm, and when we cut them open and spread
the pale dairy butter over the spongy interior, it was like having dessert for breakfast.

“I can’t eat another bite,” Kellie said.

“I can’t believe how many carbs we’ve devoured since we’ve been here. Not that I’m complaining, because I’m loving all the bread.”

“Tomorrow I think I’m going to order the fruit and yogurt plate.” Kellie pushed back from the table. “That was exceptionally delicious, though. What time do you think we should plan to leave here?”

“The sooner the better. We have a lot of ground to cover before we indulge in all this good stuff again at three o’clock at the Ritz.”

“Don’t you mean we have a lot of underground to cover?”

I smiled. She was starting the puns already this morning. It was going to be a good day.

We found our way to the tube station about twenty minutes later. The Holborn Station was located only a few blocks from our hotel.

I was amazed at how many people were out on the street on a weekday morning. Traffic was bumper to bumper, and it felt as if nearly that many bodies were moving up and down the street. We were a bit discombobulated because the pedestrians kept to the left side of the sidewalk while our inclination was to keep to the right.

“Did you see me crash into that poor guy?” Kellie asked as we stepped into the entrance of the tube station. “I guess they walk in the same direction they drive. I didn’t see his turn signal.”

“Are you sure he didn’t try to pick your pocket?” I was conscious that we had moved out of the friendly countryside and were in the middle of a bustling metropolis. It was comparable to walking out of a scene from Jane Austen’s lilting
Emma
and stepping into a Dickens street scene with David Copperfield on our heels.

Kellie did a quick check. Her passport and wallet were securely in place. “No, the collision was my fault.”

After picking what looked like the shortest line, or queue, we stepped up to the machine against the wall and tried to figure out how to use it. The system looked similar to ATMs, and the instructions were clear. Kellie’s debit card didn’t work, so we used my Visa and purchased one-way tickets to the station closest to the Tower of London.

“We could probably save money with one of these other options,” I said.

“We can figure out the details later. We have what we need for now.”

Commuters in a much greater hurry than we were brushed by as we figured out how to put our small paper tickets through the machine that let us into the gate area. We followed the crowds and stepped onto the steepest escalator I’ve ever seen. The moving
stairs in the well-lit area took us farther and farther down. Along the walls poster after poster advertised the current plays on in London.

“What do you think?” Kellie turned to look at me from the escalator step directly below mine.

“I think this is the opposite of yesterday when we were going up in the balloon. Now we’re going down. Really down. Does this freak you out?”

“Not really. When I asked what you thought, I was referring to all these ads for the theater. I wanted to know which play you thought we should see.”

“Oh. Any of them would be fine with me.”

“I’ve always wanted to see
Les Misérables,”
Kellie said. “What do you think?”

“Oui, oui! Les Misérables
it is.”

The escalator deposited us into a well-lit passageway where more steps led us down a tile-lined corridor and onto a landing. Dozens of people stood on the long stretch of cement. Across from the narrow area where the lowered tracks carried the subway cars was a curved wall covered with large advertisements for popular brands of clothing and perfume.

In a funny way I appreciated the billboards and the bright lights because it took away the sensation that we were standing deep beneath the city of London. I didn’t have time to decide if that should make me uncomfortable, because our train arrived with a whoosh of air. Kellie and I pressed in with the other travelers.
No seats were available, so we stood and held on to the poles as the train pulled forward swiftly and smoothly.

Our airport in Orlando has a small monorail that transports passengers a short distance on an elevated track. It feels more like an amusement ride than a means of transportation. This subway gave me the feeling I was in a big city.

A map near the door showed the underground line we were on with each stop clearly marked. I liked looking at the faces of all the people seated and standing as we were spirited through the belly of London. The nationalities in our car were diverse. Some travelers were on their way to work. Others looked weary, as if they were headed home. Young students were easy to identify because of their uniforms. One woman wearing earphones leaned back and closed her eyes. The man beside her held a cell phone and seemed to be scrolling through his messages. His shirt was buttoned lopsided with two empty buttonholes at the neck. I wondered if he would discover his dressing error before he arrived at his destination.

Our exit from the tube was a repeat of our getting on, only in reverse. Another steep escalator lifted us back to street level where our tickets were once again inserted into an automatic gate.

When we were outside, we followed the signs to the Tower of London and were both awed at the size of the medieval fortress that sits on the river’s edge. The tall stone wall that surrounds the tower was intimidating and more massive than we had expected.

“William the Conqueror began building this medieval fortress in …” Kellie paused, looking at one of the many travel brochures we had cherry-picked from the assortment available at our hotel. “Are you ready for this? Almost a thousand years ago. The year was 1078. Can you even begin to grasp that?”

“No. We just don’t know what old is, do we?”

She read on. “Inside these eighteen acres the sovereigns of England have housed a prison, a palace, chapels, a museum, and an execution site.”

“And the Crown Jewels, right?”

“Right. If we don’t want to go on a tour, we can go directly to the Waterloo Barracks to see the Crown Jewels.”

I liked the idea of being on our own time schedule, but Kellie was hesitant about our winging it. “I don’t know,” she said. “We won’t have any information on what we’re seeing. All we have is this brochure. We’re going to miss a lot of interesting details if we don’t go on a tour.”

“Well, maybe they have short tours.” I didn’t want to be the impatient tourist since this spot was on Kellie’s top-five list. I also knew that if she and I were going to end up having any squabbles on this trip, it would be over details like this. I liked having a glimpse of the big picture, finding my favorites of the moment, and then moving on. Kellie liked to pause and ponder.

I thought about how she could have lingered much longer when she found the Morris tapestry along with the Tolkien bust at Exeter Chapel. I had a feeling she picked up the pace and slid
out when she did not only because of the organist stopping in midrehearsal but also because I was already out the door.

The solution, I decided, was for me to be sensitive to what would be most enjoyable for her, especially at the locales that were on her list and not on mine. An extra hour gazing at a rug or relic wouldn’t kill me. This was London! The Tower of London, to be precise. I’d waited most of my life to come and see all this. So what was my hurry? It was time to stop and smell the history of this place.

W
hen we paid our admission fee
for the Tower of London, we found we could rent portable recordings that corresponded with points of interest. If we wanted to pass up one part of the grounds but stop to view another, all we had to do was press the number that was posted on the marker of the site we were standing in front of. This was the kind of tour that made both of us happy.

Our first stop was on the fortress’s waterside. We climbed up to the top of a walkway that allowed us to look out at the wide, murky River Thames and to take some fantastic photographs of the Tower Bridge. I thought we were looking at the famous London Bridge until another tourist with an American accent corrected me.

“The London Bridge is in Arizona,” he said. “At Lake Havasu City. We’ve been there to see it. I heard the bridge was bought for two and a half million and was shipped over, stone by stone,
because it was falling down from all the traffic here. The Tower Bridge you’re looking at is much more interesting. Trust me.”

We nodded our appreciation for his opinions and took a few more pictures of the impressive suspension bridge before the sun dipped behind an incoming army of clouds. The two towers on the bridge reminded me of gigantic chess pieces with their spires and turrets sticking up in the sky and threatening to puncture any cloud that came too close.

As we made our way to the Waterloo Barracks, four Beefeaters passed in front of us. We quickly pulled out our cameras to join many other tourists in the picture-taking fest. These traditional guards wore regal blue dress uniforms with bright red trim. On their heads were tall, black-brimmed hats circled with more red trim. Everyone stopped to watch them pass.