Venturing Out

The sites people want to see when visiting another country are an interesting study in human nature, i’m not sure if there is a conclusion to be drawn but it’s a phenomenon. Jennie and I are sticking to our goal of 5 mile walks each day, mostly through Regents Park and along the canals in Camden town. The canals were first designed as an avenue for hauling coal and grain to the docks in London -  now they cool just to walk along or hire a boat to pole you along or even a boat with a guitar player to serenade you as you’re poled along. Kind of a smaller, gritty, less well known version of Amsterdam.

Yesterday we ventured out to our first real “tourist attraction” the zebra crossing in front of Abbey Road Studios, made famous by the Beatles, is a two mile walk from our place so why not incorporate that into a walk? The studios are very rarely open to visitors and there is a tiny, very overpriced gift shop next door but a picture in the crossing is free. The city has been forced to hire a very bored and disinterested attendant to direct tourists and let them know when it is ok to go into the road to take pics, otherwise traffic might be perpetually blocked at the site. The light turns red, the attendant says go and in turn groups pose in the crosswalk. You have to take your own photo (in Rome a similar situation at the Mouth of Truth [made famous in the movie Roman Holiday]is managed better and more efficiently by letting the attendant take the pictures). Some groups are well rehearsed and try to duplicate the Beatles poses (I didn’t see any bare feet but i’m sure that happens) others just get a picture posing randomly, some don’t seem sure why they are posing for the picture at all (probably saw everyone lined up and googled it). The attendant attempts to hurry people along in three of four different languages, the light turns green, eventually the traffic moves and a few minutes later the process repeats.

It’s taken for granted that the Grand Canyon or the Pyramids of Giza are “must sees” but one is a pile of rocks neatly arranged and the other a hole in the ground. There are other canyons and pyramids. I’m sure there is an article written by someone that provides “better” alternatives to both. If the Beatles are or were truly more popular that Jesus, as John Lennon said, maybe the masses making a pilgrimage to a spot where they were photographed crossing the street makes sense. After all the Basilica of San Giovanni in Laterno in Rome was built to hold what is purported to be Jesus’s umbilical cord and other churches were built around his tears and his foreskin (although the foreskin has mysteriously gone missing - next Dan Brown novel?). It’s all about what you want to make an effort to see.

Another "Street Crossing" was in St. Luke's Mews, to see where the "Cue Card" scene took place; but today’s "mission" was really to see the book shop from the Hugh Grant movie Notting Hill and the red store front made famous in Paddington 2, which ironically has become more of an attraction since Paddington recently said that he was “more popular than  Jesus and the fucking Beatles”. Yes, Paddington swears.