Unlikely Words

A travel day. Since our flight to Italy didn’t leave until 4:00, we decided to squeeze one more bit of sightseeing in before we left: the British Museum. First, though, was breakfast. At a café across the street from the museum, I finally had a traditional English breakfast. If it weren’t for the fact that I’d keel over at the age of 45, I’d eat this every morning. Eggs! Bacon! Sausage! Mushrooms! Tomatoes! Baked… beans? Even the baked beans were, somehow, delicious. That plate and a cup of tea were just what I needed for a long day ahead.

I don’t think I can express how awesome the British Museum was, and how much more time we should have spent there. In the ninety minutes we did spend, we only saw a small handful of galleries: some of the Egyptian and Assyrian collection, and a tiny fraction of the Greek and Roman items.

First up was the Rosetta Stone. It was remarkable to walk into a museum for free (a museum that, I should add, is in an immense and gorgeous building that takes up two city blocks and which is more or less dropped in the middle of a neighborhood), turn a corner and nearly walk right into the Rosetta Stone. The actual, honest-to-God Rosetta Stone. The thing is huge, which I didn’t realize. All of the pictures I’ve ever seen made me think it was something one could pick up and hold, but one could not, unless one were the size of some of the Egyptian statues we saw. It’s a very cool artifact. Hieroglyphics, Rachel noted, look exactly like you think they do.

The rest of the exhibits we saw were great, too. Egyptian monuments, Assyrian narrative carvings, a bust of Tilgath-Pileser III, huge gates from Sargon’s palace, the Elgin Marbles from the Parthenon… and that was just on one floor, through one door off of the spectacular central hall. If you are in London, you must go to the British Museum.

Rachel finally dragged me out of there with enough time to walk back to Karen and Gordon’s place and say good-bye. We then walked from their apartment to King’s Cross station with all of our bags (OMG just like Harry Potter!!!1!!) to find our way to the tube to Liverpool Street station, and thence to Stansted Airport. (In our hurry, we neglected to take a picture of the barrier between platforms 9 and 10. I’m still kicking myself.)

Once at the airport, our check-in was a breeze. American airports might be able to learn something from the way Stansted works. We walked into the terminal, found our flight on a TV monitor, and then walked up to the EasyJet counter for our specific flight. It took maybe five minutes. We then had several hours to relax in the lounge area, eat some more Pret A Manger, and look in vain for a souvenir England football jersey. Going through security was also a breeze. There was no nonsense about taking off one’s shoes, or removing one’s laptop from the bag. Just put your stuff on the conveyor and walk on through.

From the central terminal you take a short automated tram to the gates, and here was my only complaint about Stansted airport: it was hot. Ridiculously hot. Sun streaming in the huge windows, sweat dripping down my back, and no air-conditioning. It was the first time I’ve ever felt more comfortable getting onto a plane than off.

The flight itself to Naples was entirely uneventful. About the Napoli airport, the less said the better.

We were met by a driver arranged by our hotel, the Hotel Belvedere in Conca dei Marini on the Amalfi Coast. The very nice young man, whose name was Fortunado, ushered us into a black Mercedes and we were on our way. (This is not how we usually travel, I should add, and it was the most pleasant bit of travel we expect to experience for quite some time.)

The drive from Naples to the Amalfi coast took about 90 minutes, the last half of which was up and down frighteningly curvy mountain roads – or rather, roads that would have been frightening if it hadn’t been pitch dark outside. We finally pulled up outside the hotel and were shown to our rooms by the night porter.

By the time we put our bags down it was almost exactly 10:00, and we hadn’t had dinner, so we dragged ourselves upstairs (the hotel is built into a cliff, so our room on the first floor was actually down two flights of stairs). The restaurant was long closed, so we decided to chance the bar.

The bartender at first seemed a bit surly and put out at our request for something to eat. In fairness, he might have been annoyed at our dithering about what drinks to order and under some amount of pressure as he seemed to be in the midst of making drinks for about three different groups in the bar. In the end, we settled on a gin and tonic for me and a Bellini for Rachel, and the bartender said he’d see if he could rustle up some fruit salad for us.

I have never been so happy in my life to eat a fruit salad. (It was even banana-free, and wasn’t overwhelmed by melon!) When he brought them over several minutes later, he seemed to be in a much better mood. He asked us if we were on our honeymoon and since the actual answer (“sorta”) was too complicated, we said “yes.” He came back over 5 minutes later with a strawberry that he’d carved in the shape of a rose for Rachel. He was our new best friend.

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