This is another posting on the delights and trepidations of travel with grandchildren upon attainment of their twelfth year. This year we have two coming of age (so to speak), and decided with some concern, to do a twofer. When I’ve explained this to others, I’m generally met with raised eyebrows and an implied, “are you nuts”, and in a way, we are. S. and I in the fall of our years, cherishing privacy, an afternoon nap, a cocktail or two before dinner, and a schedule dictated only by our whims taking on the task of traveling with and entertaining a young boy and girl teetering between childhood and adolescence. At this age they know nothing and they know everything. They are impatient with our frailties but attentive to our needs. Desirous of everything they see, but conscious of a desire to make us happy. I don’t think we picked the age twelve with much conscious forethought, but we couldn’t have made a better choice.
This morning at breakfast, well it was their breakfast as I’d had mine three hours earlier, we made a list of all the things we hadn’t yet done or experienced in London. It was a list of items that could not possibly be crammed in the two days we had remaining in the London segment of our trip. They ranged from a girls shopping excursion (very important) to viewing the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace (desirable but not essential). I put my foot down on Madame Tassaud’s Wax Museum to no avail. S. was luke warm on a Thames river cruise in a speedboat. Hudson had always had the Imperial War Museum high on his list. The Tate Gallery was on the list but had but tepid support. S. lobbied for retracing old steps in Hampstead and St. John’s Wood. She put in a special pitch for Panzer’s Deli.
I stepped into the breach and announced we were going to do the Big Red Bus tour. You’ve probably seen them in photos of London. Double decker buses with the top cut off teeming with fat Germans and inscrutable Japanese wearing funny hats. I know, you’re thinking, “what got into your head?” I figured any thing you can do for two hours sitting down has got to be a good thing. Every one seemed excited about the prospect. First, I made them all promise that they would take no photos of me on the tour bus. I could deal with the abstraction of me being on the bus, but I would tolerate no actual evidence. You see in the lead in photo that Hud, Georgia and S. were actually on the bus, but you’ll see no evidence of me there.
It was not a cheap thrill. We got the family pass for sixty-six pounds sterling, which, by the way, included a Thames river cruise if you were of a mind. It was a hop on and off type deal, which came in handy when I needed to visit the public WC at Trafalgar Square. Hud nailed it when he opined to all, “sixty pounds isn’t a bad deal at all considering that you get to see London from seven feet up”. How can a twelve year old do irony?
By the time we reached the area of Embankment Station, the thrill was gone and the urge to shop was overpowering Georgia and S. Hudson and I were anxious to make it on to the War Museum so we all spent several minutes studying The Underground map. I would have bet a pocketful of farthings that the moment we left, S. would have walked through the station and hailed a black cab, but she did not. Hud and I headed for Lambert North (which is on the south side of the river) and a walk of unknown distance to the museum. By the time we arrived, it was closing in on 1:30, well past my lunch time. A lunch trolley beckoned nearby and we went for it. I had my third, and worst, order of fish and chips and Hud had fish sticks. We both regretted our order.
I had visited the Museum twice before and thought I knew what to expect….a lot of old WWI and II materiel well displayed, but I was surprised to learn that they had installed a very good permanent exhibition of the Holocaust. I was somewhat leery given the warnings that the exhibit was inappropriate for those under fourteen. Hud persuaded me by noting that he had already studied the subject in school. As we walked through the exhibit, he studied it with the same intensity he studies everything. He didn’t say much, and as there were a lot of people around, I didn’t press him with questions. Once we left the museum, and in the first quiet moment, I anxiously asked what the thought about what he had seen. He hesitated a moment and replied, “it was really depressing”. Hard to disagree with that, I thought. He went on to ask, “why do people do things like that?” I couldn’t come up with a satisfactory explanation.
S.and Georgia completed their shopping tour of Harrods and Harvey Nichols, even leaving a few odds and ends for others to buy.
What a great day!
PS. Quote for the day: Being grandparents sufficiently removes us from the responsibilities (of parenting) so that we can be friends (with our grandchildren).
