UK adventure in detail: part the second

Happy new year. Last night I watched the ball drop on TV at 11 central time, set my alarm for 11:55 PM and fell asleep. Brian called at 11:54, and while he was intoxicated, I think I was more out of it. Still in bed I watched the new year change, made a few quick phone calls, and was back asleep by 12:15 AM. Highly satisfying, I must admit.

Now, back to our story.

From Paddington Station we took a cab to our hotel. The driver was still unloading our luggage when my sister came running out to greet us. She was very happy to see us. She'd already checked in and it was yap yap yap from all of us as we got our keys and went up to our suite at the Savoy. The Savoy is a very famous old hotel in London, now owned by Fairmont. My dad travels too much for work so he gets to be a platinum frequent hotel-stayer or whatever they call it at many chains. Fairmont is one of them, so one of our nights was freeeeee.

Our suite was gorgeous. Two bedrooms and the Greatest Bathroom Ever. My parents' bedroom had a huge king bed while Mark, Lynn and my room had a really good cot the firmest twin beds ever--so firm, it hurt my boobs to lay on my stomach. The ceilings were high and the corners of the rooms were slightly rounded, making for these funky semi-circle closet doors. The linens all felt like milk and the whole place had a charm generic hotels can't fake. The Greatest Bathroom Ever had a huge tub with spray faucet, b'day (however one spells it), separate glass shower with tsunami-esque shower head, marble everything, horrible wonderful lighted magnified mirror that showed every pore, and heated towel rack. After we all showered and changed and felt moderately human again (the Beauty and the Beast song was in my head the whole time), we headed out to wander around Christmas Eve London.

Us wandering around London

At this point, I was pretty out of it, having slept at best two of the last 24 hours, so the evening was a blur of shops (much stayed open for last-minute gift purchasing) and stories from my sister and lighted streets and cold and trying to buy my brother clothes while he wasn't in the mood. We ate dinner at a very nice French restaurant (dessert pictured on the right) and discussed trying to see midnight mass at one of the big famous London churches, but I was crashing hard and fast and we all ended up laming out once we'd returned to the Savoy. I like saying Savoy instead of hotel because it is more impressive. Yes, I'm a snob now. Mark, Lynn and my mom turned on a South Park marathon on MTV UK but I was asleep by midnight.

Christmas morning my parents were cruel enough to wake me by 10 AM. We did a lot of wandering the streets of London, up and down the Thames, past Big Ben and Parliament and Buckingham Palace and the Prime Minister's house. Lynn got excited everywhere she recognized from Love Actually, made my dad and brother sit on a bench by the Thames and have Mark say he was in love. My dad had never seen the movie and didn't quite understand, at which point we all decided he had to watch it that night before dinner.

We'd discussed going to a Christmas service at the Westmister Abbey because we are such good Christians, and since most of London was closed we were in line for 3 o'clock evensong by 2:10. When the doors opened promptly at 2:30 we were ushered in to unbelievably good seats. As we walked into the huge, gorgeous, incredible building we saw the graves of the many famous people buried inside the church: Sir Isaac Newton, Shakespeare, Longfellow, poetic lords Byron and Tennyson, composers including Handel and Purcell, and Queen Elizabeths, just to name a few I remember. The huge organ (hehe...huge organ) filled the hall with music. According to the program, the following (in order) entertained us before the service began:

Bach's In dulci jubilo BWV 729
Dietrich Buxtehude's Gelobet seist du, Jesu Christ BuxWV 188
Olivier Messiaen's Puer natus est nobis from Livre du Saint
Sacrement
Buxtehude's Wie schon leuchtet der Morgenstern Bux WV 223
Charles-Marie Widor's Andante sostenuto from Symphonie Gothique Op 70

The service itself started promptly at 3 PM (gotta love those Anglicans/gentiles and their timeliness) with the entrance of the all-male choir. Soprano and alto parts were sung by young pre-pubescent boys (very cute) and all the music was incredible. Everything was clearly church music, but it spanned a good 500+ years, making it Church Music History in a Nutshell. Also strange to my Jew upbringing was having actual music written into the program so we could sing along. In the Jew world, it's 5000 years of beautiful tradition that lets you know the melody, fuck you if you don't already know it, and half the people can't carry a tune anyway. Gentiles write it out for you, allow for new melodies to be brought in regularly, and sing everything in major keys. Dissonance showed up in the more recently composed pieces, but always major and musical and happy.

The following composers were represented over the course of the Christmas Festal Evensong:

Michael Praetorius (1571-1621)
Bernard Rose (1916-1996)
Kenneth Leighton (1929-1988)
Heinrich Schutz (1585-1672)
Nathum Tate (1652-1715)

My favorite piece was actually after the service ended: Improvisation on Adeste fideles by Francis Pott (b 1957). I'm not sure if it was an actual written down composition or just the organist's personal improvisation, but it was quite interesting and marvelous.

By this point it was dark out and the fam headed back to our hotel. We all crawled into my parents' huge bed and watched Love Actually on Lynn's laptop, which is a great movie to begin with but was even more fun because it takes place in London at Christmastime so we could say "we saw that today!" to half the movie. As per usual, I was drawn to the unrequited love plots. Somehow it seems more romantic when they don't work out. "Is there anything worse than the total agony of being in love?" That's closeish to one of the lines, spoken by the kid. Is happiness just not glamorous enough for me? Shit I'm annoying sometimes.

Christmas dinner was at the Savoy's restaurant (centerpiece pictured to the right). A very drunk Santa and a mediocre magician and a cute Dutch waiter and too much good food made the evening special.

So ends the best, most Christmassy Christmas in this little Jewgirl's life, as well as this installment of my adventure.