Laura

Once I was accepted to study abroad, my friend Laura from school made plans to come and visit me in England for her spring break. I assumed that by the time she came to visit in March I would have a feel for London. I would show her my favorite hangouts and would roll my eyes when I had to take her to all of the tourist attractions that London insiders such as myself were sensible to avoid.

“Sure,” I’d say when presented with her inevitable itinerary, “the guide book says it’s good, but trust me it’s nothing special. We should really go here instead.”

 In other words, I thought I would make a competent tour guide. Well March is here, and so is Laura and a competent tour guide I’m not. When presented with her itinerary (Laura is nothing if not a great planner) I jumped at the chance to go see places that I hadn’t yet gotten a chance to check out, and when asked to recommend, say, a good place to eat I would be just as clueless as the next tourist standing on the corner with a foldout map that they are unknowingly holding upside down.

Despite my lack of saavy as a guide, however, Laura and I have had a great time. At first I was worried that she might not make it here because the night before I was supposed to meet her at City Airport I got an email from her apologizing that she was sorry, but she had missed her flight. I was devastated! We had been on the phone (actually on Skype, which is a phone that works like AIM—you talk on your computer and it’s free which makes it infinitely superior to a phone, I love being able to talk to my friends and family at home for hours on end without having to keep my eye on the meter. Seriously, go to www.skype.com and check it out, all you need is a microphone for your computer. I highly recommend it! Okay enough with the advertisement, back to Laura) for the entire week before, discussing the visit and what we would do. I had even purchased concert tickets to St. Martins in the Fields for an evening of Bach string concertos for the night she arrived. It was just my luck that I didn’t know a single classical music fan at Kings, so now apart from not being able to see my friend, who I seriously missed, I would be stuck with an extra ticket, just my luck. The next morning, however, brought better news, apparently she had found another flight that would be arriving that day at Heathrow, so all was well with the world. The near miss ended up being fortunate because, when she finally stepped off the plane looking jet lagged and a little beleaguered but happy nonetheless, I realized that the prospect of not seeing her made her presence that much dearer. Awwwww.

There’s a rule in my family that, in order to avoid long periods of jet lag, it is advisable to keep on your feet when you arrive in a new time zone. I have agonizing memories of being dragged around museums and marketplaces after twelve hour plane rides and no sleep. It was much more pleasant to observe the rule when I was not the one who had made the flight. As soon as Laura had collected herself and changed her shoes I guided her to the tube and took her back to my flat. We spent the hour long tube ride catching up, and she told the tale of how she had managed to miss her flight. Apparently, she had been planning to share a cab with one of our friends who had a job interview with Microsoft. Microsoft was paying for his cab, and she figured that a free ride to the airport would be worthwhile, even if it did cut things a little close. Our friend is a brilliant computer engineer, but a lousy planner. He hadn’t packed by the time they had to go which delayed the cab ride just enough that Laura ended up missing her flight. I know how much Laura likes to have things planned out, and I commented that she must have been devastated.

“Yeah, it was pretty bad,” she told me, “but then I was crying, and I noticed there were three people crying outside of security including me. The other two were going to India to their sibling’s funeral, so that kind of put things in perspective.”

Eventually, after many phone calls and much sturm und drang, she had found a flight and ended up in London only an hour later than she was originally scheduled to arrive, mostly because her new flight didn’t involve changing planes in Amsterdam.

After we had deposited her luggage I took Laura for a walk around the neighborhood, and we walked over to Borough Market for an organic lunch. We had some rather disappointing venison burgers (the only less than stellar food I’ve gotten there), and after admiring the organic vegetables and artisnal cheeses we decided to splurge on a piece of gingerbread which we took back to the flat and ate with tea, British style.
That night was the Bach concert, and again I tried to keep Laura on her feet by proposing we walk over to St. Martin’s in the Fields. We left early, which gave us enough time to stop by Covent Gardens and to grab a Cornish pasty for dinner.

We got to St. Martins in the Fields early despite our best dawdling efforts, and were planning simply to poke around and admire the Church, but when we got there we found that there was a pre-show discussion on Bach and the concerto so we got to hear that instead. I have to say, I can take or leave Classical music, although I do have a weakness for Bach and Mozart my interest is chiefly in their vocal music (which comes from having sung in sundry choruses for the past ten years or so), thus I wasn’t really looking forward to a two hour concert of nothing but strings. Our seats were right next to the stage, but (because I had to work them into a student budget) they were behind a pillar. The seats next to us were never taken, though, so when the concert started we shifted as discreetly as possible over two seats and were rewarded with a full view of the musicians. The concert ended up being incredible, not the least because of the Church. Aside from providing the best possible acoustics, the setting made the music feel incredible profound and spiritual. Also, you forget how amazing it is to hear live music played. If we had spent the evening listening to a recording of the same concertos, even if we had been listening in a church, I would probably have fallen asleep, but there is something so forceful and immediate about watching music being made right in front of you. It’s like eating something made from scratch in front of you as opposed to from a package—there’s simply no comparison.

After the concert Laura had reached the point where I could probably have knocked her over with a feather (though she had managed to stay awake through out the entire concert, which speaks to her love of Bach), so we took the tube back to the flat and, after the requisite argument about who would sleep in the sleeping bag and who would get the bed, went to sleep, dreaming of the week to come.