I served as the “advance team” for my 28-year-old son. I arrived in London before him and waited for his arrival at Paddington Station aboard the Heathrow Express. The clean, efficient, inexpensive, non-stop train whisks passengers, in 15 minutes, to and from Heathrow Airport into and out of London.
I knew Harrison had collected his bags, cleared customs and immigration, and found the Heathrow Express easily. He’d texted me a photo of the colorful, purple signage with iconic London images, such as Big Ben and the London Eye, which direct arriving air passengers through the airport to the platform and the trains, which depart every 15 minutes.
Paddington Station, with its soaring industrial ceiling and timeless, if not nostalgic, architecture, is visually stimulating. The rush and din of travelers is like lifeblood running through its historic veins.
While I waited, I found some irony in walking over to see the artistic statue of the Paddington Bear character along the far wall. I was picking up a “boy” who would now, as a 28-year-old man, see the actual Paddington Bear in the station in which the iconic literary, television and movie character was discovered upon creation in 1958.
Paddington Station, itself, opened in 1854. I observed more people snapping selfies and posing for photos with Paddington Bear than the historical plaque honoring the founder of Paddington Station along the same wall.
Planes, Trains and London Cabs
Excited to greet Harrison after the Heathrow Express pulled in, I lifted my phone up to snap a photo of him walking up the platform toward the turnstiles amidst the crowd. After we greeted with a hug, the blonde boy took a disposable camera from his backpack.
“I thought it would be fun to take some old-fashioned print photos,” he explained.
“Where did you even get that?” I asked. After all, he was a child of the digital age.
“There are 28 shots on here,” he said, spinning the little plastic wheel to advance the film,” so we have to choose important moments throughout the trip and not run out before the end.”
Harrison then hoisted the disposable camera for a “selfie.” Of course, we had no idea whether we were even in-frame. And we wouldn’t find out until well after the trip, when he found a shop that still developed actual film. The camera was old-school, but so is Paddington Station…and, wonderfully, so is London.
An arrival at Paddington is like entering a theme park. You roll your suitcases past the coffee stands and over to the taxi queue, where a line of classic London black cabs awaits the passengers who jump in as if they’re climbing into a roller coaster.
That iconic, spacious vehicle drives through places like Hyde Park with its highly informed, often entertaining driver dispensing “the knowledge” he studied for two years. Drivers must learn London’s mews and streets forwards and backwards, regardless of the invention of GPS, to pass a comprehensive test to qualify for their license.
Popping Into The Palace
The London Cab dropped us near the entrance to Victoria Station, which is as close as it could get to Red Carnation’s Rubens at the Palace Hotel, which is directly across the street from the side entrance to Buckingham Palace.
Buckingham Palace Road was closed off, as it was nearly 11 am, at which point the pageantry of the Changing of the Guard would take place, as it does every Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
As we leapt from the cab, I grabbed our luggage and told Harrison to make a run for the palace gates. “Head up that street, bear left along toward the crowds, and you’ll get there just in time,” I suggested. “You will see a large open space and a huge monument. Work your way over to the gates as best as you can.”
With no hesitation, Harrison jumped into the adventure while I headed to the hotel’s luxurious lobby, where I dropped the bags. I would then follow behind and catch up with Harrison somewhere near the plateaued Queen Victoria Monument, which looks like a rococo rocket ship with a golden angel atop. This is at the end of The Mall – the processional route leading through St. James’s Park to Buckingham Palace.
It is from this space, which Italians might describe as a piazza, that thousands have watched the Royal Family appear on the big balcony on the palace’s east front during each summer’s Trooping of the Color, weddings, or coronations.
Thousands more laid flower bouquets at the palace gate and along the tall fence in mourning for Diana, Princess of Wales, and Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth.
Harrison would peer through the iron bars of that palace fence, but over the crowds of people hoisting their smartphone cameras over their heads, trying to record a video of the changing of the guard on the palace forecourt, below the balcony, (which I doubt they will ever watch again).
Mission Accomplished With the Help of The Rubens
I lugged the luggage to the lively lobby team at Rubens Hotel and was greeted by their genial red-coated, top-hatted doorman, Pascal. He helped me check our bags with the bellhop.
As soon as their handles left my hands, I felt my phone already buzz with a WhatsApp ping from Harrison. “I am seeing the parade!” his message read.
This was happy news to me because it meant Harrison made it to the event in time to see the procession of bands march majestically up The Mall, through the palace gates, and into the forecourt.
As I understand it, the military musicians are from the Bands of the Household Division – the Foot Guards, the Grenadier Guards, the Coldstream Guards, the Household Cavalry Band, and the drummers and buglers of the Corps of Drums.
Curiously, in addition to the traditional British marches you might expect in such a pompous parade, I have also heard the formally uniformed, red-coated, fuzzy black-hatted bandmen pop out pop hits from the likes of Taylor Swift, ABBA, Earth, Wind & Fire, and Meat Loaf.
The changing of the guard is more festive fun than it sounds. It is not perfunctory – it is pageantry.
As I caught up with Harrison along the fence, the bands were belting out the James Bond 007 soundtrack theme. This provoked Harrison, standing in the shadow of Buckingham Palace, to ask a question.
“Hey, Pops, can we go see the 007 headquarters?”
“MI6 HQ,” I responded. “Yes, we, actually, can. Funnily enough, the headquarters of Britain’s intelligence operations is one of the most visible buildings in London.”
Suiting Up
We snapped selfies and the requisite photos in front of Buckingham Palace, and, after the Changing of the Guard, it was time for the changing of the clothes.
Since Harrison had been hurried straight to the palace from Paddington, he was still wearing his decidedly casual overnight flight ensemble. This included a Sunset Oil Mini-Mart camouflage trucker hat (albeit a Los Angeles institution right across from Whisky-a-Go-Go and The Roxy).
But the t-shirted Harrison had not a stitch of Burberry or Turnbull & Asser on him in fashionable London.
Therefore, we walked back to Rubens at the Palace Hotel. Working from his suitcase in a side room, the young barrister Harrison surprised me by emerging in a gray windowpane suit, burgundy tie with tiny white dots, spread collar, Ferragamo shoes, and Shinola watch.
It was one hell of a reemergence. As he walked past the front desk with purpose and poise, Harrison even straightened his tie ala James Bond himself. Harrison was looking smashing as we headed back out into the noonday sun.
Our first stop was right across the street. This time we went inside the palace walls to see the King’s horses and historic, gilded carriages of the Royal Mews, which any subject of His Majesty or visitor to London can experience.
“Prince Harry” (Harrison) looked regal in his suit while posing in front of the Rolls-Royce Phantom VI used by Catherine Middleton for her wedding to Prince William.
Fish and Chips and Cabs
We walked part of the way to Westminster, past the 775-room Clarence House – home to King Charles and Queen Consort Camilla, until Harrison became hangry. Who could blame him – he had flown all night, non-stop “over the pole” from the USA’s City of Angels to Jolly Old and it was well after lunch without so much as tea and crumpets.
“Seems like fish and chips is the traditional thing to eat in England, right?” Harrison asked.
“A pint in a pub to wash it down doesn’t sound too bad either,” I answered, impressed by his “when in Rome” attitude toward local culture.
With some effort, we managed to hail a London black cab. Two years of training give drivers what’s called “The Knowledge” of every road, route, row and roundabout in London, but their expertise extends beyond their mental Mapquest.
From the spacious backseat, I explained to the driver we would like to head toward Westminster but needed a fish-and-chips lunch either in that touristy district or along the way. That was not as simple a question as it seemed.
The driver drilled down, craning his head back so we could comprehend his Cockney accent.
“Is it good fish and chips you want? Or a place with good atmosphere?”
As he drove, our collaborative conversation came to a conclusion: it was either one or the other – culinary…or cool. We jumped out in traffic at Victoria Street, which was full of food stands like a mid-day, Middle Eastern bazaar.
Since it was literally Harrison’s first hours in London after an overnight flight, his stomach and imagination were hungry for satiation. Sure, he’d been spirited through iconic London landmarks, Heathrow Airport, Paddington Station, and Buckingham Palace’s Changing of the Guard, but since we were “playing the hits,” a pint in a traditional English pub was on tap.
We settled into a corner near the storefront window of the nice, dark Grafton Arms, a 19th-century Victorian Pub known for hosting the comedy of the Goons. We ordered at the bar, and once we were through our snack and suds, Harrison wondered, “Where next?”
Looking for Bond, James Bond, M and Q
I reminded Harrison that he’d asked about seeing “007 headquarters.” I am glad he wanted to see it because I was, myself, curious what would happen when I summoned an Uber to the pub by typing in the destination as “MI6 Headquarters.”
Sure enough, the Uber app recognized the location as “Secret Intelligence Service (MI6).”
I asked Harrison to push the “confirm ride” button as if my mobile phone were a gadget given to me by “Q,” 007’s MI6 quartermaster, who provided the spy with the devices of his tradecraft.
As we buckled into the back seat, the Uber driver, named Naveed Ahmed, turned back before putting the car in gear, pivoted his shoulders to ask Harrison to confirm our destination.
“You’re going right to the secret spy headquarters. Is that right?”
“Yes,” I affirmed. “I bet you’ve never been asked to drive someone there?”
“I haven’t. And to tell you the truth, I really don’t want to,” he said while pulling out into the traffic flow.
“Why not?” I asked, while Harrison listened for his answer.
“I prefer to stay away from authority. I don’t like to be around authority.”
Considering, perhaps, it might be an immigration issue for the driver, I took his trepidation into consideration as he drove the car across the bridge spanning the Thames River into Vauxhall and the building came into view.
I pointed it out to Harrison because, as shown in a number of 007 movies, the Secret Intelligence Service HQ is, strangely, one of the most prominent, visible buildings in London.
According to my reading, though, the big, postmodern, Art Deco, green and cream-colored building on the river is as strong as a fortress both physically and in terms of hackers, cyber attacks, and electronic eavesdropping.
After the Uber driver turned left, he put the car in a glide and merged toward the front, but this was no valet entrance. There were doors, alright, and a few official-looking men, some in uniform, standing between the curb and the door.
“It’s okay,” I said to the driver. “You can drive a little past the door and drop us off along the curb down the block.”
He was more than happy to oblige us, and so we set off on foot, walking around the manicured, concrete, park-like areas around the building, leading down to a walkway between the building and the river.
We didn’t see any more guards, but the walls of the MI6 headquarters down there were fairly high, and there were noticeable security cameras. Our cameras, however, were not welcome.
We spotted a red sign on the wall with the image of a camera crossed out, reading: “This is a prohibited place under the National Security Act. Persons engaging in unauthorized activities, including the taking of photographs, videos, or other recordings, may be arrested and prosecuted.”
The sign was near a heavily fortified, narrow, back entrance gate with bars and a keyboard to punch in an access code. A sign read: “No Unauthorized Access. This is a protected site under the Serious Organized Crime and Police Act. Trespass on this site is a criminal offence.”
Henceforth, we took our time observing the rest of the building and seeing what we could up close and through the gates, but were careful with the camera until we went up on the bridge above the river for our “007 photos.”
Adventure Tube to Big Ben
We could see the iconic “Big Ben” clock tower along the river and the Houses of Parliament
and Westminster Abbey, which were our next destinations. We were within walking distance along the
Thames, but Harrison, now animated from his spy adventure, wanted to try taking “the Tube” –
London’s “Underground” subway system.
He led the way, using an app on this phone, to a subterranean stairway seemingly hidden in a park. Then Harrison navigated which trains to use by referring to the different-colored lines on the wall map.
We had to go down one level (where every direction starts to look the same) to take one line a few stops to another station, where we needed to change tracks and trains to reach Westminster.
I don’t think the journey took less time than walking, but it was more of an adventure – and how often do adult sons and their fathers get to have adventures together?
Upon emerging at the bustling, busy, busker-filled seven green arches of the Westminster Bridge, we were in the shadow of Big Ben, but it was a different towering structure that caught Harrison’s eye, which brought a tear to mine.
“Check out that Ferris wheel,” Harrison said, pointing across the river at the London Eye – the 135-meter-high, white wheel that is one of the United Kingdom’s most-visited attractions.
“Want to go on it?”
When I heard 28-year-old Harrison say those words, it felt to me like “father and son” were suddenly “man and boy” again.
Through misty eyes, my imagination took me from the teeming crowds of Westminster to the many amusement parks we’d explored together from the time he was a toddler.
Walt Disney World in Orlando and Disneyland in both Anaheim and Paris. Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio. Universal Studios and Epcot in Florida. Busch Gardens in Williamsburg, Virginia. Mount Igueldo, in San Sebastian, Spain. And even the rainy day at King’s Island, near Columbus, Ohio.
“C’mon! It will be my treat,” Harrison urged. (It turned out to be no small expense at $75 each).
While his old man was steering him, eventually, to the very formal vespers at Westminster Abbey (no charge, there), Harrison bounded, first, to the Ferris wheel.
From the top of the joy ride, we saw all of London and every inch of the big, glass cabin we rode in while posing with pictures of the panoramic cityscape.
On the walk past the Prime Minister’s 10 Downing Street residence on the way to Westminster Abbey, “little Harrison” was reframed as a young man again, as the 28-year-old attorney, or should I say, “barrister,” posted at the entrance of England’s Supreme Court building.
Dine and Dash
The long day’s journey into night led Harrison and me to dinner at the historic, delicious trattoria La Famiglia in Chelsea. Here, the decadent Tuscan dishes, such as the authentic spaghetti freschi alla carbonara – egg pasta, guanciale, free range eggs, Pecorino, and black pepper – sent us too soon to sleep in the equally decadent and tasteful, leopard-carpeted, Noel Coward Suite of the Red Carnation Milestone Hotel across from Kensington Palace.
My bedtime prayers included a wish that I’d be hungry by the time I woke up so that I could indulge in the Milestone’s traditional, authentic full English breakfast in the hotel’s leaded-windowed Victorian Park Lounge.
Dreams do come true – and they did on my plate the next morning in the form of free-range eggs, back and streaky English bacon, Cumberland sausage, Stornoway black pudding, field mushrooms, a San Marzano tomato and a hash brown cake washed down with hot tea.
Walk a Block and Save
Considering the culinary opulence of the past 14 hours, it was time for a major walkabout, which Harrison and I embarked on from The Milestone with a stroll through Knightsbridge to the famed Harrods department store.
One can clock thousands of steps inside Harrods just to see it all. We covered the chocolatier shop and Harrison bought some designer sunglasses (with the consultation of a complementing, cooing and coy young English sales assistant with long, dark hair and perfect makeup).
Then, we were on our way (again via the more economical Underground at Harrison’s insistence) to the original Penhaligon’s. This is the Royal fragrance maker, since 1903, with a Royal Warrant most recently bestowed by His Majesty King Charles.
The small shop, which displays the framed Royal Warrant in the back, has a small pipe emanating from its storefront, pumping perfume into the street to draw in dawdling browsers in Covent Garden.
We took our time enjoying the consultation and history lesson provided by Penhaligon’s shopkeeper. The experience was akin to an olfactory wine tasting as we sampled scent after scent. We finally settled on Harrison’s birthday present: a $260 dollop of Daphne Bouquet eau de parfum with a yellow ribbon atop the big, trademark bottle.
Penhaligon’s “tasting notes,” if you will, state it is “a fragrant folklore of blackcurrant leaf and daphne accord burst with joyful radiance. Spring awakens, vibrant yet elegant, and brings with it the verdant caress of moss. An eau de parfum created in collaboration with Highgrove Gardens and inspired by the daphne flower, which blooms in Highgrove Gardens, the private residences of His Majesty King Charles III, and created in support of The King’s Foundation.”
If it’s good enough for Charles, it’s good enough for us, so I bought a bottle for myself, as well, as Harrison and I were in our own line of royal succession.
Persuing Picadilly
Harrison and I, for the remainder of our only full day in London, wandered, stopping first for a drink outside the Covent Garden Market (birthplace of “Punch & Judy”) to watch a clown-like, shirtless and shoeless fellow put on a high-wire act on a rope between two pillars six feet above the pavement.
We then people-watched through Piccadilly, passing the Hippodrome Casino, theaters, and clubs, whilst seeing everything from TikTokers making practical joke videos to anti-Iran protests.
Eventually, still touting our bags from Penhaligon’s with a King’s cologne in them, we slumped into seats in the American Bar of a certain hotel known to have been frequented, for a time, by HRH’s William and Kate.
The very old, but fancy bar’s ceiling is full of model airplanes and caps given to the hotel by visitors from around the world and Second World War airmen.
The hotel in question, with a large painting of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth in its lobby, is across the street from the four-story Clarence House, where King Charles III primarily lives, and sprays on his Penhaligon’s cologne, near St. James’s Palace on The Mall.
The Mall leads up to Buckingham Palace, where Harrison and I watched the Changing of the Guard only 28 hours earlier.
Read more of Michael Patrick’s work at The Travel Tattler and contact him at MShiels@aol.com. Order his book Travel Tattler – Less Than Torrid Tales at https://amzn.to/3Qm9FjN
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