The Summer of Love, part two

Trafalgar Square, July 1967 (Don Dale photo)

Breakfast the next morning bowled me over. I described it in the letter about my London trip to my parents.

"Breakfast was served family style at the Victoria Hotel by the proprietor's wife, who looked like Fanny Brice. I had mush (oatmeal), biscuits with fresh apricot preserves, fried eggs, bacon, sausages, toast, coffee, fruit juice and sliced tomatoes. It was quite a meal."

I had spent the night in a few small hotels in Germany on weekend trips. Breakfast was much simpler: cold cuts, coffee, hard rolls and perhaps a boiled egg. But the English really knew how to serve breakfast right.

Thus fortified, I was off to see more of London. I took the Tube to Russell Square, where I caught a bus for a half-day tour of the city. It cost a pound ($2.80 in US dollars). It was mostly a drive-by tour, but that's okay. I have made sure ever since to first take the drive-by tour in a strange city. It gives you a look at places you might want to come back to. We saw Trafalgar Square, the Houses of Parliament (where we stopped for a guided tour), Big Ben, the Tower of London, Westminster Abbey and Buckingham Palace (where we stopped to see the changing of the guard).

The bus dropped us back at Russell Square, and I immediately took the Tube to Westminster Abbey for a closer look. The exterior was, in 1967, badly in need of cleaning -- stained with city grime and pigeon droppings. But inside -- awesome! I stopped to look at the elaborate sculptures, tombs and memorials honoring some of the great names in English history -- Darwin, Burns, Gladstone, Churchill, Shakespeare, Chaucer, Dickens, Keats, Kipling, Milton, Shelley and Wordsworth.

I learned that the abbey itself has roots going back more than 1,000 years. Monks worshipped at the site in the 10th century. It has been the coronation church since 1066. Seventeen English monarchs are buried there. I wrote to my parents that it was "chock full of English history inside, and you could sort of feel it, really."

After shooting a couple of rolls of film, I walked to Trafalgar Square. It's huge, with each of its four sides the length of a football field. It's named for the 1805 Battle of Trafalgar, and at the center on a 185-foot column is a statue of Horatio Nelson, the admiral who commanded the British Fleet at Trafalgar. I was told that the square is the fourth most visited tourist attraction on earth.

I was blown away. "There must have been 500 people there," I wrote to my parents. "Most were young, and they were sitting on the lions, the base of the column, the sides of the pools, the railings, the benches, the pavement . . . everywhere.

"I would sit somewhere for 10 minutes, and at least three people would stop to chat. I talked to people from Austria, Germany, the States, England, Ireland, Wales, New Zealand, Australia and Hong Kong. We talked about where we came from, why we were in London, and what life is all about. We argued politely about Vietnam, the draft, and the virtues and drawbacks of carrying a camera on vacation."

It was dark by the time I made my way to dinner, where I encountered another difference in customs at a restaurant near Leicester Square. I was alone. The place was crowded. So I was seated at a table with two young Australian women. After about five minutes of ignoring each other, Celia and Kimmie and I started to chat. After dinner, they were going to Regent's Park to see a play. We had gotten on so well that they invited me to tag along. I saw "Cyrano de Bergerac," memorable for its outdoor setting and spectacular lighting.

I was two days into my first trip to London, and I was bubbling over with excitement. On the way back to my hotel, I stopped by Trafalgar Square one more time. It was still crowded, even at midnight.