I spent some time on Wednesday at the Natural History Museum admiring dinosaur bones and identifying types of rhino. Did you know that there are five types of rhino? There are. I don't think I've mentioned that or my love of rhinos and my love of fun facts pertaining to rhinos despite the title of this travelogue. But I do love rhinos. Especially black rhinos. Which is why people really need to stop killing them under the misguided impression that their horns will serve as boner-boosters.
Thursday involved more markets and some other adventures, which I will come to later. Friday, the last day with my friends in London, we went to Harrods to not buy things and then to the Science Museum, where I had my walking monitored and learned (among other things) that I apparently think like a female. So, good for me.
I'm now in a hotel in Belgium, though. My parents came across the ocean to have a personal tour guide for London and a little extra exploring. Recounts of those adventures should be forthcoming. But for now, however, I return to Thursday night.
As a final farewell for the study group, we had a fancy pants dinner cruise on the Thames. Our professors repeatedly reminded us that there was a dress code that meant we couldn't wear jeans and trainers, so I was officially out of my element. That fact was confirmed even more when I discovered that I would have a palette cleanser between meals. I'd never had a palette cleanser before. Turns out they're delicious. But I suspect I won't be having another for quite some time.
All through the dinner and dancing though, I had my pair of beaten up sneakers in my purse. I was looking clean and polished enough that my history prof had to remark on my lack of ridiculous, monster-related headwear, but my sneakers weren't just a reminder that normally I traffic in being less than classy. Sure, sometimes I doff a top hat and parade around, but given the fact that my aforementioned lady brain comes with a lady body, top hats in my case are rarely seen as an acceptable high class fashion accessory. No, my sneakers had come along, not to serve as a humbling reminder of my casual wear, but to be thrown off a bridge.
Not to worry, they didn't go into the Thames. I didn't want them to wash up with any stray dead bodies that might still be hanging around. (Or, you know, pollute the river.) On one of the walking tours that I have forgotten many details from, Katy, my history professor, took us to Royal Festival Hall across the Hungerford Bridge. A near by public space that has become a skateboard park has contributed a mass of broken skateboards and worn down skateboard shoes to one of the cement supports rising out of the Thames. It has taken on a kind of public art status. I wanted my own shoes, skate shoes from the boys' department, to join their fellow cracked and leaking shoes on the cement circle in the middle of the river.
After the cruise, I made my way across Hungerford Bridge toward the shoe and skateboard cemetery with a few friends in tow. The dome of St. Paul's was glowing in the distance as I tied together the laces of the sneakers I had worn through from walking in London. They needed a eulogy before I cast them off to the cement below us. I once buried a pair of sneakers in the back yard but couldn't remember what words I had used to lay them to rest. When I burned a pair of lucky white and blue socks in a trash can in the cemetery at school I had murmured, "One sock, two sock, white and blue socks," as the flames engulfed the holey footwear. But my new old shoes needed words of their own.
"Dear shoes," I began rather dumbly, "you have been good to me. But London has not been good to you." With that, I flung my shoes off Hungerford Bridge to the eager cement below.
Though it kicked the shit out of my noble pair of sneakers, I will not hold a grudge against London. It has been quite okay to me. And after our adventures on the continent, my family is spending another day in London before I finally turn my new (and all ready ripping) shoes toward home.
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