Breakfast in the hotel (included in price and quite good). Spend too long trying to locate Howard Hotel. Sometimes (typically) I can be an idiot about these things. Rather than look it up or ask a concierge I set out walking, thinking I know where I'll find it. End up taking an hour (including a ridiculously short taxi ride) to make what should have been an easy ten minute walk.

The Howard is a letdown, especially considering the price (more than double the cost of the Holburn). The hotel clearly is a London institution (ah, but so is Margaret Thatcher). It sits on the bank of the Thames midway between the Tower of London and the Parliament.

The busboys are old men in slightly faded tailcoats with absurdly affected manners. All the guests visible in the lobby are in suits and ties. I stumble in with my rolling bag and bright red knapsack, feeling a bit surly from the long walk and wishing again that I had stayed an extra night at the Holburn. Two steps into the Howard I can see it for what it is: a tarted up old lady of a hotel where the aging upper crust of London society meet to perform rites of self-congratulation while the kowtowing staff drag their knuckles on the floor in pained subservience. (And Howard, whoever he was, must have been a drag queen; the theme is overwhelmingly pink with over-the-top accoutrements worthy of a Las Vegas wedding chapel).

Perhaps I'm being too harsh, but spending nearly $400 per night for a worn out room with a sagging bed... who wouldn't be?

After dropping off my rolling bag (too early to check in) I take a walk down the Thames path, which extends along the banks of the river to the Tower Bridge. It is Sunday morning, and the path is uncrowded, but chilly when the wind gusts down the river.

The restored Globe Theatre looks intriguing, so I stop to take the tour. The guide (for a group of twenty or so tourists) is an entertaining woman on the downhill side of 60 who wears black leather pants, a silk blouse and an eclectic assortment of rings and bracelets. Her commentary becomes a performance of sort as she hams up the story of the theatre's painstakingly accurate reconstruction from hand-hewn and pegged timbers, hand-turned ballisters and thatch roof.

Coming in the year 2000: The Globe Theatre "Experience". (The western world seems to be experiencing an experience binge: in London there is the Tower Bridge "Experience" and the Millenium Dome "Experience". In the states we have Experience Music in Seattle, Experience Star Trek in Las Vegas and at a hospital near you, Birth and Near Death Experiences...)

Midway through her lecture a large door to the outside opens and a group of revelers (in bizzare costumes) pours in for a brief solstice festival in which the theatre's artistic director is presented with a symbolic tree sapling and a pot of compost in which to plant it. A wad of herbs is lit, filling the open-air theatre with its smoldering aroma. There are a few minutes of oddly-rendered midieval music, then they are gone and the tour continues, ending (quite naturally) in the Globe Theatre Souvenir Experience.

After the tour I continue down the path, beyond the Tower Bridge, and stop in at a small pub for a bowl of cheese soup and a pint of ale. Delicious.

Crossing the Tower Bridge, I have a nice view back up the Thames toward the Parliament. The new British Airways Ferris Wheel is now fully vertical -- a pity since it effectively blocks one of the best views of Big Ben from the river.

I had noticed earlier that St. Paul's would present an organ recital in the evening, so I walk west, a few blocks up from the Thames to the cathedral.

At 5:30 the organist begins; the music is good, but not awe-inspiring. The inside of the cathedral, however, is quite an amazing space. It is easy to imagine the spell-binding power that such a structure would exert over the lower-class Catholic faithful. (And lower-class they would have been, as the Church of England, at home in Westminster Abbey, was the institution catering to the moneyed elite of England's royalty and upper classes.)