Swan Upping

After I straightened out the credit card glitch, I spent a few hours locking in entry tickets to museums and tours. I didn’t anticipate the layer of anxiety choosing a time would be. What if I’m tired? What if I get lost en route? What if I am captivated by a particular exhibit and don’t want to move on? What if I’m drawing and lose track of time?
In the end, I erred on the side of simplicity and booked one venue a day. If I have the energy for more, I can walk up and hope there’s a ticket available. I’ll also make a list of unticketed things to do. All bakeries deserve a visit. Ditto gardens in fair weather. I have multiple audio walking tours on a Dickensian theme downloaded to my phone. Meandering along the Serpentine is always a fine choice. Sadly, I’ll miss the annual Swan Upping since it’s a July event.

Creating an Itinerary

It’s like building a 3-D jigsaw puzzle: where to go to see which exhibits at what time, divided into length of trip, subdivided by time of day, minus days of the week venues are closed plus extended hours on certain days, and prioritized by desire.

The size of the venue and depth of the collection figures in – the V&A requires multiple times the visits of the Wallace, the Soanes multiple times the visit than the Foundling Museum. There’s the strategy of visiting obscure museums on the weekends when the major museums are swamped. Sunny days for outdoor walking tours, gardens, and street markets (happily, rain and cold never factor inside the museums). Proximity counts; locations near each other are the first choice to add in if time and stamina allow.

All the factors affect each other. Once all the facts are gathered, intuition and multiple-choice play a part. Here’s how it breaks down.

• List all the places you might want to visit. Cast a wide net
• Plug them into a document with their addresses, days, opening closing times, and websites.
• List in order of desire. Desire is highly idiosyncratic. Maybe you want full immersion in a single museum multiple days in a row, or maybe you’d like multiple venues you’ve never visited before. Follow your bliss.
• Make a bespoke Google map with the addresses.
• Make a trip day-by-day calendar.
• Plug in venues on each day by desire, proximity, and visit time – thats your rough itinerary, a starting point for negotiations if you will.
• Start booking your timed entry slots online (this is new since Covid and I’m finding it a more irksome constraint than I anticipated).

This is where I ran into the first big hitch in my get-along. The first two days I wanted for the V&A were shown as fully booked. Huh. I swapped them for the British Museum.

Then I hit a wall. My AmEx and my Visa were declined by The Courtauld (day booking) and the British Museum (membership). After several frustrating go-rounds, I called Amex. The chipper customer service person assured me my card was valid. I emptied my cache and tried again. Declined. I typed in each number instead of auto-populate. No good. What the what? I know for a fact they accept international credit cards. The customer service rep, equally baffled, tried to book a ticket using her own card and no dice. Her final advice was to email or call the museums, explain the issue and ask for help.

I sent a plaintive, polite email to the British Museum asking for their help resolving this, complete with screenshot of my Visa and AmEx being declined. What on earth could be going on? I have no plausible guess. Maybe there’s some kind of ransomware situation? I can’t even.

Other places – Westminster Cathedral, St Paul’s, The National Gallery – are a week out from releasing tickets for the days I want. I’m going to set this aside until then. Fingers crossed they’ve fixed the glitch by then.

Why ease back in when you can cannonball?

Let’s see. What have I missed? Happy Thanksgiving, Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year x 2. I think that covers it. *

After two years of ducking into the storm cellar with every new variant and surge, I’m going to London at the end of March. Not exactly the trip I originally planned – three weeks instead of six, one city instead of three – but after reviewing the venues and exhibitions, I am fired up and feeling lucky.

Between turning the front yard into a cottage garden and raising the cutest puppy on four paws, I’ve been fully occupied and safe as it is possible to be.

Time to revisit the daily itinerary, double-check the current status of venues, and book those timed-tickets.

*That line is a quote from a dear Canadian friend.