Back to Britain, Part 2
Dolphin
Square Apartment Hotel
June
10-25, 2003 (Updated Dec. 2, 2003)
By
Lewis Nolan
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June 11, 2003, Wednesday – In London
We had a spacious, studio apartment at the
Dolphin Square Apartment Hotel for our seven nights in London. The Dolphin
Square is 1,000-unit, residential development in the Westminster borough of
central London, a couple of blocks from the Pimlico tube station. About 140 of
its one-bedroom and studio apartments are set aside for use as a hotel.
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| Lewis and Betty in Dolphin Square's garden |
| Click Colored Type to Enlarge Photo |
It is just off Chichester Street in a quiet
section of town and across busy Grosvenor Road from the Thames River
Embankment. It is near the Vauxhall Bridge. The Dolphin Square is one of the
facilities used by Grand Circle Travel’s extended vacation packages in London
and has reasonable proximity by foot, by bus or tube to many of London’s most
popular landmarks. We liked the idea of having a space and convenience of a
flat while still being able to enjoy the services of a four-star hotel, plus
reasonable proximity to the many of London’s most popular attractions.
Our strategy of a late morning arrival at
Gatwick Airport worked and we were spared hours of grumpy boredom waiting for
our room to be prepared. It took a couple of hours to collect our bags, clear
customs, ride the train to Victoria Station and then catch a cab to the hotel.
We checked in without delay about 1 p.m., familiarized ourselves with the
hotel’s facilities and then napped for a couple of hours.
We learned from Adrian Ray, general manager
of the Dolphin Square, that the 1,000-unit apartment development was built in
1938. It consists of four, red brick buildings constructed around massive,
bomb-resistant piers made of concrete, an important attribute when the war
clouds were gathering. In fact, Ray told us, the construction method kept the
buildings from collapsing when the Dolphin Square was hit repeatedly by German
bombs and rockets during World War II. One can’t move a step in London without
encountering history; the city dates to Londinium, a Roman colony founded two
millennia ago.
The late Charles de Gaulle of France made the
Dolphin Square his headquarters during World War II. Among other notable
residents who have kept in-town apartments there were former British Prime
Minister Harold Wilson and Princess Anne.
The highest buildings have 10 stories. All
are built around 3 ½ acres of exquisitely landscaped gardens that are by
themselves worth a visit. Comfortable, wooden benches are strategically placed
so residents can alternatively enjoy sun or shade, depending on season and
mood. Some read. Some work on their tans.
The formal plantings of white, red, pink and
yellow roses were in full bloom and were gorgeous. Other beds included
geraniums, allyssem, lobelia, ivy leaf geraniums, begonias, fushia, cannas,
lavender and grapevines. In the middle of the gardens is a beautiful fountain
with water gushing around a metal sculpture of three dolphins that are about
half life-size.
One young man told us he paid just over
£1,100 (nearly $2,000) a month for his one-bedroom apartment, comparable to New
York and San Francisco prices. He said that sum was relatively low for central
London. Later, we met another young man – a Yale MBA student working for the
Morgan Bank in London for the summer – who said he was paying $2,500 a month
for a 1 ½ BR apartment a block or two from the Dolphin Square. Again and again,
in London and elsewhere, we marveled at the sky-high housing prices and
wondered how so many people can afford such rent and buy small condos with a
view of the Thames for $500,000 and up.
The Dolphin Square complex is old but
charming. We have a freshly decorated studio apartment, or flat, that includes
a marble and tile bathroom with a huge tub and one of the odd,
shower-on-a-metal-hose contraptions one finds in Great Britain. A tiny kitchen
includes an office size refrigerator and a clever Panasonic, multipurpose
cooking unit that can be used as an oven, a microwave, a grill or a convection
heating device. We only used the kitchen equipment to make toast, heat
sandwiches and chill beverages. The bedroom/living area is large and includes a
dining/work table, easy chairs, a kingsize bed and TV that broadcasts CNN plus
loads of British news and sports programming.
I was struck at the huge offerings of sports
on “the telly,” at all times of the day and night. There were endless hours of
soccer, rugby, cricket and horse racing. There was live coverage of the U.S.
Open golf tournament underway near Chicago.
Air conditioning was achieved by opening the
windows or turning on a fan. That’s the way it is done at most English
residences including St. James Palace, home of Prince Charles. With highs
during our stay in the low and mid 70s and a cool wind from the nearby Thames,
we were never uncomfortable. Oddly, London doesn’t seem to have the mosquito
problem we have back home. None of the windows at places we stayed - the
Dolphin Square, the Hilton in Bath or the Trewinnard Hotel in St. Ives - had
screens. It wasn’t until our last night in England, spent at the Holiday Inn
Gatwick (part of a chain that was founded in Memphis and caters to Americans)
that we had air conditioning.
The Dolphin Square offers its hotel guests -
plus those complex residents and a few others who pay membership fees – the use
of a large and elegant health club, called “Zest.” It reminded me of the
“Vertical Club” fitness facilities in New York City I patronized years ago when
staying at the nearby Hyatt Regency on 42nd Street. Zest has an
18-meter, indoor pool; lots of aerobic and weight resistance equipment; and
individual rooms for a range of therapeutic treatments including massage and
aromatherapy.
It offers a mini-mall of sorts that includes
a small grocery store, liquor store, hair salon and deli. It also has a
business center with Internet connections and office support services, travel
agency, two restaurants and a bar. The deli was our main source for lunches,
delicious ham and tomato sandwiches on baguettes we ate in our flat. Breakfasts
usually consisted of sliced ham from the deli plus some toast or sweet rolls
bought at the grocery and heated in our tiny kitchen.
London is one of the most expensive cities in
the world to live in or to visit. Decent hotel rooms that are small by American
standards are $200 a night and up, and usually way up). Nonetheless, we found
that we could eat reasonably well pretty cheap. We fended for ourselves at
breakfast and lunch most days with takeout food. Dinners were eaten at
inexpensive restaurants or neighborhood pubs recommended by hotel concierges.
Our typical evening meal cost $15-to-$20 each, plus wine – about what we pay in
Memphis unless we get fancy.
We followed the dining advice of a very
helpful, bellman/concierge named
Raymond, who lives in the neighborhood. Our first night in London, we ate “pub
grub” at The Gallery, a watering hole across the street from the Pimlico tube
station. The fish and chips were excellent and included generous servings of
fresh cod, French fries and a salad for £7.95. I soon learned that it’s tough
to stick to the Atkins way of eating only low-carbohydrate foods anywhere in
England, especially in a pub.
After dinner, we walked around the
neighborhood and hotel gardens. Across the street from the Dolphin Square is
the most ugly school building we’ve ever seen. In a “Clockwork Orange”
architectural style of retro modernism, it is built of stainless steel and
glass jutting out at odd angles that makes one think of a prison. It is a
middle school, one of many in Britain that are grossly under funded because of
the country’s economic contraction and quite possibly government mismanagement.
Aesthetically, it is an abomination. The grounds are absolutely filthy with
accumulated grime and trash that can only come with months of indifference. The
asphalt playgrounds were sunken perhaps 8 feet below ground level, making them
large repositories of blown trash and leaves from seasons past.
We were flabbergasted to see that the mean
playgrounds served as a venue for what appeared to be a fairly important Net
Ball tournament. Net Ball is a co-ed, British team sport that seems to combine
volleyball with basketball. The couple of dozen teams of young adults played
for their league championship over the weekend. One of the players told us
everybody participating lived in London, but their team uniforms and banners
reflected their countries of origin. There were teams of transplanted players
from such Commonwealth countries as New Zealand, Australia and South Africa.
Striking up a conversation with another
player about to join her teammates for an after-game pint at a nearby pub, I
asked why the tournament was being played in such a crummy venue. She politely
informed me that “there isn’t money available for quality venues like you have
in America.” I thought this quite odd, because London has hundreds of acres of
open land in the Royal Parks. But none seem to have the ball fields and other
recreational facilities that are customary in U.S. parks. I suppose there is a
fundamental difference in values and thinking between Americans and Brits about
proper uses of public land. I recall the oft-quoted line attributed to the
writer George Bernard Shaw about “two great nations separated by a common
language.”
The school at the front door of the Dolphin
Square serves as a reminder that there is a gulf of much more than water that
separates America and England.
What a depressing place for children to
learn. It made inner city schools in America (like the one in Memphis where
Betty has taught for many years) look like showplaces of civic pride by
contrast. We asked ourselves, “Where is the famous British pride in
appearances? Where is the PTA or other parental support? Where are the
neighbors?”
The hotel’s general manager told us that a
proposal to raze the school and rebuild had been shelved several months ago by
worsening government finances. No wonder so many affluent Britons send their
children to private schools.
We are always amused by the differences in
customs and designs we encounter when traveling to other countries. Great
Britain certainly has its quirky way of doing things.
For example, the ceiling light in our flat’s
bathroom is activated by a long, pull string that hangs down alongside the door
and often gets tangled in the door knob. Why didn’t they put a switch in the
wall? Why didn’t they hang the string from the light rather than connect it to
a switch and conduit hidden in the ceiling?
The bathtub is mounted on a platform 6 or 8
inches high. There doesn’t seem to be any reason for the extra height, which
poses a risky step down for bathers climbing out of the tub. The door handles
are mounted about 18 inches higher than they are back home, in perfect position
to catch shirt sleeves. The tub’s glass splash wall only extends a foot or two
from the shower head, guaranteeing that a shower at full force will dump a lot
of water on the floor. In England,
hard-boiled resistance to change still has most new plumbing installations of
basins featuring separate, hot and cold water faucets rather than the
U.S.-favored, single-handle water mixers.
I’m sure our British cousins are equally
mystified by the way we Americans approach design. They certainly have reached
out to their American visitors with signage reminding of opposite flowing
traffic. Crosswalks on busy streets frequented by tourists have “Look Left” or “Look Right” warnings painted in bold
letters to help visitors look out for approaching traffic coming from
unexpected directions.
We found not a hint of anti-American
sentiment anywhere in England. The newspapers were full of protest coverage and
commentary about the wisdom – or lack of it - of Prime Minister Blair’s
unwavering support of President Bush and the U.S. position over the invasion of
Iraq. But the frenzy of outrage in the non-Labor Party press didn’t spill over
into any private contacts and conversations we had with everyday Brits. They
were unfailingly polite and accommodating to our requests for directions or
information.
Certainly, the substantial falloff in
American tourism is affecting the economy here and Brits have a reason to be
extra nice to their visitors. But I think what is more important is the deep
reservoir of goodwill between Americans and Britons that transcends passing
government policies.
In fact, just over a month after our return
home, Prime Minister Blair was given a thunderous welcome by a special, Joint
Session of Congress. He cracked that he was received better in the U.S.
Congress than in his own Parliament. He brought down the house when he reminded
the Americans that his just-presented medal was first given George Washington for
defeating the British and that he had toured the site where British soldiers
had burned the original Library of Congress in 1812: “I know it’s a little late
for this, but ‘Sorry.’” Love the English! Would that we had a man of Blair’s
wit, intelligence, toughness and political skills.
London is a city of contrasts. The character
of neighborhoods often changes drastically within a block or two, and sometimes
even across the street. Pockets of elegance and shabbiness seem to co-exist far
more prevalently than in American cities, where worries over real estate values
lead to zoning restrictions and building code enforcement actions.
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