The Most Famous Address in the World

Today was the first stop on our literary spring break trip. I will explain more about this later--preferably at a more reasonable hour--but suffice it to say, Jenn and I are acting like complete dorks during spring break by visiting all of the literary sites around England that we've always wanted to see.

We went to London. Untold possibilities open when you step onto the train...oh, sod it. Sorry, but it's too late for me to try to write anything remotely poetic about my trip today. You'll just have to be satisfied with blunt facts.

Our list of stops may seem random on first glance, and they probably are: The Australia House, a red telephone booth near Scotland Yard, Charing Cross Road, King's Cross, and 221b Baker Street. However, they all have some literary merit or were used in a film adaptation of a beloved book. Most of them have roots from the Harry Potter series: Australia House was used to film Gringotts, Charing Cross road was Diagon Alley, the telephone booth was seen in the fifth movie, and of course Platform 9 3/4 is at King's Cross Station. Though most of our stops were Harry Potter-related, the majority of the day was monopolized by a different literary character.

Sherlock Holmes. The consulting detective. According to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, this fictional character lived at 221b Baker Street with his trusted associate, Dr. Watson. Not only has this address become one of the most famous in the world, but devoted fans have turned it into a museum of the fictional work. Fantasy becomes reality on Baker Street. It was astonishing to walk into this museum, which is set up exactly as the books describe. It was one thing to visit the home of Jane Austen, where there was historical documentation of how the house might have appeared. But at 221b Baker Street, an entire residence was created solely from the descriptions of Doyle's imagination, right down to the hat and pipe resting on the armchairs by the fire. They had even set up several figures to represent certain scenes from Holmes's cases, such as The Speckled Band or The Red-Headed League.

And the museum wasn't all. Hidden down Northumberland Road is a restaurant with a theme devoted to Sherlock Holmes.

I know what you're thinking: Surely not. It's such a tourist attraction! Surely they wouldn't...

Of course we did. How could we resisit, especially when we saw that the items on the menu were named for the books and the characters within. Jenn, of course, ordered a dish of Hound of the Baskervilles, which turned out to be a common English dish usually known as toad-in-the-hole. This is essentially sausages, broccoli, carrots, and mashed potatoes in a bowl of Yorkshire pudding. Though the dish was good, she admitted to only ordering it because the name was so appealing. And who could blame her?

I ordered a vegetarian dish of mushrooms stuffed with two different kinds of cheese. What was it called? Moriarty's. For those of you who don't know, Moriarty was the Napoleon of crime in The Final Solution. He was thought to have killed Sherlock Holmes and was considered as the evil equal to Holmes' ingenuity. Some may recognize his name as the mysterious "M" from A League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, a connection that never fails to annoy me. As much as I like Sean Connery's character, there is no way that the criminal equal to Sherlock Holmes would have ever been outsmarted or defeated by the likes of Allen Quartermain.

But I digress. I blame it on the lateness...or earliness of the hour. There's not much else to tell, especially considering that Jenn forbade me from writing all that much about going to see Phantom of the Opera tonight as well (whoops, did I just accidentally mention that?) I'll make sure to post a lowdown on our literary trip plans soon, since we're getting started bright and early tomorrow.

P.S. Between you an me, POTO was amazing! Absolutely breathtaking, awe-inspiring, the works! But you didn't hear it from me! ;) For more details, check Jenn's blog on the side, the one written in French.