DESTINATION St Martins Lane, London
INSPIRATION Hollywood power couple, producer Holly Wiersma and Cassian Elwes—agent and brother to “Princess Bride”’s Cary Elwes—kidnap me at the airport.
Travel journals in hand. BlackBerry out and emails loading. Adrenaline pumping through me as John Lennon sang through my earphones. I’d arrived!
I bounced off the plane and it was though the sound of music stopped short. Floods of people and unpleasant smells bombarded me. Adventure Angie disappeared. The reality of traveling alone hit me as I lugged my Patron duffle through Heathrow. (Yes—I was traveling with a Patron-labeled bag, given to me by a friend of a friend who worked with the tequila brand.)
Where am I? Mom? What was I thinking when I thought traveling alone was a good idea?
Wide-eyed, confused and torn, I wanted to sit down on the ground and cry. Missing a night of sleep will do that. Going back and forth between feeling like a child, versus solo career woman sent into bohemia, I followed signs for the train shuttle, doing everything in my power not to phone an assistant, demand a car-service pickup, and insist the hotel be notified of my arrival. That’s how I worked things out in my old world—but in this one I was giving self-reliance a try. My brain wanted to start plotting next moves, but it was instead hitting a lot of question marks.
On family vacations, this was the stage where everyone wonders aloud: “How far to our hotel? What are we going to do first? What are all the numbers and questions on these passport forms?”
“Mom, stop stressing, we’re on vacation. Dad, just pay the guy and stop counting how much you’re spending in your head!”
“JJ, can you please stop making jokes and help me with this luggage?”
“Adam, don’t be so grumpy. Jeez. Fine. We’ll go eat at the restaurant you want.”
“Will you all please just hurry up–this is not that complicated!” OK, I didn’t miss that part–the traveling and balancing personalities! I started to relax. Traveling alone just might be amazing.
I looked down and saw my cell battery dying. I am an adventurer.
Nope. Still scared shitless. I wanted to go back to the white carpet of my apartment, surrounded by the color-coded journals, planning my travel. The “build up and pretend” stage was so much more fun. My eyes, trained for spotting outlets, start scanning the walls to charge my BlackBerry while my brain plotted how I’d handle getting a train. I wasn’t about to ask for help.
Before I had time to panic, my BlackBerry flashed! It was a text from my friend from home, the great Holly Wiersma, producer and wife of the agent Cassian Elwes:
“Don’t get on the Heathrow Express. You are being picked up by a driver and brought to the Elwes estate. Meet him at Gate 3.”
FROM Holly Wiersma
TO Angie Banicki
subject Arrival
Don’t get on the Heathrow Express. You are being picked up by a driver and brought to the Elwes estate. Meet him at Gate 3.
BIO >> HOLLY WIERSMA & CASSIAN ELWES
Holly Wiersma and Cassian Elwes have always been a reality show to me. They live in the Hollywood Hills with their seven dogs–untrained. Producing the show is Prince Moses, the alpha pup who has a full wardrobe of dog outfits and his own cartoon strip. Four foot, eleven inch Holly is a social engine. Always in
6-inch heels that balance her 100-pound frame, she runs around her house throwing parties and barbeques for her celebrity friends while still negotiating film deals at the same time.
But Cassian and Holly are a lot more interested in great movies than in reality TV.
Cassian has produced 53 movies and shows, including “Blue Valentine” and Margin Call.” Holly has eight producing credits herself, including the critically acclaimed “Bobby,” written and directed by Emilio Estevez.
If they really were a reality show, my episode with them would be called “HOLLY AND CASSIAN: THE LONDON SPECIAL ... Guest starring Angie Banicki.”
I let out a huge sigh. I felt like a child who’d found mom after being lost in the supermarket maze. I felt my shoulders drop and the bag slide from my arm. Self-reliance is great, but I knew I had plenty of time for that on the trip.
This first surprise was quickly followed by a second. The “driver” at Gate 3 was Cassian himself, in a tiny European car, with Holly in the passenger seat.
“Angie Banicki! Welcome! We are going to take you to the place where the Magna Carta was signed—in Cassian’s backyard.” Voila, a surprise moment to start the trip!
THE MAGNA CARTA
The Magna Carta was signed in a meadow in Southern England in 1215, yet laid the foundation for citizens’ rights as we know them today. The document, which listed 37 laws, limited the power of King John and future royals, allowing for the formation of a powerful parliament and establishing due process and the right to habeas corpus. Less known was that the Magna Carta put an end to the royal sex trade; prior to its signing, the king could sell the widows and daughters of barons as wives when in need of extra funding.
We pulled up to the grounds and drove through a grandiose wooden gate then down a dirt path.
Holly and Cassian tour-guided me down the road, just as they tend to tour-guide me through the film world in Hollywood.
Cassian’s family welcomed me, despite being in the throes of preparations for Cassian’s sister’s wedding. In a constant state of awe, and more than a little jet lagged, I felt innocent and vulnerable in these new surroundings. Tents were going up and Cassian’s sister and mom were voicing concerns about the placement of the kids’ table, hanging the dress under the high ceilings to let the wrinkles fall, and positioning flowers at the entry.
I sheepishly looked back out the door, a view stretching into the warm UK sun.
“Angie Banicki, you are so quiet! Aren’t you excited to be here? Do you see, over there is the field where the Magna Carta was signed!” Holly pointed and said in her sing-songy voice, seeming to sense I wasn’t myself.
“Angie, it’s unbelievable. You’ve arrived on one of London’s very few perfect, sunny days. This is very uncommon,” says Cassian, his accent seeming stronger as I listened to him in his home country.
Cassian accompanied us, joking about all the knickknacks his mother had squirreled away over the years and, “insists on spreading around the home.”
“Mother, she doesn’t need to see all the rooms!”
Funny to see Cassian, now the embarrassed son, worrying that his mother was taking up too much of a friend’s time with “Mom stuff.” Meanwhile I treasured the history and, despite the magnitude of the place, felt a gentle sense of home as Mum walked me through it.
Though she is older and moves more slowly than her grown children, Mum thrived on my fascination and eagerly walked about the house, describing the invaluable artifacts in each new room we encountered. Sharing them with me seemed to breathe new life into them, and her. All moms want to be appreciated, especially by their own kids. When they can’t get their kids to feel it, a friend of their child is the second best thing. And of course, Mum knows best: The tour was exactly what I needed as I tried to acclimate.
Jet lag was setting in, and just as I was getting loopy with tiredness, Cassian and Holly volunteered to drive me to my hotel, St Martins Lane. On the way to the city, they took me for fish and chips at their favorite spot. Over beers, Cass unraveled more of his family story for me.
His parents met in the UK when Tessa was 17, and his dad, an English portrait painter, was 23.
His grandfather (Tessa’s father) had a court restraining order placed against his dad, making it impossible for them to marry. The couple ended up fleeing to Cuba to elope, but soon after the ceremony had to board a raft to Miami to escape the revolution. The hotel where they were staying as guests of the mobster Meyer Lansky was raided 20 minutes after they left. To make sure their marriage was legal, they had a second ceremony in front of New York’s Supreme Court. Tessa is the niece of diplomat and Yugoslav shipping magnate Vane Ivanovic and great-great-niece of Dušan Popovi, one of the founders of Yugoslavia. The elopement was a major cause célèbre at the time, arousing widespread controversy.
I had never heard Cass open up so freely and honestly about his family and I was touched to be let in on the story. I felt my head relax in all the history and romance.
What a fairytale surprise to kickoff London!
TRIPPING POINT
Castles or cornfields, we are most ourselves in our homes—take every chance you can to meet people there.