Beaucoup de French Kids

Up and out in good form this morning. Made it through our very fine breakfast and out the door to the British Museum not that long after it opened. That was a good plan as the museum just seemed to increasingly fill up as the day moved along.

I was mentioning to my loyal opposition that the one surprising thing about London is how few English people you run across hereabouts. I guess it makes sense that we tend to cluster around the tourist things, but perhaps this is the very first truly international city. It’s past, though, is thoroughly British Empire as we saw today with gallery upon gallery of the world’s archaeology. We took in some of the Assyrian and Greek stuff first off – including the Nereid tomb from Lycia (which has greater meaning having spent some time these past two summers in Lycia itself) and, of course, the Parthenon marbles. I enjoyed those and felt it is fine by me if UK holds onto those for now, my guide and contradictrice feels otherwise – but settling that one goes beyond the scope of my plans for this trip.

The museum itself was impressive. The dome that was built over the entire internal courtyard of the museum is really striking. The museum was thronged, unfortunately, with squads of little French kids being marched past things with “grand importance historique”. The English school kids wore dayglo green vests and seemed well managed; the French kids were more of a force – drumming on the sarcophagi or some of the teenagers smoking in the stairways. I’d imagine that smoking in a place like the Smithsonian is probably a felony now in the US – anyway, kids today…

I liked the early European galleries most of all. There was an intriguing exhibit of clocks and also lots of material from early Medieval or even stone age Britain. I was surprised to see what a large footprint the Byzantines had even in Medieval British art and artifacts. I gather their arts and artisans were sought after all through Europe.

We did not push the museum thing too far. The museums in the US – and particularly Boston – do a nice job with lots of the archaeological stuff as well – and the contemporary world beckoned. So, after a few hours of galleries we had a nice lunch down in the cafeteria and wandered out by foot and by tube to Trafalgar.

My memories and image of Trafalgar was of an utterly immense place, so I was surprised by its relatively modest scale. We spent a bit of time at St. Martin’s in the Field.

Probably the most remarkable thing today was tea at Claridge’s. This required swinging back by the hotel to put on a sport coat but it was a surprisingly nice experience. Nice tables in the back of the lobby, a five page menu of tea selections and a succession of little tea sandwiches, biscuits, little pastries are brought by the table over the space of an hour or so. Very nice place - mirrors, pianos playing with cellos, leather upholstering on the walls. Very nice and relaxing experience – my teas in Durham, NH are going to have to kick it up a notch starting with a bit more clotted cream, scones and black currant jam.

Also, I am happy to report more advances on the “getting around” front. The #13 bus is everything we need, running from next block on Baker Street down past Selfridges through Oxford Street and Oxford Circus down onto Regent Street, Piccadilly and Trafalgar – everything you need on one double decker run.

Photo: The Elgin Marbles in Lord Duveen’s Gallery at the British Museum

Where Am I?

Figuring things out.

I did not have much time these past weeks to read up on things London, so today was a nice day to get my bearings on the city. London hardly follows any sort of grid plan, and the thing with driving on the left is bound to create some confusion (I am looking both ways about five times before I even put a toe over the curb around here) – but made some progress.

Jet lag seems to be passing ok. Woke up very early as my travel companion had a “math problem” in setting her cell phone alarm – something about adding or subtracting five – but actually it was pretty hard to drag myself out of bed even at 8:30. Breakfast was a nice reward. It’s obviously included in the bed&breakfast idea, but it was good – nice croissant, eggs and Cumberland sausage, good black tea, marmalade, oj – all the things you might want from the English treatment.

We headed out on a journey by Underground down to the Tate Modern, although those trains were pretty slow today. As we poked up out of the hole and wandered down toward the millennium bridge we got distracted by the wonders of St. Pauls. In the end that turned out to be a more athletic event than religious and we climbed up the three series of ever narrower spiral staircases up to the very top of the dome. The views were magnificent and I got some nice photos there.

We only got to the Tate Modern in the afternoon – we grabbed a bit of lunch at some chain French café – a sandwich and a bowl of cappuccino. I gather the Rothko’s which are the big item there have been moved over to the Tate Britain – but we enjoyed a few galleries of contemporaries and abstract expressionism. The latter galleries were my favorites. They had some nice pieces of Jackson Pollock (Summertime) and a large panel of Monet’s water lilies. It was a nice visit – not my favorite chunks of the Western artistic tradition but it was fun to get some idea of what they were up to in their various ways as they rooted out and upset absolutely any kind of expectation one might bring to art. The last gallery involved things painted in blood which had (mercifully) faded to grey over the years. That was about my limit. I am looking forward to seeing the Turners over at the Tate Britain – maybe Wednesday as I think the British museum is on the itinerary for tomorrow.

It was fun walking around the Thames and downtown today. After the Tate we walked up and down Bankside a bit and grabbed a bus that took us down to the London Eye (the really huge Ferris wheel) and over across the Waterloo Bridge into the Strand and the theater district. We strolled through Covent Garden market and then got on one or two wrong buses (or buses going in the wrong direction) but, no matter, it was nice to check things out. We finally did make it back to Oxford Street and down Gloucester Place to the hotel. Found a nice neighborhood restaurant right here for dinner and took a stroll around this neighborhood after dinner. I spied two or three interesting pubs that might merit a second look.

The architecture of the city is really neat – an odd mix of old and really modern work. Especially downtown it seem every other building is trying to put the old stuff behind it with bulging curves of glass, metal skins and all manner of other odd features. It’s also fun to wander into these places I’ve heard about all my life but never actually seen (Bloomsbury, Blackfriars Bridge, Soho, The Strand, St. Martin’s in the Field, Covent Garden…).

So, I am happily being a tourist with an ever clicking camera and sore feet.

Photo: St. Paul’s figure from the door of the south entrance. The church was built after the fire in 1666, thus the Phoenix and the motto. I’ll also post a few pictures of the view from the the dome.

The Same only Different...

The Golden Horn blows again…

I wasn’t sure if I would blog this trip. After Moscow and Istanbul and the wilds of Turkey, merry old England seems pretty tame – especially the nicer bits of London, but here I am.

The flight was uneventful and as pleasan as one might expect except for the Icelandic volcano that did its fighting best to keep us home. Even before I headed off to Logan I had hear the flight was delayed from 7:45 until 11 PM because all the London planes were being rerouted around the plume. When we finally did get underway we flew straight north over Newfoundland and Labrador and off to the northern parts of Greenland before arching over Iceland and down across the Faroe Islands and the Orkney’s and on down to London.

No complaints with the flight and I even managed to sleep a bit more than I usually do. It was the least crowded fliht I've seen in about twenty years (only 151 on the plane). The Heathrow arrival and customs was also easy and we made it through and on into Paddington Station by train, and then by taxi to our hotel here in Marylebone on interestingly enough the address is: The Hart House on Gloucester Place….

We took a long walk this afternoon to stretch our legs and get some bearings. We went up through the southern edge of Regent’s Park and then back up Baker Street through Prospect Square and on up to Oxford Street with meanders through the food court at Selfridge’s, etc. Then we cut up to Hyde Park and took a stroll through Speaker’s Corner before collapsing footsore and jet lagged. This provided a good opportunity to figure our “how the bus works” – we have bought a very useful 25 Pound London bus, underground pass that is good for our entire week. So, we got the experience of riding along in the top of the double decker down Oxford Street.

I had spied an interesting Italian place earlier – and one that receives some good praise from the bulleting board here at our hotel- so after it all we parked it for a nice Italian meal. It’s not even eight and here we are back at the hotel thinking about how long we might manage to keep awake…fading fast.

This might explain the general lack of insight and wit that Golden Horn readers have come to expect and demand. My travel companion was rather freaked out by squirrels, pigeons and other little parkland creatures– perhaps I will expand on that soon, but so far so good.

Tomorrow? Probably one of these museums – maybe the Tates, or perhaps a run through the major downtown sites like St. Paul’s. Westminster, Churchill’s Bunker, etc.

I was surprised at how much I recognized particularly of Hyde Park around Marble Arch station from my long past trip here with Mom and Dad in 1977.

Photo: An interesting street sign reminding us of the prudence of NOT renting a car for our visit.