Day 6 – Last Day in London

The Rosetta Stone

On our agenda for today were two of the most famous museums in London, the British Museum and the National Gallery. This is a holiday weekend in the UK (May 1 in a bank holiday) and so both museums were jam packed. The crowd was five or six people deep around the Rosetta Stone and it would have been difficult to get a close up look.

Assyrian Human-Headed Winged Bull (behind me)

The British Museum is kind of a bittersweet museum to visit because on one hand it has the greatest collection of artifacts anywhere in the world, but then you have to remember that most of it was acquired when “the sun never set on the British Empire” so the means used to acquire some of the pieces is a bit suspect. One good example is the Elgin Marbles, which are fragments of the Parthenon and other buildings on the Acropolis of Athens. These were acquired under dubious circumstances by Lord Elgin in 1801 from the Turkish government which ruled Greece at the time. In recent times the Greek government has been trying to get them returned and the British Museum has consistently refused.

One of "Elgin's Marbles"

In the Elgin Marble shown in the picture, it is one of a sequence of an original 92 metope panels depicting battles between the Lapiths (legendary people of Greek mythology) and the Centaurs. Spoiler alert: The humans win!!! Probably why we don't see Centaurs today.

Virgin of the Rocks (close-up)

The National Gallery certainly has one of the greatest collections of paintings in the world with works from all the major masters. Just to mention a few:  'Sunflowers' by Vincent van Gogh, 'The Ambassadors' by Hans Holbein the Younger, 'The Arnolfini Portrait' by Jan van Eyck, 'The Madonna of the Pinks' by Raphael and probably their greatest piece 'The Virgin of the Rocks' by Leonardo da Vinci. For me, the works in these museums were of major interest as I had studied most of them in my Art History class last year and it was fantastic to see them in person. We also find new painting we like. Jeanne especially liked Van Gogh's 'Long Grass with Butterflies' which we had never seen before.

Sunflowers by Van Gogh

For dinner, we had wanted to try one of the historic pubs in London like the Lamb & Flag which was a hangout of Dickens back in the day. However once again it was massively crowded as tomorrow is a bank holiday, as were the next 5 or 6 pubs we tried. In fact it was extremely crowded throughout all of Covent Garden, but finally we stumbled into one of the newer pubs which was also crowded but happened to find a seat as two people were leaving and had an excellent Steak and Frites dinner. Everything worked out for the best in the end.

Day 5 – Kew Gardens, Tate Modern and the Globe Theater

Jeanne in Kew Gardens

We started the day with a visit to Kew Gardens, which is alongside the Thames on the west side of London and about a 20 minute ride Uber ride from our hotel.  Kew Gardens is very large (300 acres) and claims that their “collection of living plants is the largest and most diverse in the world.” We can vouch for the size as we pretty much walked it from end to end and although we saw all of the highlights, there's still a lot of the garden that we did not see.

Open Space in Kew Gardens

The gardens were nice, but this probably wasn’t the optimum time to visit if you wanted to see flowers. We apparently just missed the Cherry Blossoms and were too early the peak of Spring flowers.  There were large, beautiful fields of bluebells around Queen Charlotte’s Cottage, rhododendrons in bloom and vast expanses where you could just picture the king going out for a ride back in the day.

View of St. Paul's and the Millennium Bridge

In the afternoon, we took tube to St. Paul and walked across the Millennium Bridge over the Thames to go the Tate Modern museum. While many of the National Landmarks controlled by the National Trust of England are very expensive to visit, the museums in London are free.  The Tate is actually a group of several museums and the Tate Modern focuses on “modern art.”  In terms of the art in the museum, it was just okay. It has some really great pieces but also doesn’t seem to have the coverage you would expect. The MoMA in New York is better but that’s just my opinion.

Inside the Globe Theater

After the Tate and a dinner in a pub overlooking the Thames, we went to the Globe Theater to watch a production of Romeo and Juliet, but with a very modern twist. While it held oddly to the text of much of the original play, it replaced swords and poison with guns and featured a Capulet party with the song “YMCA.” A little bit odd but the play still holds up after nearly 500 years. The Globe theater is supposed to be an accurate replica of the original which burned down long ago.

By the way, if you are counting, we walked almost 8 1/2 miles today. That is probably a little more than normal because Kew Gardens is so massive but a typical walking day has been 5 or 6 miles, even using mass transit as well as we can.

Day 4 – Windsor Castle

Windsor Castle with the Queen's Flag

Today’s main sightseeing trip was to Windsor Castle which is 25 miles west of London.  Windsor Castle has been the home to Kings and Queens for over 1000 years and today was no exception as the Queen was in residence when we visited. You can tell by her personal flag which flies over the round tower, which you can see in the photo. The odds are actually pretty good of catching her at Windsor as the monarchy doesn’t much like Buckingham Palace, which is like “living over the shop” as our guide from yesterday described it. We were in luck as the State Apartments were open today and they aren’t always when the Queen is at Windsor. The rooms are fantastic and what you would expect for English royalty with a vast collection of art, china, portraits and weapons, with most everything dated after the fall of the republic in the 1650s.

Changing of the Guard

Our timing was pretty good as we saw the changing of the guard ceremony at Windsor Castle. There wasn't a changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace yesterday and this was a good replacement. In addition to about 20 heavily armed soldiers, there was also quite a large marching band that accompanied the change.

St. George's Chapel

St. George's Chapel is one of the more historic sites at Windsor Castle and is the burial spot for 10 English Kings, including Henry VIII, George III and George VI who was the Queen’s father.

We are getting pretty good at getting around by public transport. We have our Oyster contactless cards which are good on the tube and all busses. As today was outside of London, we had to buy rail tickets, which were pretty cheap (£15 for the two of us, roundtrip) and also efficient. We had to make one change, but it was really pretty easy.

Afternoon Tea

The rest of the day we spent as Londoners would do. We had Afternoon Tea at a hotel near us and then took a double-decker bus down to see a comedy show with the well-known comedian and TV personality, Jimmy Carr. He did one liners for at least two hours and had us in stitches. His jokes were largely in bad taste and definitely not politically correct, but nevertheless hilarious.

Day 3 – Iconic London

Buckingham Palace

Today was the day for our 9-hour Full Day London tour.  The idea behind the tour is to hit all of the London icons in one shot, if possible, and we pretty much accomplished that. The tour included stops at Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, St. Paul’s Cathedral, the Tower of London, a cruise on the Thames and with a final stop at the London Eye.

Big Ben (note London Eye in the background)

The tour required an earlier start that we normally like to do (before 7 am), but as we had to be downtown at Victoria Coach Station in time for the start of the tour, it was necessary. Fortunately our body clocks are still off, so we didn’t even sleep until the alarm. The weather has been changeable both days we have been here and today was no exception. We started out today sunny but cold, probably in the upper 30s. It warmed to about 50 and then promptly clouded over and began to mist and eventually turned to a light rain requiring umbrellas.  We were both at the upper end of the layers of warm clothes that we brought but it was okay.

Westminster Abbey

The guide was pretty good at bringing out the small “quirks” of the way that Brits look at life.  For example, he told the story of why everyone was upset over the memorial to the Duke of Wellington memorial inside St. Paul’s Cathedral. There are two basic reasons. One reason was that it took something like 75 years to complete, but of course the original sculptor died in the process and someone else had to take over, so that is understandable. But the main complaint is that they show Wellington on his favorite horse which he road for something like 60 hours at the battle of Waterloo.  The complaint is in the fact that they show the horse facing the altar while a statue of the pious Queen Anne was facing out of the church onto a street lined with pubs.  In typical British humor, the guide said he thought showing the other end of the horse facing the altar would be worse.

Tower of London

The Tower of London is the site of many famous executions and also the location of the Crown Jewels.

Tower Bridge

The Tower Bridge as seen from the Tower of London. Our cruise went underneath.

Parliament

The Houses of Parliament as seen from the London Eye, which was the largest Ferris Wheel at the time it was built in 2000. Note that the bridge in the foreground is the Westminster Bridge which was the site of the recent terrorist incident where a car was driven into the crowd. We crossed the bridge and there is a small memorial on the spot where it occurred.

Days 1 & 2 - London

British Architecture

The trip is finally underway and I’m reporting on the first two days in one post as they kind of blend together anyway because of the over-night flight in the middle. It was pretty much an inauspicious start, nothing bad but nothing outstanding either. We left in rain, Jeanne left her umbrella on the airport shuttle, the flight was number 20 in line for take-off from Newark so we were late leaving, the entertainment system on the plane wasn’t working and it seemed like our seats had less space than normal. That is kind of par for the course these days.

St. Martin's Theater

We landed under cloudy skies and took an Uber to the hotel. We are staying in the Kensington section of London at a Hilton and the rooms here are really small, but it is convenient to public transportation. After an afternoon nap, we took the tube to Piccadilly Circus for a walk around Soho. The weather is cool (upper 40s and breezy) and the Londoners are still wearing their winter coats. In a lot of respects, the tube and the crowds in the street seem a lot like New York and there were a ton of American stores and restaurant chains everywhere. But everywhere else it is different. When you look above the streets you see the distinctive British architecture and red double decker busses are everywhere.

Soho is the main theater district in London and the longest running play there is the The Mousetrap by Agatha Christie. It has been running for 61 years and I saw it the last time I was here, which was 37 years ago. Still playing at St. Martin's Theater. I hope they have new actors!!!

Punjab Restaurant

So what do you eat in London? You would think it would be something like Fish and Chips, but in a recent poll the number one favorite British food is Chicken Tikka Masala, dating back to the British Colonial days when they controlled India. So when in London, you do what the Londoners do and we ate at Punjab, which is the oldest Northern Indian restaurant in London and the tikka was excellent.

The UK 2017 Game Plan

Newsboy cap and Napier tartan scarf

So first let me start with the question of why the United Kingdom?  The simplest answer I can give is that it was about time for it. Jeanne and I have been to continental Europe several times by now – maybe eight if my count is correct – but we have never been to the UK together. I was in London for a night back in 1980 but that almost doesn’t count. The second consideration is that, at least for me, it is a trip back to the “mother country.” The Napier family is of Scottish origin and my mother’s family is English, so for me it is actually two mother countries. And after doing some research on the Napier family, I was able to pick out a few Napier-related sights to visit in Scotland, including spending a night in Culcreuch Castle which was once owned by a Napier ancestor.

In rough terms, this will be a 22-day trip starting on April 25 and returning on May 17. We fly to London and spend four nights there. After that we rent a car and spend three nights traveling north along the eastern side of England up to Edinburgh, Scotland. Three nights in Edinburgh, a couple more in the Scottish highlands (including the castle) and two in Glasgow.  From there we head south through the western side of England, through the English lake country to spend two nights in Liverpool. Then one night in Wales before spending the rest of the trip in the southern part of England and flying out again from London.

There are really too many activities planned for me to preview here, but let me just say that we are trying to hit as many of the high points as we can in one trip and will try to provide details in the daily blog.