Day Six: Sunday in London

On Sunday, our last full day in London, we got on a 'hop-on, hop-off' bus tour. For one ticket good for 24 hours, you can ride this bus around London with live or recorded narration, getting on and off when and where you want. You can also hop off and hop onto a river cruise boat.
Sunday morning was the best time, I suspect. The traffic was probably not as heavy as on a weekday, though London streets were by no means deserted. The best thing about Sunday morning was the church bells. I wish I could share those with you.

The weather was remarkable: sweater on, sweater off. In the space of 30 seconds, weather like this......went to weather like this.We saw several sights we had seen before, but saw them in different perspectives. These two pictures show the dramatic approach to Tower Bridge from the top of a double-decker bus.

This is Victoria Station, from where we had left for Canterbury.
This is a view of St. Paul's we had not snapped the day before.
I like the following photo of Queen Anne's statue in front of St. Paul's because it captures the visual experience of riding around on a tour bus.
We saw some things we had not seen yet. Here is London's 'Marble Arch.' Yep, that's what it is.
If the entire world was made of people exactly like me, we would have no marble arches, as pretty as they are. No one would ever think to say, "Hey, let's build a big marble arch in the middle of a sidewalk for no apparent reason." And if anyone ever did, everyone else would just laugh. So it's good that we've got all kinds.

Ellie and I are going to petition the world's camera manufacturers to invent a device with which you can label photos as you take them. I cannot remember what this dragon signifies, but it's kind of scary descending on our tour bus like that.
And if anyone reading this blog recognizes the next two buildings, please let me know in the comments section. The tour narration would say, 'This event took place here,' or 'That person lived here,' and we would snap our pictures. But when you get the photos back out of the camera...?
Some typical London street scenes:
I like the contrast of the construction cranes and the old steeple:
We hopped off the bus at Westminster Pier to hop on a riverboat tourist cruise boat to Greenwich. On a lucky break, we were crossing Westminster Bridge just as Big Ben struck noon. I was surprised at how fast the tune played; I think our little mantle clock plays it slower. But the twelve big bongs to mark the hour were slow and sonorous.

Hint for those who plan to visit London: the boat was so crowded that they did not even bother to check for tickets. (Or maybe the boat was so crowded because they did not check for tickets?) Anyway, we did not need our tickets to get on, stay on, or get off.

Left to right, here is the Tower of London, the Tower Bridge, our boat and a building I believe is London's City Hall--that big round glass thing.
The Thames is tidal, and we traveled at what must have been extreme low tide. Remember the picture of Traitor's Gate from Day One, through which they brought prisoners by boat into the tower? The arch in the middle of the sea wall in the photo below is that gate high and dry at low tide.
Here is the best picture we could get of Millennium Bridge, which we did not get a chance to walk on.
This is the Prospect of Whitby, the oldest pub (1520) on the Thames. Look at the angle between the upright part of the building on the left and the horizontal part of the building on the right. Looks as if you can get tipsy in this pub before your first sip.
We quickly moved past the polished city into the shipping area, where centuries of commerce and trade have passed. Little seems to be used for actual shipping anymore, but I could be wrong about that. The narrator of the tour did not come out and say, "It's all moved elsewhere," but everything he did say was in the past tense.

Many of the old riverside warehouses had cranes attached to the side of the building, so that boats could tie up to the wharf and the cranes could swing out and unload the cargo directly into the warehouse. Here is a photo of 'Metropolitan Wharf,' with a close-up showing the cranes. The foundation shows how very large the tides are.

The tourboat narrator said that this inlet was the opening of a canal that goes all the way to Manchester. I'm going to check that out on Google Earth; I did not know how much to believe from some of these guides.

The grimy East End has been renovated in the past couple of decades. The riverboat narrator was a native of that area and had the Cockney accent to prove it. We got a bit of class resentment from him. He pointed out condominiums and upscale housing that sells for millions of pounds--the humblest homes in London have been pushed aside for the most expensive. He told us the area was now known as "The Docklands," but said you'd hear that term only from the rich newcomers, who can't bear to say they live on the 'Isle of Dogs.' But I'll bet the view of the city is fabulous.

These office buildings are in the shape (he pointed out) of an European electrical plug.
The boat trip ended at Greenwich, where longitude starts (0 degrees) and where time starts: Greenwich Mean Time. We could see the Royal Naval Observatory from the boat, but did not go there.
We were getting very hungry and we wanted to eat lunch at a tea shop that Ellie had frequented so that Keith and I could get a sense of what her daily life had been like. So we hopped off the boat and walked through the village to the tube stop. We saw just enough of Greenwich to get it on our list of places to visit next time we're in London.

The tea shop was the Muffin Man in Kensington. The tea was the very best I've ever tasted. The sandwiches were delightful, and I wished I'd had the room in my stomach and time to taste all their scones and teacakes.
We then headed over to Regents Park, Ellie's favorite London park, and now ours, too.
It surprised me to see palms in London.

Inside Regents Park, there are some gardens... You would think that a bright sunny day would be best for those photos, but I love what the diffuse gray light did for the glow of the roses and the shades of green in the vegetation.

We hopped back on the tour bus, but it was getting late. We did not catch any new sights before getting kicked off in Piccadilly Circus at 6:30PM--the end of the day for the tours.

Our day--and the recreation part of our journey--ended just as a movie scriptwriter would have had it. Ellie looked in a store for some shoes ("1 Million Pairs MUST GO!"), and Keith bought the last souvenir on his list.

Then the three of us stood there, our backs against the wall, our eyes glazed, watching all the hubbub and not being able to think of one more place we wanted our tired feet to carry us.

London memories without photos

I was surprised at the extent to which the world culture--at least the English-speaking part of it--has been homogenized. If you had just plopped me down in London without letting me see any of the place names (e.g., Paddington Station) or landmarks, I cannot say how long it might have taken me to realize that I had crossed an ocean.

I would certainly have known, as soon as I looked at or listened to the people around me, that I was in a big city, but I have the clear impression that British accents constituted only a slight majority of the voices we heard, if that. The person who checked us past customs had a Russian accent; Hispanic, Middle Eastern, and Asian accents were all around. None of the people with whom I spoke at our hotel--with the exception of the maintenance man, whom I'll get back to in a moment--were British. On Westminster Bridge, with sight of the Boadicea statue, I could find no native Britons to ask how to pronounce her name. I think the souvenir-booth vendor who finally did pronounce it for me was Korean.

The posters all over the tube walls were identical to those you would see in the States. Movies: Public Enemy, a film about Chicago gangsters filmed largely in Wisconsin; the execrable and ubiquitous Bruno (Sasha Cohen, a British comedian but unfortunately very present in the States); and Sunshine Cleaning, a film about a pair of California sisters. The electronics, cars, and book advertisements that filled the remainder of the poster frames were also identical to those you would see in the States. Cable television shows: National Geographic. (What does 'National' Geographic even mean in London?) The posters advertising stage plays--Grease, Chicago, Michael Jackson, and others were similarly familiar to me. (Talk about timing; the stage show of Michael Jackson's music apparently opened a day or two after his death.) The world was still reeling from the news of Jackson's death when we arrived in London; one more American who was all over the magazines, tabloids, and television.

The tube licenses 'buskers'--street musicians who play for tips--in the stations. The music was delightful, but it was also either from the States (Paul Simon, James Taylor) or music just as common in the States as in London (Elton John.) When we finally whisked past a street musician playing Handel, I desperately wished I'd stuck a pound note in my pocket so that I could drop it in.

I loved the tubes. And for me--a person who is very averse to crowds, particularly crowds in a hurry--that is saying a lot, because the tubes were crowded.

And not even all that orderly. With the high proportion of foreigners in the city, there was no consensus about which side of the stairs was for ascending and which for descending. Even the posted signs--"Walk on the left"--had little effect. An ad-hoc decision was needed every time we came to a staircase that accommodated two-way traffic.

I loved the ceramic tile work in the tube stations. Like the bridges on the Thames, every station had a unique color scheme and style. You could tell they were constructed in many different eras. I need to remember to ask Ellie the name of the tube station near Abbey Road; that was my favorite. But they were all good.

I loved the long, long, long escalators from the surface to the tube platforms. Because the tube was busy all the time--not just at rush hours--there was always a conveyor full of strangers passing by in the opposite direction. The variety of sizes, shapes, colors, dress modes, moods, conversations, everything--was so full of life and interest. I so wanted simply to train a video camera on the opposite elevator. I swear it would make for an interesting half-hour (at least) movie.

The engineering of the tube stations also fascinated me, particularly when three or more lines shared the same station. The trains ran at different levels, and to get from one to the other, passengers scurry along a variety of tunnels going up and down, around corners, up and down escalators and stairs. I tried to imagine, but could not, what a 3-D model of the platforms and subways would look like.

Other things I want to remember:

Thames river walk at Kew.

No iced tea anywhere.

Other tourists waving at us in recognition of our shared dependence on Rick Steves at Westminster...

Intense large specialty stores--an entire store filled with nothing but umbrellas near Charing Cross Road; fishing tackle at a store near the South Kensington tube station.

Cheerful class resentment from gangly Cockney maintenance man who fixed the electricity, with bad teeth. (Ya won't catch the royal family doin this...)

Saturday notes not made on blog: Walk to Hindu temple took us through workaday London. IKEA, etc., except for small front yards, could have been Chicago.
St. Paul's: far too military for my tastes; People get so swept up in worship of authority that they no longer distinguish between sacred and secular. John Donne statue was amusing. Could have gotten in free through door near gift shop, at least at that time of day.
Heard choir at Westminster Abbey; boys and man.
Walked through St. James Park; Beatles last concert venue in the rain; Fortnum and Mason.

Stereotypically sweet, helpful Indian cab driver: When Ellie asked me for gum and I said, "Damn! I forgot to buy you some," the cab driver gave us a package of gum and insisted we keep the whole thing.

The parks were evidence of the fact that having an upper class does, on occasion, have benefits for the common welfare. Beautiful park land in the middle of the city was preserved for the ages, when it would not have been if it had been owned by less comfortable folks.

Silly, self-conscious, but charming Liverpudlian on second riverboat cruise, who knew that a middle-aged American woman would want to know about Liverpool, and his Silent-Bob friend from Cambridge. The Australian on first riverboat cruise. Ubiquitous helicopters; the riverboat driver said 'businessmen avoiding traffic.'

Ellie and I bumped heads a few times before I realized that we had not spent this much time with each other--certainly not depended on each other so much--since she had been in high school. It was very clear to me how very much she and our relationship had changed. It's always been one of mutual respect, but at least before I was the mom. In London, she was the one who knew her way around and who wanted to lead. Mostly, that was fine with me, but once in a while, when I had looked at the map and had an idea of my own, she would really snap at me to put me back in my place.

Day Five: Saturday in London

Happy 150th Birthday to Big Ben! The bell rang for the first time on July 11, 1859.

The guidebooks said Portobello Road Market—three miles of vendors’ stalls selling antiques, new and used clothes, fruits, vegetables, baked goods, books, and bric-a-brac—opened at 5:30 AM every Saturday. They warned of crowds and not to expect any great buys, but said that this large weekly open-air market was entertaining.

But we slept late anyway and got there at 9:00 AM or so. Aha! It had been raining earlier, the vendors had just set up, and the crowds were thin. If this market had been in Madison, I would have bought a LOT of stuff, but I did not want to have to schlep too much across the Atlantic. We mostly browsed.
I loved these antique toy soldiers. We bought Ted his souvenir, a leather messenger bag. And despite what the guidebooks said about not expecting bargains, I got two lovely scarves for 7 pounds, about $11.50. I wish we had gotten a photo of the gorgeous vegetables, but the hydrangeas were almost as pretty.
The food looked fabulous. If I lived in London, I’d eat lunch every Saturday at Portobello Road.
For our next stop, I dragged Keith and Ellie to the largest Hindu temple outside India, the BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir. I appreciated their forbearance, neither of them being as spiritually curious or adventurous as I am. These photos are all from postcards; the morning was too gray to get a good photo of the outside, and they made us check our cameras as we went in.

In one room, dioramas illustrated stories. This one is 'duty,' a story about a young man who found a way to enable his blind and crippled parents to visit the shrines.
The workmanship--SO much carving--was impressive. They made Keith cover up his legs (he was wearing shorts) with a sort of sarong, and Ellie felt very uncomfortable sitting through a short religious ceremony she did not know. I loved the visual spectacle of the Hindu worship. It's got to be the most colorful and sparkly of the world's religions.
Of all the religious sites we visited during this trip, this was the only one where our guide tried to proselytize us--but in a charming way. "Oh, you are from near Chicago? Let me show you this video." And he made us watch a very well-made five-minute video on the ecological damage caused by eating meat.

Our next stop was St. Paul's Cathedral, England's national church. People have worshiped on this location since 604 AD. The church is such a national symbol that during the blitz of 1940, Churchill ordered firefighters to save it at all costs, which they did. The cathedral took a few hits, including one that destroyed the altar. The next two pictures (both from postcards) show the rebuilt altar.
Christopher Wren designed the current building after the Great Fire of 1666 to have clean, simple lines. The interior was simple cream-colored stone, and the windows were of clear glass. The spare decor did not survive the Victorian era, when the ceiling was encrusted with fabulous mosaics, heavy with gleaming gold.Apart from the ceiling, the entire building is chock-a-block full of memorials to many military figures from throughout British history. Admiral Horatio Nelson (below) and the Duke of Wellington are both given large statues in the nave and imposing tombs in the lower level.
One military memorial that I found moving was a book of the names of all the American soldiers and sailors who gave their lives during World War II. This memorial is in a place of honor right behind the altar in the first picture, above.
To save time, we did not take the guided tour in St. Paul's, but instead walked ourselves through the building following the narration in Rick Steves' guidebook. (God bless Rick Steves--everything in his little book was dead-on accurate and just exactly what we wanted to know when we wanted to know it!) We enjoyed Steves' commentary on this massive painting:

In 1854, William Holman Hunt debuted The Light of the World. Critics savaged it, calling it 'syrupy' and 'too Catholic,' but the masses lapped it up. It became the most famous painting in Victorian England, a pop icon that inspired sermons, poems, hymns and countless knock-off copies in churches and homes. The Guardian newspaper recently published a list of "Britain's Ten Worst Paintings." They honored The Light of the World with seventh place, comparing it to a plastic crucifix.

Next to Westminster Abbey. If you asked me to choose an inscription for the outside of a religious building, it might be something very close to this:
No picture-taking was allowed here; all these inside photos are from our postcards. Here's the altar and an amazing medieval mosaic floor.
No photo can do this next ceiling justice: it's the ceiling of the 'Lady Chapel,' commissioned by Henry VII. It's called a 'fan ceiling,' like the one in Canterbury we saw yesterday, but much bigger. That heavy stone can be worked like this--and then put on the ceiling!--to give the impression of fine, light lace, just seems nothing short of magical.
Henry VII built the Lady Chapel to house the tombs of his family. He's here with his wife, as is his grandaughter, Elizabeth I.
As an American, I whispered "Thank you!" as I stood at this tomb. We are who we are because Elizabeth I was who she was. Without this woman's risky and visionary choices, you would be reading this blog en français o en español.
The coronation chair is quite a sight. It is the real thing--used for every monarch since 1308--but it must not always have been kept this high and out of reach: it's covered with carved graffiti!

As we left Westminster Abbey, we noticed the Methodist Central Hall in that sea of Anglicanism.It turns out we got there just after closing, otherwise we would have accepted the invitation on the banner outside and gone in for a cup of coffee.

Britain's interweaving of church and state was very apparent at all three of the Christian cathedrals we visited. What we saw today, I think, supports the argument that when Church and State intertwine, the State will likely have a greater influence on the Church than vice-versa.

A naïve visitor to St. Paul's could easily conclude that it is a war memorial rather than a house of worship. Apart from a few crosses and the big painting of Jesus at the door, the overwhelming majority of the statues and images are military-oriented. On the hour, a clergyman asks all the milling tourists for a moment of silence and offers a short prayer. While we were there, his prayer was for protection of the military and law enforcement.

Similarly, Westminster Abbey can easily be experienced as a shrine to the monarchy and to secular cultural leaders. Aside from a few crosses, I cannot recall seeing even one religious statue or image at Westminster Abbey. Beautiful, yes. Religious? Not really.

Canterbury Cathedral has the dubious honor of being the site of the most dramatic example: the politically motivated murder of the Archbishop Thomas Becket.

In contrast, the Hindu temple--free from any entanglement with the State--was purely spiritual, top to bottom, side to side, inside and out.

Ah, but the secular stuff can be amusing and uplifting in its own way. On the sidewalk as we left St. Paul's, we were engulfed by dozens of demonstrators carrying big furry balls. They assembled on the stairs and chanted as the tourists clapped and snapped photos.
We'd had the honor of meeting up with the Testicle Tour--"Talking balls around England," raising money and awareness about testicular cancer. Check your nads, lads!

On to Day Six....

testing...the post for experimenting with stuff.

 Ignore this post. I use it as a scratch pad.