London Calling

Today we packed up and got ready to go.  We decided to get to the airport 2 hours early and it took about 45min via the tube to get there.  Prior to leaving, however, we did take advantage of the gorgeous sunshine and walked around our immediate neighborhood.  To live in this particular neighborhood would be quite expensive, but you would get a nice house, albeit small.  Here is the advantage: beautiful private gardens behind every building.

More Telephone Booths

We arrive at the airport in plenty of time (or so we think).  We get the 3 lb deposit back from our oyster cards and head to bag drop off, since we already checked in online.  The line to drop off bags is long and winding and moving super slow.  Why?  Who knows.  After standing in line an not moving for 20min, we tell a United person we have a 1300 flight and they let us go to the priority line, and the United person spends another several minutes typing stuff into the computer.  Why?  Once again, who knows, we already entered all our info online, all we need is to drop our bags.  I asked how early we should have been here and the United guy stated 3-5 hours.  

Bye from London

Crazy!  The funny thing is, we went through actual security in like, 3 minutes with no line at all.  The time consuming thing is your airline line!!!  It shouldn’t be that hard.  Why can’t the bag tags be printed online.  They are all being x-rayed behind the scenes anyway!  Needless to say, the flight was fine, and the crew was much friendlier on the way home.  We made it home safely and would definitely travel to the UK again…

Mind the Gap

Oh, in case you were wondering, even though we speak the same language, some term are very different.. Here are some examples: mind your head=watch your head, queue=line, cinema=movie, biscuits=crackers, chips=french fries, potato chips=crisps, lolly=lollipop, leads=leash, trolley=bag or suitcase, mates=friends, lift=elevator or escalator, jumper=jacket, pram=stroller and so on…  I’m sure there are a lot more, but enough for now.  We’ll try again next visit…

Stair climbing

Today we traversed the halls of the Science Museum.  Way cool stuff in here.  The medical history section is brilliant!  We spent quite a bit of time  parousing the engineering and flight sections, but I really enjoyed the medical history.  There are 2 floors with many things to see.  This is where I did see some history of the Hunter brothers and one of John Hunters anatomy pieces ( in case you are wondering, I am reading ‘The Knife Man’-which chronicles the life of John Hunter, a surgeon and anatomist in the 1700′s).  There was also lots of interesting ancient medical devices.  Guess what? We even spotted an old anesthesia machine and an operating theatre depiction in the museum.

anesthesia machine c.1980

Operation in 1980

They use ‘swabs’ instead of sponges in this time period.  Funny…

After grossing Jessie out with all the medical stuff, we decided to try out Coven Gardens.  It is a lovely area with many shops and eateries.  Incidentally, it was the site that the anatomy classes and public exhibitions were done by William and John Hunter.  Most people probably remember it from ‘My Fair Lady’ with Audrey Hepburn.  We shopped and bought some fun London memorabilia to take home.  We ate lunch at the Covent Garden Kitchen, feasting on the best chips we’d tasted so far.  They had a different batter they were cooked in and they were tasty.  We also got a couple of ideas for recipes at home by trying the basil/olive tapenade and mushy peas and mint mixture.  Loved the mushy peas!

We asked Jess what she wanted to do for her last evening in London.  She wanted to go to a pub and taste another drink while still legal.  We also decided to take in the Peter Pan play at Kensington Gardens theatre.  We got our tickets at a discounted price at one of the discount ticket counters  (locations are listed on most maps).

Tasting a Cider

We went to the Stanhope Arms Pub just down the street from our hotel and tested a tropical drink, ate some dinner and headed off to the play.  The theatre is really unique, for me at least, as it was located in a tent in the middle of the park.  You can buy refreshments and request a picnic dinner if you like.  The stage was round, so all the seats were pretty good.  The play was very clever in terms of making everyone fly and moving the props around, considering the limited space.  The actor playing Peter did a great job (who was also not too hard on the eyes), and the actor who played George Darling/Captain Hook was Jonathan Hyde.  You would recognize him from playing the Egyptologist in ‘The Mummy’ and Bruce Ismay in ‘Titanic’.  My favorite was Tinkerbell.  Small role, but funny.  Great show.

Covent Gardens Architecture

Environmentally Safe Paper

Saint Paul's

It’s Thursday and we are running out of time to see everything.  Lots planned for today!

St. Paul’s Cathedral is the site of the wedding of Prince Charles and Princess Diana.  My kids recognize it from Mary Poppins and Julie Andrews singing ‘Feed the Birds’.  It is a grand Cathedral that is very old, but as with several places in London, has burned to the ground and required rebuilding, not just once, but several times.  You can’t take pictures in the Cathedral, but they would have been beautiful.  It is very serene yet colorful inside the church.  Words cannot really describe the size and reverence.  We walked all through the church, including the crypt and climbing the tiny and at times very skinny stairs to the dome at the top.  Talk about stair climbing.  And not just regular stairs, but spiral stairs, so you are not only out of breath, but dizzy too!  Even though it is a difficult climb, the view from the top is incredible!  And yes, going down is much easier.

Windy at the top

Roger and the stairs

look at the view

Jessie bailed on the stairs, claiming clausterphobia, and she may have had the right idea, given how much walking we did!

Next, we crossed the Millenium Bridge (the actual bridge from Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince-I had the wrong one before) and saw Shakespeare’s Globe.  It is a rebuilt model of the original and I think it would be great to see a play in, but I didn’t want to pay for the tour at that time, since we wanted to get to our next destination.

'running' on the millenium bridge

Shakespeare's Globe

We ate lunch at a restaurant called Gourmet Burger Kitchen.  It was great!  Really good burgers-vegetarian ones too!  A lady in line behind us gave us coupons to use which was really excellent!  You too, can get coupons to this restaurant at www.craveGBK.com.

After lunch we traversed our way to Westminster Abby and took the guided tour.  This involved a radio device that describes each stop of the tour through the Abbey as you walk through.  It is also a beautiful church with great architecture.   Instead of a crypt however, there are tombs and gravesites all over the church.  Some very famous English royalty and other well know names are buried here.  No pictures are allowed in this church as well.

Westminster Abbey

Both churches are magnificent.  They both

Westminster Abbey

charge for admission.  Students and Seniors receive a lesser fee.  If I had to choose one, I would have chosen St. Paul’s.  I really liked them both and loved the history and tombs of Westminster Abbey, but it seemed overcrowded with tombs, so much so that it diminshes from the beauty of the church itself, but the architecture is still very stunning.

We still had daylight and didn’t want to stop yet, so we decided to go to the cinema.  We walked all the way to the Electric, on Portobello Road, in Notting Hill, but it was sold out for the rest of the day!  We then walked back to the tube (at least a mile each way) and found another cinema on Kensington High St.  We ended up seeing The Proposal-which was an adorable movie-but honestly, Iwouldn’t recommend the cinema.  It is really expensive at over 10lb per person (that is $15 in US) and you get standard seats.  For the nicer seats, you pay more.  Good thing the movie was fun!

Jessie and Harry

Gardens

The Orangery

After tea, we walked through the park to the Victoria and Albert museum and the Natural History Museum, which happened to be down the street from our hotel.  The V&A, as it is known in London, is a collection of items from Queen Victoria’s reign and some current things to see.  We really enjoyed the descriptions of fashion from the 1600′s to current and future fashions as well as the jewelry collections.  Talk about some expensive jewelry.  All I can say is I want a tiara! Or a huge emerald and diamond necklace and earrings!

V&A Museum

Next we walked across the street to the Natural History Museum.  It is filled with dinosaurs and other ancient animals, insects, minerals, you name it.  We really loved seeing all the dinosaur bones and the skeleton of the humongous Blue Whale.  This museum also has some impressive gems in ‘the vault’.  The building architecture itself is a marvel to visualize.  We liked the museum, but it is really targets a family with younger children.  There are a lot of interactive design features that are great if traveling with your children, but since my younger 2 were at home, we didn’t spend as much time going through everything.

There are many museums to see in London.  Most have free admission, but ask for donations throughout the museums.  If you can, donate!  These really are wonderful treasures to be able to see.

grand entry

Outside the museum

After the museum, we rested our weary feet for a bit and got dressed and spiffed up to go to see Wicked, the musical.  We minded the gap and hopped the tube to Victoria Station.  We ate at an Italian restaurant called Prezzo and walked to the Victoria Apollo Theatre to see the show.  It is an older theatre, but grand to say the least.  Most everything is decorated with a greenish hue, fitting with the theme of the play.  The play was wonderful.  It was a very creative twist on the Wizard of Oz.  We really had a great time.  We bought souveniers at the close of the show, because we haven’t done enough shopping, and went back home for the night.

The cost of the show varies, but we got the 4 0 lb tickets.  There are more expensive and less expesive, but we had really good seats.  You can also consume beverages of the alcoholic variety in the theatre.

Victoria Station

???

Wicked

Anyhow, we started today our finding our was to the British Museum of History.  What a grand building!  There is a ton of history in the museum dating back to as early as 4000 B.C.  We started looking at all the Egyptian artifacts including texts, statues and even mummies, real mummies-no misconceptions there!  One of the mummies exhibited was named Cleopatra.  They have done lots of study and imaging on the mummies with x-ray and CT scanning, and found that she died at age 17.  Now, I don’t know if she is the Cleopatra, but I did read somewhere that girls were considered grown at 7 and were married off by 12, so you never know!

Cleopatra Mummy??

Egyptian Statue

They also had significant Greek and Roman artifacts.  They actually have significant pieces of the Parthenon.  In the Greek section was an interesting pamphlet that documented that the Greeks have requested their artifacts back, but England found them and were given them some 300 years ago and they aren’t giving them back-period.  They also had the letter documenting the gift as part of the exhibit.  Finders keepers!

Crystal Skull

Mummified Cat

Greek Artifacts

This is a Crystal Skull also located in the museum .  Can you say Indiana Jones?  We looked at all the artifacts

throughout the museum.

 It can be confusing because it is so big and crowded.  Easy to miss things.  Just as we were about to leave, we found an older section of the museum with more artifacts and tons of books.  It was an incredible room!  Beautiful wooden floors and cabinets, more sculptures and bust of famous people throughout time.

Aphrodite

When we finished at the museum, we popped over to the nearest Starbuck’s (located on every block) and got something warm to drink.  We then took the tube over to Kensington Gardens.  We walked around the Gardens and saw Kensington Palace.  It isn’t what I’d imagined, but the gardens were really pretty and the Palace was big!  We wandered around the park and found more fountains and a Peter Pan sculpture.  We also found the Princess Diana Memorial Playground.  We wanted to go in, but sadly, it is only for children to play in.  Good for them for doing that.

Kensington Palace

Peter Pan Statue

That particular time of the day it was a little bit rainy, so we left the park and went to a pub across the street called The Black Lion.  It had been there since the 1700′s.  We ordered some chips and tried the Pim’s for a drink this time.  Pim’s is an Enlish liquor that I hadn’t heard of or tried before, so why not?  It was mixed with lemonade and was bloody good.  So, I had another with pomegranate juice the next time.  Hey-we were on vacation!

Jessie and Peter Pan

At the pub we met a lovely couple from Manchester who had come down for ‘lunch with the Queen’.  We thought they were joking, but they weren’t.  They literally did have lunch at Buckingham Palace with the royals as part of a function for her employment.  They talked to us about living in the U.K. and we found that all things are very similar in terms of the government and recession etc.  They were really fun to talk to and learn from!

Black Lion Pub

In our pub travels, we did learn that each one has it’s own character on the inside, but the outside is easily recognized and the menus are all the same, for the most part.  Families can eat in them and they are pretty mellow.  We didn’t quite make it to the all nighter pubs-but probably should have! Cameron Diaz and Jude Law were spotted at one really close to our hotel!

Pod on London Eye

7/20/09

We got up early today and booked it to get tickets to the London Eye and the London Dungeons.  We arrived at the Eye at approximately 1000 and had absolutely no wait!  We hopped right on.  The revolution around (the ride) is about 30 minutes long and you get to see spectacular views of the city.  The pods are roomy and they don’t overcrowd them so everyone can see the views.  If you didn’t know what the London Eye is, it is a giant ferris wheel of sorts with pods instead of seats to ride in.  The pods can accomodate more bodies than a regular ferris wheel.  This one is also much larger in size!!  I believe is was built for the millenium celebration-but don’t quote me on that.

Roger on the Eye

After disembarking from the London Eye, we walked across the Hungerford Bridge.  It looks alot like the bridge the Deatheaters blow apart in Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince.  Next, we popped over to the London Dungeons.  We had to stand in line for about 45 minutes before getting in, but it wasn’t too bad.  I don’t know what most people expect of the Dungeons, but I was expecting more of a historical account

Jessie from the Eye

of torture/surgery /imprisonment of London  in earlier times.  I actually saw an ad regarding surgery in the 1700′s and thought I might catch a glimpse of John Hunter’s surgical and anatomy experiments and models–but it is actually a amusement type of attraction.  Even though is wasn’t what I expected, it was fun.  It has some historical facts about some strange murderers from London’s past and includes 2 amusement rides.  The best one was the free fall drop simulating a ‘hanging’ at the end of the tour.  What fun!  As with all good amusement rides, they snap an awful picture of you right at the scariest moment, and ours was a winner, so we had to buy it.  Helpful tip: we purchased the London Eye and Dungeon ticket together and got a discount on the price £33 each for adults.  I wouldn’t bring small children to the Dungeons–too scary for them, but over 10 is probably okay.  Also, keep in mind that the two are in totally different locations, so you will have to figure out how to get from one to the other.

London Dungeons

View from London Eye

Next we walked over Tower Bridge and went to the Tower of London.  I have always thought this was just a tower, but in fact, it is a medieval castle built in 1200ish (if I am remembering correctly) by William the Conquerer.  There are several tower(s) in the Tower of London.  We walked through all that we were allowed to.  It is quite a tour with many spiral stairs involved, some  probably left over from the medieval period.  Hold on tight to the rail, because you wouldn’t want to trip and fall.  The White Tower housed a fascinating exhibit of the armories of Henry the VIII, called ‘Dressed to Kill’.  There is a lot to see in this exhibit.  We were unable to see the crown jewels because the line was too long and we didn’t have enough time.  We did, however, climb through the Bloody Tower, where several famous English residents were imprisoned and killed, most famously during Henry VIII’s reign.  Funny how they didn’t mention that at all in the tour.  Both Ann Bolelyn and Catherine Howard were beheaded there!  The tour quoted the Tower’s most famous prisoners were the young princes, sons of Edward IV, Edward V and Richard.  Supposedly their Uncle Richard had them imprisoned at 13 and 10 years old because Edward was next in line to the throne.  Guess what?? They disappeared shortly after their sweet Uncle had them declared illigitimate– and he just so happened to become the next King.  Funny how that all works.  Later, when demolishing and rebuilding, the skeletons of two children were found under the building and were believed to be the princes.  They have been reburied at Westminster Abbey.  All this is very interesting, but I still found it funny there was no mention of the Wives and what happened to them.  Oh I forgot to mention that Henry VIII was supposedly a ‘dutiful’ husband.  HA!!!  He married multiple times to meet his needs, philandered when he wanted (as I’m pretty sure most Kings did) and disposed of wives at will!  In any case, all were very informative and incredible to see.

Hungerford Bridge

Tower Bridge

After the Tower of London we got the Tube back to our hotel and  picked up some snacks at the Waitrose, a grocery/take away store accross from the hotel.  I highly recommend the Cadbury Dairy Milk Chocolate bar.  It was fabulous!  Later we went to dinner at an Indian Dehli Brassiere restaurant.  It was tasty and they gave us a 20% off card for our next visit.  Way Cool!

Tower of London

View of the White Tower

Today we rode the hop on/hop off Big Bus tour.  It was only £25 each and you can visit any of the sites from the bus and catch another one when you are ready to go on to the next stop, or you can just keep riding.  If you can get an upper deck seat, you can see the sights much better–but beware of the sudden downpours!  The nice thing is that the bus provides you with a plastic rain jacket if you happen to forget your umbrella!

Remember your jumper!

We rode all around several areas of London.  We got off at Parliament Square, saw Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, and the London Eye.  We walked around and got ideas and ticket pricing for the Eye.  We also stopped at Buckingham Palace.  Everything about the palace looks amazingbut I wanted to view the Queen’s Apartments, and they aren’t available until after we leave.  Bummer.  The guards at the palace were not the traditional guards at the time we were there, but ones with big guns!!  If you want to see the changing of the guard, it occurs at 1130 daily.  It was past that time for us, so we plan to return another day.

London Eye

The  Bus tour is worth the money to view all the sites.  They also narrate along the way about all the little places along the route not everyone would notice otherwise.  There is just so much to see and so little time!  This does, however, allow you to plan what you do want to spend more time visiting during your vacation.

Self portrait in front of Parliament and Big Ben

Big Ben

After the bus tour, we travelled to Picadilly Circus area and ate dinner at a traditional Pub.  We ate traditional pub fare–fish and chips of course– and each had a beer-Jess is legal here.  Roger did get a Guiness and Jess and I got a hard cider type drink.  All I can say is I am really glad I didn’t get a Guiness myself!  Not being  a beer person, you will just have to see the picture of me tasting the beer.  That is why I  drink wine!

Guiness and Jess

Guiness and Lisa

*Tip for traveling on the Underground: buy a 7 day Oyster Pass to get around.  It was £28.80 including a £3 deposit on the card which will be returned when we return the card.  You can purchase them from any ticket office.  That cost will cover you for the ‘Zone 1′ areas–which include all the major stops around town.

Another interesting factoid we learned on the trip was that London is actually the Business area located in the downtown area.  The City of London has it’s own Lord Mayor.  The rest of the immediate area the rest of us Yanks know as London is actually the city of Westminster, including all the royal sections of the city.  What we consider suburbs are called bouroughs in England.  For example, we stayed in the Royal Bourough of Kensington and Chelsea.

Leaving for London today!  Haven’t posted a blog for a long time.  Meant to blog our Disney vacation and have yet to blog the Wine Country vacation as well, but who has the time?  I could use a secretary!

We flew to Chicago O’Hare and on to London on a Red eye via United Airlines.  I don’t have any complaints per se; there were no delays and the service was fine, but I have to say that if I compare it to my flight to Spain last year, NWA/KLM seems like a better international flight service.  Why do you say?  Well, the NWA staff was a little friendlier, but they also walked around and offerred water or tea or lemonade all night long to drink if you happened to be awake.  We had to get up and ask on United.  The movie service was better as well.  Continuous ‘pick your own’ movies, tv, and games on NWA, but only one at a time on United.  I don’t know, it seems we pay a hefty price to fly anymore, and we shouldn’t have to pay more for better service.  On the positive side, we didn’t have to pay for checking luggage (but that is only for international now)!

We arrived in London Heathrow about 1100 on Saturday the 18th and made it quickly and safely through customs.  We took the tube to our hotel.  It took about 40 minutes, but it was only £4.  There is a train option from the airport as well, but it was more expensive and we would have had to take a cab or tube from the station the train stopped at.  The Gloucester (pronounced Gloster) tube dropped us off around the corner from our hotel, the Crown Plaza on Cromwell Rd, Kensington (formerly a Holiday Inn).  We were pleasantly surprised with our room.  The hotel is very nice.  2 good size double beds, a big screen TV and A/C (a rare commodity last summer)!

I could live here!

We got directions from the concierge and headed off to the Portobello Road open market-located in Notting Hill–yes the one from the movie!   It was amazing!  Tons of antiques, jewelry, knick knacks, souveniers–you name it.  We also sampled some local fare as we were walking.  Roger found a really good Spring Roll and I got a great coffee (imagine that), from a local coffee shop.  Jess tried a cola lite and wasn’t too impressed with the different flavor.  There was also tons of restaurants, fruit and vegetable stands, fresh fish stands and fun things to look at.

Notting Hill

Glouster Station

When we finished at the market, we attempted a walk through Harrods.  It was crazy!!! Really, really crowded.  Almost no walking room.  Some sort of sale was taking place, but we didn’t have the patience for it at the time and left pretty quickly.  We were hungry and headed across the street to Harrod’s2.  We ate at the Lebanese counter.  It was good, but not the greatest service.  You could have eaten appetizer type food only from the conveyor belt of chow, but we wanted some wraps and it took a while to get them.  Oh well!

After dinner we walked back to the hotel.  We passed the Natural History Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum.  Both have free admission and we plan to see them later this wk.  They look really huge from the outside.  We crashed at 2000 because we were so tired.  Guess what happens when you go to bed too soon?  You wake up at MN and stay away until about 0500 then fall back asleep!!!  UGH

BTW–I plan to add pics later, but don’t have my cable to my camera with me!

After getting my bearings, palms to the left, right, behind and forward and not a map with a compass direction in sight, I headed for the Tower of St. Mary’s Basilica (below), where I was promised a great view of the palms. Started in 1673, the basilica represents the fourth religious building to be located on this site. Of note (again, think bar bet or Jeopardy!), this basilica is the ONLY temple in the Catholic realm which is allowed to perform a play (the other UNESCO World Heritage designee) within its walls. Granted this privilege by Pope Urban VIII in 1632, the religious drama (were you expecting “Wicked” or “Rent”?) “Elche Mystery Play” continues to this day – - it’s a production worthy of Las Vegas, with angels appearing in “aerial devices” and a pit known as the “tomb”.

The Tower roof is reached via a tight spiraling staircase. Exactly 167 steps (yes, I counted) plus three more to the metal observation platform, I was treated to, well, a lot of palm trees. And, a self-portrait opportunity (yes, it was bright and 38 degrees celcius).

After enjoying the tower views and getting a better idea of the town’s layout, I visited several of the gardens as well as the river-bed park.

Along the way, I discovered that Elche has more talented taggers (below) than Alicante.

Signs pointing the way to Burger King outnumbered directions to the Rock of Ifach 6 to 1. Once I hit the Burger King, I used my finely tuned bat-sense of direction and followed the biggest road going towards the park.  Walking in the man-made canyons of Calpe’s vacation towers, the Rock of Ifach wasn’t available as a point of reference. Along the way I found this cool piece of artwork (below).

After an hour walking, I arrived at the Penon de Ifach (Rock of Ifach), the largest rock in the Mediterranean. I realized I had a lot more climbing to do before I reached the summit. Referred to as the Northern Rock by the Phoenicians (Gibraltar is the Southern Rock), this rock looms 332m over the Mediterranean. The first part of the trail meanders pleasantly through low pines, carnations, and Robertonian orchids.

 After about twenty minutes, I reached the tunnel (about 30m) leading to the other side of the rock. The dark tunnel provided a welcome break from the sun.

 After exiting the tunnel, the trail becomes more primative and dangerous. (There’s several signs along the way that tell you just this.) A few places have ropes tied to anchors in the rockface to steady yourself as you cross a stretch with a nearby drop to the ocean below. I divided my attention between where I was placing my next step, the vertical drop to my left, and the frayed rope which looked like it last saw action in the rigging of a Spanish galleon. The trail eventually forks: one trail going to a guardhouse lookout and the other zigzagging to the summit. The trail reminded me a lot of hiking in the Sawtooths of Idaho, except for the squaking seagulls and the dull thrum of powerboats in the distance. The gentleman who strode by me wearing nothing but a black speedo and flip flops was another clue I was hiking in Europe. The upper trail is steep, mostly obvious, with several rock scrambles. Occasionally, I gingerly crossed a section with a long drop and quick stop facing me on one side. By the time I reached the summit, about high noon, I was sweating like a fifth-round draft pick at rookie camp. After congratulatory self-portraits, I enjoyed some fresh cherries I picked up at the Central Mercado before leaving.

 The views in all directions were spectacular. In the photo above, you can get a feel for the height of the rock as well as how far the tram station is from the park. (Find the clouds over the far peak, then immediately in front and to the right of that peak is a long, flat outcropping of rocks with green below it. When the white buildings begin, that’s where the tram lets you off.) The way down took me about as long as it took to reach the summit (about an hour). Looking like polished bone, the granite is slick from years (centuries) of foot traffic. Momentum, gravity, and granite wanted me to take the quick way down, while occasionally trying to keep one of my Salomon trail shoes. I took the 10 minute stroll down the other branch in the trail and out to the guardhouse, which was actually a rock with a bunch of seagull crap on it. The trail was mostly flat and shaded by pines, so that was a plus. 

On my way back to the tram, I took the seafront promenade. Just off the promenade are the partially submerged ruins of of an ancient fish salting factory from Roman times. Clear green water sloshed back and forth across the ruins. Very cool. I thought about snapping a few photos, but there also happened to be several topless women swimming among the ruins. Not wanting to seem like a perv, I continued walking, eventually cutting back to the main road I had walked down in the morning. You know darn well that I stopped at the Burger King and ordered a wonderfully cool cola light grande. And, then, I ordered another one, while I rested my tired toes.