More touring in London
Aug. 14th, 2005 10:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
readsalotI'm home now, and trying to remember where I've been. Let's see...
We got to London late on Tuesday afternoon. I'd misplaced my dramamime, and ended up feeling really sick for the last hour or so of the train ride, and therefore wanted to take a taxi to our new hotel rather than taking the tube to Victoria and walking. It might have made more sense to just sit in a cafe or something for a whle and then take the tube, considering that the taxi was very expensive, and slow (it being the beginning of evening rush hour), and couldn't take us all the way to the hotel anyway because that street happened to be in the middle of being repaved, argh, so he drove way around the block and ended up dropping us off a couple of long blocks from where we really needed to be. Oh well.
Before we left on the trip,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
merrylg did vast amounts of research and found us a very nice place that had two bedrooms, one bathroom, a living room, and a kitchen, and was also about 3 blocks from the Paddington underground station. However, it was also a bit on the expensive side. When we decided to come back to London after Interaction, she really wanted to come back there, as it had been quite comfortable, but aleph_1 and I were hoping to spend a bit less. The B&B we'd found at lastminute.com was noticeably cheaper; it was located about 6 blocks from Victoria station. We figured it would be small, but we were willing to accept that, and we hadn't really had much use for the kitchen, though having a refrigerator had been convenient, and having the living room where we could hang out and talk about what we wanted to do the next day had been useful. (Both places included breakfast, but the first place's was sufficiently mediocre that none of us wanted to try it more than once.)
I'll go into more detail later, maybe, but the rooms were very small--big enough for a bed and not much else, and with the smallest bathroom I've ever been in. The sink and toilet part was about the same size as an airplane bathroom, and the width of the shower was the same as the distance between my elbow and finger-tip.
However, I hadn't been expecting much more, and we weren't planning to spend a lot of time in the hotel, so all in all, I wasn't too disturbed. The road work was possibly more annoying--it caused a lot of noise and bad smells throughout the day, and closed a bus stop that would otherwise have been very convenient.
I also liked the location of this place more than the previous one, as the area was much livelier and contained many restaurants and cafes, a nice (though slightly pricey) intenet cafe, and even a decent-sized market.
merrylg really wanted to see at least one play while she was in London, so after getting checked in, we made our way to the discount ticket booth in Leicester Square, where we found tickets to that evening's performance of H.M.S. Pinafore in the open-air theatre at Regent's Park. My guidebook claimed that there was good food available there, so we made our way to the park, which was lovely, and headed for the theatre. merrylg and aleph_1 found take-away food at a cafe, but there was nothing I liked, so I'd become resigned to no dinner, and then we found that the theatre had its own little restaurant, with food that I did like (I had a piece of grilled chicken that came with my choice of several different cold salads, all of which were quite good.) They also had a full bar, though I didn't want any alcohol for fear that I'd fall asleep during the play. Our seats were in the third-to-last row, and quite comfortable, though I wasn't really happy about the lack of railings on the steps. We had a great view, and the sound was quite clear, and the performance was lively and fun. I'm now interested in seeing the play again, because apparently this was a new version, so I'd like to know what was changed.
When the play was over, we had to find our way home, which was harder than we'd expected, because there were almost no street lights, we came out a different way than we'd gone in, and we were also heading for a different Underground station that we thought would be closer than the one we'd come in by. However, there were many other people finding their way out, so following the crowds turned out to be an effective solution.
Apparently I picked a good time to visit St. Paul's. I get there first thing in the morning, and there aren't too many people around, so I get to wander slowly and look at things and listen to the audio tour. The cathedral is currently in the middle of a restoration project. Right now, that means that there's scaffolding around a lot of the outside, and some sections of the crypts are closed, but the interior of the ground floor is mostly open, and already restored, and, well, stunningly beautiful. The tour starts at the western doors, where they left one section of the wall unrestored so that you could see just how grimy it was (very) before they cleaned it. Everything is gorgeous and impressive. Next time, I think I'd like to get the atheist's version of the tour, though, and maybe some more architectural information rather than detailed explanations of the theology behind the paintings. Don't know how I'd request that, though. And it's cool that John Donne's statue survived the Great Fire intact, apparently because it's essentially a column with no extra bits sticking out. (It's based on a portrait he had done of himself in a shroud.)
Most of the monuments on the first floor are of military leaders. The one for the Duke of Wellington is astonishing--it's just huge. Down in the crypt, the first few monuments I found were for the people who built the cathedral, which I really liked, because they deserve notice. (Not just the memorial for Christopher Wren, the architect, but also some for various engineers and builders, whose names I've forgotten because I didn't write them down. Argh.
I then walked to the Museum of London, where I had a really disappointing lunch in the cafe (surprising, because all of the museum food I'd had up until then had been tasty), and then spent many hours looking through the exhibits. "London before London", the exhibit about prehistoric settlements in the area, had some nice bits, but far too many pseudo-historical quotes on big plaques by poets being fanciful. I don't mind that sort of thing if I'm reading a historical novel, but I don't look for it in museums, where I want fact.
There were also nice displays about the Roman period and the Stuart period. Unfortunately, everything in between those two periods (which contain most of the history that I'm interested in) was closed for renovation. The rest of the museum had some interesting bits, but by then my feet hurt enough that I was sitting down a lot, and the benches were invariably too far from the exhibits for me to be able to read anything while sitting.
We'd decided to spend the next day visiting Greenwhich, which has many interesting things to see but is a little far away for quick trips. Taking the train there turned out to be very easy. Pretty much the first thing we found when was the passage underneath the Thames, which looked interesting but also like it had more stairs than I wanted to deal with. We visited the Cutty Sark, which is a restored clipper ship. The information panels all had kiddy versions at the bottom that were amusing in their differences from the originals, and had questions like, "How many cups of tea does your family drink every day?". I like the panel that talked about the building of the ship--apparently the builders went bankrupt after completion because their bid was too low, and they weren't able to add any charges. Perhaps everyone who starts a software consulting firm should come here first.
There was an Information building that had lots of tourist pamphlets (not terribly useful), toilets (very useful), and adjoined the Samuel Pepys House, which mostly consisted of a cafe and gift shop. There was a wonderful timeline of English history and events connected to Greenwich hanging from the ceiling there. I would happily have bought a replica of it, but that wasn't one of the things they were selling.
By now it was time for lunch, so we found a nice-looking and apparently smoke-free Italian restaurant.aleph_1 wasn't hungry, so he scouted around, found a cafe, and waited there for merrylg and I. He then told us where the local "market" (I'd call it a flea market) was. I ran out of interest sooner than either of them, and let them know that I was taking off for the Maritime museum. We ended up spending most of the day at similar places, but didn't bother to stick too close together since we'd decided we could just meet up at the pier at 5:30 to get a boat trip back to London.
The Maritime museum was interesting. Outside there were a bunch of anchors on display, with plaques explaining what kind of ships had used them and various features. The ones for the modern ships are much bigger than the older ones, and radically different in design--they're made to kind of fold up and slide inside the hull. I also noticed a kind of tram standing around, and read the signs to find that it went between the Maritime museum and the Royal Observatory. Hmm. Seeing that made me reconsider walking to the Observatory--after all, if it was a long enough trip that some people wanted a tram, then maybe I did too. Especially because my legs and feet were hurting pretty much constantly now--obviously I should have gotten into better walking shape before the trip. I noted the schedule, and went inside.
There were two queues: one for free tickets, and one for pay tickets. Odd. Well, there's a special exhibit on Nelson and Napoleon, and they want you to pay for that. I wasn't sure I'd have time to see that exhibit, so I went to the free line. Where I actually had to step up to a counter, tell the worker that I wanted a free ticket, and have him ring it up. Why did they do that? I don't think there was anything else for sale there, though maybe the guidebooks? Really, really weird. Maybe they're trying to make it really obvious that they're begging for money, and if people don't contribute enough, they'll be forced to charge?
It's a nice museum. I particularly liked the gallery on being a passenger, which goes through the last couple of centuries of people taking huge ocean liners to go places and to be tourists. Apparently the big liners like the Titanic made more money on the steerage passengers (because there were so many of them, presumably) than on the people traveling first class (who paid a lot, but expected a lot of amenities and service in return).
Eventually I decided that I needed to head to the Observatory, so I indeed didn't have enough time to go to the special (non-free) exhibit. I got on the tram, which started on a very roundabout (because it needed a wide paved surface) trip through parking lots, and then got my first glimpse of the Observatory. I hadn't realized that it was at the top of a noticeable hill, though that seems obvious in retrospect, so I was very happy indeed that I'd decided to take the tram, even though they were asking for a £1 donation. The tram dropped me off in front of a carousel and tearoom, and I wandered confusedly for a while until I found the path to the Observatory. It was hard to find, partly because of the big leafy trees obscuring things, and partly because they're currently doing a lot of construction on a new exhibit area or something, so there are big blockages and walls obstructing the way. When I got to the right place, there was a sign directing me to the queue for free tickets. Sigh. This is apparently run by the same group as the Maritime Museum, but it's an even more annoying setup--where there I was able to get my free ticket and then go through, here I have to get in a line, get my free ticket, and then go over to a gate to show my ticket and be let in. Being a gate guard there must be a really bad job, as you have to keep dealing with the irate people who want to know why they have to go stand in line for a free ticket.
Right inside the gate is a courtyard with a lot of people standing around in each other's way taking pictures. Huh? Oh, this is where the official Prime Meridian is located. There's a metal strip for it set into the ground, and everyone's taking pictures of it, and themselves standing on it, and there's also an odd-looking sculpture (which I later find out is actually an astronomical instrument, but it's very decorative) situated at the end of the line, and people are taking pictures there. I think I manage to walk through without being in anyone's picture, and head into the house. The first thing that strikes me in there is that it's warm, and full of people, and full of the odor of lots of people being warm. Never before have I so understood why museums need air-conditioning. Anyway, there are many fascinating exhibits about the first Royal Astonomer, John Flamsteed, who seems to have been the kind of perfectionist nerd who would have fit right in at MIT (something about his data being published before he wanted it to be, so he managed to buy 300 of the 400 copies that were printed and burned them). There's also a great exhibit about the longitude problem, and John Harrison, who solved it.
I'd been thinking about going to the Fan Museum, but I was concerned about how long it would take me to get down the hill and back to the pier, so I punted and walked back. Turned out I had plenty of time, so I bought a cherry pie in a famous pie shop, and had some coffee, and then went to the pier. We eventually figured out which boat would have a guide (because part of the reason for taking a boat back to London was to get some descriptions of what we'd be seeing), and got our tickets. Eventually we were able to get onto our boat, and found nice seats on the upper deck. The sky was looking a bit threatening, and there was a cold breeze, but the view made up for that. For about the first half of the trip there was no narration, so we discussed the buildings we were seeing and speculated about their uses. Starting around Tower Hill, someone who said that he wasn't a professional guide, just a member of the ship's crew, started talking about the things we were passing, and he was informative and quite funny. (He said that the Millenium Bridge used to be known as the "wibbly wobbly bridge".) He did ask for a tip at the end (because he wasn't a real guide), and we were happy to provide one. Kind of annoying that the company seems to lie about their tourism stuff, though.
The last stop was near Westminster, so we decided to look for a place to eat that would be non-smoking, and almost immediately found a pub that had a non-smoking restaurant! Yay! They had very nice food (I had roast beef with various vegetables and yorkshire pudding, and a really wonderful ginger cake for dessert), and good beer, and it was all great until they started closing down around the time we were finishing up (which seemed early, but oh well), and one of the workers decided to stand in the door to the kitchen and smoke. So, we paid and headed out.
That night, we found out about the British Air strike. Fortunately, we were traveling on Virgin Atlantic, and it looked like we'd be unaffected.
merrylg and I both wanted to see Shakespere's Globe, which is a reconstruction of the original theater. It's good that we have maps and a guidebook, because it's not terribly close to any tube stop. We got off at Southwark, which seemed like the closest from the maps, and the signs there told us to follow the orange lampposts until we got to Tate Modern, where there'd be more directions. When we got outside, we found that there was indeed a line of lampposts, painted orange, with Tate Modern on them in white--presumably the museum provided money to have that done, which seems like a nice way of both maintaining lampposts and providing directions. We followed that line until we got to a point on my map where it made sense to diverge, and not long afterward, found the Globe's box office. merrylg correctly pointed out to me that we wanted the Exhibition, not the box office, so we followed more signs and eventually got to the right place, which was a building that houses a small exhibition about the history of the Globe, and local theater in general, and how this one was rebuilt. We also went on a guided tour, led by an actor who did an excellent job.
The new Globe was built in a way that's as authentic as could possibly be managed. All of wood was hand-carved, and it's all joined with pegs and woodwork (I don't know that much about carpentry). Elizabethans used to put cow hair in their plaster to strenghten it, but they couldn't find any long-haired cows, so they used goat hair. The thatched roof (the first one in London since the Great Fire) has a sprinkler system all over it (and they know it works because during a performance of The Merchant of Venice, incense being burned on stage triggered it.) The galleries and stage are covered by the roof, but not the pit where the groundlings stand, so if it rains, they just get wet. Because of that, plays are only performed during the warmer months; this year, for example, the season goes from May 6 to October 2. (Apparently someone once asked their guide if the building was air-conditioned.) The seating is mostly pine benches (the theater will rent seat cushions and seat "backs" during a performance), and it's ok to bring food and eat it there (and they also sell food.) Apparently the wood and plaster in the construction make the theater very resonant, and it's not at all hard for an actor to make herself heard from the stage.
When the tour ended, I went back in and finished going through the exhibits. They also had a Guy Fawkes exhibit that was apparently meant to raise questions about whether the original investigation was aimed at finding or covering up the truth, but to me it didn't seem very well organized or designed.
When I left I thought about eating at their restaurant, but it looked a bit more expensive than I wanted to deal with, so I checked my guidebook and found out that a place we'd passed on our way there was a well-regarded Turkish restaurant. That sounded interesting, so I went there and had a lunch special that got me a basket of breads, some olives, a very tasty red lentil soup, and a delicous chicken pide (a crusty thing filled with chicken, spices, and cheese.) The Millenium Bridge was right nearby, so I walked over that (fortunately it doesn't wobble any more.) It's a very short bridge, and very pretty, and there's a nice view from the center. I then made my way to a tube station, and headed for Picadilly Circus, because I wanted to visit Fortnum & Mason. The Picadilly area was very very crowded; I don't know how much of that was normal, and how much was extra because of the long queues at the travel agents filled with people presumably trying to rebook their flights because of the British Air strike.
Right before I got to Fortnum & Mason, I found Hatchard's, an old bookstore that's mentioned in various Regency novels. I went in there and browsed, but didn't see anything I wanted offhand, and was a bit too tired to spend a lot of time there. Also, I'd been trying hard not to buy a lot, because my suitcase was already heavier than I was really happy with.
Fortnum & Mason's food hall was just as amazing as I'd heard--aisles and aisles of wonderful and exotic-looking foods. I browsed a bit, then had wonderful scones with strawberry jam and clotted cream, and delicious tea, and then browsed some more, and eventually bought myself some glaceed fruit. (Again, lots of things looked wonderful, but very heavy. Must plan better for next time.)
That pretty much did me in for the day. I got back to the room fairly early, and collapsed for a while, then revived myself enough to go to Sainsbury's to pick up some drinks for the airplane (including a liter of a really yummy fruit smoothie from a company called Innocent Drinks that not only makes delicious drinks, but has really silly stuff on their labels.)
We had an uneventful flight back. Thanks tomerrylg's online check-in on Saturday morning, we had seats all together on one side of the plane. I'm not sure if those seats were just inherently wider than the ones in the center block, or it was that I had a few inches of extra space from being next to the window, or if it was the extra foot space from not having whatever it was attached to the seat supports in the center block that was always in our way, but I was much more comfortable on the way over. Also, there was no child kicking my seat back the entire time, and I there were either fewer crying children on that flight or they were further away and I couldn't hear them. I actually managed to doze a little bit, and read, and the food was plentiful and good. There were no real holdups at the airport when we left, and it was all great, except for the shock of going from London (where the temperature was around 24 at the highest) to Boston where it was 34.
We got to London late on Tuesday afternoon. I'd misplaced my dramamime, and ended up feeling really sick for the last hour or so of the train ride, and therefore wanted to take a taxi to our new hotel rather than taking the tube to Victoria and walking. It might have made more sense to just sit in a cafe or something for a whle and then take the tube, considering that the taxi was very expensive, and slow (it being the beginning of evening rush hour), and couldn't take us all the way to the hotel anyway because that street happened to be in the middle of being repaved, argh, so he drove way around the block and ended up dropping us off a couple of long blocks from where we really needed to be. Oh well.
Before we left on the trip,
merrylg did vast amounts of research and found us a very nice place that had two bedrooms, one bathroom, a living room, and a kitchen, and was also about 3 blocks from the Paddington underground station. However, it was also a bit on the expensive side. When we decided to come back to London after Interaction, she really wanted to come back there, as it had been quite comfortable, but aleph_1 and I were hoping to spend a bit less. The B&B we'd found at lastminute.com was noticeably cheaper; it was located about 6 blocks from Victoria station. We figured it would be small, but we were willing to accept that, and we hadn't really had much use for the kitchen, though having a refrigerator had been convenient, and having the living room where we could hang out and talk about what we wanted to do the next day had been useful. (Both places included breakfast, but the first place's was sufficiently mediocre that none of us wanted to try it more than once.) I'll go into more detail later, maybe, but the rooms were very small--big enough for a bed and not much else, and with the smallest bathroom I've ever been in. The sink and toilet part was about the same size as an airplane bathroom, and the width of the shower was the same as the distance between my elbow and finger-tip.
However, I hadn't been expecting much more, and we weren't planning to spend a lot of time in the hotel, so all in all, I wasn't too disturbed. The road work was possibly more annoying--it caused a lot of noise and bad smells throughout the day, and closed a bus stop that would otherwise have been very convenient.
I also liked the location of this place more than the previous one, as the area was much livelier and contained many restaurants and cafes, a nice (though slightly pricey) intenet cafe, and even a decent-sized market.
merrylg really wanted to see at least one play while she was in London, so after getting checked in, we made our way to the discount ticket booth in Leicester Square, where we found tickets to that evening's performance of H.M.S. Pinafore in the open-air theatre at Regent's Park. My guidebook claimed that there was good food available there, so we made our way to the park, which was lovely, and headed for the theatre. merrylg and aleph_1 found take-away food at a cafe, but there was nothing I liked, so I'd become resigned to no dinner, and then we found that the theatre had its own little restaurant, with food that I did like (I had a piece of grilled chicken that came with my choice of several different cold salads, all of which were quite good.) They also had a full bar, though I didn't want any alcohol for fear that I'd fall asleep during the play. Our seats were in the third-to-last row, and quite comfortable, though I wasn't really happy about the lack of railings on the steps. We had a great view, and the sound was quite clear, and the performance was lively and fun. I'm now interested in seeing the play again, because apparently this was a new version, so I'd like to know what was changed. When the play was over, we had to find our way home, which was harder than we'd expected, because there were almost no street lights, we came out a different way than we'd gone in, and we were also heading for a different Underground station that we thought would be closer than the one we'd come in by. However, there were many other people finding their way out, so following the crowds turned out to be an effective solution.
Apparently I picked a good time to visit St. Paul's. I get there first thing in the morning, and there aren't too many people around, so I get to wander slowly and look at things and listen to the audio tour. The cathedral is currently in the middle of a restoration project. Right now, that means that there's scaffolding around a lot of the outside, and some sections of the crypts are closed, but the interior of the ground floor is mostly open, and already restored, and, well, stunningly beautiful. The tour starts at the western doors, where they left one section of the wall unrestored so that you could see just how grimy it was (very) before they cleaned it. Everything is gorgeous and impressive. Next time, I think I'd like to get the atheist's version of the tour, though, and maybe some more architectural information rather than detailed explanations of the theology behind the paintings. Don't know how I'd request that, though. And it's cool that John Donne's statue survived the Great Fire intact, apparently because it's essentially a column with no extra bits sticking out. (It's based on a portrait he had done of himself in a shroud.)
Most of the monuments on the first floor are of military leaders. The one for the Duke of Wellington is astonishing--it's just huge. Down in the crypt, the first few monuments I found were for the people who built the cathedral, which I really liked, because they deserve notice. (Not just the memorial for Christopher Wren, the architect, but also some for various engineers and builders, whose names I've forgotten because I didn't write them down. Argh.
I then walked to the Museum of London, where I had a really disappointing lunch in the cafe (surprising, because all of the museum food I'd had up until then had been tasty), and then spent many hours looking through the exhibits. "London before London", the exhibit about prehistoric settlements in the area, had some nice bits, but far too many pseudo-historical quotes on big plaques by poets being fanciful. I don't mind that sort of thing if I'm reading a historical novel, but I don't look for it in museums, where I want fact.
There were also nice displays about the Roman period and the Stuart period. Unfortunately, everything in between those two periods (which contain most of the history that I'm interested in) was closed for renovation. The rest of the museum had some interesting bits, but by then my feet hurt enough that I was sitting down a lot, and the benches were invariably too far from the exhibits for me to be able to read anything while sitting.
We'd decided to spend the next day visiting Greenwhich, which has many interesting things to see but is a little far away for quick trips. Taking the train there turned out to be very easy. Pretty much the first thing we found when was the passage underneath the Thames, which looked interesting but also like it had more stairs than I wanted to deal with. We visited the Cutty Sark, which is a restored clipper ship. The information panels all had kiddy versions at the bottom that were amusing in their differences from the originals, and had questions like, "How many cups of tea does your family drink every day?". I like the panel that talked about the building of the ship--apparently the builders went bankrupt after completion because their bid was too low, and they weren't able to add any charges. Perhaps everyone who starts a software consulting firm should come here first.
There was an Information building that had lots of tourist pamphlets (not terribly useful), toilets (very useful), and adjoined the Samuel Pepys House, which mostly consisted of a cafe and gift shop. There was a wonderful timeline of English history and events connected to Greenwich hanging from the ceiling there. I would happily have bought a replica of it, but that wasn't one of the things they were selling.
By now it was time for lunch, so we found a nice-looking and apparently smoke-free Italian restaurant.
aleph_1 wasn't hungry, so he scouted around, found a cafe, and waited there for merrylg and I. He then told us where the local "market" (I'd call it a flea market) was. I ran out of interest sooner than either of them, and let them know that I was taking off for the Maritime museum. We ended up spending most of the day at similar places, but didn't bother to stick too close together since we'd decided we could just meet up at the pier at 5:30 to get a boat trip back to London. The Maritime museum was interesting. Outside there were a bunch of anchors on display, with plaques explaining what kind of ships had used them and various features. The ones for the modern ships are much bigger than the older ones, and radically different in design--they're made to kind of fold up and slide inside the hull. I also noticed a kind of tram standing around, and read the signs to find that it went between the Maritime museum and the Royal Observatory. Hmm. Seeing that made me reconsider walking to the Observatory--after all, if it was a long enough trip that some people wanted a tram, then maybe I did too. Especially because my legs and feet were hurting pretty much constantly now--obviously I should have gotten into better walking shape before the trip. I noted the schedule, and went inside.
There were two queues: one for free tickets, and one for pay tickets. Odd. Well, there's a special exhibit on Nelson and Napoleon, and they want you to pay for that. I wasn't sure I'd have time to see that exhibit, so I went to the free line. Where I actually had to step up to a counter, tell the worker that I wanted a free ticket, and have him ring it up. Why did they do that? I don't think there was anything else for sale there, though maybe the guidebooks? Really, really weird. Maybe they're trying to make it really obvious that they're begging for money, and if people don't contribute enough, they'll be forced to charge?
It's a nice museum. I particularly liked the gallery on being a passenger, which goes through the last couple of centuries of people taking huge ocean liners to go places and to be tourists. Apparently the big liners like the Titanic made more money on the steerage passengers (because there were so many of them, presumably) than on the people traveling first class (who paid a lot, but expected a lot of amenities and service in return).
Eventually I decided that I needed to head to the Observatory, so I indeed didn't have enough time to go to the special (non-free) exhibit. I got on the tram, which started on a very roundabout (because it needed a wide paved surface) trip through parking lots, and then got my first glimpse of the Observatory. I hadn't realized that it was at the top of a noticeable hill, though that seems obvious in retrospect, so I was very happy indeed that I'd decided to take the tram, even though they were asking for a £1 donation. The tram dropped me off in front of a carousel and tearoom, and I wandered confusedly for a while until I found the path to the Observatory. It was hard to find, partly because of the big leafy trees obscuring things, and partly because they're currently doing a lot of construction on a new exhibit area or something, so there are big blockages and walls obstructing the way. When I got to the right place, there was a sign directing me to the queue for free tickets. Sigh. This is apparently run by the same group as the Maritime Museum, but it's an even more annoying setup--where there I was able to get my free ticket and then go through, here I have to get in a line, get my free ticket, and then go over to a gate to show my ticket and be let in. Being a gate guard there must be a really bad job, as you have to keep dealing with the irate people who want to know why they have to go stand in line for a free ticket.
Right inside the gate is a courtyard with a lot of people standing around in each other's way taking pictures. Huh? Oh, this is where the official Prime Meridian is located. There's a metal strip for it set into the ground, and everyone's taking pictures of it, and themselves standing on it, and there's also an odd-looking sculpture (which I later find out is actually an astronomical instrument, but it's very decorative) situated at the end of the line, and people are taking pictures there. I think I manage to walk through without being in anyone's picture, and head into the house. The first thing that strikes me in there is that it's warm, and full of people, and full of the odor of lots of people being warm. Never before have I so understood why museums need air-conditioning. Anyway, there are many fascinating exhibits about the first Royal Astonomer, John Flamsteed, who seems to have been the kind of perfectionist nerd who would have fit right in at MIT (something about his data being published before he wanted it to be, so he managed to buy 300 of the 400 copies that were printed and burned them). There's also a great exhibit about the longitude problem, and John Harrison, who solved it.
I'd been thinking about going to the Fan Museum, but I was concerned about how long it would take me to get down the hill and back to the pier, so I punted and walked back. Turned out I had plenty of time, so I bought a cherry pie in a famous pie shop, and had some coffee, and then went to the pier. We eventually figured out which boat would have a guide (because part of the reason for taking a boat back to London was to get some descriptions of what we'd be seeing), and got our tickets. Eventually we were able to get onto our boat, and found nice seats on the upper deck. The sky was looking a bit threatening, and there was a cold breeze, but the view made up for that. For about the first half of the trip there was no narration, so we discussed the buildings we were seeing and speculated about their uses. Starting around Tower Hill, someone who said that he wasn't a professional guide, just a member of the ship's crew, started talking about the things we were passing, and he was informative and quite funny. (He said that the Millenium Bridge used to be known as the "wibbly wobbly bridge".) He did ask for a tip at the end (because he wasn't a real guide), and we were happy to provide one. Kind of annoying that the company seems to lie about their tourism stuff, though.
The last stop was near Westminster, so we decided to look for a place to eat that would be non-smoking, and almost immediately found a pub that had a non-smoking restaurant! Yay! They had very nice food (I had roast beef with various vegetables and yorkshire pudding, and a really wonderful ginger cake for dessert), and good beer, and it was all great until they started closing down around the time we were finishing up (which seemed early, but oh well), and one of the workers decided to stand in the door to the kitchen and smoke. So, we paid and headed out.
That night, we found out about the British Air strike. Fortunately, we were traveling on Virgin Atlantic, and it looked like we'd be unaffected.
merrylg and I both wanted to see Shakespere's Globe, which is a reconstruction of the original theater. It's good that we have maps and a guidebook, because it's not terribly close to any tube stop. We got off at Southwark, which seemed like the closest from the maps, and the signs there told us to follow the orange lampposts until we got to Tate Modern, where there'd be more directions. When we got outside, we found that there was indeed a line of lampposts, painted orange, with Tate Modern on them in white--presumably the museum provided money to have that done, which seems like a nice way of both maintaining lampposts and providing directions. We followed that line until we got to a point on my map where it made sense to diverge, and not long afterward, found the Globe's box office. merrylg correctly pointed out to me that we wanted the Exhibition, not the box office, so we followed more signs and eventually got to the right place, which was a building that houses a small exhibition about the history of the Globe, and local theater in general, and how this one was rebuilt. We also went on a guided tour, led by an actor who did an excellent job. The new Globe was built in a way that's as authentic as could possibly be managed. All of wood was hand-carved, and it's all joined with pegs and woodwork (I don't know that much about carpentry). Elizabethans used to put cow hair in their plaster to strenghten it, but they couldn't find any long-haired cows, so they used goat hair. The thatched roof (the first one in London since the Great Fire) has a sprinkler system all over it (and they know it works because during a performance of The Merchant of Venice, incense being burned on stage triggered it.) The galleries and stage are covered by the roof, but not the pit where the groundlings stand, so if it rains, they just get wet. Because of that, plays are only performed during the warmer months; this year, for example, the season goes from May 6 to October 2. (Apparently someone once asked their guide if the building was air-conditioned.) The seating is mostly pine benches (the theater will rent seat cushions and seat "backs" during a performance), and it's ok to bring food and eat it there (and they also sell food.) Apparently the wood and plaster in the construction make the theater very resonant, and it's not at all hard for an actor to make herself heard from the stage.
When the tour ended, I went back in and finished going through the exhibits. They also had a Guy Fawkes exhibit that was apparently meant to raise questions about whether the original investigation was aimed at finding or covering up the truth, but to me it didn't seem very well organized or designed.
When I left I thought about eating at their restaurant, but it looked a bit more expensive than I wanted to deal with, so I checked my guidebook and found out that a place we'd passed on our way there was a well-regarded Turkish restaurant. That sounded interesting, so I went there and had a lunch special that got me a basket of breads, some olives, a very tasty red lentil soup, and a delicous chicken pide (a crusty thing filled with chicken, spices, and cheese.) The Millenium Bridge was right nearby, so I walked over that (fortunately it doesn't wobble any more.) It's a very short bridge, and very pretty, and there's a nice view from the center. I then made my way to a tube station, and headed for Picadilly Circus, because I wanted to visit Fortnum & Mason. The Picadilly area was very very crowded; I don't know how much of that was normal, and how much was extra because of the long queues at the travel agents filled with people presumably trying to rebook their flights because of the British Air strike.
Right before I got to Fortnum & Mason, I found Hatchard's, an old bookstore that's mentioned in various Regency novels. I went in there and browsed, but didn't see anything I wanted offhand, and was a bit too tired to spend a lot of time there. Also, I'd been trying hard not to buy a lot, because my suitcase was already heavier than I was really happy with.
Fortnum & Mason's food hall was just as amazing as I'd heard--aisles and aisles of wonderful and exotic-looking foods. I browsed a bit, then had wonderful scones with strawberry jam and clotted cream, and delicious tea, and then browsed some more, and eventually bought myself some glaceed fruit. (Again, lots of things looked wonderful, but very heavy. Must plan better for next time.)
That pretty much did me in for the day. I got back to the room fairly early, and collapsed for a while, then revived myself enough to go to Sainsbury's to pick up some drinks for the airplane (including a liter of a really yummy fruit smoothie from a company called Innocent Drinks that not only makes delicious drinks, but has really silly stuff on their labels.)
We had an uneventful flight back. Thanks to
merrylg's online check-in on Saturday morning, we had seats all together on one side of the plane. I'm not sure if those seats were just inherently wider than the ones in the center block, or it was that I had a few inches of extra space from being next to the window, or if it was the extra foot space from not having whatever it was attached to the seat supports in the center block that was always in our way, but I was much more comfortable on the way over. Also, there was no child kicking my seat back the entire time, and I there were either fewer crying children on that flight or they were further away and I couldn't hear them. I actually managed to doze a little bit, and read, and the food was plentiful and good. There were no real holdups at the airport when we left, and it was all great, except for the shock of going from London (where the temperature was around 24 at the highest) to Boston where it was 34. 
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St Paul's
Date: 2005-08-15 05:14 pm (UTC)Re: St Paul's
Date: 2005-08-15 08:22 pm (UTC)