London Trip May 2003

Part II: Thursday - Friday

Fred and Carol went to the Westminster area today and did the touristy things there; Katie and Gail did some museums and the Old Kensington Walk which was good and the Belgravia Pub walk which wasn't. John and I went to Oxford - sort of a nostalgia trip for him since he had spent a year there during college. I love the British rail system. You just wander down to the station, check the board to see the time and the platform and go get on the train! It's about an hour's ride from Paddington to Oxford, through pleasant countryside most of the way. Our first order of business was to stop and buy a warm sweater for John since we guessed wrong about the temperature! The guy we bought the sweater from (very nice sweater by the way) said that in March it had been very hot so people were now getting quite impatient with the cooler weather in May!

We wandered around a bit, looked at some old churches and cemeteries then took a bus up Banbury Road to Summertown which is where he lived when he was there in 1966-67. We had lunch at the Dew Drop Inn where he had logged many hours - studying, of course! We walked north to Davenant Road and then down to the end of it. Lovely old homes, lots of nice landscaping and gardens. The block where he lived has been torn down and they are putting up new flats. However, they are doing a nice job of it - at first I thought they had gutted the insides only because the exterior really matches the existing styles of homes very well.

One of the fun things about any part of Britain are the road signs that you would never see in the US. You will also note that they are now using yards and miles! After the campaign to convert the US to metric fizzled, it seems that Britain has given in and converted to ounces, feet and miles, though they do consistently still use Celsius for temperature. A few interesting signs:

We walked along the Oxford Canal and then over to Wolvercote - an old village just west of Oxford a mile or so. Saw as many gardens today as we did yesterday but without the crowds of people!   We had afternoon tea on the terrace looking over the river at the Trout Inn (left), that was built in 1133. Then we walked over to the ruins of the Godstow Nunnery (right) just behind the inn - nothing there but ruins. Not a tourist attraction - just ruins set in a huge field. Very, very OLD ruins. Wolvercote Commons is a huge area; we saw cows, swans, ducks, dogs, and a pea hen gobbling beans in somebody's garden. This was a nice glimpse of real "country" - a piece of England you won't see in London!

We walked back to Summertown along the canal - lots of houseboats. Some were clearly in transit, others appeared relatively permanent. Many had roof gardens. We left the canal path at a "do it yourself" drawbridge. It stays up, you have to pull a chain to get it down and it's nicely counterbalanced so that when you get across it lifts itself back up! We took a bus back down to central Oxford and visited Blackwell's hunting for a hymn tune which we didn't find. We then took the 6:15 back to Paddington and met up with Fred and Carol who were going for Fish and Chips so we joined them back at the Sawyer's Arms and then "crashed."

Friday morning Katie, Gail and I set off on our own and John, Fred and Carol went to the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew. I was really pretty gardened out and wanted to do the London Eye (which Fred and Carol did already and John was not interested in.) So where did we start - at a garden! :) This one was different though. It's billed as the largest rooftop garden in Europe; it's at the top (6th floor) of an office building at 99 Kensington High St. During their Kensington area walk on Thursday it was closed for a photo shoot, but the guide showed them where to come back the next day. So we did. I'm sure if I watch carefully I will start seeing this in movies as it is quite spectacular. There's the "Spanish Garden" and the "English Garden;" a long "creek" with fish, ducks and flamingos. While we were there, the food guy came along and the wildlife all woke up and enjoyed breakfast. Here's Barb in the Spanish garden (looks more like Mexico than London) and Katie and Gail in the English courtyard. Yes, all on a rooftop in London!

And before we leave gardens to move on to the London Eye, here are a couple of pictures Carol took Friday at the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew. The Pagoda (left) and the Conservatory (right).

After the garden, we headed to the London Eye (to the right). It cost 11 GBP each but there was no wait at all. These are big, football shaped "capsules" that are all glass (or plastic more likely) and they go around the giant ferris-wheel like "eye." But they don't sway and it's very slow. You can stand up and walk around or sit on a nice bench in the middle of the capsule. Takes about half an hour to get all the way around. Of course, you get a great view of all the sights. Even on an overcast day we could see quite a distance. Below, right, you can see Parliament and Big Ben across the Thames; and just behind that on the right is Westminster Abbey. The picture on the left is Barb and Gail inside the capsule (in black and white).

       

We had lunch at the Marriott Hotel Lounge which is in the old City Hall building right across the river from Parliament. Very fancy. We felt a bit like country bumpkins but the staff was quite formal and polite. The rest room was so nicely appointed we took a picture of it! (No, not included here.) Next stop was Holbrook where we met Angela for the "Legal and Illegal London Walk." That was quite interesting - we learned a bit about the legal system of England; the four Inns of Court are like huge law firms. Each barrister must be associated with one of the Inns and each has its own campus with historical buildings and customs. The Inns (clockwise from upper left on the coat of arms at left) are Lincoln's Inn, Middle Temple, Gray's Inn and Inner Temple. We got clever tidbits of history, saw very old buildings, went into the Church at Middle Temple that was dedicated in 1185 (right). (We just don't have any clue about "old" in the US!)

To the left is the Chapel at Lincoln's Inn where John Donne first recited "No Man is an Island;" on the right is the Royal Courts of Justice building. We then had about 45 minutes in the John Soane Museum (on Lincoln Fields Inn Road) before it closed. It was also quite interesting - many of his architectural designs are housed there but also lots of "stuff" he collected. Wish we'd had a bit more time there. We had tickets for "Sexual Perversity in Chicago" (by David Mamet) at the early show (6:30) so we headed over to the theatre district. We grabbed supper at Pret a Manger (London fast food); the other 3 had the same inspiration and came in from their day at Kew as we were finishing up! These were the only theatre tickets we had bought before we left because the show had big name stars (Matthew Perry, Minnie Driver, Hank Azaria and Kelly Reilly) so was selling out fast. All we could get were balcony seats and by the time we got to London it was sold out through the end of May. Good acting. And there were some good lines. But it was rather crude. It was really kind of sad - about classic singles who have no clue how to have a relationship with people of the opposite sex.

British taste in theatre really is different! After we got back home, I heard the end of an interview on Morning Edition. It was really about the play "George Dubya" but Bob Edwards asked about the rest of the London stage - was there anything currently playing in London that could make the jump across the Atlantic? That critic said no - he thought Shakespeare was about all that Americans would be able to swallow from the current offerings!

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