Westminster, the British Museum, the Proms and Home

For Wednesday, September 7th, we had been thinking of taking the London walks tower of London Tour, but everyone says that if you want to see the Crown Jewels, you should arrive when the tower opens, at 9 a.m., not after an 11 a.m. London Walks tour, so we put off visiting the Tower until the next time we’re in London. We definitely wanted to take the London Walks British Museum tour at 2:15, so what could we do in the morning. What we settled on was the “This is London—Flash! Bang! Lightning Highlights Tour.” What this is in reality is a walk through Westminster, from the Houses of Parliament to Trafalgar Square, with a stop at Buckingham Palace for the changing of the guard—except that today there wouldn’t be a full guard-change ceremony, so we would have to settle for the Horse Guards trotting up the street to the Palace.

We took the Tube to Westminster, and there, in the shadow of “Big Ben” (actually the name of the bell in the clock tower, not the tower itself), we met our guide, Fiona, and fellow walkers. It was a pleasant and interesting walk through Royal London.

Afterwards, we had lunch at the cafeteria in the crypt of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, another church (like St. Paul’s and St. Mary-le-Bow) by Christopher Wren, but best known for its world-class chamber orchestra, the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, whose founding music director (and later music director of the Minnesota Orchestra), Sir Neville Marriner, coincidentally, died the morning of the day that I am writing this. This cafeteria is very much a low-budget volunteer operation, to raise money for charity, and the lunch was not nearly as good as the one we had the day before.

We hurried back to Bloomsbury, and at the Russell Square Tube station we met Karen, the guide for our London Walks British Museum tour. Though all the London Walks guides we had were very good, Karen had the most “personality,” and could have persuaded us that a telephone book was the most important artifact in the world. Come to think of it, maybe the Rosetta Stone was an early telephone book Unfortunately, I incorrectly assumed that I wouldn’t be able to take my camera into the museum, so I didn’t bring it.

In two hours, what can you see of what the London Walks website calls, and it may well be correct, “the most important museum on the planet” (their italics)? Not bloody much. But that was understood by everyone. So instead we hit some of the big highlights. First, we got a flavor of the original collection of “curiosities” and how they were displayed when the Museum began, in 1753.

Then we saw the Rosetta Stone, which enabled the translation of Egyptian hieroglyphics, without which we would know much, much less about the ancient Egyptians than we do.

With some preparation, we then visited the room where the Elgin Marbles are displayed. What a spectacular demonstration of the artistic capabilities of Periclean Athens. Then we went upstairs to see the Egyptian mummies. I’ll have to say that ancient Egypt leaves me cold. Actually, I have some sympathy for the American child whose family we met on Santorini in 1998, who had asked her parents “Why are we looking at all these broken buildings?” What I like best in Rome are the (few) medieval churches. Rome’s sites are mostly either ancient or Baroque, neither of which is something that particularly interests me. But the Parthenon (Elgin) frieze sculptures are something special.

With some trepidation, we decided that the best bet for dinner near Royal Albert Hall was a Polish club and restaurant, Ognisco. Our fears about Polish cuisine were unfounded: we had a very good meal. We had to rush to get to our seats in the Hall just as the lights were going down for the Proms Concert. We had gotten the tickets so far in advance that I didn’t remember who was on the program, and we didn’t find out until we bought a program at intermission. Mary Joy had liked the pianist, but not the conductor, who had gotten in the soloist’s way, tripping him up one or two times. The soloist’s encore (Prokofiev, like the encore we had heard from the piano soloist in Dubrovnik) was wonderful. He was another young Russian, Daniil Trifonov, but further along in his career than Andrey Gugnin. When Mary Joy learned the name of the conductor (who shall here remain nameless), she said “No wonder.” Not one of her favorite conductors, to say the least. Nonetheless, the whole atmosphere at the Proms, with their crowd of what Shakespeare would call “groundlings,” standing on the main floor, was a lot of fun.
The next day, Thursday, September 8th, we walked our luggage to the Russell Square Tube station, which I remembered from my first visit to London, thirty years ago, and took the Piccadilly Line out to Heathrow Terminal 2, and caught our planes back to Reykjavik and MSP, with no problem.

This trip took us to a part of Europe we hadn’t seen before. Our guide, Ivana, who speaks extremely good, colloquial, American English, was very informative and helpful. The bus driver, Dragec, was a true skilled professional. The itinerary was interesting, the hotels good, the food reasonably decent.

I would like to write more about Sarajevo, but I might not be able to take the time to sort out my thoughts. This trip the blog was pretty much completely restructured. Instead of being primarily text, illustrated by photos, it became primarily photos, put in context by text. I think that approach works, mostly. It is certainly much less labor-intensive and allows me to enjoy the trip while it is going on, instead of spending any free or travel time writing, then spending months back home finishing up.

St. Paul's, Shakespeare, St. Paul's Again and a Pub Walk

On Tuesday, September 6th, after breakfast, rather than looking for an ATM in our neighborhood, since we were going to the City of London, arguably the banking capital of the world, I assumed that we would easily find one there. We took the Tube to St. Paul’s Cathedral. Around the corner from the Tube station was, indeed, a streetful of banks, each with its ATMs. We went back to the station and found there a London Walks guide, Judy, collecting money for their St. Paul’s walk. London Walks has a very good reputation for its walking tours, many of which seemed interesting when we looked them up on their website. The price, ten pounds (plus entry fees) for a two-hour tour, couldn’t be beat. As a senior, I got a two-pound, discount, and for two pounds, Mary Joy later bought a card which would give her a two-pound discount on each of the other three walks we ended up taking with London Walks.

After waiting five minutes for possible latecomers, Judy gathered us together and led us to the Cathedral, stopping a few times on the way to give us some preparation. No photographs were allowed inside, and there was a bag search. We went through the nave and eventually into the crypt, where, at one point, I found myself standing on the grave of the pre-Raphaelite painter Sir John Everett Millais, who, coincidentally, had at one time lived in the townhouse on Gower Street that is now the Arosfa Hotel. Next to his grave, I found that of a painter who is much, much more to my taste, J.M.W. Turner. The biggest tombs are for the Duke of Wellington and Admiral Nelson (which recycled Cardinal Wolsey’s unused sarcophagus), showing that when push comes to shove, a society values its military heroes more than its artistic heroes.

We had lunch in another church crypt, that of St. Mary-le-Bow, nearby. This is a serious restaurant with seriously good food, unlike the money-for-charity cafeteria in the crypt of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, where we would lunch the next day.

Then we walked down across the Southwark Bridge to Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. We had bought tickets online for the 2 p.m. performance of Macbeth. I had also gotten a cushion-rental voucher—the theatre is so authentic, that not only is there open-air standing room for the groundlings, but what seating there is is on wooden benches. The play was done very well, with some direct interaction (including topical quips) with the audience.

It finished around 5:00, so we had to rush across the Millennium Bridge in order to catch about half of the Vespers service at St. Paul’s. Afterwards, as we went out, the presider was greeting people at the door. Mary Joy thanked her for a nice service. She responded by asking if Mary Joy were a musician. Mary Joy replied that she was organist and choir director at a small church in St. Paul, Minnesota. The clergywoman responded by offering greetings from St. Paul’s to her choir in St. Paul. That was pleasant to hear.

At 7:30, we were at the Temple Tube station, for London Walks’ “Hidden Pubs of Old London Town” walk. Our guide, Andy, took us to various nooks and crannies of the City, including the Inns of Court and three pubs: the Devereux, the Edgar Wallace and Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese.. There were some interesting beers and stories, but things ran a bit late, so we were’nt able to have dinner at the pub he suggested, and instead went back to Tottenham Court Road and had more Pizza at Franco Manca.