In the airport lounge at Heathrow, heading home. We’re
munching on the vestiges of our British snacks, meat pasties (that’s pah-sties,
not pay-sties.) I remember one food chain in Boston used to serve them, I am
thinking it was Au Bon Pain, although that doesn’t seem quite right. But then they stopped serving them. They’re
good, and I’ve just decided they bear a strong resemblance to knishes.
We had a very nice
last half day in London, actually a very nice five days in all. Started off at
the Tate Modern, a great modern art museum right on the Thames, in an old power
plant or some such large industrial building. I’m wondering if it was in some
way an inspiration to the guy who created Mass MOCA. It has some of the same
capacity for large scale works, although they didn’t seem to be using it as
such at present. The museum, and all, or most, of the London museums, are free,
although they do ask for donations, suggesting about L4, or about $6, very
reasonable. I wonder what percentage of visitors contributes. The museum seems
to do quite well, they have had several times the anticipated yearly
attendance, and are currently building an addition.
There is much construction all over the city. The very friendly, chatty customs officer at
the airport, and our cab driver into town, both told us how much London has
changed in the last decade.
I don’t remember all this construction our last visit, which
must have been at least a decade ago. The ovoid building people call the
Gherkin is very impressive, especially in contrast to some of the old
architecture around it. I wonder what the verdict is, if people generally like
it or hate it. I happen to like it,
think it’s fun to come around a corner and get a glimpse of it. It looks rather
like an alien spaceship just landed in the city. There are many more glass
towers with other unusual designs, and I
get the sense that they are all competing to be the most innovative and daring
in design. I saw a listing for some kind of exhibit or talk about the future of
London architecture, and wish we’d had time to check it out.
We walked a lot, and took the bus a couple of times, and the
tube once, in our five days. Loring strides quickly and I try to keep up, but
get waylaid easily by an interesting building or store or plaque. It’s amazing
that we didn’t lose each other during all of our walks.
I’d chosen an apartment in the Shoreditch area of East
London, just a few blocks from the trendy Brick Lane. The street is bustling,
and especially so this morning, on Sunday. Even at 10am there were throngs, and
on our way back to the apartment, I mean flat, it was even more crowded. Brick
Lane itself is a mix of vintage clothing stores, pastry shops or different ethnicities,
and Indian curry restaurants. At each restaurant there are men trying to hustle
your business. In the neighborhood in
general there is a mix of Muslim men, women, some in headscarves and some in
burkhas with just their eyes showing, lots of children, and young white couples
pushing baby strollers, or whatever they call them here. (prams?)
And graffiti, all up and down Brick Lane and most of the
streets that came off of it. Some of it was good, some not so good. Iv'e seen a lot of street art in the last few months, in London and Paris, New York, Miami, and Havana. I must say
I was most impressed by the graffiti I saw in Miami a couple of months ago. Not
being nationalistic and hoping I don't sound like too much of a braggart.
In medieval times,
this was a Jewish area, from something I read on a tile wall produced by
children from a nearby school documenting the history of the area. There was
also a separate plaque, not part of the school project, that talked about Jack
the Ripper and who he might actually have been. It did not say, however, if
this was the area he stalked. Glad I was there in the bright sunshine, though.
Our flat was in a row of small buildings called the Victoria
cottages. The Albert cottages were across the street. They date from the 19th century.
Our apartment had a bedroom, combined kitchen
living room, a bathroom, and a small area with a desk in a kind of alcove. We
were on the second floor, and the stairs leading up were quite steep and
narrow, with a turn. Not a terrible problem, except that I am very leery of
stairs and escalators, etc. since my recent mishap. The windows overlooked a courtyard that the
aribnb listing had described as a garden, one of the reasons I’d chosen that
apartment. To get to the garden you had
to go downstairs, down three doors to a little alley where the trashcans are
kept, then through another doorway into the garden. None of that would have
been a big problem, but the garden wasn’t maintained, the chairs were covered
in bird poop, and no one seemed to use it much aside from to hang laundry. But
it did make for a nice view out the windows.
The bathroom was interesting. I’m always interested in
bathrooms. The toilet and shower were the same
space, with no separation for the shower. So when you showered, everything got
wet, and then the floor was wet for a while too. And, I can’t say I’m a big fan
of watching myself in the mirror while I am showering. Since returning, I’ve
learned that it’s called a wet room.
In the five days we were there, we ate breakfast at
home, cooked dinner a couple of nights –
frozen cottage pie, not bad at all, pasties the other night, and veggies. The
difference between cottage and shepherd’s pies, I am told, is that the former
is made with beef, the latter with lamb.
We were meeting my friend Kwan for Indian food one night,
and so sought out pubs with traditional food for the other dinners. I now know
what Scotch eggs are. One night I had what seemed a contemporary take, the
other one that seemed more traditional. It’s basically an an egg baked into a
sausage patty. My first version was made with pork and venison, and a duck’s
egg. The other night was just regular sausage, and I assume a chicken egg. Both were
good.
At the first pub there was a beer apparently brewed in the
Bronx. We took a picture of me by the sign. But there was also a grapefruit flavored
beer, and not being much of a beer person, tend to like the flavored ones, and
am addicted to grapefruit. It was good, but one beer is about all I can handle,
so I didn’t get to try the Bronx.
It seems that many pubs, all of which have beautiful signs
and interiors, don’t serve food at all, are just bars. And I saw a couple that
served Thai food, which seemed totally incongruous to me. But it all depends on
the context, I suppose, and what you are accustomed to.
The several markets around
our area have a large number of stalls with clothing, jewelry,
etc. and also a large number of food stalls. The variety is amazing, ranging
from Japanese to Mexican (complete with very aesthetic display of yellow Old el
Paso taco boxes, to Moroccan to Lithuanian. As we approached, I noticed large numbers of
people sitting on the curbs of the sidewalk. They were all eating food
purchased in the market.
The quantity and size of vintage shops and stalls was
amazing. I looked for a bit, then had to leave, feeling overstimulated and
overwhelmed. I’ve never seen anyplace in
the US with this kind of quantity of vintage clothes.
During our five days, we met up with two old friends. One
was Nicole, a Dutch woman who was one of the au pairs I supervised when she
lived with a family on the North Shore a couple of decades ago. She subsequently moved to London, married a
Syrian man, converted to Islam. They lived in Syria for several years, then
moved back to London.
They have two young daughters, who she brought with her. The plan was to
meet at a fountain at Somerset House, a huge mansion that was once connected
with the Britsh navy, and now is a cultural center. Nicole had never been
there, and thought it would be a good outing for the kids, and it was.
Only
problem, when Loring and I arrived, we couldn’t find the fountain. I went and asked a guard, who explained
that it was in the courtyard, which we’d just walked across, but hadn’t yet
been turned on for the day. So back out to the courtyard, and spotted a woman
in a headscarf and two small girls, who’d seen us and were walking toward us.
Just then, the fountain turned on, one of those splash fountains, and it
covered most of the courtyard. The girls squealed and ran into the water.
Later, we went out to the large balcony that overlooked the
Thames and had a nice snack bar, with beautiful French pastries. We sat and talked while the girls blew
bubbles and ran around in the sun, drying out their bodies and clothes.
Nicole had planned to take the girls to the National
Portrait Gallery, and we headed over with them. It seemed as good a plan for
the day as any. I have really liked that
museum when I’ve been there before.
And there, an amazing thing occurred. There was an exhibit,
a yearly competition for artists to submit portraits. I stood looking at one,
unusual in that it showed a young man lying on the floor, back to the
viewer, not showing his face. I think of
a portrait as a face, and this was interesting because it didn’t have one. I
leaned it to read the information, and, lo and behold, the artist was from
Massachusetts, and had just graduated from Gordon College, just a few miles
from where we live.
But that’s not all!
Another woman viewing the picture looked at me and smiled. I smiled
back, thinking we were sharing our mutual admiration of the painting. Then, a
couple of minutes later, after I’d moved on, she came over to me in the gallery
and asked if I was an art critic. I’d been writing down the artist’s name to
look up later and maybe even contact. The woman who’d asked me, it turned out,
was the artist’s art teacher at Gordon College, and a couple of years ago,
she’d encouraged Rebecca, the artist, to enter this completion when they had
visited London together with a group of students. So, an amazing double
coincidence. One, that the artwork caught my eye, and two, that the teacher
happened to be there at the exact moment I was viewing the painting. Added to
the fact that the teacher and student had visited this very exhibit two years
ago with a student group, and the teacher had encouraged Rebecca to enter the competititon.
Another day, we headed over to two small museums we’d read about. First, the
John Soane house. Soane was an architect and collector in the 17th
and 18th centuries. He collected many things, but particularly Greek
and Roman architectural elements, and they were arrayed all over the home, on
every bit of wall space, on the floor, in nooks and crannies, many of which
he’d designed himself. Loring said it was the first place he’d ever seen with
more things on the walls than our house. A vast exaggeration, of course. There were also many plans and illustrations
of places Soane had designed, most of them monumental. It turns out that Soane had students who came
to the home to sketch many of the architectural artifacts. Although it’s hard
to imagine too many students being able to fit into the space at a time.
One room housed all paintings, one of which looked quite
like a Canaletto , who painted both in Venice and in London. Those of you who
are avid readers of this blog, if there are any of you, might remember my
previous quest for Canelettos in Venice, only to find out that there were only
a couple of them there. And then our subsequent weekend visit to DC because
there was a big Canaletto exhibit. So to find here, in one of the lesser known
London museums, actually two Canalettos, and for me to recognize one as his,
was remarkable.
Next unusual museum, The Hunter Hospital museum, or
something like that, was just across a small park from the Soane house. It was a collection of medical specimens from
the 19th century. It was fascinating but also kind of creepy. They were
arranged in glass jars on glass shelves
on two floors. There were thousands of them, ranging from animal skeletons to
human fetuses. There was a section about
ether, which mentioned Mass General, where the first anesthesized surgery was
performed. And there was the examining table of, and information about Lister,
who introduced anteseptics to surgery. And for whom, I assumed, Listerine was
named.
Every day, we walked long distances, between
6 and 10miles. You never know what you might stumble into. Interesting
architecture and juxtapositions. Really
old buildings crammed between modern ones, some of them dating back to
Elizabethan times. Yesterday we walked by a building that was part of Lloyds of
London. It seemed it was just a branch bank, although perhaps it was more.
There were tellers’windows, beautiful marble columns and artwork, and then also
computer screens and ATM museums. The tellers seemed amused at our gawking, in
a friendly way. On our way out there was a tv showing the news. It was Donald
trump making one of his ridiculous statements. The guard and we chuckled and
shook our heads together.
Just a few doors down was a very narrow little store, with a
sign saying Twinings. It was the actual original Twinings tea store, and had
been there at least a couple of centuries. They had all kinds of teas in tins,
but also individual teabags from which
you could make your own selection , a minimum of 15, which of course I
did, making sure to check each one for hibiscus, which has a very strong sweet
taste that I don’t like, and which is an ingredient in many herbal teas. There
were many more choices than are available at home, and I was pleased to see
that there were quite a few without hibiscus!
Now I just hope I like them.
And then up, eventually, toward Covent Garden and the
theatre district to the Harold Pinter Theatre, where we had matinee tickets for
a musical about the Kinks called Sunny Afternoon. I had looked hard for a play
that wasn’t a revival or a play that had originated on Broadway. This one had
gotten good reviews and much of the story takes place in London. I was able to get tickets in about the 5th
row, in the orchestra, or rather the stalls, as they say here.
The play was terrific. I hope it makes it to Broadway. I
didn’t really know that much about the Kinks, although I was familiar with most
of the music they used in the play, which depicts their early years in the 60s
and early 70’s. The play tells the story of the group’s early years, through
the music. It doesn’t feel like they
forced the music onto the story, the songs work well to tell the tale. And
since, as Ray Davies says at one point, the songs are about us, it makes sense,
and that’s the whole point, I guess. It
just keeps moving, and is very well staged and choreographed. There’s a walkway up
through the stalls, on which a lot of the action takes place, along with
performers running up and down the aisles. I’m a sucker for a play that puts
the actors out into the audience, I think it always adds an element of excitement and connection.
I was ready to wait for the actors by the stage door, but
don’t think Loring thought I was serious. I used to do that regularly when I
was in high school and went to Broadway matinees on my own.
After the play we met up with my old friend Kwan, whom I’d
met perhaps a decade ago, on my volunteer trip to Transylvania, where we and a
dozen or so others worked with kids from a social service agency for a couple
of weeks. I hadn’t seen him since, but
we’d stayed in touch through facebook.
Kwan lives about two hours outside London, near Nottingham
and Sherwood Forest, which he said is still (ie since Robin Hood’s time) a nice
place. He took the train in, and back
home again, that same day. He has friends in London, and comes in periodically
to visit. What a treat to see him, and
we were amazed that he spent four hours travelling back and forth, just to meet
us for dinner. We had dinner in an Indian restaurant not far from the
theatre. Dinner was fine, but not better
than Indian food I’ve had at home. Don’t know that I should expect it to be,
but since London is replete with people of Indian heritage, and with Indian
restaurants, I guess I’d expected more. The restaurant advertised itself as the
oldest Punjabi restaurant in London, with four generations of the same family
running it. I suppose that doesn’t necessarily mean better. Anyway, the main
point was to visit with Kwan.
Kwan walked us over to Holborn station, where we took the
tube for the first and only time. The second day there had been a one day tube
strike, which didn’t really affect us. The busses still ran that day, and we
did take one, although we’d thought they’d be terribly crowded, and I was in no
mood to cram into public transportation after my previous mishap. But they were not overwhelmingly crowded,
although the streets were, with throngs of people walking home from work, and
the ride was very slow.
That day, our friendly bus driver was very forthcoming about
his disdain for the strike. The tube workers are unionized, the bus drivers are
not, according to our bus driver, and the train workers also make about three
times the salary of the bus drivers. And the work, as he said, doesn’t require
the same level of skill as driving a double decker bus in narrow streets and
traffic. The tube workers are striking
to prevent being put on different schedules as the new night service gets
implemented.
Other London adventures -
on our last morning, before the West End show, we walked across the
Millenium footbridge, near the Tate Modern, where we’d started out the first
day, and then along the Thames. It seemed like everyone in London was doing the
same. It was a nice sunny day, and I’d say it was a mix of Londoners and
visitors.
We walked from the Tate up to the London Eye, the impressive
Ferris wheel along the riverbank. Along the way, there were buskers, cafes, an
art center, and a summer festival, which included a small artificial beach
along the lines of the Paris Plage. We stopped to have our final meat pies at
one of the many stalls and cafes.
Those busking
included living statues, although the trend these days seems to be moving ones,
so perhaps statues isn’t the right word, sand castle builders, (on the real
sand at the edge of the Thames, not the artificial beach) and musicians. There were signs with rules for the buskers,
to relinquish the space after two hours if others were waiting to perform, to
stay in the designated spots, etc.
I mentioned toilets
a while back, and that I had more to say on the subject. I’d read about some
London tours called Loo tours, a tour of various public toilets in the city. It
was started by an American woman who was frustrated by the lack of free public
toilets, and wanted to share info about where you could find them. But she also
got into the history of plumbing, which is very interesting. So there was lots of info about the Romans,
who did have plumbing systems, to the Middle Ages, when they dumped it out the
windows, etc. According to the website,
she and her two employees do tours a few days a week, but there was also an
audio tour. We weren’t available for one of the guided ones, weren’t even sure
she still conducted them. So we
downloaded her tour yesterday, did a long walk before, and picked it up a few
miles along. Some of it was interesting, especially the historical parts. But
we ran out of time and interest partway in. I think it would have been much
more rewarding as a live tour. It’s kind of hard to follow the directions, not
because she didn’t do them well, but because we kept getting distracted by other
things along the way, and also because we were trying to share one phone and
pair of ear buds.
Our plane home didn’t leave until 6pm Sunday. We wanted to
be there by no later than 4pm. And the ride in from the airport had taken 2 ½
hours through crammed city streets. We’d been told 2 hours by our airbnb host,
and were incredulous about that, but it was an underestimate. So we knew we
wanted to leave our flat by 1:30pm.
Our driver on the way in had given us his card, and said
he’d give us “a good price” on the way back. Since we had no phone, we’d borrowed Kwan’s at the restaurant the night
before. Loring got the guy on the phone ok, but the next thing I heard, on
Loring’s end, was “you’re leaving for Greece tomorrow morning?” Which put us back at square A as far as a
ride to the airport. We considered taking the tube after all, about which we
were both hesitant given my recent debacle.
So we went walking, a last stroll through the neighborhood, which we’d
planned to do anyway, hoping to find a cab we could schedule for later.
Out on Brick Lane we soon stumbled into a cab agency, with a
bell to ring for an upstairs office. The man came down, clearly from his
residence above, very friendly, and quoted us a price of less than ½ of what
we’d paid on the way in. We didn’t hesitate, although I have a feeling we could
have negotiated an even lower price.And chances were he wasn't licensed, but that's something we don't worry about much, having taken many unlicensed taxis in many countries.
So the rest of our last morning was a visit to
Whitechapel Gallery. We’d passed by it
several times during our stay, but hadn’t had the right opportunity to visit
until now. It was a great last event. There’d been some type of competition,
and the works, all modern and in a variety of media, were on display. They
ranged from video installations to sculpture to paintings.
The trip to the airport took an hour, less than half the
time as on the way in, although the driver had said an hour and a quarter to an
hour and a half. That might have something to do with the much cheaper
fare. This was early Sunday afternoon, and
the way in had been a weekday afternoon.
The trip back was uneventful . That’s good, I’d had enough
of eventful for a while. Many exciting
experiences, a near disaster mishap and then, another one, memories of sitting
by the window or on the balcony, night after night, watching the Tower twinkle,
and then, finally getting to share it with Loring. Lots of museums and
monuments, and also many unexpected places and events stumbled upon. Seeing
some old friends after a long time, three in all from three different places
and times in my life.
And now here I am on my porch, finishing up this chapter of
my travels. . I already read last Sunday’s Travel section. What’s next, who
knows, but I’ve got a bunch of ideas.
I’ve got to watch Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris again(hate
the man, loved the film) keep up my French, and figure out a way to get the
Kinks’ “Sunny Afternoon” out of my head.
signing off, for now...
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