Canterbury and Leeds Castle

Today was the last day. We fly out tomorrow morning around ten, which means that we have to leave the hotel at 6:30, because we're supposed to be at the airport three hours early. So I won't write much tonight. I do need to give you the highlights, though.

Today we hopped on a bus and went to Canterbury. The tour company gave us a full size bus for just the thirteen of us (or 14 with Mike, who came along), so the ride was comfortable and spacious. I'd like to say we watched the green countryside pass by, but I think most of us slept. We arrived in Canterbury and went to the cathedral, which is beautiful and very old--there's been a church there since the 500s, and the present cathedral dates from the 1100s. Thomas a Becket was murdered in the cathedral by the king's men, and after he was canonized the place became an important pilgrimage site. That's why the characters in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales are traveling there. The shrine to St. Thomas is gone (knocked down by Henry VIII during the reformation), but they have a candle lit on the site where it stood. All in all, an impressive literary, spiritual, and historical place.

Afterwards we wandered through Canterbury, a small medieval market town that was a nice change from the bustling metropolis. We had lunch and then hopped back on the bus.


Next we went to Leeds Castle, originally built by William the Conqueror (I think I got that right) and later owned by Henry VIII and others before it passed into private ownership. The castle is breathtaking (once described as "the loveliest castle in the world"), set in a huge estate teeming with birds (black swans and peacocks predominant). We went through the castle, visited the world's only museum of dog collars (an oddly random component to the Leeds experience) and then several of us went into the hedge maze, where we promptly got lost. Friendly people on a high vantage point finally helped us find our way through, and we got out alive.

Leeds was idyllic, and we could have walked through the grounds forever (or for a while longer, anyway), but we had to get back. The drive back to London didn't take as long as anticipated, so after we bade farewell to Jim the Bus Driver, Mike took us to a pub just around the corner from our restaurant to wait until our reservation time. After the driving and walking, it was good to unwind in the pub. We could feel the end of the tour coming, and everyone was tired and happy. Much giggling occurred, mainly from Kali and Robin, but everyone was feeling jovial.


Dinner was a restaurant in Chinatown, where the food was good but where a Coke costs two pounds I discovered. After dinner, for our final night in London, we stayed low key, since we knew it would be an early morning. We took the Tube back to Pimlico, and then most of us went to the local pub, the Pride of Pimlico, for a couple of hours before heading to the hotel.

Now all that's left is to pack. I've got a lot more pictures from today, and if we have Internet access tomorrow I'll try to post them. This may be the last post, though. Thanks for reading, and thanks for traveling along with us. It has been a great trip--very smooth and trouble-free, and packed with fun and interest. I could not have asked for a better group to have done this with.

Sleep well. We'll be flying when you wake up...

Two for One

I couldn't get blogger to work for me this morning, and so here's Tuesday and Wednesday in one go.

Actually it makes sense to do it this way. As may be apparent, I planned the tour to be more structured at the beginning, and then to loosen up the "official" group activities as time went on and the group got more comfortable moving around the city. Tuesday and Wednesday were mostly free days: all day Tuesday was free until dinner and the Jack the Ripper tour, and today (Wednesday) was free except for a matinee of Othello at 2pm and dinner soon thereafter. I can only really report on the stuff I did, so that's what I'll give you.

On Tuesday, most of us chose to go to museums. London is full of museums, and we will not have time to see even a quarter of them while we're here. Different students were interested in different things, so we had a museum morning (except for a few folks who went shopping). People broke up into groups to visit various places. Jen and Liz and I traveled together.

We went to the Dickens House Museum first. Dickens lived at 48 Doughty Street for three years, while writing Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, and part of Barnaby Rudge. Because Dickens was extremely popular during his own lifetime, lots of personal effects were kept after he died, so there's lots of ephemera that makes this place more fun (for English majors) than some other museums: Dickens's walking stick, change purse, furniture, clocks, etc. They also have the best collection of various editions of his work, as well as a dangerous gift shop. Here are Jen and Liz outside Dickens's house:

After that we went to the British Library, where we all three had spiritual experiences. I can't even begin to list here everything they had on display, but here's a small sampling of what we saw: the only Beowulf manuscript in existence, the manuscripts of Jane Eyre, Alice in Wonderland, Middlemarch, Jane Austen's writing desk, handwritten scores by Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and Rachmaninov, and handwritten lyrics of ten or twelve Beatles songs, including "In My Life," "Ticket to Ride," and "Strawberry Fields Forever." And a fragment of the Dead Sea scrolls, dated around 50 AD.

The library was next door to the huge neo-Gothic St. Pancras station:

From St. Pancras we went south to the Imperial War Museum, which is housed in the old Bedlam Insane Asylum. We were able to do the exhibits on both World Wars and the Holocaust exhibit before we needed to leave to make dinner. We had to go in the side door of the War Museum, because Margaret Thatcher was in the building when we got there and was about to leave through the front door (police cordons and friendly bobbies kept us away). The museum was good, though the Holocaust exhibit left me feeling slightly dazed and sad, as it was supposed too. We ran into Brandon and Jamie in the Holocaust area, and we all hopped the Tube back north for dinner.

Dinner was at a good Japanese place called Wagamama. We all met back up and recounted how our day was. Various people went to the Natural History Museum, the Science Museum, the British Museum, and the stores on Oxford Street. Rebecca, intrepid explorer, actually left London. She wanted to see Oxford, and Mike and I helped her get on the right track to finding the train station and what to do once she was there. She took a five hour tour of Oxford and was back in London to meet us for dinner.

Chris ran into actor Christian Bale in the street, but didn't want to stalk him, so kept on walking.

After dinner we did the Ripper tour. Our tour guide, Heather, was great--very entertaining and a great storyteller. She led us all over the East End while telling the story of the five Whitechapel murders in the summer of 1888. Our group was enthralled:

After being horrified out of our minds, most of the group elected to return to the hotel. Museum walking is often more tiring than regular walking, and more deceptive, because it doesn't feel like you're tiring yourself out. I went with Chris, Liz, and Rebecca north to Regent's Park, where we walked through the rose gardens in the drizzly dusk before subsiding into a pub.

WEDNESDAY was much the same in the morning. The group split up and either hit museums they'd missed or did some final souvenir and gift shopping. I went the shopping route, and then walked down the Victoria Embankment by the Thames to meet the group at the Globe Theatre for the 2pm showing of Othello.

The Globe is beautiful. It's a reconstruction done in the 1990s, as exact a replica of Shakespeare's theatre as can be reasonably done. Seven of us bought cheap tickets to stand in the pit, and six of us (including me) bought pricey-er ones in the balcony. The play was excellent--I love Othello, and this was well acted. They played Iago and Rodorigo more for comedy then I was used to, but it worked, and the murder scene in the last act was uncomfortably intense. Here are some photos. We couldn't tkae pictures during the performance, of course, so these are from the pre-show musical warm-up.

After Othello it was dinner-time.

Tomorrow is the trip to Canterbury and Leeds Castle; I"m sure there'll be lots of pictures and things to tell. Then Friday, it's up and off, flying back to see you.

Sleep well.

Wait for It...

Hello intrepid readers. I hope you won't be too disappointed that today's blog will not be up until tomorrow morning. It's very late here (twenty 'til 1, actually), and the connection is taking an extremely long time to upload even a single picture. There's fun stuff to relate (we did the JAck the Ripper tour tonight and lots of museums during the day), and I promise to update it right after breakfast in the morning, which is 2 or 3 am for you guys. (or 4am for my family on the east coast).

When you wake up--you'll have some serious blog. Until then, let's take turns sleeping. I'll go first...

Rainy Days Are Mondays

It's rained most days, because it's England, but today is the first day it turned actively cold. The walk this morning was through Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park, through Green Park past Buckingham Palace, and over to Westminster Abbey where we did the tour.

Kensington Gardens/Hyde Park was beautiful as it always is, but as I said COLD. Chilly, damp cold. We stopped by the statue of Peter Pan, and everyone posed. Here's me, because my kids are wondering why I'm never in the photos:

And here's Jamie, Meagan, and Ashley:

And here's Jen, Liz, and Rebecca:

It was Peter Pannapolooza. We also saw a group (battalion? herd?) of Royal Horse Guards going through their paces on Rotten Row in Hyde Park. It was very impressive, but my camera batteries died just at that point, and by the time Ashley M. had loaned me some new ones, the horses and their guards were gone. Trust me they were impressive.

And we saw the always huge, ever gaudy Albert Memorial:

After the park we followed another group of horse guards (they were everywhere!) across Hyde Park Corner, through the Wellington Arch and down to Buckingham Palace. The group as a whole was unimpressed with the Palace, which frankly isn't that stunning or overwhelming after St. Paul's and the Houses of Parliament. But it's big, and we were there. We then walked down the side at St. James Park down to Parliament Square and so on to Westminster Abbey.

There is nothing unimpressive about Westminster. We waited in line for a while (here's Chris being cold and wishing he'd bought an umbrella).

Inside, where it was warm(er), and no cameras were allowed, we spent an hour seeing tombs and effigies and some of the most ornate Gothic stone work in Europe. The tombs of numerous monarchs, including Elizabeth I, Henry VII, and Mary, Queen of Scots. Also there are the graves of luminaries like Charles Darwin, Isaac Newton, and Handel (who wrote the Messiah amongst many others). Also on hand was the Coronation Chair, in which every monarch has sat to be crowned since 1308. That chair was almost five hundred years old when the American Revolution began. Several of us remarked on the amount of history breathing in the stones around us.

The part of Westminster Abbey that always floors me emotionally is Poet's Corner. As a professor of British Literature, it's almost overpowering to stand above the mortal remains of so many of the writers I spend my life reading and teaching. Byron, Tennyson, Browning, Hardy, Trollope, Kipling, Lewis Carroll, Samuel Johnson and a host of others are lying interred in Poet's Corner; so many that it is impossible to look at one stone without standing on another. And for me, two writers who encompass almost the whole of what literature is and does are there as well--Geoffrey Chaucer (died 1400) and Charles Dickens (died 1870). I spent a fair amount of time with both this morning, and feel the better for doing so.

By the exit, the best story of the whole tour happened while we were waiting on everyone to finish the tour. Will thought a guy across the room looked familiar. He looked closer, and the guy looked at him, and then they realized that they knew each other. This guy had gone to elementary and middle school with Will, and they had been good friends. They hadn't seen each other much recently, but here they both were standing in Westminster Abbey. They spent a few minutes catching up before we moved on. Pretty amazing!

Outside we split up--Brandon and Ashley F. went to find the Harley Shop to get souvenirs for a friend who's into motorcycles, and the rest of us caught the Tube to Covent Garden. Here's Rebecca, cold and wet like the rest of us:

We ate at a pub in Covent Garden, and then split up again to shop. I went book shopping and got a beautiful old edition of Othello, since we'll see that play Wednesday afternoon. I also found Miles Davis' Kind of Blue for six pounds. Others arrived at dinner laden with bags, happy with their haul as well. We ate traditional British fare--"bangers and mash," which is sausages and mashed potatoes. Again the food was excellent, possibly because we walked so far and were so cold by the end of the day.

After dinner a few folks went to see 300 at the IMAX theatre, many went back to the hotel, and I helped Jamie find a club she wanted a picture of (for a complicated in-joke with some friends in the States). Later a few folks went to the local pub (the Pride of Pimlico) and I tagged along.

Tomorrow will be a little different, as it's the first day we'll have mainly free time (no organized walking tour, etc.) Quite a few of the group are going to spend the day at museums (trying to fit in a couple of the dozens we haven't seen). I'm going to the Dickens House museum, and maybe to the British Library for an exhibit of sacred books there, possibly with a few of the group in tow. We'll meet for dinner and then at 7 do the Jack the Ripper walk, which should be good fun.

I think I've worked out my camera battery problems, and should have more pictures for tomorrow.

Good night.

Happy Mother's Day

Hello everyone--

I've heard that quite a few parents, friends, and curious folks have been following along on the blog--thanks for reading. I'm now under more pressure to get all the grammar right. But we all wish that all of you could be here as well, so it's nice to know this is providing a connection.

If it's possible, we walked more today than any other. The day started slowly; there was nothing official scheduled for the morning, and since half the group was out until the wee hours (I won't embarrass them by giving the exact time), that's a good thing. Six of the group attended mass at Westminster Cathedral, which was reported to be impressive, but longer than they expected. After the hour and a half service, they just had time to meet the rest of us for the 1pm meet-up time in the hotel lobby. Some folks slept in until just before 1; I went out around 11:30 and found some lunch near the hotel.

At 1, we hopped the Tube north to Hampstead, a much different place than what we've seen so far. Hampstead is ritzy and rich, a quiet, leafy suburb where big houses cost multiple millions of pounds. Mike tells us that most of the rock stars and celebrities choose to live in Hampstead, and seeing the houses there you can believe it. Not mansions like in Hollywood or anything, but old three or four story houses with big yards--much larger and more elegant than anything near the city center. We stopped briefly at a sandwich shop for the church-goers and late risers to grab some food, and then we walked over to the Keats House.

The Keats House is one of my favorite literary museums. Keats only lived there for two years, but they were two of the most productive years of his short life, and it was there that he met and fell in love with Fanny Braun, literally the girl next door. The house is full of furnishings, paintings, and objects connected to Keats and Fanny Braun, including the engagement ring he gave her that she wore until her death sixty years later.

From there we walked over Hampstead Heath, a huge expanse of forest and open parkland that affords a great view of the whole city from one of its hills. Or at least it does when it's not raining, as it was today. We could see a fair amount, and it was nice to be walking in grass and trees instead of city streets for a change. Here's the group dripping on top of Parliament Hill:

You can almost see London in background there through the haze and rain. Here's Brandon and Ashley F.:

Then things got fun. We walked over the Heath to the village of Highgate (which is still part of London, it just likes to call itself a village) and went to Highgate Cemetery, an old Victorian cemetery with lots of atmosphere and some notable dead people. Ask one of us to tell you about the imperious old woman at the gate there, who didn't want a large group going through in case the graves got damaged. I don't have time to give her the cariacature she deserves, but she was worth the walk by herself. (Blogger tells me that cariacature is spelled wrong, but I don't have the energy to look it up. You know what I mean). Luckily our cemetery tour guide Susan (from Chicago) was much friendlier, and seemed apologetic about the dragon-lady at the gate.

The cemetery was great. I'd been there before, and it was just as cool this time. Large impressive monuments in various stages of decay, lots of trees and hidden places. The rain had stopped by now, but it was still cool and damp and misty, perfect for a place where some of the old Hammer horror movies were filmed. I'm familiar with Highgate because part of Bram Stoker's novel Dracula is set there (it's where Lucy is buried and later staked). Today it was easy to see why.

By now it was a quarter to five, which left us only an hour to meet Mike for dinner, and we were a long way from the meeting point for tonight. We walked to Archway Tube station, a not insignificant hike, and then hopped a train. And here is where I made the only howling blunder of the tour (so far). We needed to change trains to get to Queensway station, where Mike was meeting us. I looked at the Tube map, and read that we could change lines at Holborn, and told the group. They've gotten good at using the Underground, and in case of separation Mike or I always make sure everyone knows which stations we're heading for and where to change. BUT, I read the map wrong. And this was the first time that we did get separated. A train was about to leave as we reached the platform, and only some of us made it on before the train left. As I stood with the rest of the group waiting for the next train, I realized that Holborn wasn't on this line, and the change should happen somewhere else (as it happens, at Tottenham Court Road). The first half of the group were racing through the tunnels looking for the wrong station.

But of course, these are UMary students, and I have taught them well. When the rest of us arrived at Queensway station, everyone was already there, having easily figured out how to get there. So I didn't need to worry about what would happen if I lost half my students in a huge city 4,000 miles from home after all. Hoo-ray.

Each night the tour company books a paid-for dinner and Mike leads us over to the restaurant. We eat and drink and make merry, and plan the evening and next day as well. Dinner tonight was at Shish, a Mediterranean restaurant in Bayswater. As with every place Mike has taken us, the food was excellent.

After dinner, Brandon suggested we ride the London Eye, and as everyone seemed eager to do so, we took the Tube down and did it. The Eye is the largest ferris wheel in the world--you ride up in large glass rooms very slowly. The whole trip takes thirty minutes and the views are pretty impressive. Even though the rain had started back up a little (it never rains hard, just often) it was still amazing. More so even than the top of St. Paul's, the view from the London Eye shows just how large the city is. Here's a sample, but I wish you had been there...

After the Eye, we walked across Westminster Bridge beneath Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, and everyone but me got the Tube home from Westminster Station. I went into a phone booth and called my mom and my wife. Then I walked the mile or so back to the hotel because I was looking for the small square where my favorite Dickens character was supposed to have lived. I found it, and it was charming, but it had already gotten too dark to get good pictures. On the way back to the hotel from there, however, I passed through a series of side streets and found the perfect final image for our Mother's Day in London. I bet you didn't know there was a union:

Museums and Markets

Saturday morning--Ashley F. isn't feeling well and decides to sleep in; Kali and Robin plan to spend the morning in the shopping meccas of the West End. The rest of us head for the south side of the river to the Tate Modern. We spent an hour in the museum, and though most of us agreed that abstract and minimalist art isn't for us, we did see some some impressive works by Picasso, Magritte, Dali, Matisse, and Pollack.

Leaving the Tate, we headed east along the Thames, stopping near the Globe Theatre to mug for the camera while Ashley M. bought ice cream from a street vendor:

After that, we headed down the river, under Southwark Bridge, past the old Clink prison (where the phrase "thrown in the Clink" originated), and under a train trestle to find Borough Market. The market, which happens every Saturday and Sunday, is huge and filled with food--fresh, organic, raw, cooked, everything you can think of from venison burgers to baklava to fresh bread to fresh fruit. We took an hour and wandered through, eating lunch as we went. The market was crowded, but represents some of the best of London for me.

Next door to the market is Southwark Cathedral, a beautiful church where Shakespeare probably worshiped while he lived in London. We walked through the cathedral (which is much smaller than St. Paul's) and sat for a bit in the grounds with other market customers.

The plan had been to then walk a half mile or so down to the remains of the old Marshalsea prison, but it began to rain fairly hard, and instead we hopped on the Tube from London Bridge Station and went to the Tate Britain, the parent museum of the Modern we had visited that morning. The Tate Britain has artwork from the Roman times until 1900, including most of the important Pre-Raphaelite works (which I spent my time there contemplating). The Tate is also handily only a few blocks from our hotel, so it was a quick walk back to rest before dinner.

We ate tonight at a pub called The Centre Page near the Millennium Bridge--traditional English fish and chips with mush peas and apple pie for dessert. Ashley F. was feeling better, and Kali and Robin recounted shopping adventures (they passed on the $5,000 purse at Harrod's). Then we dispersed. Liz and Jen are seeing The Glass Menagerie tonight, and Robin and Kali are at The Woman in Black on my recommendation. The rest of the group are in or near Picadilly Circus exploring the London night life. I, older and tireder, shopped for books for about an hour (buying only six for now), and am now off to bed.

Friday

Today was very full as well. Mike took us on our second walking tour this morning. We started at Samuel Johnson's house off the Strand, and then went over past St. Paul's, across the Millennium Bridge to the Tate Modern, where we checked out the view from the glass cafe on the seventh floor. Here's the group outside St. Paul's:



Then we took the Tube over to the Tower of London, where Mike left us. We spent two and half hours or so in the Tower, seeing the Crown Jewels, the armory collection in the White Tower (which dates from 1071), the Bloody Tower (where we voted on who killed the Princes there in the middle ages), and a disturbing display of torture devices. Will posed beside John of Gaunt's armor:
Ashley posed in an unoccupied guard's station:

And the whole group posed in front of Tower Bridge:






After the Tower, everyone wanted to go back to St. Paul's and do the tour, so we did. After having some really good hot sandwiches at an eaterie near St. Paul's Tube station, we went to the cathedral and spent quite some time. The church is amazing beyond my ability to describe (the second largest cathedral in the world, after St. Peter's in Rome), but since no pictures were allowed, you'll have to take my word for it. We saw the cathedral itself and the crypt (where we also saw the tombs of Lord Nelson, Christopher Wren, William Blake, George Cruickshank, the painters Holman-Hunt and Millais, and a host of others.

The most spectacular part of St. Paul's, for everyone I believe, was the galleries in the dome. We walked up to the Whispering Gallery, which is at the bottom of the dome, then up to the Stone Gallery, further up and outside, and then up to the Gold Gallery, which is a tiny stone balcony at the very top of the dome of St. Paul's. 494 steps in all, mostly on a very narrow spiral stone staircase. It was not unlike the most vicious stair-stepper workout ever conceived. Much panting and stopping to rest and burning of the legs was involved.

But the pay-off was worth it. From the top of St. Paul's we could see all of London stretching out in all directions around us. Pictures are below. Breathtaking--in all sense of the word, since the wind up there was kicking it old school. But the view:

We don't know why Will ends up in more photos than anyone else. We've talked to him about it but there he is again. After an hour of free time around Covent Garden, we met back up with Mike for dinner at an Indian restaurant off Charing Cross Road, which was very good. Indian food is half the reason I go to London, and it seemed like everyone else enjoyed it as well.

Then we split up. Everyone is feeling pretty comfortable using the Tube and finding their way around the main areas of central London (or at least the main areas we've been to), so we split up for the evening. Most of the group went to see Equus with Daniel Radcliffe at the Gielgud Theatre. I went to see The Woman in Black at the Fortune, and Kali, Robin, Liz, and Jen went exploring (I know that at least Jen and Liz planned to take a walk by the river to see it at night). All in all a full day. And more of the same tomorrow. But as it's nearly 1 am here, and I have an 8am wake up call, I'll bid you a good night.

More Photos from Thursday's Walking Tour

A street performer by the Thames

Will poses with one of the St. James' Horse Guards

Trafalgar Square

Mike fascinates the group with tales of Admiral Nelson

Shakespeare statue in Leicester Square

Welcome to London

I spoke too soon in the last entry--they moved the gate at Newark a fourth time. But at that gate we did finally get on the (really large) plane, and after sitting on the tarmac for an hour, something like twelfth in line to take off, we flew out only an hour behind schedule.

The flight was around six hours--more spacious seats, dinner and breakfast, and personal TVs with 9 channels of movies to choose from. We were once again all sitting fairly close together, except for Chris and Rebecca who were separated to the back of the rest of us. Here's a pic of Liz looking out at the lights of New Jersey just after take-off:

After six hours of flying and on average about 1 1/2 hours of sleep, we landed Gatwick airport and negotiated immigration, money exchange, and baggage claim. All of our baggage made it, which isn't always the case. We were pleased.

We were met at the airport by Mike, our tour guide, who right away took us in hand and got us on a small bus/people transport (driven by the intrepid Dave) to drive us the thirty-five miles from Gatwick to London. Driving on the expressway during morning rush hour on the left side of the road was an eye-opener for some of us, especially when we reached London itself, where the traffic got heavier, the streets got narrower, the stopped trucks got more numerous, but Dave got no slower. Having survived the drive in, we left luggage at the hotel and went on a walking tour of the central areas while our rooms were gotten ready.

Mike did the honors for the tour, and made sure everybody learned how to get on the Tube and negotiate line changes and what-not. He also walked us by the Houses of Parliament (where Big Ben is), up Whitehall to Trafalgar Square, through Leicester Square to Picadilly Circus, and then over to Covent Garden. At each spot he stopped and gave a brief bit of history and tips on how to orient ourselves. We also saw No. 10 Downing Street, which was a-swarm with TV news crews awaiting Tony Blair's announcement today of the timeline for his stepping down as Prime Minister.

Then we had lunch--nine of us ate at a pub called the Essex Snake, where fish and chips were the order of the day, and Will, Robin, Kali, and Chris wandered the streets near Leicester Square and had sandwiches from a street vendor. We met back up at 2pm and came back to the hotel.

Now, after a full 24 hours of no showers, toothpaste, or much sleep, we're taking break to perform some basic hygiene and rest before we go out to dinner at Ishtar, a Mediterranean place near Baker Street.


Incidentally, clicking on any of these pictures will give you a much larger, nicer version.

Still in New York

We've finally gotten to the correct gate (they changed it three times), and will be boarding in about an hour. Just wanted you to see all these happy little faces waiting for the plane:


We probably won't get to post another entry until late tomorrow, after our first day in London.

Sweet dreams--we'll be flying over ocean while you sleep...