Hampton Court

This is another catch-all blog entry since I didn't write about our trip to Hampton Court last weekend and we had a busy Saturday yesterday as well... And tomorrow we are off to Seville for 5 days so I'll have lots to add when we get back!

Hampton Court is way down the Thames to the west and was one of Henry VIII's many houses that he took over from its original owner Cardinal Wolsey after he had him executed (that's one way to get into real estate). We took a long bus ride from our flat to get there (close to 1.5 hours!) It was long but direct though. Hampton Court is a beautiful red-brick palace originally built in the early 1500s but has had expansions and renovations that were made over the 200 years it was a royal residence. On the day we went the courtyard was being set up as a medieval market place for a movie (Jack the Giant Killer) they were going to film there that week. Lots of taxidermied animals were laying about in preparation for this set. Hampton Court also has costumed actors wandering around portraying Henry VIII, his new (and last) queen Catherine Parr and members of their court as if it were their wedding day (July 12, 1543). The house is a bit spooky as there are reminders of a few of King Henry's unfortunate queens (for example, a small H&A for Henry and Anne Boleyn was accidentally left behind on a carved screen in the Great Hall when workmen were scraping away all traces of her memory... There is a carved doorway with Henry's tudor rose and Katherine of Aragon's family's pomegranite symbol). The kitchens are in working order and the day we were there they were cooking up Tudor-style gruel/porridge and chickens were roasting on a huge (and very hot) fire. Other wings of the castle (added later) were the apartments of the monarchs William and Mary in the late 17th century and are filled with their paintings and furniture. There is also a beautiful garden to wander in and a famous hedge maze we found our way through. The weather was beautiful that day and since it has been warm the flowers were blooming.

Another busy blog entry

It's been a busy few weeks for us but I haven't been keeping up with my blog entries! Last weekend we took a trip to the Hunterian Museum which is housed in the building of the Royal College of Surgeons. The museum is the private collection of a pioneering 18th century Scottish surgeon named John Hunter. Aside from developing our knowledge of human anatomy, he also developed a vast collection of specimens - animal and human - including human skeletons, pathologies (diseased bits...), "human oddities", plants and animals, surgical instruments, etc... The collection was built up over the years but is mainly owing to him. It made for a fascinating if gruesome afternoon (our guide book said it was a must see, but warned readers not to eat first!) The grisly nature of the collection is diminished slightly by the beauty of the displays themselves, which were recently renovated (no dusty old shelves or labels here!) It was certainly a memorable experience.

The next day we took a walk to Little Britain Lake, about 20 minutes south of our flat. It's part of a vast set of trails that criss-cross all over London. The lake supports a variety of water fowl (including one species of duck that we had never seen before) including swans, various geese (Canada, Greylag, Embden), coots and mallards. Spring is in the air so there were lots of little spats between members of the same species over mates and whose bit of the lake was whose. We were confronted on the path by a party of cranky Embden geese (the big white geese with orange bills and blue eyes in these pictures) but they allowed us to pass with only a bit of fuss.

Uke-mania!

I'm trying to catch up on some of our adventures from the last little while. One big update from last month is that we bought a ukulele named which I have named, appropriately, Ukie. We bought Ukie at a specialised ukulele store in Spitalfields called The Duke of Uke (only a city the size of London would be able to support its own specialised uke store). It was lots of fun trying out the different sizes - soprano, concert and tenor (we didn't try any of the baritone ukes which are quite large). Each one we tried had a very unique sound and look with lots of variation in the type of material (some were wood and others were laminate). We had a tough choice but in the end Ukie won out with her beautiful colour and sound. Ukie is the middle 'concert' size and made of Hawaiian koa wood. We are both enjoying learning to play some new favourites!

The view from up here

Wow, it's been way too long (again) since I updated our blog! One of my excuses is that I came down with a cold in early March which meant we didn't get out much for about two weeks. My other excuse is workload... both of us have been so busy with work and school which involves copious bouts of writing that neither of us had much enthusiasm for updating the blog. But never mind, on with the show!

A few weekends ago we went to St. Paul's Cathedral. It was one of those places that was on our to-do list but we just hadn't gotten around to it yet. It is mainly white inside, not exactly plain because it's filled with statues, but it is very different from the inside of Westminster Abbey (of course, it's also a much newer building than Westminster). We took the plunge and climbed to the very top of the Cathedral. It is quite a climb! The first 259 steps are very wide and shallow and take you up to the famous "Whispering Gallery". (Unfortunately it was too busy to do much whispering, and although we did try it out all I could hear on my side were the people beside me trying it too). But from the Gallery you get a fantastic view of the huge paintings that are inside the dome of the church, representing scenes from the life of St. Paul. Another 119 steps later (this time up a steeper and more tightly spiralling staircase) and we were at the Stone Gallery which takes you outside for a view of the city. Once we had our breathing back under control we took the final 172 steps up to the Golden Gallery at the very top. Now this was a scary climb up a spiral metal staircase (I am not a fan of heights). After making it to the top it was well worth the effort. The Gallery is tiny, and lots of other brave folks were crowded up there with us. It offers spectacular views of the city. Here's a view from this level (look for the London Eye in the distance).

What is interesting is from this vantage point you can see some of the architectural features of the building. A few weeks before we had seen a documentary on the BBC website about Baroque architecture which talked a lot about St. Paul's. Christopher Wren designed it so that it looks magnificent both from the outside and the inside, but what you see from both vantage points is actually not the same. On the outside there are false higher walls that make the building look taller than it actually is. When you are standing on the Stone or Golden Gallery you can see into the "ditches" that are made by this false wall (you can see one of these ditches in the picture here). Both the inside and outside of the Cathedral have the famous dome - but the dome you see when you're outside and the one you see when you're inside are actually not the same thing. There is an external dome that is higher than the internal dome. When you climb the scary metal staircase to get to the Golden Gallery you are actually climbing beside an internal cone-shaped supportive structure that holds the two domes on either side. Whew!

Back from Bath and squeaky clean

We got home last night after a relaxing 2-day break in Bath. It's one of those places where a short jaunt is the perfect amount of time; the historic core of the city is very compact so it's easy to get around on foot and two days affords a leisurely look at the main historic sites and gave us a feel of the city. Our hotel was in a perfect spot, easy walking distance from the train station and a block away from the famous Roman Baths, the Pump Room and Bath Abbey. Our first morning had us walking up the 212 steps to the top of Bath Abbey. Since we were the only two people on the tour (the first of the day - it pays to be an early riser on holiday) we got the chance to ring the Abbey bells and also got to clamber into the underside of the church roof. We then went to the beautiful Assembly Rooms where big parties were held in the 18th and early 19th centuries. We then walked up to the famous "Circus" (a circular street of Georgian houses) and the beautiful Royal Crescent pictured here. We wandered through Victoria Park, enjoying the first sun we had seen in more than a week. Afterwards we went to the Jane Austen Centre on Gay Street, one of the streets she lived on. The museum presents the Bath of Jane Austen's day, both what she enjoyed and did not enjoy about living in the city. Since it's such a small place it was amazing to recognise the areas on the map where she lived during her years in Bath. That evening we enjoyed a lovely dinner at a restaurant set in the old Green Park train station, where a jazz trio performed featuring a great young female singer.

On Friday we spent several hours making our way through the fantastic and recently refurbished Roman Baths museum. This was a huge Roman bath and temple complex in the years 40 to about 400 AD, dedicated to the goddess Sulis Minerva (Sulis being the goddess worshipped by the local Celts and Minerva one of the Roman goddesses). The natural hot springs in Bath had always been a place of worship for people before they figured out a more mundane explanation for where all that warm bubbly water was coming from. The museum presents artifacts found in and around the hot spring and temple - one of the most fascinating of which I think are the "curses", little messages written to Sulis Minerva complaining mainly about petty annoyances (like the theft of clothing at the baths!) and wishing death, blindness and all other manner of horrible things on the culprits. I think these little scraps of metal on which people poured out their anger really bring you close to the people who lived there millennia ago. After seeing the ancient Roman baths you can go to the Georgian Pump Rooms above and sample the famous Bath waters. Although I am glad we did this, I am also really glad that I have never been prescribed a gallon of this water a day like some people were back when they went to Bath for healing. It is a bit like drinking liquid metal!

We really enjoyed our time in Bath and found the smaller crowds and nearly non-existent traffic noise a great break from London!

Handel's house

Another Saturday has come and gone. Since we've been to most of the major museums in London we have moved on to the slightly smaller and more obscure sights, discovering some interesting gems. Today we went to a fairly new museum (opened in 2001) that is set in the bachelor pad that George Frideric Handel lived in for the last 35 years of his life. It's a Georgian townhouse at 25 Brook Street in the Bond/Oxford area and it's a great little museum staffed by friendly volunteers. Handel lived in the house from 1723 til his death in 1759. It's an amazing place to visit as Handel composed most of his work after 1723 in the house itself (in the tiny composition room) and rehearsed with many of the top singers and performers in Europe in the rehearsal room. It's a modest space but you can imagine a workaholic bachelor living there, and the history of the place makes it well worth a visit, particularly if you are a fan of Handel's music. (An interesting aside is that in the 60's Jimi Hendrix lived in the flat next door!) The museum reminded me a lot of the Mozart house museum that I went to in Vienna this past summer (although Mozart certainly didn't live at that address nearly as long as Handel lived in this house in London). It really brings the composers alive to imagine them living and working within these spaces.

To continue on with our music-themed afternoon we went to Denmark Street in Soho, once considered the "tin pan alley of London". We had a nice time looking at all the specialist guitar shops (including the "Bass Cellar" and a store specializing in vintage guitars). So as not to walk away totally empty-handed, Keith bought some new guitar picks.

The Wallace Collection

Keith and I took our respective mothers' advice and went to the Wallace Collection today. The Wallace Collection is in the Baker Street area and is the personal art collection of the 4th Marquess of Hertford and his son Sir Richard Wallace put together mainly in the 19th century. The collection is still contained in the family's large London town home (Hertford House) which was bequeathed to the nation at the end of the 19th century and turned into a public museum. There were a few paintings that I recognized in the collection: The Swing, featuring a lovely lady in a pink frothy gown having a romantic idyll with her two male admirers (one of whom was originally supposed to be a Bishop, naughtily), The Laughing Cavalier (who is arguably neither) and a beautiful portrait of Madame de Pompadour. There are other paintings by Van Dyck, Rembrandt, Canaletto (Venetian scenes), Jan Steen - the list goes on and on. There is also a lot of French furniture, including more of Marie-Antoinette's stuff than what is now at Versailles. Other French pieces abound, including a lot of paintings and busts of Louis XIV through XVI. There are also a lot of paintings which feature dogs - always a hit with us. We liked the so much we picked up a calendar featuring the Dogs of the Wallace Collection. there is also a remarkably huge collection of early guns, cannons and armour. The museum was a great place to spend the afternoon because while there is a lot to see, it's not so big that the visit is stressful or exhausting. Very much recommended to anyone visiting London!