National Portrait Gallery

Knowing we didn't have time to explore the HUGE National Gallery, we headed around the corner to the National Portrait Gallery to see some famous faces. The gallery was filled with famous faces from the past and present.

My favorite portraits were in a temporary exhibit by Anderson & Low called Champions. The room was filled with photographs of famous athletes - nude. They were nude to show that despite their fame and bodily perfection, they are just as susceptible to HIV/AIDS as everyone else. The photographs really show off their stunning strength and beauty. The collection was commissioned to benefits the Elton John AIDS Foundation.

London is hosting the 2012 Summer Olympic Games and the National Portrait Gallery has dedicated a few rooms to portraits of British Olympic athletes. Here you can watch a video of David Beckham sleeping by Sam Taylor-Wood. One of the most interesting portraits is of the swimmer Duncan Goodhew by Marty St. James. It is a collection of video screens that shows the swimmer diving into the pool and swimming from every conceivable angle. I am sure Goodhew got the best stroke analysis of his life from the film.

Matt also enjoyed checking out the portraits of famous scientists, like William Kelvin and Michael Faraday, while I was enjoying the portraits of Princess Margaret.

Changing of the Guard and Plans

"The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry."

-Robert Burns

I planned out every minute we were going to be in London. I researched the museums, found audio guides for walks and sites, sought recommendations from locals on restaurants and night spots, read countless reviews of shows and sites, spent hours on travel message boards, mapped tube and bus routes - I am sure you get the picture. However, London had other plans. Picked restaurants had "special" holiday hours, the tube had massive closures over the week, I got sick, Matt missed the bus, planes were delayed, and there were crowds.

However, despite all the hiccups, our week went surprising well and the only thing we seemed to be short of was time. I think one of the best example of planning gone awry was our plans to see the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace. Message boards, travel guides, and friends all suggested arriving half an hour before the show to see the display of pageantry. Ever-conscience of the clock, we arrived 45 minutes ahead of time to scope out the best place to photograph the guard.

Stepping out of Hyde Park, I knew this was just not going to happen. Bus loads of tourists were already lining the gates, steps, and walk ways around Buckingham Palace. Having already spent enough time standing around in the cold (think fireworks and parade) and not wanting the prize view of the back of someone's head, we moved right along.Fortunately, we moved right along past the horse stables on accident. We found front row seats for the changing of the horse guard. While it might not be as famous, it was pretty nice show of pageantry just the same.Next time we are in London, we will know better. Maybe we will camp out at Buckingham Palace the night before. Hmmm. I wonder if the guards let you do that...

A Spot of Tea

Since a two-hour high tea wasn't in our time or wallet budget, we stopped in Sacred Cafe for a spot of tea on Friday morning. We ordered a pot for two of red berry fruit tea and then sank into wonderful cushioned couches to enjoy our tea break. Our tea was served in a lovely flowered pot with two over sized tea cups. It's the kind of place you would want to pick-up your daily cup of tea (coffee) from - too bad it's halfway around the world.

Which is Which?

Red phone booths are popping up all over!















So which one is the authentic phone booth that can be found on a street corner in London and which one is an attraction found at Epcot in Disney World?

Don't be confused by Matthew - he is pretending to be Superman in both phone booths.

Wicked

We finished New Year's Day off with a showing of Wicked at the Apollo Victoria Theatre. I have read other books by Gregory Maguire and knew I was in for a treat in the fractured fairytale; I just didn't know for how big of a treat. It was a wonderful show; the set and the cast were amazing. My favorite part was the monkeys. They were so life-like, but wonderfully artsy at the same time.

The story just drew you in and everything from the original story was expertly woven into the fractured tale. Now I can't wait to read Maguire's other books. I have been trying to find Wicked and A Loin Among Men at the library and local bookstores for a few months now with out any luck - I guess I will just have to order them from Amazon.

Now if we can just get back to London to take in some more fabulous West End shows and intermission ice cream...

Tate Modern

After ducking out of the parade, we popped over to the Tate Modern to see artwork from the 20th century. Since modern art really isn't our thing (the Tate Modern was one of the only things open on New Year's Day in the area we were in), we decided to take one of the free introductory tours. Our tour took us through the Idea and Object wing and focused on the artists Martin Creed and Carl Andre. It was a nice look into minimalist art and helped us understand the thoughts and ideas behind it. On the way out we poked our heads into the Materials Gestures exhibit to see one of Monet's beautiful paintings, Water-Lilies.

New Year's Day Parade in London

Parade Grand Marshalls

A short night's sleep after viewing the fireworks on the River Thames, Laura and I were on our way to see the London New Year's Day Parade. Laura had the excellent foresight to get us tickets at a grandstand, so there was no more standing and waiting in the cold for us this time! We walked right up to our seats on Piccadilly Street just in time for the parade.

I've never been a fan of parades. I don't watch them on TV, and unless people are throwing candy (and by "candy," I mean "good candy") directly at me, I don't like watching them in person either. There's just not anything interesting about seeing beauty queens and high school bands meandering their way down the street. But despite my general disdain for parades, I had high hopes that the London New Year's Day Parade would be at least as spectacular as the parades held at the major US cities and broadcast on TV. Maybe they'd even have balloons!

It turns out that the annual South Carolina Poultry Festival (yes, this is a shout-out to "the BL") has a better (and shorter!) parade than London (one of the top five or so most important cities in the world). The parade in London is just a sorry excuse to invite American high school bands, who have to pay their own expenses and thus unload American money in London. There were no fewer than 28 (!) high school bands/choirs from the United States, and they weren't even those good high school bands with the rockin' drum lines. They were just plain old high school bands, playing the same tired songs every one of us heard a zillion times between freshman and senior year. It was like an American reunion on Piccadilly Street, with an obscene number of parents (a nice bonus for the economy of London) there to watch their children march in the parade.

Laura and I made it through two of the three hours before bolting. The one major bright spot - other than the occasional candy throwing - was an enormous group of British Mini owners showing off their rides.Mini on Parade

The "Oliver" Float

New Year's Eve Fireworks in London

On New Years Eve, Laura and I braved the crowds and the sub-freezing temperatures to see the big fireworks display on the River Thames. The fireworks display was directly over the river, many of them shot directly from the London Eye.

We arrived at the mob scene at about 21:00 (24 hour time used here in honor of the European preference for it) wearing long underwear, sweaters, big scarves, skull caps, two pairs of wool socks, and our thickest jackets. (I even wore a second jacket underneath my big jacket.) At about 21:30, trees started getting toilet-papered. At 22:00, the music started. At 22:30, the cold was starting to creep through all our layers. Around that time, famous people like Ricky Gervais, Michael Caine, and Homer/Marge Simpson started dispensing well-wishes via an enormous projection on a building behind the London Eye. Finally, at about 23:50, they started pumping the crowd up with louder music and lights on the Eye, followed by a countdown on the aforementioned building and the chiming of Big Ben at 24:00. Then the fireworks started and ran for about 10 minutes. I'm not a big fan of fireworks, but it was a very nice show.

Natural History Museum

On Wednesday we went to the Natural History Museum. I was tremendously excited about this visit, partly because I recently read Bill Bryson's A Short History of Everything - a most accessible and fun book on natural history - which contained the following passage about the Natural History Museum in London:

The Natural History Museum contains some seventy million objects from every realm of life and every corner of the planet, with another hundred thousand or so added to the collections each year, but it is really only behind the scenes that you get a sense of what a treasure house this is. In cupboards and cabinets and long rooms full of close-packed shelves are kept tens of thousands of pickled animals in bottles, millions of insects pinned to squares of card, drawers of shiny molluscs, bones of dinosaurs, skulls of early humans, endless folders of neatly pressed plants. ... The spirit room alone holds 15 miles of shelving containing jar upon jar of animals preserved in methylated spirit.

Back here are specimens collected by Joseph Banks in Australia, Alexander von Humboldt in Amazonia, and Darwin on the Beagle voyage - and much else that is either very rare or historically important or both.

How can that not capture your imagination? Just think of all the rare artifacts at the museum that have passed through the hands of exceptionally brainy people and all the knowledge that has been extracted. Think of the vast extent of the British Empire and their unique position to form an expansive collection for all their museums, including the Natural History Museum.



At the museum, we first attended their temporary Darwin exhibition (another link), which was wonderful. It told the tale of Charles Darwin's life, from his invitation to join the HMS Beagle on a voyage around the world as its naturalist, to his aha! moment stemming largely from observations on the Galapagos Islands, to the years after he finally published his theory of evolution through natural selection in On the Origin of Species in 1859.

I have two favorite anecdotes about Darwin from the exhibit. The first was that he liked to "sample" (cook and eat) many of the animals he encountered on his travels. The second anecdote is from an encounter he had with gauchos in South America, who took him hunting for lesser rheas. The gauchos hunted rheas using bolas (two balls attached with a cord). When Darwin tried, he got his bola wrapped around the legs of his own horse. He wrote in a letter, "The Gauchos roared with laughter; they cried they had seen every sort of animal caught, but had never before seen a man caught by himself."

If you haven't been to the UK (or visited since 2000), you might also be interested to know that Darwin's likeness now adorns the £10 note.

Matt riding the escalator through Planet Earth to the Volcano Exhibit

As for the rest of the museum, we looked at the exhibits on birds, dinosaurs, primates, geophysics, and minerals. We also visited The Vault, a display of rare (and often historically interesting) specimens of "gems, crystals, metals, and meteorites." The museum was great and I hope one day I can go back and spend more time there.

London Eye

After walking along the South Bank, we queued-up for a trip in the London Eye. The London Eye was opened in March 2000, as a celebration of the new millennium and a modern Britain. It was designed by David Marks and Julia Barfield, a husband and wife architect team.

There are 32 capsules on the wheel - one for each borough of London. Each capsule can hold 25 people; that's 800 people per revolution. The Eye loads and unloads while still moving and each flight last about 30 minutes. From the top of the Eye (135m tall), on a clear day, you can see Windsor Castle, some 40 km away. For more information about the construction of the Eye and other fun facts visit here.

Here are some of our photos of the Eye (since we chose to ride the eye at night and tripods are not allowed we do not have any pictures of the amazing views from capsule):

South Bank Walk

After Gallivanting through Greenwich, we hopped on a bus back to Tower Bridge to begin a walk down the South Bank of the Thames River. Here are the photos from our walk down the Thames:

Tower Bridge

Tower of London

City Hall

View of Downtown London from across the Thames River

HMS Belfast

Old Billingsgate Market

Southwark Cathedral, where John Harvard was baptized

Shakespeare's Globe

We popped into the Royal National Theater for one of their daily free concerts. The concert of the day was by a jazz group called the Christian Brewer Trio.

Golden Jubilee Bridge (AKA Wobbly Bridge)

London Eye and the London Aquarium

Big Ben & Parliament Buildings

Foxes and Hounds and Pigs! Oh my!

No, we did not visit a British petting zoo, but rather took a pub walk through Chelsea. With promises of seeing celebrities' houses, visiting real English pubs, and a walk through the most exclusive borough of London, we set off with Claire, our guide from London Walks.
Our first stop was the Fox & Hounds where we were told to drink only "real beer", AKA cask ales, or else risk banishment from the tour. Cask ales are served much warmer than lagers and other carbonated beers because they are served at cellar temperature (just imagine the beer in the summer months). The casks are stored in the cellar and the bartender siphons the beer into the pint glass up by pumping the tap. We joined the crowd and tried Young's Special and Bitter. The Fox & Hounds was a lovely Victorian pub, with wood paneled walls, decorated ceilings, and beautiful furnishings. As you entered the building, you stepped back into time.

After finishing our (half) pints, we walked through the heart of Chelsea. We passed the Old Royal Chelsea Hospital and the houses of:

• Paul Getty
• Eric Clapton
• Mick Jagger
• Brian Adams
• Keith Richards
• Richard Rogers

• And, the most important residence, of James Bond, 007. You can see the street sign from his street in the first photo. Unfortunately, he wasn't home.

Our next stop was The Phoenix, a "tarted-up pub" according to the guide. It looked like the cross between a Starbucks and cosy wine bar inside. Fearing exile from the group, I tried an English cider instead of an ale. Fortunately, my Aspall Draught Suffolk Cyder was approved by the tour guide since it was made in England.

We finished the tour of Chelsea in The Pig's Ear, a pub across the street from Eric Clapton's house. Needing to get up early the next morning, we skipped the last drink and headed back to the hostel for the evening.