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):

Dutch New Year Tradition

I learned a new Dutch tradition today - upon seeing someone for the first time in the new year, it is traditional to shake their hand and say, "Best wishes in the new year" or something similar. (Everyone returned to work today from the holidays, so there was a lot of hand shaking going on.) At first I stuck with the more familiar (to me, anyway) "Happy New Year!" but by the end of the day, I was giving people "best wishes" as well.

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

Gallivanting Around Greenwich

On Tuesday morning we headed down to the Waterloo Pier to catch a commuter boat down the Thames River to Greenwich. We started our walking tour at the currently covered-up and under-renovation Cutty Sark tea-shipping vessel.The rest of our walking tour took us through the Maritime Greenwich UNESCO World Heritage Site. We walked through the Old Royal Naval College that was designed by Christopher Wren, who also designed the Old Royal Hospital in Chelsea. The wonderful example of baroque architecture is now home to the University of Greenwich and the Trinity College of Music.Our walk led us to the National Maritime Museum, which tells the story of British seafaring. My favorite exhibits in the museum were the photo gallery showing life on the British seashore, called Beside the Seaside, and the exhibit on the history of cruise ships and vacations.
Next we walked through Greenwich Park to the Royal Observatory. Here we had the opportunity, along with tons of other like-minded tourists, to straddle the Prime Meridian and stand in both the Eastern and Western Hemipsheres at the same time.

We also stuck around for the "ball dropping". Every day sine 1883 a red ball has dropped atop the Royal Observatory at 1pm to help boaters on the Thames set their clocks. This ball moves halfway up at 12:55pm, the rest of the way up at 12:58pm, and then drops down at 1:pm. The following video clip shows the dropping of the ball (sped-up, of course).

After setting our watches precisely, we headed back down through Greenwich Park to the Queen's House. Well, we might have stopped for a bit of Mexican food for lunch, but then we were on own way again. We took a quick walk through the Queen's House to see the Tulip Stairs (the first spiral staircase without a center support column), a beautiful marble floor, and the exhibit Turmoil and Tranquility (same wonderful paintings of seascapes, ships, and battles).
After the Queen's House, we took the bus back to the Tower Bridge and began our walking tour of the South Bank...

The view of downtown London from the Royal Observatory through the Old Royal Naval College.

Australia

Due to having pre-booked tickets, after a long afternoon nap, we trekked out to Portobello Road to the Electric Cinema for a showing of Australia. This wasn't just any movie theater. The seats were red leather, cushy arm chairs with foot stools and in between the chairs were tables with built in wine buckets. Since I was feeling yucky, we opted for cokes serves in glass bottles with staws and a large, gooey brownie. The experience even included an intermission (which was greatly needed in the middle of the over 2 and half hour movie). It was the perfect date night location.

Windsor Castle

Our time in London was incredible - London is a truly amazing city - but our plans often ran into snags. On the day we arrived (Saturday), we discovered both London Underground stops near our hostel were closed for the weekend. This made any trek to and from the hostel a much, much longer bus ride. The very first meal we intended to eat was foiled when our handpicked Moe's-like burrito place was closed - despite no warning on its website. (This was to be the start of persistent trouble throughout the week with eating, which included unannounced holiday hours, closure for private functions, and a restaurant owner simply not showing up for work on time.) Laura and I also battled flu-like symptoms (Laura much worse than I) throughout the week. Much of this came to a head on Monday, our most discombobulated day of the trip.

That day, Laura woke up feeling particularly sick. However, we had plans to travel by bus between the popular but not particularly closely located triumvirate of sights Winchester, Stonehenge, and Bath, so Laura soldiered on. When we arrived at the station, they had changed Winchester on our itinerary to Windsor Castle. This was the first curve ball - it's not cool to change the trip you paid for and not tell you until you arrive - but actually worked out well because we both wanted to see Windsor Castle anyway.

So we took the bus trip to Windsor Castle, during which Laura fought valiantly not to vomit on anyone around her. After arriving victorious (read: Laura still had her stomach contents intact) and marching with the group through security and into the castle, we were all told to be promptly back at the bus at 12:55.

But let's pause the story for a moment for some pictures we took of beautiful Windsor Castle. The castle's site high on a hill was originally chosen by William the Conqueror in the late 11th century for its strategic value. The original structure has been rebuilt and extended by monarchs ever since and has been continuously inhabited for nearly 1000 years. Today it is one of several residences for the royal family and Queen Elizabeth spends many weekends there.

We only had time to look briefly at the grounds, the State Apartments, and St. George's Chapel. The State Apartments are some general use areas and the home of many fantastic paintings. St. George's Chapel (completed in the 16th century) serves as both a place of worship and royal mausoleum.

A view of the castle walls as approached from the town below.

Laura on the way to the State Apartments.

Another part of the castle, The Round Tower, isn't actually round and is surrounded by a moat.

More of Windsor Castle.

Matt in front of a very picturesque entryway.

St. George's Chapel

Unfortunately, no pictures are allowed inside, so to get an idea of the castle interior, you'll have to visit the official site. I personally loved the interior because it conformed to the images of castles that are popularly propagated in fairy tales and in the movies, with swords, guns, armor, and coats of arms on prominent display, references to knights abounding, magnificently appointed rooms, and great views.

Hopefully you see that Windsor Castle was fantastic ... but now back to the story. At about 20 minutes or so until we had to be back at the bus, we started the short walk through the town of Windsor to the bus lot. Laura wasn't feeling well (because of the aforementioned flu symptoms), and we were both hungry (our dinner the prior night was a single candy bar due to the aforementioned problems with restaurants being open). We stopped into a sandwich shop to get some grub for the road. The line was long and time started getting tight. Laura, being ever punctual, was adamantly in favor of abandoning the sandwiches and heading to the bus. I needed that sandwich in the worst way. I reasoned that if Laura went back to the bus at her own sickness-slowed pace, I could run to the bus after buying the sandwiches and still arrive on time, or at least nearly on time. So Laura went on to the bus and I waited in line for sandwiches.

After checking out, I had about a minute to get to the buses at 12:55. This wasn't enough time, but I certainly wasn't going to be very late. So all was basically well - or at least it should have been - because after leaving the sandwich shop in the direction of the buses, I realized I had no idea where I was going. I looked for signs for "tourist buses" or "bus parking," but to no avail. I looked for streams of tourists coming or going from a particular direction, also with no luck. So like a bouncing pinball, I ran full speed through town, stopping to ask five different people in total if they could direct me to the tourist buses. The first, as luck would have it, gave me a completely incorrect answer, which I gladly followed in the wrong direction. Answers then gradually got better from there, and all told it took me about 15 minutes to actually get to the bus lot. The bus, of course, was gone and I found Laura waiting nearby with a stern look on her face. This was not my finest hour. Lucky for me, there was a silver lining for Laura - missing the bus meant she didn't have to spend the rest of the day cramped together with strangers trying to keep her insides inside.

So when we should have been on the way to Stonehenge, we instead made our way back to the hostel. When we would have been seeing Bath, Laura was recovering via a nap and I was writing blog entries. And as for the sandwiches...they weren't even very good.

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.