This is written not so much as a letter to all of you, but as things we want to remember. We have always said we should keep a written log of our experiences so we can look back on more than just pictures. But time didn’t allow it prior to this with having to go back to work shortly after returning home.
London
We arrived after our two hour flight from Praha to Heathrow Airport. The subway, or tube as they say, goes all the way out to the airport making transportation very simple. The first part of the line is above ground so we got to see the country side. There were about a dozen stops before the one we needed. We both noticed at various stops there would be a computer recorded male voice saying “Mind the Gap”, “Mind the Gap”. It wasn’t until we were getting off the tube that we understood exactly what it meant. There is a three or four inch gap between the platform and the actual subway car and it is reminding us to watch out for it.
Our stop was the Victoria Station. Once above ground we were greeted with a row of taxis. They were all the vintage black replicas of cars from the 1940’s. I never realized that they had kept that look, which is quite nice. They are very distinguishable and they just looked like they fit into the area because many of the buildings are from or were rebuilt to look like the early 1900’s.
I had two maps with me to get to the hotel plus written instructions that they gave me over the phone. Wouldn’t ya think we could find it without a problem? First we had to figure out what street the exit we came up from was on. Not as easy as it sounds because it was where three streets came together and no street signs. We found the right street and headed down it. Directions showed that we needed to turn off Eccleston after two blocks onto Belgrave. So after two blocks we went to the left. What we didn’t realize was Eccleston turns into Belgrave when it bears to the left a little farther up the street. So we ended up at the Quality Inn asking for directions.
Belgrave is a street of homes converted into bed and breakfast inns. It looked charming. We found our little inn, and at first glance inside we figured it wasn’t for us. He hands us a key and says it’s on the fourth floor. That is the floor with the rooms that have their own bathrooms. Well, the fourth floor of floors with ten foot ceilings is a lot more climbing than we wanted to do. Plus the room itself hadn’t been redecorated in twenty years. We told him it would not work for us and proceeded back to the Quality Inn. It’s already after 6pm and wouldn’t ya know it they are booked. So we head back towards Victoria Station and a Holiday Inn that we saw down a different street.
A Holiday Inn, next to a train and subway station, can only mean one thing - big bucks. But, was now close to 7pm and we were tired. Darn good thing I packed light. However, Jack was carrying the larger of the two carry-ons and would have debated that statement right then.
We walked back to the Quality Inn after dinner to see about staying there the next few nights. Their price was half of what the Holiday Inn charged. Quality Inn had just purchased the hotel and was in the process of renovating it. However, everyone else apparently knew it was a good price. We could get a room for Friday and Saturday, but Sunday was booked. Instead of hoping someone cancels and if not having to find another place, we decided to call around the next morning.
The yellow pages listed several businesses that specialize in accommodations so we picked one. They did a very good job. They found us a hotel two subway stops from where we were. It was in the Chelsea/South Kensington area, more of a residential area and a short six blocks from the tube. It is a very nice Victorian house that had been converted, but they kept all the Victorian look and charm. AND they had an elevator! So we found a home for the next few days.
Half way between the tube and the hotel we also located an Italian restaurant where we ate in once for breakfast and twice for dinner. Down a couple of doors from the restaurant was an English pub that was reasonable and relaxing after a long day. One nice thing about pubs, you go to the bar, place your order, pay, and collect your drinks. No hassle trying to get a waitress’s attention to order or pay.
Friday was a perfect day. We almost thought we should have brought spring jackets instead of light wieght winter coats. We took the tube to the Thames River and Westminster Abbey. The original Abbey (of which nothing remains) was built between 1042 and 1066. Portions of the existing Cathedral date back to the 1200’s. Most of the work took place in the 1500’s. Yet it remained incomplete until the 1700’s because of a lack of money.
Royal coronations have taken place here since 1066. We took a guided tour and our guide explained that the church normally seats a couple hundred people. For special services it can accommodate a couple of thousand. For the last coronation in 1953 they seated 8,000! If Queen Elizabeth II were to die today Charles would become King at that moment, however, the coronation would not be until the day after the one year anniversary of her death. The customary one year of mourning is honored. As our guide indicated it takes six months to prepare the Abby for the Coronation. They build additional seating that goes five stories in height.
The Abbey is also the burial and memorial site for hundreds of British royalty and other note worthy people. One in particular we thought was unusual was that the Abbey is the burial site for Isaac Newton.
The House of Parliament is a stone’s throw from the Abbey. They were not in session so we were unable to go inside. An impressive building it is. From there we walked in the direction of Buckingham Palace.
This route took us past several government buildings of wonderful architecture, including the current and old Treasuries, the Admiralty, the Horse Guards, and the Foreign Offices. We stopped and took a quick tour of the Cabinet War Rooms. These are the actual rooms underground that were used by Churchill and the military during W.W.II. These were not rooms recreated. These are the actual rooms. For security reasons, the rooms were sealed off exactly as they were in 1945, papers on desks and everything. It wasn’t until the 1960’s that it was reopened and used as a museum.
With regard to 10 Downing St. where the Prime Minister lives, the entire street is sealed off in both directions. On TV it appears to look like it’s a normal residential area. The building itself and the building across the street are typical looking government buildings. In the middle of the block is about a half dozen ordinary looking house entrances and then it is typical government building on either side. That small residential looking area is the entrance to 10 Downing. Makes for a nice homey photo op.
From there we proceeded down the entire length of Buckingham Palace Gardens. We were surprised to see crocus and daffodils in full bloom. So were many ornamental trees. The palace itself is only open to the public in July and August. Which we knew before we left, but I wanted to see the outside anyway. We did see the changing of the guard. Not the big one with horses that occurs at noon, the one that takes place each hour.
Saturday we started with the double-decker tour bus. This tour is the type that you buy a ticket and it is good for 24 hours. You are able to get on and off at your leisure. Perfect to see more of the city as London is one of the few cities in Europe that does not have trams.
We got off at St. Paul’s Cathedral. It is massive. The main dome is second only in size to St. Peter’s in Rome. Most of the work took place in the 1700 and 1800’s with the last area completed in the early 1900’s. There is more detail in the individual chapels and arches than any cathedral we have been in.
The three smaller domes are entirely done in various mosaics depicting scenes from the bible. The mosaics are made of irregularly set reflecting glass called “tesseraes”. Thick slabs of opaque glass of various colors were produced from which the tesseraes for the mosaics were cut.
The massive central dome has eight fresco paintings that were completed between 1716 and 1719. One could climb the 530 steps to the top gallery to get a closer view of the paintings. Or one could just look into the large mirror set on the floor below and marvel at the sight. We opted for the mirror.
We were in the east wing when a security guard told us that we must “terminate the area” as there was a wedding party coming in. Fine. We’ll just go down into the crypt. And what a crypt it was. The crypts that we have been in are small dingy cellars. This was almost the same size (in length and width not height) as the cathedral above. It was very bright, spacious, and elaborate. There are hundreds of burial sites and memorial sites. It also has a chapel (The Order of the British Empire Chapel) and the Cathedral treasures are down there.
Buried in the crypt is the Duke of Wellington who defeated Napoleon. He died in 1852. His tomb is made of what is called “Cornish Porphyry”. It just looks like rough cement. It is very simple compared to his memorial in the cathedral. The artist worked on cathedral memorial of bronze with ivory and black marble for twenty years and it was still incomplete on his death in 1875. The figure of the Duke on his horse that tops the memorial was finally completed in 1912. The memorial is over 20’ in height.
As we were walking through the Order of the British Empire Chapel wouldn’t ya know that same little security guard was “terminating” us again. The wedding was taking place in the OBE Chapel. A wedding? In a Crypt? Yeah it may be a cute chapel, but it’s in a basement and surrounded by dead people! We would have stayed to see what we could of the wedding but it wasn’t for another hour.
By now the weather is typical of London, wind and rain. We caught the double-decker tour bus again. Our next stop was the Tower of London. The name, Tower of London, makes you envision one massive tower. It’s not. The original fortress built in the 1100’s consisted of a walled enclosure. The first building (1190-1285) within the fortress was a large rectangular building called the White Tower. This is where the name Tower of London derived from. There have been additional defensive walls, towers, and buildings added up until the 19th century.
The Tower of London has served not only the place to house the royal jewels, for a brief time it was the royal palace, a prison, an arsenal, and the royal mint. It was never intended to protect London from invasion or meant to be the principal residence of the royalty, though many did spend periods of time there. Its primary function is to provide a base for the royal power and as a stronghold to which the royal family could retreat in times of civil disorder.
The crown jewels have been on display since the 17th century. The jewels on display date back to 1660. The items used for coronations prior to this were destroyed after the execution of Charles I in 1660. The gold and silver were melted down and the jewels sold by orders from Oliver Cromwell after Great Britain’s brief civil war. For eleven years Great Britain was ruled as a republic and not by a king or queen.
At a coronation the king or queen is presented by the Archbishop of Canterbury with the three symbols of power, an orb and two scepters. The king’s scepter contains the largest quality cut diamond in the world. It is called the First Star of Africa and weighs just over 530 carats.
There are three sets of “regalia”, the word they use to describe the orb and scepters. One set is for the crowning of a king. One set for the wife of a king as she becomes the queen consort. The third set is for the crowning of a queen. The husband of a crowned queen does not become a king as that would make him more powerful than the queen.
We got great views of the Tower Bridge. We didn’t go over to it and climb the stairs up to the top. That sounded like too much work on such a nasty day. The bus tour took us across London Bridge and onto the area on the south side of the river.
Sunday the weather had improved remarkably. It was museum day. Within walking distance of our hotel are the four museums of South Kensington. We viewed two, the Science Museum and the Victoria and Albert (V&A) Museum. We walked past the massive Romanesque style exterior of the Natural History Museum.
The Science Museum has 10,000 exhibits on 7 floors with 2,000 hands on exhibits. I attempted the controls of a model helicopter. It crashed a number of times. They have a flight simulator that appeared to be something not to be attempted so quickly after a large breakfast. We spent three hours there. We hit the areas for metals, chemistry, computing, flight, and oceanography. We had to by-pass the space exploration wing and marine engineering area. Those and another hundred other areas on the various floors would have taken up the rest of the day.
The V&A Museum houses the world’s largest collection of decorative art and design pieces. We concentrated on Italy, China, and Japan. They contained ceramics, porcelain, jewelry, arts and other period pieces. We also spent time in the sculpture and architecture wing. It contains true to scale plaster casts of Roman and Egyptians artifacts, monuments, and temples - massive beyond words. They had a small Frank Lloyd Wright wing which displayed the entire office and actual office pieces he had created for the president’s office in the Johnson Controls building that he designed.
From here we walked to Hyde Park and the Kensington Gardens. Our intent was to go through the State Apartments at Kensington Palace. However, we found it to be closed until May for refurbishing.
The palace was the home for Princess Diana. It is the current home for the Prince and Princess Michael of Kent, the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester, and for Princess Margaret. Seems strange all these people having apartments within one palace. From the pictures we have seen these are not small apartments, but, mini palaces within a palace.
Monday the plan was to take the Docklands Light-Railway to the foot tunnel under the river that leads to Greenwich. The Docklands Rail is an elevated rail system so we would get a good view of the former docks. In Greenwich are the National Maritime Museum and the Royal Naval College. However, when we got over to the docklands entrance near the Tower of London, we were told that there had been an explosion within the foot tunnel and it would not be open that day.
The only other access to Greenwich would be to go back to central London and take a bus across the river and then to the east, or by boat. This would have taken another 1-1/2 to 2 hours. We opted to view the British Museum and explore the area around it as this was closer to where we currently were.
The British Museum is another massive museum that couldn’t possibly be viewed in one day. One of its most noteworthy attractions is the Rosetta Stone. They were doing some construction work so I had a problem locating it. We were about to ask a security person for help when we located a banner with its name.
The Rosetta Stone dates back to 196BC. It contains three separate “writings” carved into the black stone that is about 2’ wide by 3’ in length. Two of the script is Egyptian and one is in Greek. This is what enabled the meaning of Egyptian hieroglyphs to be deciphered. Napoleon’s army at Rosetta in the Nile Delta discovered it quite by accident when excavating the Delta area for construction.
Instead of concentrating on their vast collection of Greek and Egyptian artifacts we spent time in the European Medieval, Renaissance, and Modern collections. There we viewed pottery, ceramics, porcelain, glassware, vases of every type from each period of time.
We had to call it a day early as our theater tickets were for 7:30. We needed allow time to get back to the hotel, change, eat, and then locate the theater.
We had tickets to “The Phantom of the Opera” I had seen a movie on the Phantom many years ago so I knew the general plot. The theater was Her Majesty’s Theater in an area of Piccadilly Circus. This is the same theater that the play originally opened in 1986. We had terrific seats. The theater was smaller than I had expected. But we have only been in theaters constructed more recently than this.
The play, we learned, was based upon a novel that takes place in a real opera house in Paris. That opera house had a total of 17 stories. Seven of which were below ground. It took the developer 15 years to build the Paris Opera House. When the work was completed it is told that one of the architects begged the developer to let him stay on. They say he lived under the ground until he died. The opera staff used to joke that they saw him dart from pillar to pillar. The play at times takes place on what appears to be a lake. There really is a lake underneath the building the Paris opera house the novel was based on.
In the play the Phantom is sort of an elephant man born into an aristocratic family. As a child he is imprisoned in a mask by his mother. He tours in sideshows and becomes a court jester of the Sultan of Persia. Through his genius, he ends up designing palaces for the Shah. He eventually moves to Paris where he is one of the architects of the Paris Opera House. Thus the plot follows legend. The play takes place during the time he is living below the Opera House.
The play itself has enormous props and elaborate special effects. It was the icing on the cake for our trip!
We did not have to be to the airport until 3pm on Tuesday. The weather was the same as it had been for the last three day, sunny in the morning and cloudy in the afternoon. The temperatures were in the mid 40’s.
We used the morning to go back to various places to take some pictures that we meant to take or couldn’t take at the time. We walked across to the south side of the river to catch the view from there.
After lunch we took a walk around the area of our hotel. The area of South Kensington is picture book perfect row houses. The Bolton’s is an area of larger homes. We were told the homes are well in excess of a million pounds ($1,600,000).
Observations
--Two things that stood out for us were the wider streets and very few dogs. Praha has very narrow streets as most date back to the horse and buggy days. In London the streets were widened once after the great fire of 1666 and again during reconstruction after the bombing of London during W.W.II.
--In the urban areas the houses are closer to the street and side walk. They normally do not have grass between the house and the side walk.
--In Great Britain one drives on the left. This does not hold true for walking. It is a mixture and at some times very annoying. Escalators are the same as all over, stand on the right to allow walking up/down on the left.
--Crossing the street is harder, physiologically that is. They have painted on the street just below the curb in large letters “Look Left” or “Look Right” whichever direction is required. Yet you still look the other way too because it just doesn’t feel right.
--I had told my sister I could live in London. It is clean, charming, alive, and I don’t need a translation book. This really isn’t true. Not only did we have a problem figuring out what “mind the gap” and “terminate the area” meant we also had a slight problem in the airport. All of the TV screens that show departure times and the corresponding gate number said to “Go to Security” for every flight but a few. We had to ask, thinking there may be a problem. It means to go through passport control and the metal detectors. It makes sense now, but not at first glance. In the pub near the hotel there were about six guys who were discussing a football (soccer) game. Their accents were such that I could only understand an occasional word.
--Like airports in Germany the check in area is patrolled by military personnel with automatic rifles. Heathrow also had a guard with a German Shepherd.
--British Airways in both Praha and London have a separate check in desk if you only have carry-on luggage. They also have a computer for “Self Check-Ins”
--People were friendly and willing to help with directions. One of the concierges was a bit on the stuffy side once he realized we were not going to hire a personal guide at 160£ ($250) per day that he recommended. He was a bit pushy to sell us on everything that I’m sure he received a little kick back on.
--Having tea in the late afternoon is still popular, but pricey. At our hotel it was 8£ ($13) for tea and a bunch of finger sandwiches, cakes, and other sweets. The luxury hotels advertised twice that amount. This isn’t exactly high on the list of cultural experiences for a diabetic.
--The biggest thing was we missed the homecoming celebration for the Czech hockey team after it won the gold medal at the Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan. We saw all of the games up to and including the win over the USA. And we were able to see extensive coverage of the Canadian game. There was no winner even after ten minutes of overtime, so they had to go into a shoot out. This I learned is where each team picks five guys to go one on one against the goalie. The first Czech player scored against the Canadian’s. After that, neither team scored. We saw only brief highlights of the actual final game with Russia. Once we were home they were re-broadcasting clips of the crowds at the Old Town Square and in various pubs watching the game. We saved the articles and pictures from USA Today and the Prague Post.
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