August 10, Home

 Having become an expert, in one day, at taking The Tube, I decided to take public transportation to the airport.  It worked like this:  Walk two blocks from hotel to Baker Street Tube station, take two   v   e   r   y       l     o     o     o    o    n    g   escalators down to the bowels of London, board the train on platform 9, disembark at Paddington, wind your way through tunnels and up escalators and along more passageways to Paddington Station proper, find platform 7, get on the train, get off the train at Heathrow Central, follow the signs to Terminal 3, which may have been a longer walk than the two blocks to the Tube.  And what about paying?   A flick of your watch at the stile as you enter and then exit the Tube Station. As for the Heathrow Express ticket, you can buy that on-line.

Check in for the flight was easy as was security, and the flight was just fine.  Food was terrible.  Landed almost an hour early!  Passport control fast. (Global Entry is the best.)  Bag drop fast. No customs at all.  Found person who was picking me up without  difficulty.  Traffic from JFK light on a Sunday afternoon yet.  All totally astonishing!  

 Best parts of the trip were the days with Alex and Alex and then with Max.  Except for the HEAT at the beginning, lucky with the weather, which is a huge factor when you are walking between 12-17 miles a day.  Some of the stages were beautiful, some were dull.  Navigation apps worked 100%.

Most accommodations were fine; a few were standouts and a couple were "I wish I did not have to stay here." There was a mix of hotel, bed and breakfast, and AirB&B.  Overall, I prefer hotels, except when they are self check-in, in which case you have the disadvantages of an AirB&B without any of the advantages (kitchen, e.g.).  

Luggage transfer, all arranged ahead of time worked perfectly.  

Biggest challenge: when there was not a good grocery store close by.  

Offa's Dyke: harder than I thought it would be, but some stages were lovely.  The downside of Off'a Dyke is that there are not always accommodations near the path.  This means either complicated taxi arrangements or several miles on asphalt to get to a place to stay.

Shropshire Way:  Bag the most northern stages completely.  They are dull, there is too much road walking, and some have significant detours. The southern segment is quite nice. But because the Shropshire Way is not a National Trail, it is not all that popular, so the route is poorly maintained in places.

Overall, a good experience, say, B+  AND I am glad to be home!

August 09, London

Today, like many days, was divided into two parts: morning and afternoon!   When one rises and shines at about 4:30 a.m., even a leisurely cup of "coffee" along with something to eat and spending time reading Daf Yomi only gets you to about 6:00 a.m.  Where to go?  Either  explore city streets or a park.  I chose the latter, so off to Hyde Park once again it was.  

Henry Moore:

Couple on a bench:

Hyde park has special horse lanes: wide swaths of sand:  Here are a couple kicking up some dust:

Oh, tally ho! I say, is that the cavalry racing along?

You can almost hear the trumpets even though they are not in the picture.

This colorful avian creature has a fearsome itch:

Some are prettying up; some are having a chit-chat:

And this one is so don't bother me!

Sir, do you have a reservation?  No?  Oh, I see.  Well there seems to be only one spot available at the moment.  Will that do?

There was a triathalon happening in the park, which, I realized later, is why some  of the runners were jogging along wearing bathing caps.  Here is a group getting ready for, or just having finished, the swim portion:

In the park is an Italian Garden.  An Italian Garden has to have at least one fountain:

Already in the neighborhood, I decided to give the Victoria and Albert another go.  Good move! Now, to get to almost anywhere at the V&A, you have to walk through the long sculpture hall. where  this bust of Dr. Anthony Addington by Thomas Banks caught my attention:

We are told that despite the life like appearance of the sitter, the bust is based on a death mask cast directly from Dr. Addington's face after death.  (Uhhh, not life-like looking to me!)

Time to make a bee line to the jewelry collection:

As you might guess, there were many, many dazzling pieces.

Darling, with my black sheath, shall I wear the blue?

or the green?

Some pieces were actually practical, like this silver and ruby Spanish hair comb:

And some—though not many— utterly charming:

Behind this tiara is a sad story.

When Prince Albert died in 1861, Queen Victoria was so devastated, she could not go out or do anything, to the extent that she could not even fulfill her royal duty of being present for the ceremonial opening of parliament for FIVE YEARS! Finally, in February, 1866, when she could summon up the strength to officiate, she wore this modest tiara that Albert had designed for her:

Some pieces were, uhh, ugly:

and/or strange:

I will call that one Spaghetti with Olives.

Bouquet of stems of yucca, wheat, lavender, rosemary and poppy.

How it was meant to be worn we are not told, but it might, or might not, pair with these shoes from Harrods:

What is clever about this necklace is the way it opens and closes:

You see that green heart in the center?  It splits into two, right down the middle!


The display did not stop with wearables.  There were, for example, jewel encrusted boxes:

And goblets such as this one that has a lid affixed in such a way that seemed to render the goblet impossible to drink from: 

All jeweled out, I hunted for the Jacobean and Tudor rooms, but could not find them, so I retraced my steps to Harrods to buy something good to eat.  Whilst first perusing (again) their jewelry section,  I engaged in conversation with a man who worked at the Cartier display. When he found out that I could not gain admittance to the exhibit at the V&A, he showed me  photos of some of the items on his phone.  I could see why you cannot get a ticket until September.  Why not take a peak to get a taste.

Food supplies acquired, it was time for the afternoon plan.  The info on Google Maps made it clear that the only way I could get back to the hotel to drop off my food supplies before heading to the zoo, was to take a TAXI, which, like the tube, I had never done before. It worked out just fine!

A thirty minute walk through Regent's Park got me to the zoo.  As did Alex in 2023, I saw a coyote in the park:

A few highlights:

Emu:

White-naped mangabey:

:
Uhhh..black, yellow, and white lizard?

Dyeing (yes, dyeing) poison dart frog:

Comment from little boy looking at these frogs, "One of them is hitching a ride."

An observation that more accurately applies to this youngster and his mom:

Ethiopian mountain adder:

My favorite of the day was this camel:

But the one to worry about was not even in the zoo:

August 8, London

I set out this morning at about 7:00 (that is late!!) for the hour and forty minute walk to The Tower. It was not a particularly nice walk, but I do enjoy covering as much of a city on foot as possible because you get a good sense of things that way. However, it was such that I did not want to do the return on foot, and here comes the climax of the day:  I TOOK THE TUBE!  I am terrified of underground transportation—once, years ago, I took the subway the wrong direction in New York, and so I am  convinced I will do that again.  Anyway, I am feeling proud to the point of smugness! (I confess to having watched a video in advance to prepare for the possibility!)

Although the walk was not a joy, there was a small sculpture exhibit en route.  Is this piece meant to portray a cupcake or a tutu?

I do not know what these are called—not wind chimes exactly—but they made charming, sweet sounds:

It was a super smart move to have a ticket for 9:00 when the Tower—a set of museums, really—opens because everyone rushes to the Crown Jewels, that being the star exhibit, so in advance of the hordes, you can see the display best.  Photography is not allowed, but you can get a sense of it all here.  The jewels are dazzling to the point of obscenity. You think there cannot be more opulence but there is more and more and more.  Then you see the gold bowls and dishes and implements—there is a gold punch bowl that holds 270 bottles of wine—and wait!  

A bulletin just came in.  Instead of my telling you all about The Tower and then a stroll in Regent's Park, read a better narrative about a stroll in Regents Park followed by a visit to the Tower, at  Alex and Alex's visit to the Tower

Alex says that the punch bowl held 144 bottles of wine; clearly there is controversy about this important fact! Other than that, we had pretty much the same reactions to things and took photos of many of the same objects

But I still have a thing or two to say!   Remember this photo (from the above mentioned blog)?

Well, here is a detail.  the hand is made of pistols....all the parts are pieces of weapons:

A gold lion spouting, Peace to you, Mark, my evangelist

Horse and rider... not cast into the sea, as far as we know:

It would be so miserable to have to wear this:

Can you imagine on a hot day?

A fancy cannon:

One blurb noted that the weapons of the realm were stored at The Tower so that they would be ready at a moment's notice if needed.  Given the size and the weight of the machines of war, I highly doubt that anything could be had at a moment's notice.

Who, I ask you, who would want this job?

Here is a bit of what the museum says about Edward 1:

I was surprised that in addition to the taxation, the museum recorded that Edward imprisoned (in the tower) a large number of London Jews, murdered some, and in 1290 officially expelled all the Jews from England. 

Now back to Edward's day to day:

                            

The medieval equivalent ot fire assembly points?

  

This is so sickening!!

After the tower visit and my successful tube journey back to Baker Street, I thought I would pop into the Sherlock Holmes Museum.  You would not believe the line!  And these were all people who had reserved a time!  So on to Regents Park where the flowers were nowhere near as profuse as they were when Alex and Alex were there in June 2023. (See photos on blog page mentioned above.)  I prefer Hyde Park, I have to say.   

I did catch these two beauties, though: