On Friday afternoon we headed to the King’s Cross station to catch the train to York which is 195 miles north of London.  York is described as one of the most historic cities in England and one of the best preserved medieval cities in Europe.  It began as a Roman fort and over the subsequent centuries was controlled by the Saxons and then taken over by the Vikings in 866.  The enormous York Minister, the largest Gothic structure north of the Alps, dominates the city, 800 year old walls and gateways which include parts of the original Roman fortifications are still in place and some medieval buildings also still remain.

Upon arrival we set ourselves up at The Grange Hotel and then walked into the city centre to get our bearings for our full day on Saturday, participate in the Food Festival that was taking place and do some nebbing.  We started Saturday at The Minster which is over 500 feet long and about 250 feet wide (and 250 years to build) and houses the largest collection of medieval stained glass in Britain.  Think of its enormous size and then picture about every section having a massive section of stained glass.  Some of the glass dates to the late 12th century.  It turned out to be wise to begin here because we spent several hours on the sight.  The crypt has a wonderful history display including remains of the original Roman fortification, Viking, Norman and medieval carvings as well as tangible evidence of the history of the earliest chapel on the sight dating to about 1220.

The rest of our day took us to the Yorkshire Museum Gardens, many medieval ruins that remain in great condition including St. Mary’s Abbey, Clifford’s Tower, the Shambles with its timber framed buildings and Holy Trinity Church.  The small Holy Trinity Church is a must see with its founding in the first half of the 12th century, its architecture from the 13th and 14th centuries, its pewboxes from the 17th and 18th centuries and its stained glass from the late 15th century.

On Saturday night we had dinner with Jacquie Martinez and Gail Hammond who I have worked with for the last three seasons during my time working on Mayan ruins in Belize.  Jacquie just finished her Master’s studies in York and Gail begins her PhD studies in London this month.  Our thanks to Jacquie for her recommendations of sights to visit in York.  We will connect with them again this Friday in London where I am sure they will take one more shot at convincing Konnie to join us in jungle of Belize.  Good luck with that one ladies.

Back to London on Sunday afternoon.  Too many pictures (again) but York is a great visit.

Picture labels to come later.

According to Wikipedia, Mews is a chiefly British term formerly describing a row of stables, usually with carriage houses below and living quarters above, built around a paved yard or court, or along a street, behind large city houses, such as those of London, during the 17th and 18th centuries. The word may also refer to the lane, alley or back street onto which such stables open. It is sometimes applied to rows or groups of garages or, more broadly, to a narrow passage or a confined place. Today most mews stables have been converted into dwellings, some greatly modernized and considered highly desirable residences.

So we are staying in a small townhouse in Eaton Mews.  Back here in the stable section there is a significant amount of construction going on.  It reminds me of the scrape offs and rehabbing of old properties in Denver during the boom time.  Here, because everything is connected, they go in and demolish the entire guts and start over but have to leave the walls standing.  Ours is old and a bit worn and needs to be redone.  But the remodels we have been able to see into look very nice.  And the “large city houses” referred to above which are on the streetside of our building look like very lovely homes.

And a couple of mews(ings) from London…

They have clearly forgiven the Germans here for the relentless bombings of London in 1940 and that whole 1939-1945 war thing (we have seen that reference on plaques rather than WWII).  German cars dominate and expensive ones to boot.  On one block near us the other night I counted six Porsches (is that the plural of Porsche or is it like deer?) and because I couldn’t multi-task at the time I was unable to count the Mercedes and BMWs on that same block but they too were numerous.  Other fancy cars are also common in this area including Rolls Royce, Aston Martin, Bentley, Jaguar, Ferrari and Maserati.

As mentioned earlier, things here are very expensive.  Perhaps that is why we seldom hear an American accent on this visit.  But there are two exceptions of note for us.  Coffee.  Even after the exchange rate this works out to be less expensive here than in New York or Steamboat Springs.  And theater tickets are much less expensive than comparable seats in New York.

And speaking of the theater, our third theater visit of the trip took us to the Vaudeville Theatre to see “The Prisoner of Second Avenue” by Neil Simon starring Jeff Goldblum and Mercedes Ruehl.  And boy these theaters are small which is obviously a very nice feature in addition to the lesser than New York prices.

After our third visit to Patara, which we obviously really love, Thursday night was pub night with a visit to The Trafalger.  Off to York for the weekend this afternoon.

We spent about five hours walking about Cambridge which is situated on the River Cam and is about an hour train ride from London’s King’s Cross station and worth both the time and cost to get there and back.  Cambridge, an important town since Roman times, became the gathering place of various religious orders beginning in the 11th century and at the beginning of the 13th century it also became home to various religious scholars who departed Oxford University because of religious disputes.  Wow, religious disputes.  Apparently not a new development.

Anyway, the city center is a fabulous collection of medieval architecture housing the city’s 31 colleges.  The focal point is the Chapel at King’s College which was established by Henry VI in 1441.  I have been fortunate to visit a good number European cathedrals and find them fascinating for the architecture, the length of time (and thus the huge commitment) it took to build them and the amount of humanitarian good that could have been done with the same amount of money.  In any case, the King’s College Chapel interior may be the most striking of those I have seen.  It’s fan vaulted ceiling is absolutely gorgeous and the painstakingly made 26 sets of stained glass windows that took a mere 30 years to install are also beautiful.

So when you get this way, don’t miss Cambridge.  By the way Cambridge City, Indiana near my home town, your name makes absolutely no sense.

The Pope arrives tomorrow and will spend his London time in our neighborhood at Westminster Cathedral and Hyde Park so we will depart for a weekend in York.

Cheers.

What to report for Monday and Tuesday?  Really nothing other than standard tourist stuff so I won’t expound beyond making the following suggestions for inclusion in your visit here.  Over the course of the two days we were to St. Paul’s Cathedral, Pret A Manger, Tower of London, Tower Bridge, various Tube rides with our newly acquired Oyster Cards, dinner in the townhouse (yikes!), Covent Market and Shops, cappuccinos in a variety of places, morning coffee with treats at Patisserie Valerie (home of the best visitor internet service in the city), Sir John Soane Museum (one of the most fascinating places you will ever visit when you go there http://www.soane.org/), the London Silver Vaults (http://www.thesilvervaults.com/), more beautiful old and new buildings and, of course, flowers everywhere.

To date we have had pretty good weather including a perfect day on Sunday.  Cool and cloudy for the most part, misty today but nothing to disrupt getting around and viewing the city.  So far we are happy with our decision to spend extended time here.  Some out of town travel coming up including this weekend in York to see that city and visit with my friends Jacquie and Gail, two professional archaeologists who I work with in Belize.

So too many pictures today from traveling about the city the past two days plus I am also including more of my shots of the differences in our English languages and interesting signage around the city.  It will take awhile to get them all labeled.

“England and America are two countries separated by a common language.”

George Bernard Shaw

Irish dramatist & socialist (1856 – 1950)

I have been trying to capture indications of how true this saying may be.
Some of these do demonstrate merely different English words we use in
the two countries and some are just signs that I thought are just fun or
different from what we generally see. This is Edition 1.

What a gorgeous weekend here.  Saturday was matinee day at the theaters.  We tried out “The 39 Steps” which is a comedic spoof of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1935 movie that was based upon a 1915 novel by John Buchan.  A very unusual and funny production of a Hitchcock mystery thriller and they even figured out a way to include the usual Hitchcock cameo appearance that he always made in his own productions.  Before that it was lunch at the Duke of York Plaza Saturday market.  Dinner at Patara, an outstanding Thai place on Beauchamp Place in Brompton.

Sunday saw us taking the train to Hampton Court Palace which is about 35 minutes outside of the center of London.  The building of Hampton Court was begun by the archbishop of York but taken over by Henry VIII in the early 16th century as one of his many homes.  It’s palatial construction has the fingerprints of numerous royals over the centuries as well as architect Christopher Wren.  And it would not be a royal homestead without fabulous gardens of which it has many.  We returned to Patara on Sunday night and will have to work on not embarrassing ourselves by easily returning there every evening.  It is really excellent.

At Hampton Court Palace there was a German speaking couple and he was going to take her picture in front of one of the gardens.  A German speaking lady rushed over and the nature of the German conversation was revealed when she prepared to take a picture of the couple together.  And just before taking the picture she said to them…”say cheese.”  Ah yes, English.  Still the number one language around the world.

That was the plan for today.  View the symbolic Changing of the Guard ceremony at Buckingham Palace with its celebratory atmosphere (not to be confused in any way with the solemn Changing of the Guard at the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery) and then head to the city center for an in-depth visit.  But upon arrival at Buckingham, it was clear that the mob present in front of the Buckingham fence and gates would dictate the need to try again later in our visit.  There were many warnings from the officers patrolling on horseback that "there are pickpockets in the area."  See the sign in the pictures warning the pickpockets that there are undercover officers in the area also.  It reminded me of the photo radar warnings to drivers in Denver. 

So we spent the next five hours touring the city center on foot.  The markets, the plazas, the unique retail makeup of central London with entire areas selling the same type of item such as books, the beautiful buildings, gardens and storefronts.  Lunch at La Roche (modern Mediterranean cuisine with Moroccan and Lebanese influences), the Temple Church (http://www.templechurch.com/), Kings College, Trafalgar Square, St. James Park and then dinner at Haandi (North Indian Frontier Cuisine) in the Brompton area. 

I am trying to avoid making this strictly a travelogue but do hope that the places we go and comment about might be helpful to others who will visit here.  So while I hope friends and families might find the information useful in knowing what we are up to (but they also have the option of ignoring it), first and foremost these are notes to me for sometime in the future so I can remember what I did with my youth.  So I skipped yesterday as our day consisted of a long walk through the Chelsea area and Battersea Park which included a visit to the Royal Hospital where the pensioners live.  Interesting and fun to do but certainly not to read about.

The highlight of the day was losing our pubginity.  Spell check says there is no such word but there is now.  I have decided that a pubgin is someone who has been to the UK many times but never in a pub.  We have one right up the street and it was Konnie’s brilliant idea to try it for dinner.  With all of those beautiful floral displays on the outside, why not?  Bingo!  The food was fine, the wine was fine, they don’t smoke in them anymore and we saved a bunch of money.

With Thursday’s forecast of only a 20% chance of rain it seemed like the day to scoot back to the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew which is advertised as the most complete public gardens in the world with 300 acres and about 40,000 plants.  It is about a half hour via the Tube from downtown and Kew is a lovely village to visit also.  We made a springtime visit there in 2009 which was spectacular but even the late summer visit of today was worth the trip.

So here are way too many pictures and I will tell you up front that if you don’t like ridiculous close ups of flowers and us you might as well skip this one.  Oh yes, please check in later as I am working on two “special” posts for publication later in the trip.  One is “Signs You Don’t See in the US” and the other will be “The Window Boxes of London.”

One more thing.  The kids over here in their school uniforms (blazers, hats, ties, school backpacks etc.) are sooooo cute.  I have been afraid to try to take pictures of them except for the one from behind at the pastry counter but hopefully I’ll get up the nerve to ask a parent sometime.

A day that started crisp and clear turned to rain.  The drizzle and Underground strike altered our plans and we headed to Westminster Abbey instead of to the theater district where we planned to consider a matinee.  As is typical of the cathedrals from that era, it is spectacular including nearly a millennium of history on the site.  Admission was a head turning 15 pounds (about $25 dollars) but when you get inside it now includes a free thorough audio guide which makes the price more reasonable.

Here are some sights from today.

The weather remains as we expected with temperatures in the mid-sixties and overcast.  A quiet day here as expected which started with getting my first run of the trip and the opportunity to see how huge the bike sharing program is here.  We have a superb one in Denver which has come under fire by the Republican gubernatorial candidate as something that "could threaten our personal freedoms."  (http://www.denverpost.com/election2010/ci_1567389)  It appears that they are at an even greater risk to a loss of freedom here because of their efforts to reduce traffic and pollution and stay healthy.