Stonehenge and Bath

We wanted to see both Stonehenge and Bath, so we took a group tour.  It was not the most successful experiment.  All those glowing reviews are either by company shills or people with lower expectations than we have.

We met at the Victoria Bus Station at 8:15 -- over a hundred of us, but we broke into two busloads, and we never saw the other group again. Still, fifty isn't an intimate group. Two hour drive to Stonehenge, about an hour to visit the site and tour the visitor center (all this in the rain and wind, of course).  Here's the obligatory photo

You can't go into the actual circle -- you get close enough to take good photos, but it would be interesting to see it from within.  Lots of information about what is known about the people who built this (which is not much), the purpose of the site (not much about that either), and how it was built (they know quite a bit about that).

Back in the bus (which was comfy, but not as nice as our Oxford Tube bus to Oxford, which was just regular public transportation) for an hour's drive to Bath.  We toured the Roman Baths (it was optional/extra cost, but was the highlight of the trip), found lunch (more British food, though I managed to get a salad instead of fries) and wandered around town.  Here are a few photos,

The Bath Abbey

The main pool of the Roman baths, looking much as it did in Roman times (though I suspect it got enough use that the water wasn't green with algae.)

The upper level of the baths; these statues were added in Georgian times, when the baths were first restored.

There are many more rooms to the Baths, and a good audio guide (with some commentary by Bill Bryson) and a lot of semi-interactive exhibits.  I especially liked the origin of 'curses', which were (often petty) complaints to a god, written on lead and thrown into water dedicated to them.  Often "may the person who stole my clothes while I was bathing develop leprosy" or something like that.

A Georgian arcade.  What makes Bath lovely is that the city was (re)developed as a unified whole in Georgian times out of Cotswold stone (here called Bath stone)

This currently seems to be a wine shop.  We aren't sure if "The Giggling Squid" is a recent name or it's been called that forever, but I loved the name

Part of a circle of townhomes, at the top of a hill overlooking Bath (probably the most expensive address) called the Circus.

We spent about 3 hours total in Bath.  Due to parking restrictions, they were rather martinet-like about meeting the bus on time -- we ended up picking up people who had missed their bus from an earlier tour.  Then about three hours back to London.

That we spent more time on the bus than visiting sites was probably unavoidable, but more or less all the tour did is drive us to the sites, tell us where to go and when be at the bus for the next leg.  Our guide had a bit of patter, but wasn't particularly good.  We won't be doing this again.  We went with Premium Tours, but I suspect all of them would be similar.

After coming back, we looked for a "not so British" meal.  Succeeded: Jay had pasta, I had a wonderful kale, lettuce, apple and hazelnut salad and a sea bass crudo, but with the worst service we have had yet.  We are not developing a good feeling about British restaurants.

Witness for the prosecution (and better food)

Sunday (Easter Sunday) we walked around Buckingham Palace in the morning.  I got a pretty good video of the changing of the guard as they marched from their staging area in the Mews.  (Sorry, I don't know how to edit videos in Google Photos so you may want to skip to about 30 secs into it, where you start to see the marchers)

We also walked by the tailor shop "The Kingsman" which was used in the second Kingsman movie (which Jay had seen) so we had to capture that.

They weren't open on Easter Sunday, so we couldn't go in and chat with Colin Firth :-)

That afternoon we went to a production of Agatha Christie's "Witness for the Prosecution", put on at the former County of London Courthouse.  We got to sit in the visitors stalls, and experience it as if it were a real trial.

Here is where the judge sits, with liberty above him (you may notice that she isn't blinded in this statue -- not sure what that means.)

The play was excellently done.  If you hadn't read the story (it's in a collection of short stories she wrote, but is also available online as a pdf at   http://www.juliojeha.pro.br/course39cmt_pgs/The%20Witness%20for%20the%20Prosecution.pdf )
there are two well done twists at the end, and if you have only read the short story and not the play, there's still one that will get you.  It's classic Christie -- very "intellectual", but it all hinges on the personality and believability of the main characters.  For (a lot of) extra money, you got to sit in the jury box, and one person in that group read the verdict toward the end.  We very much enjoyed it.

Dinner tonight was at J. Sheekey.  On the way there, crossing Trafalgar Square, we discovered some unusual traffic lights (well, pedestrian green lights).  They were various combinations of the gender symbols.  Startling, but cute.  Apparently, they were put in for Gay Pride Week in 2016, and were kept.  Here's an interesting article that shows the different lights (we didn't happen to cross at any of the intersections that have the people running pictured)   I love it that the Brits call these "Gay traffic lights".

J. Sheekey is a very upscale (owned by the same group that owns the Ivy) fish restaurant.  Definitely a much better class of British food.  We had local oysters (called natives), a crab souffle and a mixed seafood grill.  The oysters were quite different in flavor to the ones we get in the US, as was the crab.  The salmon was the best of the seafood, but we also had halibut, sea bream and john dory and maybe one other fish.  I also got a salad for the first time in England.

Oxford

Saturday we went to Oxford.  We took the Oxford Tube, which is a bus that happens to leave right in front of our hotel (there are trains, which are faster, but not when you have to take the tube for 20 minutes to the train station).  We had scheduled a private tour of the town, which was well worth it.  Our guide was a sort of free-lance academic (if that concept makes sense) in archeology.   He had a university ID, which got us into places we wouldn't have been able to see otherwise.   We visited several colleges, part of the Bodleian library, and looked over a few ancient pubs and other "relics" of Oxford.  We got to see dining rooms, chapels and courtyards. I can't remember which college is which, I'll just show you a few photos with only partial identification

I think that above is the back side of Baliol College

I forget the name of the building, but I took the picture primarily to show that there was sunshine that day (as well as intermittent rain)

I forget which college, but that hallway is one of the oldest building parts in Oxford

This is the dining room at King's College, which was also used as the dining room at Hogwarts for the Harry Potter movies.  

William Gladstone, one of Jay's ancestors, was once a proctor at Kings.

The back courtyard of Kings College

A pre-Raphaelite window at King's College

The tour was well worth the time and money.  The company we used was footprints tours, and our excellent guide was Mark.

After leaving the tour, we went to the Eagle and Child (apparently known locally as the "Fowl and Foetus"), which is the pub where Tolkien and C. S. Lewis regularly met (they and a few others were known as the 'Inklings') to meet another physicist/engineer whom Jay had interacted with at conferences over the years.  His wife joined us, and we had lunch while the two guys caught up on science and we told them about our travels.  After that we got a custom tour of Worcester, his college, including the newly restored dining room (gorgeous window, but it didn't come out in a picture) and then we had coffee in the fellows commons room.  Term is not in session, so we were the only ones there.  All in all we spent about three hours with them. 

We took the Oxford Tube back, and had a simple supper at the hotel.

London -- rain and Harry Potter

Our first two days in London were characterized by drizzle, rain, and more drizzle and two very good Harry Potter and the Cursed Child shows.

We are staying at the Kensington Hilton, which isn't near anything particularly interesting (other than a shopping center), but is well located on the Central Tube line so that we can get to everywhere we want to go.  Our first day we had to pick up our Harry Potter tickets early, then went back to the hotel to fully unpack and dry off and then headed out to the show (more on that below).  The second day we went to the National Gallery (we sort of did the Rick Steves' "see the best of the best through the ages" tour, though we did find two very nice Vermeers on our own plus some JMW Turners we didn't know were there), then tried to get into the Churchill War Rooms, but it was already booked full for the day at 1pm -- it was a holiday (Good Friday) so lots of extra people, both tourists and locals -- and then went to the Tate Modern (this was a google maps screwup -- I was trying to get to the Tate Britain), where there were so many people we just left again.  We had dinner near the theatre (see below) and went off to part 2 of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.

We really enjoyed Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.  It has fantastic special effects.  Lots of fire, where I can't imagine how they got permission from the fire marshals to have that level of realism in the theatre (fire places, burning beds, torches, wands that shoot fire, all of which we are pretty sure were real flames), lots of flying or flying-like activity and much more that I can't tell you about without spoilers.  The cast was superb.  You can tell that JK Rowling was involved in the production personally, as every character fit their description from the books perfectly.  I don't want to give things away, but it's over all a pretty dark story about teenagers and fathers who don't get along, a need to save the world, but screwing up while doing so, and lots of "cameo appearances" by most of the salient characters of the Harry Potter world (including all/most of the old bad guys, some reformed bad guys and some new bad guys).  My personal favorite character was Moaning Myrtle.  I'm sure it would depend on who plays the character, but she was fantastic in this production. 

For food, I have been trying to "eat local" in the sense of eating traditional foods of the area (as I did in Brussels and to some extent in Germany).  On Thursday, when we first arrived, we found a lovely pub right next to the theatre, the Cambridge, where we went for a late lunch.  I had a chicken, leek and brie pie with a puff pastry crust, which was vaguely similar to the vol au vent I had in Brussels, though the Brussels version was better.  Jay had a club sandwich (very different from a US one, with thick bread and roasted/poached chicken). Jay decided we should eat there again before the second performance (when certain people find something they like, they aren't willing to try something new, in case it might not be as good :-), where I had fish and scampi and chips.  The batter fried cod was superb, the chips were OK, the breaded scampi/shrimp were mediocre, and the mushy peas were "interesting".  I also had a very good butternut squash soup.  On Friday, we had coffee at the National Gallery, where I decided to sample a Bakewell tart.  This is an almond tart with jam and marzipan in the middle.  Very sweet.   At that point, I felt like I had sampled most of the essential British foods, all of which were fatening. And then on Saturday (which I'll cover in the next post), we went to Oxford, where we ate at the Eagle and Child (the pub where Tolkien and C. S. Lewis used to gather), which turns out to nowadays be part of the same chain as the Cambridge, and had exactly the same menu. This time I went for a vege soup (pretty mediocre) and a cherry tomato tart with small salad (excellent).  I'm done with "eating British", and am looking for other kinds of food.  On the other hand, tomorrow night we eat "modern British food" at a high end restaurant, where I have high hopes.  Let's hope that they serve something different from fish and chips or meat pie.

Next Leg of the Trip

We leave Duisburg in the morning for the vacation leg of our trip (yes, I know we've been vacationing, but there has also been a bit of work involved.  The rest is pure vacation).  We spend the next eight days in London, where we:

• see four plays, including Hamilton, and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child
• visit Stonehenge and Bath
• visit Oxford
• see a bunch of museums and walk around various neighborhoods
• eat in nice restaurants

After that we head to Naples (with a stop to do laundry), where I think we have 2 days of sightseeing and a seven day group hiking trip along the Amalfi Coast.  No plays, but I expect to eat even better in Italy than in London.  Jay may have to roll me onto the plane.

Then a quick overnight in Frankfurt and we head homeward.  It will be time.

I'm not sure how regularly I will be able to blog in London, especially with so many late night activities, but I will try.

Brussels, part 2

Saturday was a "see as much of the city as possible" day.  The weather was sunny and mild.  Rick Steves' guidebooks have become our go-to resources, primarily because he provides walks around a given city that cover most of what you would want to see, and we like to see cities on foot.  Rick gave us two walks.  We started with the "upper town" walk (upper in the sense of "uphill"), because it contained the museums, and we wanted to get there before the crowds.  Brussels houses three museums in a single building.  We started with the Old Masters, of which there were plenty, but none we found notable (I tend to like the non-religious art of the Dutch masters, but this wasn't particularly compelling).  There is a (minor) Rembrandt here, but it was out for cleaning.  Probably the best were the Bruegels (father and son).  My advice would be that unless you love this period of art, this museum could be skipped.

The Fin de Siecle museum had Impressionists and others of about that time period and some absolutely gorgeous Art Deco furniture. glassware, etc.  The impressionists were ho-hum, though this was my first introduction to James Ensor, who mostly painted slightly macabre people in masks, and I found him interesting.  There were quite a few pointillists, if that appeals.   But the Art Deco stuff made it worth the time.

But the best of the set was the Magritte Museum.  Three floors of his life.  I wasn't particularly familar with his early work or his work during the war (limited in many ways by the Nazis), so that interested me.  He got his start doing posters, book covers and other advertising, very different style than his later work, but intriguing.  He also met his wife when she was 14 and he was 17, I think, and they were together till he died.  This covered the first two floors.  The final flour was the work he is most famous for -- the oddly juxtaposed items that seem to be either a puzzle or a joke.  Few of his really famous pieces are there.  I remember one that shows a nest on a window ledge with two eggs, and the mountain seen through the window is in the shape of an eagle.  There was another one showing a window, where the glass is broken as if a rock had been thrown through it, and the image you see through the glass is painted on the glass, but it is the same image that you see when looking through the broken areas.  And while his famous "this is not a pipe" painting (of a pipe) was not there, a later painting of a pipe, labelled "this is still not a pipe" was in the collection.  Magritte is one of my favorite painters -- I love his sense of playfulness -- so I obviously enjoyed it, but so did Jay, who is not a rabid Magritte fan. 

The rest of the upper town walk was to visit various buildings, churches and gardens.  We walked through the Sablon neighborhood, which seems to be one of the ritzier parts of town, based on the number of high-end chocolatiers and clothing stores.  In one garden, where Brussels' "home boys" were honored with statues, we had to take Jay's picture next to Gerhard Mercator, as Jay is funded here in Germany as a Mercator Fellow (Mercator was from Brussels, but lived much of his adult life in Duisburg).  Here they both are:

The lower town walk takes you through some of the older parts of town (the upper town buildings are mostly from the 19th century).  We started with the famous Grand Place, the big square that is really the heart of Brussels.  Here is a picture taken on our way home from dinner,showing it at night:

Of course we had  to see the famous "Mannekin Pis", the statue of a peeing boy.  It was erected in 1619 to provide drinking water for the neighborhood.  When we arrived he was dressed in some sort of Belgian regalia (this is a regular occurence; Rick Steves says that he dresses as an Elvis impersonator on Elvis's birthday, and on Prostate Awareness Day, his flow slows to a trickle); however, before I could get my camera positioned, a guy came and removed his uniform.  So I just captured him al fresco. 

We walked through the Galeries Royales St. Hubert, which is the original enclosed shopping mall.  The enclosed walkway is about 200m long (we were looking for a specific cafe and almost gave up before finding it).  We also viewed the Church of St. Nicholas, where there are shops (primarily jewelers) built into the wall of the church.  The Jewelers provided the money to rebuild the church in the 1700s and in return were given this prime real estate in which to live and set up shop (I presume they don't live above the shops any more). This facade (the church entrance is on the left) looks pretty unchanged from that time, though most of the others have had major modernizations.

Rick Steves pointed out this lovely bar that still has its Art Deco decorations. 

And we encountered this poster, which gives you an idea of what Belgians think of the US these days.

It's captured through a shop window, so maybe a bit of description is in order: this is Trump as the Statue of Liberty, with a broken Scales of Justice in his right hand (clearly broken by too much money being put on the scales) and a nuclear warhead in his left hand. 

To give you an idea of how much ground we covered, fitbit gave me credit for 13 miles.

The next morning was the Daylight Savings time shift for Europe, so we slept in and went directly to the train station.  The trip home was uneventful.

My new hat

Yes, we'll get back to the Brussels weekend, but first a short interruption to show you my new hat. I mentioned earlier that I had lost a knitted hat and was making myself a new one.  The original plan was to use some inexpensive yarn and a simple pattern and whip one up in a week or two, so I would have it for the trip (I have a hat with me, but it doesn't cover my ears, which has been an issue on the colder days.)  But I got my yarn and pattern at a yarn expo, where the newest, best and fanciest stuff is on display.  I was seduced by a very nice (especially that it looked attractive on me) yarn and hat pattern.  The yarn is amazingly soft, which made it a delight to knit up and it will be a delight to wear (though unless it is cold in London, I may not find out till next winter).  It took me the entire trip plus 2 weeks before we left, knitting 1-2 hours a day (except on our weekend vacations) to finish it, so it's far from a simple hat.  The pattern I chose is called the "Headbumps hat".

So with that lead up, here is the hat:

(It hasn't been blocked yet, so it looks a little misshapen around the edges)

And here I am wearing it:

I'm very happy with it.  Might even make another one, if I can find a yarn as nice as this one.