LONDON, Sept 14 - 17

 
I've been waiting all year for this trip. The main focus of it was to be a week long internet get together with Coronation Street fans in Manchester. We built an itinerary around it, including a weekend in London, a day or so in Stoke-on-Trent to shop for pottery, and a Scottish tour. The tour was rescheduled when Globus cancelled the one we were on so the tour ended up having an extra weekend in London at the back end and a few extra days in Glasgow before the tour commenced. The full itinerary is here: http://members.accesswave.ca/~tvor/trip2000.htm

See the Photo Albums for this trip:

• London, Glasgow, Edinburgh
• Bonnie Scotland Tour
• Manchester and area (Ping Week)
• Annie's Barbeque
• Street Visit
• The Ping

September 14

We flew Icelandair because we got a much better deal than Air Canada but I don't think we'll fly them again. The planes are 757's or that size and you do feel squashed in like on a charter flight with less leg room and seat room.   Because we had to reschedule our flight due to the tour situation, it cost us a few hundred extra for changing the ticket so it wasn't' that cheap in the end after all, plus paying for 5 extra nights in the UK. See, Icelandair only flies out of Halifax three days a week.

My friend Carole and i landed in London around noon on Thursday, September 14, completely shattered. We decided to take the airbus but we ended up walking up hill and down dale in the ramps in the tunnels underneath terminals 1 to 2 before we found a place to get a ticket and get the bus! We were staying at a converted Victorian mansion in Bayswater, the Inverness Court hotel, which we booked through the Holiday House brochure. NOT recommended!   The lobby and stairwells were very elegant, the elevators small and slow. There were stairs once you got to your floor. Hmmm. The room was small as we expected, but our first impression was not great. The carpet was filthy, wallpaper yellowed, curtains hung limply. The outside glass doors to the balcony (well, just wide enough so you could stand if you wanted to brave the pigeon do-do) didn't shut and there was a hole in the glass about an inch round with cracks in the glass. We joked about our bullet hole! The inside sliding glass doors came off the runner once and would have every time if we weren't careful. The beds were narrow and really hard though at least the sheets were clean.

The hotel was busy though, full of German tourists I think. Breakfast was included and was continental in the dining room in the basement. It was also convenient, across from Hyde park and around the corner from the Queensway underground station, a block from the Bayswater station. That's about the only good things about it. That made for a bit of a downer to start our trip off but you can't let that bother you. We had prepaid the room and from what I heard also, London was full, with nary a hotel room available as a friend of mine found out that week as well.

No sleep since yesterday but we rested a bit and decided to go out and over to the park for a walk through Kensington Gardens. We passed the children's playground where there is a trunk of an old oak tree with elves and fairies carved and painted into it. It was done in 1911 and is called the "Elfin Wood".

We walked down toward Kensington Palace and saw this building with high windows. It appeared to have a restaurant in it and we decided to go in for high tea as it was high tea time.   We weren't dressed for it but others there were in jeans as well so we went in. This, by the way is the Orangerie which was built in 1704 as a greenhouse. We decided to splurge on the Grand Tea which includes a glass of champagne to celebrate the beginning of our trip. Included were a little finger sandwich, raisin scone with fruit syrup and clotted cream and a piece of Belgian chocolate cake! How could one resist! I managed most of it though couldn't eat all the icing on the cake as it was way too rich on top of the clotted cream. And not having eaten since the plane, that champagne sure went to our heads! Time to walk some more!

We went to Kensington Palace for a look through the gates and later walked around the lower end of the park where there were some nearby gardens as far as the Albert Memorial and Albert Hall.   Dusk is imminent so we made our way back up to the Bayswater Road end of the park via the same route we took down. We had a look at some souvenir shops opposite the underground stop, but didn't' buy tonight. Noticed that the postcards were fairly cheap here though, 10 for a pound. Back to the hotel, I tried to call my friend Alan who was supposed to have had some train tickets sent to the hotel but which hadn't seemed to arrived. Couldn't'   get through and left a message and left one for some other friends, Dave and Nikki as well.

Nothing on telly and as usual that first day, overtired so it was hard to drop off to sleep.
 

September 15

Nikki called this morning before work so we could set a time to meet, 6:15 under the Burger King sign in Liverpool Street station. We slept a little longer but I had to get up because my back was aching from that hard bed! We got up and showered and dressed and down to breakfast around 9:30. Continental, just rolls, croissants, tiny glasses for the juice and tea. You could buy the full breakfast if you wanted. But we didn't want. I called Barb before we left to set up a coffee meeting with her at 4 in a café around the corner from the hotel. Barb is another Coronation Street online pal who lives here in London.

We picked up a day travel pass at the newsagent around the corner and we caught the tube. We're going to the Courtauld Gallery in Somerset House. Bit of a false start as we got on the wrong train but got off at the next stop before it veered off in a different direction and we ended up in Wimbledon. The next stop was Notting Hill and we could get a train east. It's raining but not cold, however it makes it very muggy in the underground and on the trains. We got off at Temple and walked along the embankment which would have been very pretty if it hadn't been raining. We can see down the Thames and behind Waterloo bridge looms the London Eye, that huge observation wheel. We can also see Big Ben peeking over as well.

A little bit about Somerset House, it was built in the early 19th century to house the Royal Academy of Art which is now in Burlington House off Picadilly. Now there are several collections in there but the Courtauld is most well known. It's not a large overwhelming gallery like the National Gallery. There are three floors though only one room on the ground.   The proper entrance is off the Strand but we were not there. To get to it, we had to come in from the Embankment   entrance and walk across a large courtyard with a large fountain display in the center. Just rows and rows of fountains that start low and shoot up higher and higher. I took a few photos but they'll be gray and dreary I expect.

The building has lovely detail that you don't always see because it's up so high. The ground floor was the 14th and 15th century Northern Europe religious works, altar pieces and delicate and intricate ivory carving and triptychs. Each of the other two floors only had a few rooms and followed the timeline through the Renaissance, Baroque, a bit of Dutch and Italian and of course the Impressionists, my favourites. There were only one or two Monets, and only a few of each of the more famous painters though there were a number of Seurats, both before and after his divisionist (painting with little dots, I didn't know the proper name before!) period. I saw another Cezanne and Renoir I liked, about 3 or 4 all told that I wanted to get postcards of and was successful in that   quest.

We were in there about an hour and a half, maybe 2 and we were going to have lunch in the café there but it was too full. We went out along the Strand but by now the rain is   coming down in buckets!!! We ducked into a small bookshop to get out of it but it didn't' let up. We walked a bit further, trying our best to avoid the puddles at the street corners and playing bob and weave with everyone else on the sidewalk with our umbrellas.   Across the road I saw a sign for a restaurant up a side street called Johnston's! Woohoo, that has to be good! LOL and it had a sign offering a hot and cold buffet lunch for £5.50!! Even better! We made our way back to the corner to cross over and went in. Turns out it is a restaurant in the Strand Palace Hotel. We had the buffet and a large pot of tea each to warm up. Yes the food was cheap. The tea was £2.50! No matter, there was a lovely poached salmon on the buffet with veggies and rice. We stayed and had a leisurely lunch and dried off and warmed up.

Once we were done we thought we would kill some time up in Covent Garden but we got caught up in one of my favourite stores, Past Times (oh, big surprise!) and as it was coming up on four, I didn't think we would have time to find the tube and change a line and get back to Bayswater to meet Barb so we bolted for a bank machine and caught a taxi and were only 10 minutes late. We met Barb in Café Verdi and had a lovely visit. We talked right up until it was time to leave to catch the tube back west to Liverpool St. and meet Dave and Nikki.

The weather by this time has started to clear up a bit so we were hopeful. Came out in a massive crowd in Liverpool train station. Apparently there had been some train delays causing the Friday night exodus from London to bottleneck. We went out of the building . . . No Burger King. But I hadn't clarified it with Nikki as to where it actually was and assumed it was outside the station. Back inside and sure enough, we probably walked right past it and her because there she was!   We had to wait a few minutes for Dave to arrive and then we left the station. Just as we came out, it started to rain. Thunder and lightening as well but it didn't rain hard. We walked a ways to a bar, dragged a table to a corner where there were chairs and got settled in for a drink. It was crowded and noisy but it didn't really matter and we all got reacquainted.

Later another walk through the dark and quiet City to a restaurant called Pizza Express, a chain type place with gourmet pizza and pasta. It was in the Barbican complex. It was modern, clean, quiet and the pizza was quite good on thin crust. After dinner we walked through the Barbican complex which has a theatre, cinema, restaurants and towers full of very pricey flats.   It's very quiet in the City at night. There are people in the pubs and restaurants but the streets are fairly empty. We walked to the St. Paul's underground and wow! There's St. Paul's in all it's magnificence lit up!

We arrived back at the hotel about 10:30 and our train tickets had arrived. The envelope looked like it had been through the wars, it must have walked all the way from Manchester! We found out later when I called Alan the next day that the post office had a signature from the hotel as received the day before we arrived and the envelope must have been mislaid at the hotel! One more mark against it.   Tomorrow we go to Greenwich. Hopefully the weather will be more cooperative.
 

September 16

Greenwich
Took awhile to get to sleep last night too. Partly the caffeine and partly a succession of beeping horns from outside on the street.   Some sounded like two cars passing each other and greeting each other! Some might have been taxi's sounding for their customers. In either case it was annoying.   We overslept so got a late start. We took the tube to Tower hill where we had a gawp at the Tower of London across from the tube station before finding our way to the Dockland Light Rail train which seemed to be on a ticket-honour system as there were no turnstiles and nobody came to look at our travel pass.   There was a commentary on the train as we passed through the stops in the deep east end of London, the old Dock areas on the Thames and we heard all about the history of each section we passed through.

We didn't get off at the stop the guide recommended, thinking if we got off one farther, we would actually be closer to the Royal Observatory end of Greenwich park.   We had decided, while we still had the energy, to start at the Observatory at the top and work our way down. There was, we discovered later, a shuttle bus that takes you up from either the DLR stop or an information center but it did cost extra. We walked from the stop in the general direction of the park and soon figured we were heading too far towards the river so changed direction. We started up a side street and I do mean up! It was called Point Hill. Fairly steep and winding and lined with shops and houses and an old school which had a "Boys" entrance. Still used as some sort of school it seemed. It was quite pretty even if it was a bit of a tough climb. Luckily, though it wasn't raining the sky was overcast and there was a breeze. At the top we were faced with flat greenspace. Which way now?

Well the Observatory was somewhere on the top of the hill and that's where we were. So we see this house called "Ranger House" and a sign about an exhibition of paintings by a French Artist (Lesser? Lessup? I forget the name) The house isn't on the little map we have, printed from a map site on the Net. There was a groundskeeper, someone that worked there anyway, and he directed us down a path. We made a pit stop at a café and bought ice cream and looked at the view for a few minutes but the wind on the hill was chilly. Into the Observatory complex, paid the 6 £ admission instead of 2 for £10.50 because we could pay the difference if we decided to go into either the Queen's house or the Maritime Museum later. Just as well because we didn't go to either in the end.   The first thing we looked at was the Camera Obscura. That is in a darkened room and there's a reflection off a mirror in the ceiling projected to a white surface on a table. You can see all the area surrounding the observatory down the hill to the river and town, magnified. Very neat! The mirror revolves so you get a 360 degree look around you.

We started looking through the displays in Flamsteed House where the first Royal Astonomer lived. The Observatory was set up in 1675 under the patronage of Charles II in order to find out how to measure longitude. There was a succession of astronomers each with a larger telescope than the last, each coming a little closer than the last but instead of measuring the moon and stars, a clock maker, Harrison, discovered the best way to do it was to use a clock and measure it in minutes and seconds, how far away you are from the "home" or 0 longitude. This "home" was eventually established as Greenwich and after a bit of a political fight with several other places, Washington D.C. one of them, Greenwich was established as the Prime Meridian, the beginning of time and space, as it were. Click here for more detail.

This we learned from a fellow in costume who led us around the courtyard describing the history bit by piece.   Every day a big aluminum red-painted ball is dropped from the turret of Flamsteed House at 1 p.m. and has been since the Meridian was established (um, I forget the date but it was in the 19th century by this point) and all could set their watches and clocks by it before sailing.   If you missed it, you were "not on the ball". Coincidentally, Carole had seen an A&E tv special on the longitude clock recently. We went back to see the rest of the displays including Harrison's clocks before checking out the gift shop for postcards.

Our feet aching and energy flagging, we trudged down the hill and across the park and went to a pub right by the park gate entrance. We thought we'd eat, walk over and have a look round the Queen's house buildings before finding the Fan Museum or split up, with me going to the museum and Carole going to Queen's House and meeting back by the pub but ended up both going to the Fan Museum instead because we wanted to take a river boat back to the center of London and the last one left at 5. It was almost 3:30 by the time we had our pint and lunch - ploughman's for me which was bread and what looked like a pound of cheese cut into four slices (ok, maybe not a pound but they were pretty big slices). There were pickled onions and … wait for it, Corrie fans…Branston Pickle! It was lovely but I couldn't finish it all.

I had wanted to go to the Fan Museum once I discovered its existence. It just took my fancy, and then, i do have a penchant for odd museums if i can find them. There was only the two of us in the museum which is in an old house not too far from Greenwich park. We started off with a taped commentary but Carole had trouble with hers and I found it really way too slow. The museum showed a number of fan leaf art that would be folded and put on a fan. There were some framed and you could see the folds and then the edges were painted into form a square picture. There were different styles of them and upstairs in two rooms was a special exhibit of jeweled fans, absolutely exquisite! Some were lace, feathers, mother of pearl, tortoise shell and silk painted. The front piece of guards were jewel encrusted. These of course belonged to nobility and were used or given for special occasions but they all had fans as a fashion accessory, although the style and decoration was a matter of status too.

Down to the pier, what a busy little spot! Saw the Greenwich Market but we didn't go in to that either, time being of the essence so as not to miss the boat. Had we got there earlier I guess we would have seen more but what we did see was really interesting! The ride down the river was about 40 minutes to Waterloo pier. Good view of the Tower of London, Tower Bridge and London eye. We want to do that but on a decent day. We walked across Westminster Bridge and walked down by the Houses of Parliament in time to hear Big Ben Bong!

We left there at 6, pretty tired and footsore. Got to Westminster underground which was really modern, unlike the other stations we've been in so far. I think it has been refurbished when the Jubilee line extension was put in over the last year or so. Had a bit of a wait for the train and then, once on, managed to push out of the crowded train before the doors closed at our stop. Always a little frisson of stress when you dont' think you will be able to get out and you'll end up somewhere awkward like Ealing!   We trudged down Queensway looking for a restaurant. Tried a German one but we would have a half hour wait for a table so we ended up having minestrone soup and a sandwich in Café Verde where we had had coffee with Barb yesterday. Back to the hotel about 8:30 and puttered around, watched Lily Savage with an appearance by Liz Dawn who plays Vera on Corrie and chilled out.

I don't know what we're doing tomorrow as it's Carole's pick since Greenwich was mine. Monday we're off to Manchester!
 

September 17

We set the alarm for 8 but still got a slow start in the end. Weather is overcast and cool but so far doesn’t look like rain. Carole wanted to seek out some gardens but in the end we decided to have a wander in Hyde Park first. Before we could get through the gates, however, we discovered that all along the Bayswater road fence of the park, artists and crafts people were displaying and selling their stuff. We spent nearly an hour walking along and looking at the pictures, prints, stained glass, enamels and some other odds and ends. No jewelry which was surprising. It was like a free art gallery! One thing I really liked were some watercolours for children's rooms with their names on it. Some were birth announcements. Some had animals or just images surrounding the name. Really sweet. Another kids' print had an old fashioned picture, maybe of little animals dressed up with a little bit of prose hand written above and below the picture. A few other water colour/sketches with London scenes were quite nice and I wish now I had bought a print that this one gal had,   cartoons of sheep with bodies that were big white blocks with tiny black blobs for head, ears and legs!   I did buy a frame with three enameled small tiles inside with ships on them.

Finally inside the park we saw an Italian Gardens with fountains and statues at the head of the Serpentine, a long narrow man made lake that neatly divides Hyde park into two halves.   This was created for Queen Caroline, wife of George II in 1727-31. Most of these parks really are that old or older, some back to Tudor times. We meandered along the path following the Serpentine. We stopped to watch some little girls looking at the Peter Pan statue which is made of bronze and covered in little figures of fairies and small animals under Peter himself. A little farther we stopped for tea at the park café. It wasn't too cold to sit outside at a table by the lake. The bottom of the lake is near "Rotten Row", that's a road that was built in 1690 to connect Buckingham (or maybe that was St. James Palace) and Kensington Palaces.   In French, "Route de Roi" or King's Road. Later on it was the place to see and be seen, driving carriages and riding horses and indeed we did see horses and riders in the park today.

The sun finally came out briefly in time for us to see the rose garden and we had a nice look around at the plants there. We left the park then and headed across the road to Green Park, with Buckingham Palace our ultimate destination after a stop at the Canada Monument for a photo. It's in two parts, in a wedge shape, which points in the direction of Ottawa I think,   with maple leaves carved into it and water streaming down the flat surface. Sun's gone again. Yep it feels like blue sky is like the sunrise or sunset, 10 minutes and the show's over!

Over to the Palace. We missed the Canadian regiment that is taking turns guarding the Palace this month, they just changed and will be back Tuesday but we won't be here. Carole had a look round while I waited by the Victoria statue, having been here a couple of times before. We grabbed a sausage from a vendor in Green Park on our way back to the underground, worshipped at the Great Money God of the Wall on Picadilly and took the tube back to the hotel. We had a rest and a cuppa and decided to try a restaurant that a friend of mine told me about that was nearby.

We left early, hoping to be back for 7:30 to watch corrie but we didn’t make it. The restaurant is called Kalamara's on Inverness Mews. The easiest way to describe how to get there is to start from the Bayswater underground station. Come out of there and cross Queensway. There's a little side street just there. Go in there and just on your left is the mews though it only looks like a back alley or parking lot for the buildings around it. There was a sign on the street so we knew it was there and it turned out to be a small, narrow restaurant below street level that's been there for about 50 years, though not under present management.

The owner came out when he saw us looking at the menu and was very congenial. We asked about the fixed price menu and he made it sound so good that we went in. It's about 16 £ and they state a minimum of two people because you share everything. You get a sampling of cold and hot starters then the entrée. Desert and coffee/tea is included. They kept bringing food and bringing more food, on little plates and when we decided we weren't too fussy on the calamari, they brought something else instead. When we realized the dessert had honey in it, baklava, we told them that Carole was allergic to honey and they brought out a lovely light custardy type thing in a phyllo pastry instead! We chose the roast leg of lamb for our entrée and it was so tender it pulled apart!

The restaurant is decorated  with cream walls, soft cushioned benches along the walls and dark low backed cane chairs. There was traditional Greek music playing but not too loudly and you regularly heard the low rumble of the underground trains which wasn't too loud, just sort of like it might have been thundery weather.   The table cloths are pink with burgundy over-linens. We really enjoyed it (Thanks Rosie!) so if you find yourself in London, try it!

We didn't leave until well after 8 (arrived at 5:30!) and had a browse in the souvenir shops on the way back to the hotel. We watched part 1 of a good drama but as it happened, we didn’t get to watch the second part Monday night! Up at 7 tomorrow to get the train from Euston.

See the Photo Albums for this trip:

• London, Glasgow, Edinburgh
• Bonnie Scotland Tour
• Manchester and area (Ping Week)
• Annie's Barbeque
• Street Visit
• The Ping

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