Weather in London left a bit to be desired. Far too damp for a scheduled picnic in Hyde Park but quite suitable for exploring some of the grand museums of Kensington. We ventured to the Southbank for a walking tour, inspected artwork for sale by the park, and got caught up with good friends.

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I've Been to London to Visit...

May 20

We took National Express to London and arrived, cramped and tired from the early departure and tight quarters on the bus. There wasn't even a rest stop but I got off the bus at Milton Keynes and the driver let me run to the loo which was only a few feet away from the stop at the terminal. The bus did have a toilet but I hadn't wanted to squeeze myself in there.

We taxied to the hotel, the London Guards on Lancaster Gate. One of the reasons I booked the hotel was because it had a lift but wouldn't you know? We got a room on the ground floor but up a short staircase! It was ok though, and it was a quiet room. The hotel itself is actually on a quiet block behind a converted church on Lancaster Gate square. Good location and only a couple of blocks from the Lancaster Gate tube station. A few blocks west is busy Queensway which would normally have two more tube stations but one, the Bayswater Road one, was shut for renovations.

Hyde Park is just across the road and that's where we headed after checking in and unpacking. Spatters of rain accompanied us across the green park. It took less time than I anticipated. Hyde Park is huge but cutting directly across from north to south isn't as far as you would think. It's wider than it is "deep". We came out at Albert Memorial and Albert Hall and crossed over. Our goal was the Victoria and Albert Museum on Exhibition and Cromwell Roads and it was faster to walk than get there in a roundabout way by tube. I had looked up bus routes but forgot to print and pack that document!

The Victoria and Albert Museum, established in 1852 as the South Kensington Museum, is an art and design museum consisting of over 3000 years worth of decorative artefacts from stone carving to wrought iron to silver and gold to paintings to furniture to architecture to ceramics. Asian, Egyptian, British, European, and many other cultures are represented. There are 145 galleries across 6 floors plus educational facilities, a courtyard, shops and cafes. There are several lifts scattered about so those with mobility problems can easily get around. We only scratched the surface of the collections and it would be good sometime to go back and investigate further.

When we got there, I was hungry and had a somewhat expensive sandwich in the café in the lower level. Graham didn't find anything appealing including the prices but I was gasping for a cuppa and some fortification to get through the museum.

Cast Courts, Victoria & Albert Museum

Our favourite galleries were the Cast Courts , containing plaster casts of statues, tombs, arches and doors and much more. There is a huge replica of Trajan's column, some old wooden and bronze doors with fabulous Celtic carving, replicas of Michelangelo's and Donatello's Davids. We spent a good while checking out all the massive works in there before continuing on. Another favourite of mine was a darkened gallery that focussed on Rafael's cartoons including one that had the matching finished tapestry for which the cartoon was created as a pattern.

The tapestries are woven in mirror images to the cartoons which aren't cartoons as we think of them now. Cartoons (from the Italian cartone, meaning "big paper") in this sense of the word are drawings, unfinished paintings that are used as patterns for a finished work such as frescoes or tapestries in this case.

Another gallery I enjoyed was the British gallery featuring artefacts from the 15th to 20th century including Tudor and Jacobean items. Also in this gallery is the Great Bed of Ware, famous because of it's size, similar to a modern day king size bed but measures 10 by 11 feet and is said to be able to sleep up to 15 people (from the 16th century, they were smaller people back then!). It's got a four poster canopy on it with elaborate carvings on the headboard.

We breezed through some of the galleries en route to others but there really is something that would interest just about anyone in this museum. There is no entry fee other than for special exhibits and you might want to wear good shoes as it covers a lot of ground.

We walked down Cromwell road when we were done, thinking to find a restaurant for our evening meal and we went a couple of blocks up Gloucester Road. Not finding much of a selection of restaurants there (should have stayed on Cromwell Road and walked a bit further it turns out) we ended up in a chippie which was hot and filling anyway. Stocked up on snacks at a Tesco Metro and made our way back to the hotel for the evening to relax and take in an exhibition of another kind that is the Eurovision contest! We thoroughly approved of the winners from Finland (Lordi) but personally, I think the cheeky Lithuania (LT United) entry was robbed!

Gods and Monsters and Secret Loos

May 21

Today's plan is to check out the dinosaur exhibition at the Natural History museum in Kensington. We were also invited to a picnic in Hyde Park but it's raining so Plan B is in effect, meeting at the Marlborough Head pub off Oxford Street.

Before heading to the museum, we browsed the artists' offerings along Bayswater Road. They set up here every Sunday morning to sell. Some are definitely aiming for the tourist market, with paintings, prints and watercolours of well known London scenes but there is a little bit of everything there though mainly painting/picture type things. There weren't as many participating as last time I did this but the weather would probably be to blame there.

We got to the South Kensington tube stop just before 11 and came out of the pedestrian tunnel at the Natural History Museum to be greeted by a very long queue out the door, down the stairs and around across the front of the building. Yikes! But it turns out that the museum doesn't open on Sundays until 11 o'clock. I figured the line would proceed fairly quickly when the doors opened and it did but we still got a bit wet in the light rain.

I think a good majority of that long queue headed in the same direction as we did, the dinosaurs! The museum is a favourite for families and a rainy Sunday afternoon made it even more popular. The dinosaur exhibit is pretty good though, worth the crowds. You enter the room and can either wander around on the ground floor or go up onto an overhead platform where you can walk along and see many of the skeletons at eye level since they are suspended from the ceiling in many cases. Because of the crowds we didn't stop to read many of the information stations and proceeded along to the star of the exhibit, the animatronic T-rex.

It's not actual size but still fairly large. The tail swings around and the head of it has motion sensors and follows movement in front of it. It's dark and there are loud growly noises which, in combination with the head of it swinging to the side to "see" you, scares the crap out of a lot of the smaller kids! They seem to love it though.

Earth Sculpture, Natural History Museum

We snaked our way through the mammal galleries where the room is dominated by a monstrous great blue whale, fibreglass, I think. Some of the animals represented were taxidermied from what I could tell but some were built from plastic and fibreglass etc. but all to the proper scale. By the time we got out of there, the crowds were closing in around me so we found a café and had a sit down and a cuppa. We checked out a few more areas of the Life galleries and then walked across to the new extension where the Earth galleries are. The centerpiece there is a huge sculpture of the earth made of "plates" and there's an escalator that rises up into the center of it. Inside there are more posters and information and the displays and galleries here all focus on geological phenomena such as volcanoes and earthquakes as well as the geological history and makeup of Earth. Evolution, minerals, the impact humans have on the planet, and natural phenomena both deep inside the Earth's core and on the surface are all areas that you can explore. This Gallery also has an entrance from Exhibition Road.

We were expected at the pub for about 2 pm and had had enough of the crowds by then anyway. The Marlborough Head is on Great Audley street which is just off Oxford, a couple of blocks west of the Bond Street station. What a *great* atmospheric pub! Dark corners, gargoyles, skulls and a Grim Reaper in a case on the wall. The best part was the toilets! There are 2 brass plaques in the floor in front of a big faux bookcase, one inscribed "Ladies" and one "Gents". I was told "just walk to the bookcase". You do that, then you can spot the door in the case so you can just push it open. All very Harry Potterish! Inside, I could hear spooky music and the occasional shriek but apparently the Gents' doesn't have the same sound effects.

They sometimes have a Metal night on Saturdays but the music playing on the sound system today was mainly old favourites from the 70's and 80's. The food was a bit uneven in quality. My scampi was fine and Graham's enormous Big Ben burger was as well, but someone else's salmon pie wasn't very satisfactory. Most of the people that came to the pub in lieu of the picnic were not ones I'd met before aside from the couple that organized it and one other, all three whom I had met on previous visits to London. It was nice to put some faces to names I'd seen in the world of Live Journal.

We'd also been invited to the home of a good friend for a meal in the evening so we ventured back out into the dampness to make our way to North London. We had a lovely visit and good food and it was good to see them again. We got back to the hotel about 11 and were completely worn out.

Looking for Shakespeare

May 22

We thought the weather was going to clear up but alas, no. Still we went ahead and signed up for a walking tour with London Walks anyway on the optimistic off chance that it wouldn't rain at least. It mostly didn't so that was about all we could ask for. Our guide, Emily, led us to a river boat and we sailed from Westminster to Bankside, accompanied by an amusing narrative by the boat's captain. "The Cannon Street bridge is really just there to keep the trains from falling into the river"

Emily led us through the Hays Galleria shopping arcade and down through the chilly, damp back streets of Bankside. The tour focused on Shakespeare and what the South Bank/Southwark area would have been like then. There is very little left of the London Will knew aside from things like the Tower of London and the occaisional house or old building but there are one or two areas that wouldn't be too different from London when Dickens lived. There is part of an arch under London Bridge where there are also steps up to the bridge that date back to that time. These are "Nancy's Steps", so called as they were probably the inspiration for a scene in Oliver Twist where the character of Nancy overhears a conversation that eventually leads to her death.

Emily told us what life was like in the Southwark area of London back then and detailed a bit of theatre history. We saw the remains of Winchester Palace where the Bishops lived and were told about all the brothels that were in the area that paid rent to the Bishops of Winchester who also ran and profited from the prison, the Clink! The "Bishop of Winchester's Geese" were prostitutes that were the Bishop's private harem, so to speak. She took us into a couple of really lovely old pubs to get warm along the way as well, the Mug House and the Anchor. The Anchor has a room that was used by Doctor Johnson while he was writing his dictionary and was also allegedly where Pepys saw while watching London burn.

We stopped at the location of the original Globe theatre and some of the group recited short passages from various plays. Emily herself did a speech by both Lady MacDuff from The Scottish Play and Katherine of Aragon out of Henry VIII and later at the end of the tour we saw a house near the new Globe theatre where Katherine lodged for awhile. We ended the tour at the Globe as the focus of the tour and examined the iron gates and talked about the reconstruction of the theatre, the dream of actor Sam Wanamaker who died just before the building was finished.

St Paul's & Millenium Bridge from the Thames

Graham and I walked back to the Anchor pub which is right beside the Golden Hinde, the replica of the ship that was captained by Sir Francis Drake in the 16th century. The pub has several levels and a pretty good carvery bar as well as other traditional pub menu items.

After lunch, we headed up to Camden hoping to go to two shops in particular but because the weekend is the Camden Lock market's busiest time, some shops are then closed on Monday. Both of the ones we wanted were! As it was getting wet again, we decided to return to the hotel room for dry socks before heading east to Canary Wharf where we were meeting friends for a drink and a bite to eat. The pub we went to there is called Ledger House, a Wetherspoon's brand pub housed in a 200 year old listed building but all modernized inside. Food was the usual menu for the most part though slightly more expensive than Wetherspoon's pubs outside of Canary Wharf it seemed to me. Next door to the pub is the Docklands museum which I would like to see sometime. This end of London is not as widely traveled by tourists as it's a bit out of the way but the DLR to West India Quay will actually take you there easily and there are quite a few odds and ends to look at.

Back "Oop North"

May 23

The sun came out! We saw it from the window of the bus as we trundled out of London this morning! The bus nearly broke down too, in the middle lane of a three lane approach to Park Lane. It stopped in traffic and the driver couldn't get it to accelerate again. He and the alternate driver that goes with him debated on whether to call the police first or the bus depot. They did the latter, then after some discussion, turned off the engine and restarted it. Voila! It worked! Luckily it also worked all the rest of the way to Manchester. There was a quick stop at a roadside services station about an hour out of Manchester where, in the ladies' room, I was literally caught with my pants down by a fire alarm! No fire, though, but we took our hot drinks back to the bus and were in Manchester pretty much on time.

We walked over to the train station where we were due to pick up a rental car from the Avis agency on Ducie Street. Our mode of transport was a little Ford Fiesta which served us quite well over the next week. We went to the grocery store and stocked up and went back to the flat where I offloaded the digital camera and got some laundry together. We had an evening in with Doctor Who, and a tape of the movie In The Bleak Midwinter (excellent movie!) and a kebab (yes, even after all those groceries!).

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