tour – England Trip 2010

Getting to Know London

June 06 Tagged with: Beefeater, Buckingham Palace, bus, Eric, guard, hotel, Kevin, London, London Eye, tour, Tower of London

Jun 062010

Day 1: Instead of napping we decided to use the ‘force your body to time shift’ approach to jet lag – after checking into our apartment we went to breakfast and started sightseeing.

Apartment on Curzon Street

Our apartment is on Curzon Street in Mayfair – it’s small, but nice and very convenient to the tube; it’s also across the street from Shepherd Market, a small area with shops and restaurants. The spot we chose for breakfast was okay, but we’re not really used to runny eggs and English style bacon and hash browns. Tomorrow we’ll try eating in, though we also found some nice pastry cafes right across the street.

Walking through Green Park

Guard at Buckingham Palace

Burning off the bacon, we walked through Green Park and past Buckingham Palace, then jumped the “Original Tour” double decker bus to get situated and oriented to the city, disembarking for the Tower of London, then rejoining for the rest of the loop afterwards.

Kevin and Eric atop the tour bus

The tour of the Tower of London was quite entertaining – they are hosted by Yomen of the Guard who live within the walls. We learned about many beheadings, mucky moats, how to become a Beefeater, and nuances of armor.

Beefeater, Yeoman Warder and Tourguide

After the rest of the bus tour, including three loops through Trafalgar Square (where pigeons have been eradicated by fining humans for feeding them and sicking hawks on the birds that choose to stick around anyway), we returned home for a nap.

Late that afternoon a quick two stop ride in the tube took us back to the Thames for a ride on the London Eye. Even after 23 years of marriage I wasn’t aware of the depth of Sarah’s discomfort with heights until I asked her to take my picture near the top of the loop. Oops.

View from the top of the loop of the London Eye

We had a very nice meal at an Italian restaurant near the Eye, then hopped the tube for home. Time to finally get caught up on some of that sleep!

Legal Tour, Part 1: Parliament

June 07 Tagged with: Kevin, London, Parliament, Supreme Court, tour

Jun 072010

Parliament Building

Day 2: Coffee and hot chocolate from across the street and a heaping bowl of Special K helped us get adjusted to the new day, hopefully fooling us into accepting local time at 7am. We were picked up at 8:30 by our guide for our legal tour of London – first stop: Parliament.

Upon entering the iconic Houses of Parliament, we were met by David Stollery, who is the Senior Doorkeeper for the House of Lords. As a Doorkeeper, he helps keep the House running smoothly. This includes tracking attendance (which allows the Lords to get reimbursed for their expenses!), managing the flow of messages while the House is in session and general organization and security. Mr. Stollery spent almost two hours with us, walking us through the chambers of the House of Lords and House of Commons while explaining how the Parliament of British Government operates and the role of the two Houses. He also participates in many of the ceremonies, and entertained us with very rich descriptions of the traditions behind them.

In Parliament with David Stollery and our tour guide, Oola

Mr. Stollery also explained the process to observe the Houses in session – something we’re planning to return to do on Wednesday.

Entrance to the Supreme Court

In 2009, the United Kingdom created a Supreme Court, replacing the Appellate Committee from the House of Lords as a separate and independent court. We visited their new facilities in the Middlesex Guildhall, across the street from Parliament. Since they weren’t in session we were able to enter the court rooms (when they are in session you can observe the court from behind a glass wall).

Kevin in the Supreme Court Chambers

Legal Tour, Part 2:

June 07 Tagged with: bad math, City Hall, Inns of the Court, London, Royal Courts of Justice, tour

Jun 072010

After Parliament and the Supreme Court we visited Inns of the Court, a collection of legal encampments where students live, study and intern at law firms that are headquartered within the Inns. The Inns were originally created just outside the city walls, or “bar”, which is where the term Bar and Barister originated. There are a number of Inns, the most famous to us Commoners would be the Temple Inn, home of the Knights of Templar and location for a significant clue in “The DaVinci Code.”

We toured the Royal Courts of Justice – the Appellate Court was closed, but we were able to sit in on a portion of a hearing involving closing arguments in an estate challenge. The Baristers were in robes and wigs, though the Judge was wearing his own hair.

After a pub lunch we traveled to London’s city center and visited the City Hall, a very modern building next to the Tower Bridge. The building was designed by Norman Foster and has a unique circular design of offset layers of floors – one common nickname for the building is the “Leaning Tower of Pizza.”

London City Hall

Inside the City Hall is an enormous floor map of London and its surrounding areas. We were told that London City is only a square mile in area, but “if you look you can see that it isn’t really square at all.” In other math related news, we were also told that Norman Foster’s other building in London (affectionately known as “The Gerkin” because of its resemblance to a giant standing pickle) “is as wide as it is tall, though it looks much taller than that.” In fact, its height is roughly equivalent to its circumference, not its width, making it three times taller than it is ‘wide’. Width, I suppose, is a difficult concept for some to get their arms around.

Tower Bridge and Tower Keys Ceremony

June 07 Tagged with: London, night, tour, Tower Bridge, Tower of London

Jun 072010

Eric’s friend and classmate, Ian, is in London for a school project and joined us for dinner along the Thames. We needed to be across the river at 9:30pm for the Tower Keys Ceremony, and headed over at 9:00pm with a comfortable margin for the ten minute walk – then a cruise ship decided to leave port through the bridge. It was fun standing next to the Tower Bridge while it opened, and we raced up the stairs and stood by the lifted roadway as the cruise ship sailed by; the ship’s passengers even higher up waved down at us.

Tower Bridge at night, open

As fun as that was, it used up almost all of our margin time to make it to the Tower of London gate for the ceremony. The Tower Keys Ceremony is the longest continuous running ceremony in the world, having now happened every single day for over 700 years. It is a military ceremony for locking the huge gates to the London Tower each evening, and if you are lucky enough to see it, as we were, you also end up locked inside. It is near impossible to enter the grounds after that, but if you’re polite and don’t misbehave your Yeoman tour guide will let you out through a door in the gates afterwards.

Oxford

June 08 Tagged with: Eric, Kevin, Oxford, tour

Jun 082010

Day 3: Tuesday began with pastries, coffee and hot chocolate across the street and a walk along Hyde Park to catch the bus to Oxford. We found that some of the most elite car dealers are along Park Lane next to the park – including Pagani, an exotic machine that isn’t imported into the US, so even Eric’s sightings of the car are rare.

We rode the Oxford Tube (which contrary to its name is a bus not a subway) to the city of Oxford, enjoying the view from the second level of the bus and taking advantage of free wifi to get caught up on things at home. Once in town we had an hour to kill before our campus tour, so we visited the Covered Market and a bookstore. About the time our tour started the rain began to fall, and it continued off and on for the rest of the day.

Rainy Oxford Tour

Students in Exam Dress

Oxford is a beautiful campus, divided in to colleges for living and learning. Most students that we saw were in their exam uniforms – white shirts and ties with black cloaks and a carnation on the lapel designating by color how far through exams the student is.

I’m sure there is much more to the city of Oxford than we saw, but it very much had the feel of a college town to it.

Oxford student crossing his quad in the rain

Kevin and Eric, getting partial shelter from the rain during the tour

The Oxford Electric Compnay (sic)

The Oxford Electric Compnay

Compnay (with a backwards “C”) – I might expect that as a Cockney accent, but at Oxford? Really?

War Museum, Nicked Purse, Nick Clegg, and Parliament

June 09 Tagged with: Churchill, drinks, London, London Eye, Parliament, St. James Park, tour, War Museum

Jun 092010

Day 4

A Nice Way To Start The Day - Hot chocolate across the street from our apartment.

Our primary goal for Wednesday was to see Parliament in action, but that wasn’t until 3pm, so we started out with a visit to the War Museum underneath the ?? building. The museum is the underground bunker where Churchill and his Cabinet and staff ran the British effort in WWII from. Many of the rooms were locked up in 1945 after six straight years of use – they remain today in exactly the condition they were left in. Other rooms have been rebuilt based on photographs taken during the war to reflect authentically how they looked at the time. Connected to the War Museum is the Churchill Museum – a fascinating collection of photos, recordings, quotes and memorabilia of the Churchill’s life and career. This was all a tangible reminder of why they are called the “Greatest Generation.”

A faux Churchill making a call to FDR on display in the War Museum.

A wonderful interactive timeline of Winston Churchill's life in the Churchill Museum. Sliders along the side of the projected timeline allow you to select a year, which opens to months, which open to individual days with details in them.

Trafalgar Square was the next stop, with a brief pause in front of Downing Street, where Kevin spotted Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg walking past us on his way to Parliament. Somewhere between Downing Street, Trafalgar Square and the pub where we had lunch Sarah’s purse was slashed by someone presumably trying to steal her wallet. Luckily the purse had three internal layers and the slice only made it through the outer two, though a nick was clearly visible in the third layer. Nicked but not ‘nicked.’

Overlooking the lake in St. James Park on the walk to Parliament. The London Eye and home of the Horse Guards can be seen beyond Duck Island.

We arrived at the Parliament Building around 3pm and managed to work past other people waiting in line thanks to now knowing someone on the inside. We sat in the gallery on the second floor of the House of Lords and watched the 30 minute open comment period that opens each session. Topics discussed included whether prisoners should be allowed to vote, tax treatment of low cap stock investments, and the impact of the BP Deep Water Horizon crisis on BP’s dividend. BP accounts for 14% of Pensions’ income in Great Britain, so not paying a dividend would have a huge impact on people living off their pensions.

After the House of Lords we sat above the House of Commons and listened to two first year Members of Parliament (MPs) give their maiden speeches. They were interesting, but generally focused on more local issues than what we heard in the House of Lords. Seeing Great Britain’s government in action was definitely a highlight of the trip.

Photography is not allowed inside Parliament, so we’ll have to go with this:

A Nice Way To End The Day - A pint of Guinness in a local pub.

That evening we watched Prime Minister David Cameron’s 30 minute Q&A session before the House of Commons on TV. Prime Minister’s Question Time opens the House of Commons once a week and is a spirited back and forth between the PM and MPs, with perfect British politeness and formality tempered with insults and wit. Because it is Question Time, there is a Jeopardy strategy of all statements being presented in the form of a question.

Greenwich and a Green Witch

June 10 Tagged with: Eric, Greenwich, Kevin, lion, London, Royal Observatory, Thames, Thames Barrier, tour, Tower Bridge, Wicked

Jun 102010

Bow view of Tower Bridge

Thursday kicked off with a boat tour of the Thames from London to the Thames Barrier with a stop in Greenwich. Though it feels now as if the river banks are primarily high end housing and shopping, the water’s edge in London began as a shipping port for Ancient Rome and kept its Maritime focus of shipping, wharfs and ship building until the last few decades. In fact, the word “wharf” began as WareHouse Along River Front.

London has always been susceptible to flooding by the tides in the English Channel which affect the level of the Thames by up to seven meters. The decorative lion heads along the river walls were places for ships to tie up, but also acted as a water level warning to the citizens, “When the lions drink, London’s in danger.”

Lion's head along the river's edge.

To protect the city now, they have built the Thames Barrier – an enormous moveable dam downriver that can be closed during unusually high tides to keep the city from flooding. Since its construction in the 1980s, it has been used over 180 times to protect the city, with annual usage increasing. The Barrier was the farthest point on our boat tour and an impressive sight to see.

Thames Barrier

Thames Barrier piers. The barges are doing maintenance on one of the adjustable dams.

Greenwich was our only stop along the tour. We spent a couple hours at the original Royal Observatory: the defining point of the Prime Meridian (0 degrees longitude) and the longtime home of World Time, the standard time to which the rest of the world synchronizes.

In front of the Royal Observatory. I'm not sure what Kevin's thinking here.

The museum and tour explain the King’s original goal of setting up the observatory to collect astronomical data to aid navigation. It explains sextant navigation and the importance of accurate star data to calculate your longitude, and the necessity of an accurate sea-going clock to synchronize your observations with star data created elsewhere on earth. That ‘elsewhere’ was Greenwich, and thus it became defined as the Prime Meridian. The development of an accurate sea-going clock was so important that the government set up a 20,000 Pound prize for anyone who could build one. John Harrison claimed the prize in the 1760s after 40 years of clock development – the museum has versions I through IV (the winning clock) on display, along with many other attempts. We spent quite a while studying the various mechanisms to understand the maker’s design for overcoming the rolling of the ship that would keep a common pendulum from working properly. The museum also houses many of the clocks that for hundreds of years kept the official World Time, until the now-official atomic clock was developed.

Given that Greenwich is a rather geeky stop, and one that I assumed would only be of interest to someone at least familiar with Greenwich Mean Time, I was rather surprised to hear one of our boating companions exclaim as he exited the boat back in London, “I wonder why it feels warmer in London than it did in Green Which?”

Speaking of green witches, after some R&R time we cleaned up and headed to London’s Theater District for dinner and a play. We had a nice Italian meal before going to the Apollo Victoria Theater to see “Wicked.” Sarah had seen the play in SF, and thought the London version was not as funny but musically better.

Windsor Castle, Runnymede and Salisbury

June 11 Tagged with: Air Forces Memorial, Eric, Kevin, Magna Carta, Runnymede, Salisbury, Sarah, tour, Windsor Castle

Jun 112010

We said goodbye to London today and, being fearful of driving on the left side of the road in London, took a taxi to Heathrow airport to pick up a rental car.

From there it was a short 10 mile drive to our first stop: Windsor Castle. Or it should have been a short 10 mile drive; our GPS was configured to show north-always-up rather than what I’m used to, which is forward-always-up. By the time that confusion was cleared up I had driven another 10 miles out of our way, and in an effort to not insult those in cars near us, spoke ever so eloquently in what I’m told is French.

On to Windsor! The Queen was not in residence this weekend – I suppose she was wagering on the ponies at Ascot – so we took the audio tour instead.

The Windsor Castle Quadrangle

Kevin and Sarah in front of the quadrangle.

Kevin at Eric at Windsor Castle

The next stop was in Runnymede, where the original Magna Carta was signed by King John of England in 1215. The document is considered the founding document of constitutional law, and the American Bar Association has erected a monument on the site to commemorate it.

Kevin and Eric at the ABA's commemorative monument at Runnymede

On top of the hill overlooking Runnymede is the Royal Air Forces Memorial, where 20,000 members of the Commonwealth Air Forces are remembered. These are airmen who lost their lives over the British Isles and Europe in WWII and have no known graves. We stopped there to see the listing of Sarah’s first cousin once removed, Laurence E. Charnaud, who was shot down over the North Sea.

Air Forces Memorial, Runnymede

Flying Officer L.E. Charnaud

An hour and a half later we arrived at our hotel in Salisbury. Tomorrow we’ll tour locally.

The view from atop a hill in Salisbury, though likely not the one Phil Collins sang about.

Stonehenge

June 12 Tagged with: 3D, Eric, Kevin, Stonehenge, tour

Jun 122010

I really don’t get English breakfasts. In London we were pretty smart after the first day and either ate in our apartment or had pastries and coffee across the street. Today we had the hotel breakfast in the dining room – oops. Things look familiar, but taste very strange. Perhaps we’ll learn this time.

We chose to stay in Salisbury since it was close to Stonehenge and has a beautiful cathedral with an original copy of the Magna Carta. Today’s first stop: Stonehenge.

Stonehenge stands amid green rolling hills with roads on two sides, and they’ve done a very nice job of hiding signs of civilization. The visitor center is across the road and down the hill, accessed by an underground tunnel so it isn’t visible from the site. There is a paved pathway around the stones, and a small rope to tell you not to enter closer. It would be nice to walk amongst the stones, but given the amount of traffic it sees I can understand the reason they limit it.

We had mostly flat lighting all day, but you can get a sense of scale from the people along the left.

We took the audio tour which talks about the site, the stones, the myths and theories about their purpose. Like other museums, the audio tour comes on a small device you hold up to your ear after typing in the number of the stop you’re at – it makes it look like everyone there is talking on their cell phones.

A moment of nice light.

Kevin and Eric

Given the flat lighting conditions we had I’m pretty happy with how the pictures came out. I experimented with some stereo pairs, one of which is below:

Stonehenge 'wigglegram' - ooh ooh, 3D! The distance between the images makes it appear smaller that it really is.

Next stop: the English Channel…

Hadrian’s Wall

June 14 Tagged with: Carl, Eric, Hadrian's Wall, Kevin, Sarah, tour, Wark

Jun 142010

Our last full day in England, but it’s a very unique one. We scheduled a “Hadrian’s Wall Safari”. Hadrian’s Wall was built starting in 122 AD under Roman Emperor Hadrian. It stretched for 80 miles from the east to the west coasts of Britain, and was the northernmost border of the Roman Empire – to the north: barbarians. Our tour guide, Gary, picked us up in his Range Rover (thus the ‘safari’) around 10am.

Gary's Range Rover, our tour bus for the day

There were many stops along the way, most of which started with a short hike and then a description from Gary about what we were looking at. He did a fantastic job layering the information over the course of the day so that we were building knowledge and understanding about the Roman Empire and early British history, rather than just reading about a particular site.

A relatively intact portion of the wall. Gary's ready to charge up the hill.

At this stop, for example, he explained why the wall was here and not further north or south. But to do so, we had to be at the top of the hill…

Charging up the hill

Gary gives a combination history and geology lesson

It turns out there is a giant fault line here, and the minerals and other assets that an empire might want are primarily to the south. To the north the land is less valuable and not worth the cost of beating down the barbarians.

Fault lines and walls also make for great photo ops.

Photo Op Atop the Crop

Every Roman mile (1,000 paces) along the 80 mile wall was a Mile Castle that acted as a toll gate between the Roman Empire and traders to the north. Between each Mile Castle were two towers, stationing guards every 330 paces for the width of Britain. Below is the foundation of a Mile Castle.

Remains of a Mile Castle

A century before Hadrian built his wall, the Romans had established forts throughout the region. Vindolanda was started around 85AD and was occupied for about 400 years. Over that time it was rebuilt on top of itself many times. There is an extensive excavation going on there now with a fantastic museum. Most significantly, they uncovered wood writing tablets that are still legible, having been protected for almost 2000 years by mud.

Vindolanda excavation - the elevated floor was heated by hot water running through the channels

Crag Lough was another stop along the way. It’s close to Once Brewed, next to Twice Brewed. Twice Brewed was named for the strong ale that the Roman soldiers demanded. Once Brewed was named more recently by the founder of a youth hostel that thought that tea as a better drink to offer.

Crag Lough (that's the lake in the background); Hadrian's Wall runs along the top of the ridge

There is a hiking trail that follows the wall across the country. Most of the wall is not visible now, either because it’s still buried or because the stones were recycled over the years to become smaller walls or farmhouses.

A ladder for hikers to climb over the wall

Lanercost Priory was built by Henry II in the late 1100’s, mostly from stone from Hadrian’s Wall.

Lanercost Priory Door

A long, educational and entertaining day!

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