Rachel’s Reflections

Sunday 7 March 2010

We spent the day in the British Museum.  This museum is too large to see in one day, even if you come at opening time and stay until closing time.  It’s also a lot of walking.  But we tried to see as much as we could, and I think we did see a lot of it.  And Rachel tried to hurry and not read every single sign.  There were a lot of signs she did not read!

There was the Egyptian room with the mummies and a Japan room, China room, Africa room, North America room, Europe room, Greek and Roman room, Middle Eastern room, etc.  Note: Some of these “rooms” are actually three or four or five galleries.  I was impressed by the three galleries of library.  King George III donated his library to the museum–well, actually it was his son donating it on his behalf after his death–minor detail.  The books there weren’t all his–there were books from other sources too I think.  And there were displays of stuffed birds and marble samples and medicines and fossils and all manner of stuff that an 18th or 19th century gentleman might have in his library.  Apparently libraries weren’t just a gentleman’s collection of books–they were also private museums, or could be.  It was really interesting.  But I was most impressed by the sheer number of books.  I’ve seen public libraries without that many books.  Imagine three large hall sized rooms lined with book shelves.  Half of the bookshelf space has books, the other half has displays.  Now imagine a second story with half the number of bookshelves (spaced alternately with large windows) but these are completely filled with books.  Isn’t that a lot of books?  I looked at the titles.  Most were in English, but some were in other languages.  I was also amazed at the sheer number of books that came in multi-volume sets.  Like the History of France–I think that one was over 20 volumes.  I had to wonder if King George III or the original owners of these books actually read them.  Or maybe they were like people nowadays and just wanted to look smart.  I don’t know.

After leaving the museum we wandered around for awhile and then found a church that was opened and decided to attend services.  We could have attended services at Westminster Abbey (evening service 6:30 p.m.), but Jeremy didn’t want to go to an Anglican Service, so we found a Baptist Church in an old 150 year old building, ironically rather “new” compared to some of the other buildings we’d been seeing.  It was a small congregation, and the service was rather liturgical and there was a woman minister–not something I’m rather used to.  But the people were nice.  We talked to them after the service.   They were glad to see us and had actually heard of Bahrain and were quite friendly.  It was nice getting a chance to chat with some of the locals.

Saturday 6 March 2010

We didn’t do much today since I wanted to sleep.  I’ve been under a lot of stress at work lately, and I’m exhausted.  Plus  it’s warm in my hotel room and cold outside.

We did the houses of parliament and big ben.  It was rather odd because we came out of the tube station and climbed the steps to street level and there right in front of us was a sort of back yard fenced in by high iron fence.  There was a building and as I followed the lines of the building up I realized what I was looking at–big ben!  I found if you stare at it while clouds are moving behind it, it looks like the clock is moving, not the clouds.  They’re doing some kind of construction work on the building–the entire short side next to the clock tower was covered in scaffolding.  The parliament building is also right on the river.  There’s a bridge you can stand on and look at it.  The side facing the river has a kind of outdoor cafe.  In warm weather members of parliament can sit outside and watch the river go by while enjoying a snack or lunch.  (I would say cup of tea, but they drink coffee a lot here too–I was informed by a local that they drink everything.)

The whole Parliament building is inside a high iron fence, so no going inside.  I think though, they do let people go inside to observe sessions of parliament, but according to the guide book we bought you have to arrange tickets through your local British embassy.  It wasn’t in session on a Saturday, though, so it didn’t matter anyway.  So we wandered around and saw Saint Margaret’s Church, the church of the House of Commons and Westminster Abbey.  We couldn’t go inside either one because both were closed for the day.  Maybe we’ll go back some time.  We also wandered around this park outside that had statues of parliamentarians.  I thought the old ones were a better workmanship than the newer, modern ones.  We also saw a statue of Nelson Mandela and Abraham Lincoln.  Who’d of thought Honest Abe was in London?

After this we wandered along a street and saw a lot of old buildings that had been the seats of government during the British Empire Days.  It looked like a lot of them were still being used as government office buildings.  Along the way we saw Downing Street.  It’s easy to recognize because it’s blocked off by a tall black iron fence, has policemen guarding it, and has tourists gawking around.  We were among those tourists for a bit.  I don’t know which of the buildings along that street is THE building–there were no house numbers visible.  But it was kind of interesting.  We saw a delivery vehicle arrive–apparently the prime minister was getting some new furniture.  We left shortly after that.  As I told Jeremy, we’ve seen vehicle inspections before–we’ve been in vehicle inspections before.

Shortly onward we saw another crowd of tourists.  It turned out the Horse Guards were doing their changing of the guard ceremony.  It was really hard to see as there were too many taller people in front of me and more pushing and shoving their way to the front all the time, but I did see a little.  What I saw looked like a uniform inspection.  Been there done that, too.  Never did it with a horse involved though.  They don’t stand at attention well like people can.  When the horses got bored they started tossing their heads.  They could have broke ranks but they didn’t.  They were well trained enough that they didn’t lift one hoof up until told to do so.

We also saw a street that called itself Scotland Yard.  It didn’t look remarkable though.  In fact it looked little more than an alley.  Don’t know if that’s the Scotland Yard of the board game, but I was remembering that game as we walked down that street.

We ended up in Trafalgar Square.  What we just finished, according to the guide book, is called the Whitehall Walking Tour, only we did it backwards, starting in Parliament Square instead of finishing there.

After this we walked on towards Piccadilly Circus, home of the Eros statue.  Turns out it’s just a cupid with bow and arrow, nothing erotic.  But one building behind the statue was covered in LCD screens.  The buildings to the left and right were old buildings which had obviously been there a hundred years or more and just as obviously the LCD building was the same, with the screens put over the stone facade.  This juxtaposition of old and new is everywhere in London.  If you want to get a picture of this, check out Jeremy’s facebook profile picture.  That picture was taken on the steps of the Eros statue in front of the LCD building in Piccadilly Circus.

After this we wandered into the West End and saw a show: Avenue Q.  The theater it is in is called Gielgud Theater, but I thought they were saying Guilded Theater, because the inside has a lot of decorative goldwork.  It’s a small theater but cozy and pretty and definitely old-fashioned with all those gold roses on the ceiling and the cherubs holding up the light fixtures on both balcony rails.

After the s

And we also did a lot of walking and took in one of the shows on the west end.  Chinatown is right next to there.  We wondered into it before we realized where we were.

Friday, 5 March 2010

We flew into London and arrived around 9 p.m.  It was dark and cold.  Fortunately our hotel is quite close to the underground station, so we didn’t have far to walk.

The hotel is across the street from this seemingly endless row (all along the street) of victorian era row houses.  If you count the basement and attic they’re each 6 storeys tall but they’re only a bay window and a door (three regular sized windows) wide.  Wish I could see inside one.  Many have been converted into hotels or restaurants, but I think some are apartments.  I know why they’re called brownstones now.  A lot of them have brown or dark yellow colored brick on the outside on the upper storeys.  The basements are below street level but still have full sized bay windows.  They have a black iron railing around them, some with steps going down too.  I wonder what it was like when families used to live here.  You can just imagine the servants trooping up to the attic to sleep at night, weary after a full days work and of course going up and down all those stairs all day.  And looking up at the roof with a lot of the original chimneys still intact, I have new appreciation for how dangerous the job of chimney sweep was.  I looked up and up at the roof (some of the roof areas have railings now, but I think those railings didn’t used to exist), and I thought: they used to let kids–no require kids–to climb up and walk around up there.  Such a job was dangerous, sure, but better than starving to death.  Not sure how they cleaned out chimneys that could stretch six floors though.