I'm Back...

But not for long. I have been so bad about writing, I apologize (to my one reader, Dave, who keeps complaining about my laziness). I have a ton to write about too, I just haven't gotten around to doing it. Let's see, there was our trip to Amsterdam, my photography class, a lovely birthday tea, three museum trips, two wanders, my book club hosting duties, my mission to photograph every single blossoming tree in London, my new lens, Riley's adventure filled weekend....I promise to write about everything...when we get back.

Because we are off to Asia! We are heading to Singapore and after spending one and a half days eating we will go to the beach, in Vietnam. Then we will go back to Singapore to eat for two more days. Yeah! Can't wait! Although we aren't in need of sunny warm weather since the weather here has been so amazing. I was expecting us to be headed to the beach pale, pasty and seriously in need of vitamin D. In the past few days of summer weather in London I have actually managed to get a little sunburned. In March! But I think we'll still appreciate the hot, hot weather of Southeast Asia for 10 days.

See you soon, and I promise, PROMISE, to write more upon our return. I mean I put that in writing so now I will be held accountable (by Dave), right?

Riley Is Offended

She's calling for an official boycott of the Hampstead Heath Pergola and Hill Garden.

Museum Mondays - Part 4

This week we went to the National Gallery. No pictures, sorry. I was in the middle of a day long brain fart when I left so the fact that I managed to get to the museum and didn't take a tube trip out to Upminster was enough of a success for me, never mind bringing the camera too.

We did the "60 minute audio tour" of the museum. I put that in quotes because 60 minutes is a misnomer, but more on that later. The tour covers 40 of the greatest works in the museum, from the 13th century up through the early 20th century. The tour costs £3.50 and it comes with a map/guide that lists the 40 works. We weren't initially handed the map so we were a bit confused as to how the tour works, and then we figured out we needed the map to get started. Yeah for us!

This being my first visit to the National Gallery I was taken by the amount of art, namely mind blowingly famous art in the museum. At one point we were sitting in a room that was half devoted to Rembrandt. One of the final pieces we saw was one of Van Gogh's "Sunflowers." We also went through a room filled with paintings by Monet and Manet. The Gallery houses a truly extensive and impressive collection of art from throughout history.

One of the nice things about the Gallery is that there are quite a few benches and places to sit in the galleries. This came in handy since the "60 minute audio tour" took us about one hour and 45 minutes. And it's not as though we spent five minutes discussing each piece. We took the tour seriously and plowed through the different galleries, seeing each and every artwork listed. And it still took us 45 minutes longer than the title suggests. What slows the tour down is that you have to find each piece in the respective room. The guide shows a picture of each of the 40 works, and what room it's in, but some rooms hold 20+ artworks so you have to scan the walls looking for the right one. And it's a big museum so we were trekking from room 15 to 21 to 19 to 31 to 42 back to 35. I think they need to rename the audio tour to something more realistic like "cannot be done in 60 minutes unless you cheat and don't see all 40 artworks but that's a waste of money you slacker" audio tour. It was worth the £3.50 to learn about some of the art and the history and to see some famous pieces, however I think if we hadn't been together and set on finishing it even if we had to spend the night in there, we all probably would have skipped some stuff to make it go faster. So buyer beware. OR don't follow our lead and just see 30 or 20 pieces and lie about missing the rest. Your call.

Next Monday - Tate Modern.

Wandering Wednesdays

Not only do we have Museum Mondays, we also have Wandering Wednesdays! And we're soon starting an Alliteration Appreciation Association...

Our first wander took place up in Hampstead. One member has a book of hidden London walks so we followed that through the area. The Hampstead walk has 48 points of interest along a 4.7 mile route. We ended up skipping a few sites due to time constraints, but we did manage to see some of the neighborhood and some of the Heath and eat lunch. Pretty solid for the first wander.

We started at the Hampstead tube station and walked up to Church Row to see some houses and the church and graveyards of St. John at Hampstead. We continued around the Frognals, by the Holly Bush (a pub), we saw the Admiral's House and then went by Whitestone pond, which is actually one of the highest spots in London. Who knew?

From there we entered the Heath and checked out the Pergola and Hill Garden, a very pretty spot in the Heath. In fact the book called it one of the most delightful hidden spots in the Heath or something like that. It was pretty, but at this time of the year hardly any plants were in bloom, although some lovely spring blooms were growing at the base of the trees. We all said we'd like to come back in the summer when everything is in bloom.

We left the Pergola and continued on down to The Old Bull & Bush, also a pub. Interestingly, the book mentioned that they started to build a tube stop here and got so far as excavating the platforms before they abandoned the plan. Churchill toured the platforms with the idea that they would be backup war rooms, but they were never used that way. The old entrance to the station didn't seem to be visible, although the book made it seem like it was. There was construction across the street so perhaps the last remaining signs of it are now gone.

From there we walked through the neighborhood a bit and back into the Heath and at this point we got lost. The book said something along the lines of "follow the road til it curves left, stay right, not the hard right, then go left and follow that til it goes right and then left." OK. And no. We tried to stay on course and failed but we happened upon this very pretty small pond filled with ducks, including a Mandarin duck, a pretty brown and black one we all liked. From there we managed to find our way back to the Pergola, and ended up going in to the main part of the Heath.

We walked through the Heath towards Parliament Hill. There were tons of dogs out, some swimming, one lost and not responding to the owner, and all would have made Riley jealous. We climbed Parliament Hill, admired the view and then made our way out of the Heath and back to Belsize Park tube station. Overall we spent about 3 hours wandering through Hampstead and the Heath. It was pretty and interesting and allowed me to put the new camera to good use. And since we saw the "hidden" Heath, it took us by parts off the beaten path and new to (almost) all of us.

We decided that after such a successful wander we'll keep with the hidden walks book and next week we plan to do a Docklands walk, another area of the city that will be new to most of us.

 

Museum Mondays - Part 3

Museum Mondays continues, this time at the British Museum. We planned on taking an 11am tour of the Japan galleries but alas, it was cancelled. Instead we saw the Olympic Medals, currently on display. They are the upcoming medals, what the athletes will receive at the London Olympics. They are HUGE, or at least we thought they looked a lot bigger than past years appeared to be. We also checked out a Manga exhibit that showcases a story line involving the British Museum. The author/artist is a famous manga writer and he created a new story for and starring the museum.

After taking a little break we decided to be ambitious and take a tour after all. We settled on the Enlightenment Room tour. I had never been in the Enlightenment room and it's actually quite fascinating. There are many objects collected by the Sloane of Sloane Square, along with other bits that highlight how people classified and collected objects during this period of learning. It's a sort of bits and bobs collection and nice to wander. Our tour was interesting, except for the fact the tour guide was a bit of a low talker. We were a group of about 10 and it was hard to hear him in this large room with other people wandering and talking nearby unless you were practically in his face. And I wasn't about to get all up in his face. So I missed a hell of a lot of what he said. Too bad. He did use a laser pointer so I at least got to follow that as he swung it from one object to the next. It was a sort of red dot parade for me, and I enjoyed that at least. I left a bit early to ensure that Riley didn't have an accident (she was good girl, don't worry) and I was told that someone offered the guide a throat lozenge at the end, so perhaps he was sick. He seemed very knowledgeable about the room and the objects, and the tour was supposed to last 40 minutes and ended up going over 50. I guess that's both a plus and minus for the free tours.

The nice thing about the museums in London (aside from them being free, the best perk of all) is that they offer all these free tours. The day we went there were probably 10-12 tours going on throughout the day, for all the various galleries at the museum. I would definitely go back to hear more, and to learn a bit about art that I have no real knowledge of, and to refresh what I may have learned in college but promptly forgot (I minored in Classics so at one time - not now - knew a bit about Greek antiquities). And maybe next time I'll just casually carry a small megaphone with me in case the guide needs it. "Oh this old thing? Here, use it!"

Next Monday - The National Gallery. Stay tuned!

So close...

yet so very, very far.

Diving Is Hot, So Hot

Last Wednesday Dave and I went to the Diving World Cup at the new Olympic Aquatics Center/re. I bought the tickets in January (?) and in that time Dave was asked to go to an event at the Apsley House (that big old house at Hyde Park corner) and to possibly go to Chicago for work. He said no to both. So was the diving worth it, should he have gone to Chicago? Well....

We took the tube out to Stratford and saw signs telling us to walk through the new Westfield to the Aquatics Center/re. There were people with those foam #1 hands you see at sporting events and they said to "follow the finger to the thumb," which made no sense. Until we saw the guy with a foam hand making the thumbs up sign, pointing us up the stairs. When we got to the center/re we had to go through a metal detector and once inside we were directed to seats on the upper lever. It was open seating, but they sort of ushered groups of people to various sections.

One thing I didn't know is how HOT the center/re is kept. They do that so divers, and I suppose swimmers, don't tighten up between their events. Since we were dressed for colder weather, it was a bit toasty in there. We did get the sense that almost every seat in the center/re will be perfectly fine for watching the Olympic events, especially swimming (assuming you are lucky enough to even get tickets to the Olympics, I mean come on). If you are seated on the opposite side of the diving pool and way up high it may be a bit hard to see the action, but the Olympic-sized swimming pool is so huge every seat has a great view of it.

We watched a lot of the warm up (a lot, we got there early) and then saw the men's 3m springboard final and later the women's synchronized 10m platform. The 10m platform is the super high one that looks so terrifying. And the fact that they go off it backwards only makes it more terrifying. Not for me. The competition consisted of 6 rounds, and each round took about ten minutes, so an hour per event. The synchro competition started with the first two rounds consisting of pikes and I guess backward pikes (not sure if that's the correct term). We left when the competition was hotting up, as they would say here, with the divers doing synchronized somersaults and twists. Overall the competition was fun to watch, I guess. However, diving isn't all that exciting. Sorry if you are a diver, but really, aside from seeing some cool twists and turns and pikes (not to mention women jumping off a freakishly high platform), it does get a teensy bit repetitive. Of course to spice it up you can spend the time looking at the male divers' bodies, as they are something. I did a lot of that, but slyly so Dave didn't get offended. Maybe the actual Olympic diving event will be more exciting just because it's the Olympics and that automatically makes the excitement more palatable (I imagine). But Dave did say that after watching diving he's looking forward to seeing Olympic ping pong because it will be so fast and really fun to watch. OK, maybe he didn't say "really fun," but he did say fast.