Ropemaker's Field

I thought I would write a bit about our home here in London.  We are very happy here and are quite happy to recommend this house to other exchangers.

The house is located in a little pocket of suburbia right in the middle of the city.  It is very comfortable, with an open and airy kitchen, dining, living room combo on the first floor.  The kitchen is spacious and well-equipped and includes a dishwasher, washing machine and good sized refrigerator.    There are very good lights throughout the house.  The living room has plenty of seating and a nice tv.  Also on the first floor is the large foyer with a convenient half bath.

On the second floor is the master bedroom, a full bath with tub and shower, and a child's bedroom.   The master bedroom offers a comfortable king bed.  The third floor offers a bedroom with twin beds, another bathroom with stall shower, and a guest bedroom with desk for computer.

The location is ideal.  A 1 block stroll takes you to the banks of the Thames, along which you can meander over to Canary Wharf where there are big shopping malls and a huge financial center.  Or, take a longer walk along the Thames and get to Tower Bridge and the Tower of London.  A walk through the adjacent park and few blocks north takes you to the Docklands Light Rail station.  From the DLR you can get anywhere in London.

This location is very historic.  In the 19th century this whole area was built into docks by the
West India Corporation and other shipping magnates who were tired of waiting for weeks with their goods stuck on ships because there were not enough watermen to offload the goods onto small boats and take them to shore.  The importers also had a lot of trouble securing their goods once they did get to shore and hundreds of thousands of pounds were lost to pilferage and outright theft.  The rich guys solved the problem by building enclosed wharves which allowed the ships to enter an enclosed, secured bay and the goods to be off-loaded and moved directly to adjacent warehouses.

The street names attest to the many trades that were practiced here--Ropemaker's Fields, Limehouse, Haymarket, Barleycorn Way, Horseferry Road, Sailmakers Row, Candlewick Rd.  In Victorian times this was a bustling, busy place, although many of the workers lived in abject poverty.  

This house on Ropemaker's Field was a pub during the and 19th and 20th centuries, and it's claim to fame is that during the Blitz the entire area was decimated, and yet this one building was left standing.  Hence it earned the name, which is displayed on the park side of the house in big, bold letters, "The House They Left Behind".

  Previous to that it was called The Black Horse and was built in 1857.  The homeowners have done a nice job of remodeling the pub into a comfortable, airy, and charming home.

A car is really not needed in this location.  We have used the car once in the whole three + weeks we have stayed here.  The public transportation system--the Tube, the DLR and even the bus system--will get you where you want to go very quickly and with no hassle.  Cars in London are a hassle.   So, a suggestion for exchangers, instead of taking up a car here, ask the exchangers to purchase a weekly Oyster Card which allows you to unlimited use of the public transportation systems within the central two zones of London in trade for the use of your car. This would be win-win: They get the use of your car and the expense of the oyster card will be much less than it would cost them to rent a car.  If you need to travel farther afield, a supplemental fare can be added to the card for a reasonable charge.

More information about the area:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limehouse

A Walk in the Park

May 18, 2013

Well, it is Saturday today and from the past weekend we know that everything is packed on the weekends, so we thought we would check out the Sherlock Holmes Museum, thinking that a minor site like this would not be so crowded.  Ha, ha.  There was a line 200 people long, just to get into the museum.  So we decided to walk right by the line and over to Regent's Park.

The lovely Regent's Park was a good find.  Queen Mary's Gardens are just beautiful.  As we walked along the path to get to the gardens we enjoyed plot after plot of hundreds of tulips in every color.  I especially liked the yellow tulips surrounded by blue forget-me-nots.  Each different display was artfully designed and beautifully  presented.

We strolled along the stream and stopped to admire a group of big herons who were feasting on bugs along the bank.  And we passed though an area reminiscent of Giverny, with a Japanese bridge and willow trees hanging over the stream.

As we entered the garden we were treated to our traditional "trip wedding" .  The wedding party was just debarking their huge stretch limousine and marching up the path into the gardens for photos.  

The bride and groom were African, perhaps Somali, and all of the female guests were dressed in robes and headscarves.  The bride wore a contemporary white, ruffled gown.  

There were two little boys who must have been in the wedding party because they were dressed in pristine white suits.  And there were some girls, a bit older than the boys, dressed in white party dresses.  The  kids were playing and gamboling on the manicured lawns and over by the Japanese garden and stream and we were sure that soon those white suits would be covered with grass stains and the white shoes would be smudged with mud, but somehow they managed to keep clean.  They even got into a "football game" with two little Anglo boys who were kicking the ball around with their dad.    The bridal kids just took over the ball and were having a great time playing soccer as the two little boys and their dad just stood there and watched, bewildered.  Finally soccer dad managed to regain custody of the ball and bride daddy came over and rounded up the troops for photos and the fun was over.

I spent some time walking around the rose gardens too.  Although the roses are not in bloom yet I was impressed with the extensive rose gardens.  There are hundreds of plots of roses, each plot a bed of about 35 bushes, and with a plaque which identifies the name of the rose.  I bet these gardens are lovely in the summer when the roses are blooming.

As the afternoon progressed we decided park time was over and we walked back, past the long line at 221b Baker Street again, and into the Baker Street Tube Station to head home.

Concours d'Elegance

Sunday, May 19, 2013

Although it continues to be cloudy and breezy the sun does peek out from time to time and we continue to try to get out and do some activities.  Today we decided to return to Greenwich and the Royal Naval College where the Aston Martin fans were hosting a Concours d"Elegance.

The light rail ride was easy and fast and when we arrived in Greenwich we alit and strolled through the open market along the way to the college grounds.  Don stopped to chat with a couple of photographers and an artist who were displaying their wares and as I waited I became quite taken with the interesting items--jewelry boxes and clocks and coasters--made of Thuya wood on display at a nearby stall.

http://www.astonmartin.com/en/heritage/company-history

Finally we passed on through the market and over to the college grounds.  Hundreds of beautiful, shiny Aston Martins were parked around the grassy field and we strolled along admiring many of them.  I picked out my favorite, a glossy convertible in British Racing Green with pristine white leather interior.  Hey!  Since it is just a dream I can go for the totally impractical, right.

After awhile I just sat on a park bench while Don chatted with the proud owners, and

then we moved on to the Lambretta motor scooters. Another long chat between Don and the Lambretta guys while Don fondly remembered his good ole Lambretta days.




These two black and white pictures are of my beloved 150 Lambretta two of the motorscooter. August 1959 I was a sophomore in high school. My family was living in Yokota Air Force Base just outside of Tokyo Japan.












Then we moved on to the next green field where the James Bond car was reputed to be on display.   There were some beautiful, shiny black cars surrounded by golden posts and red velvet ropes and maybe one of those was the Bond car--I don't know.  After three hours of looking at cars, they all look the same to  me.

The Oliver one the Lambretta guys recommended the Cutty Sark Pub for lunch, so we strolled along the riverbank planning on our traditional Sunday Roast.  When we walked into the pub Don spotted a fellow, beer in hand, with a skinny little black and white dog on his lap.  The fellow and his friend were sitting in the window booth and Don asked permission to take a photo.  They cheerfully agreed and after the shoot Don and I went up to the bar to place our order.  While we were at the bar one of the window seat guys came over and invited us to have their seats as they were getting ready to leave.  So I went over and sat down to hold the place and had a nice chat with the two fellows while we waited for Don to bring our ales over.

The guys, one Italian and one British, were saying that they wanted to relocate to the San Francisco area and they needed to find some American wives so they could.  I was just starting to mention that American women might be different than other cultures when they chuckled and explained that they were a married couple.  

We continued to chat and Don showed up and joined in while we talked about Italy, traveling, home exchanging and etc.  They were very nice, happy and interesting guys.

After they left we thought about ordering our meal, but Don a selected an appetizer while waiting at the bar and it came out--a sausage roll.  We sliced it in quartrers and gobbled it up.  The board listing the appetizers was right on the mantel just above my head and we decided to try a couple more so next we ordered another sausage roll and a Scotch egg.  It is hard to beat fried doughy stuff with sausage and beer!

By the time we had finished three appetizers we decided that was enough lunch for us, promised ourselves we would have a healthy salad for dinner and then we set off for home.  As we passed through the open market again I decided to buy some Thuya wood coasters.

There is a pedestrian tunnel that goes from Greenwich under the Thames to the north side of the river, so we decided to take a walk under the river just for fun. 

We entered at the south end of the tunnel and at the north end of the tunnel we found the Pit Stop, a mini bike shop-snack shop-bbq'd sausage in a baguette vendor-free advice and first aid dispensers, sellers of maps, helmets, gloves and Chapstick.  The regulars were there--Gallic looking Paul with long Bohemian hair sitting at a little Parisian cafe table sipping coffee, clean-cut Matt industriously tuning up a bike, and  Andre turning sausages at the barbeque.

We sat down for a chat  and they mentioned that there is a guy nearby who builds Pennyfarthings and who did a 'round the world bike tour.  We told them that we had met him along the Danube 10 years ago and said we would go visit him while we are in town.

www.pennyfarthingworldtour.com

Met Joff Summerfeild on his second attempt  around the world on the Danube River, Schlogen, Austria, 9/12/2003

Time to go, home for salad and a rest.  I think I am coming down with a cold.

 

Bike Rides in London and a Visit to Greenwich

May 16-17, 2013

Over the last few gray, drizzly days Don has been able to sneak in some bike rides while I have been doing my exercise routine. 

One day he went along the canal and up to the Olympic venue.  He was quite surprised at the number of longboats, long, skinny houseboats, moored along the canal.  He said he saw at least 100.

Another day he went to the Transportation Museum where he saw some really cool, historical posters advertising the public transportation system.  He has been listening to a Detective Monk story which is set right in the area where we live and is about the dangerous drilling that was done to install the Tube system.  It is a very interesting story, especially when it references streets we walk on every day.  When we ride the tube now we think of what it was like to work underground building the tunnels for the system.  There are lots of underground rivers and springs, which made the walls of the tunnels very treacherous. Many were killed when the walls of the tunnels caved in.

After Don returned from his ride on Friday we decided to take the DLR to Greenwich, where the Cutty Sark is located and also the famous Greenwich Mean Time is calculated.  Greenwich turned out to be an interesting surprise.

The train let us out right at the Cutty Sark, which is a beautiful boat--the last tea clipper to sail from the Far East.  The boat was the fastest clipper in the fleet, and always was one of the first to bring the new tea harvest to England's tea drinkers,  but was eventually replaced by steamships once the Suez Canal was opened.

 From the Cutty Sark we strolled over to the Old Royal Naval College.  This is a huge campus with a long history.  Early history shows that there was once a Roman encampment on this land which was later taken over by Edgar the Great, whose daughter granted the land to the Abbey of St. Peter.  Next came the Viking invasions and a peasant's revolt, which gave Henry V the opportunity to reclaim the land. The land passed through the hands of a bunch of Dukes and Princesses.  Henry VIII was born here too, as was his daughter, Elizabeth I.  But enough history.  In 1675 the royal Observatory was established here and then the Royal Hospital for Seamen. 

Christophe Wren got into the architectural act here, building two huge domes.

During the time the hospital was here the artist, James Thornhill, painted a huge, amazing mural on the ceiling of the huge hall.  (This hall would be a wonderful place for a wedding reception, and the pretty chapel on the grounds would be a nice place to get married.  If you have the bucks, or pounds.) The painting is very detailed and full of allegorical references and cherubs, ala Michelangelo. 

The lovely chapel on the grounds is intricately carved and painted gold and baby blue.  Very light and airy and very pretty.

From the campus we strolled up the hill to the Royal Observatory where we enjoyed the nice view over the river, and saw the prime meridian where you can stand with one foot in the Eastern Hemisphere and the other in the Western Hemisphere.

We went into the building to see the huge telescope, the UK's largest refracting telescope, and the museum full of sextants, clocks and the history of maritime navigation.  Time was very important to seamen who were navigating the high seas with only the stars for landmarks.

Back down the hill to the Maritime Museum where we spent another hour learning all about the history of British seafaring over the centuries. They had a great Learning Center for kids with a big map of the world displayed on the floor.  Kids could get a little boat to scoot around on the map and as they moved to certain parts of the world a little recording with an interesting factoid would play in their boat.

So, there was much more to see in Greenwich than we thought and it was a very pleasant and informative visit.

Stonehenge, Salisbury and Bath

May 15, 2013

We got up at 5am today to catch our tour to Stonehenge.  We caught the DLR to the Canada Water station where we found our Expat Tour bus waiting for us. 

The drive to Stonehenge was grueling, through the London rush hour traffic, right through the center of town.  I kept muttering that there is a ring road that would avoid all of this, but our driver, Max, had just come in from the Netherlands and he was following his GPS which, I think, was taking him the shortest route.

In spite of the traffic we arrived at Stonehenge,in drizzling rain, just in time for the opening of the historic site.  We donned our rain ponchos,  picked up our audio guides and off we went to walk around the high, open hilltop listening to stories of Druids and ancient religions and how the enormous stones (25 tons each) were transported and placed to line up with the sun and the celestial calendar.

Stonehenge, erected between 3000 bc and 1500 bc (hey, that is pretty old!), has a mystical air about it.  The hills surrounding the site are burial grounds for Druid kings and priests, and the mist rises off the green hills, evoking a spiritual atmosphere as we walk around the monument listening to our audioguides.

Back to the bus and off to Salisbury and it's famous cathedral.  The stained glass windows were beautiful and the cathedral is impressive, gut really just a sidebar to the trip.  One neat find in Salisbury, though, was the Poundland.  This is the British version of the Dollar Store.  We bought gum and Mint Humbugs and chocolate candy bars for Don for 1/3 of what we have paid at the Tesco.  The most mudane things get us excited.

 

Next we went to the town of Bath.  For some reason I was feeling snobby about Bath.  I think from various novels I have read, I expected a bunch of la-de-dah snobs to be here at this resort town.  We rolled into town, our driver, Max doing a marvelous job considering he is not a native and had never driven here on the left side and was unfamiliar with the destinations and the intricacies of the towns..   The guide gave us 1 hour and 15 minutes for our time her, I think so she could get home in time for dinner.

Don and I set off for the Roman Baths and gulped and paid the steep entry fee.  We were handed our audio guides and off we went.  This site was a very pleasant surprise.  The audio commentary was very interesting and the baths are extensive.  There are lots of artifacts and interesting stories to bring the site to life.  In our short time we only had time to enjoy 1/3 of the baths site.  We needed at least 3 hours for the visit.  The steep entry fee was worth it, by the way.

We went back to the bus and off we went on a very long drive back to London, right through the center of town again during rush hour and back to Canada Water.

The Victoria and Albert Museum

May 14, 2013

 Another drizzly day, another museum.  Today we chose the Victoria and Albert Museum to explore. 

We took the tube to South Kensington and entered the museum through the tunnel entrance, and strolled through beautiful sculptures by medieval masters.

Then we went directly to the Grand Entrance in the front of the building because I wanted to see the Dale Chihuly chandelier.  And, there it was in all of its glassy glory.  But, I must say, I was hoping for more.  The colors are rather muted and so this is not my favorite Chihuly work. So, on the the rest of the museum.

The V&A is a HUGE museum!  There is so much to see, who knows where

to start?  I chose the rooms about Medieval times and the Renaissance.  

Of course the displays started out with many centuries of religious icons, Madonna and Child renditions, triptychs, reliquaries, and pope's robes.  The beautiful Hereford Screen, 35 feet by 35 feet, was there in all of it's hugeness, and a small casket purported to contain remains of

Thomas a Becket too.  From the religious items we moved on to some remarkably well-preserved tapestries, one of the notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, casket effigies of King Henry II and his wife, Eleanor of Aquitane, a beautiful little brass boat with the hull made of seashell, lots of big, heavy carved furniture, a golden globe, suits of armour, cast busts of medieval dignitaries, one of those big ceramic heating stoves, and even a whole white and gilt ballroom.   

WHEW!  I was exhausted and we had not even finished one floor.  So we decided to go home and rest and return another day.

Art Crawl

May 13, 2013
  
Our museum walking for today is to visit some of the famous art museums in London.

We started off at the Courtauld Gallery, admiring the large collection of famous impressionists.  Samuel Courtauld was a very wealthy industrialist of the late 1800s and first half of the 20th century.  He had a remarkable collection of art, which he donated, along with donations from some of his rich buds, to create this museum.

Included in the holdings here are a rendition of the very famous Le Dejeunner sur l'Herbe with the naked lady having lunch in the park with the besuited gentlemen, a version of the famous

VanGogh sans ear and also sans pipe, Manets, Reubens, Cezannes and Gaugins.  

One of my favorites was a painting of Adam and Eve by Lucas Cranach the Elder.  In this painting the famous Tree of Knowledge stands tall and dark in the center of the picture with the sneaky serpent slyly slithering along the trunk and be.autiful Eve just handing the apple to Adam who is looking at it, puzzled and scratching his head.  In another 30 seconds their lives will change forever and so will the lives of everyone who comes after them.  A world-altering moment captured in oil.

We spent the morning enjoying the work which is presented in a way that shows how the impressionist movement progressed, from religious paintings through the less precise styles of  Monet, Renoir and Degas, and on to the Fauvist style of very thick paint and obvious brush strokes of Van Gogh and Gaugin, and on Pointilism and the Cubist movement.  The descriptions of the works helped me understand what the artists were trying to achieve with their different styles. 

There was also a lovely display of silver chalices and salvers, urns and other objects which were owned by Samuel Courtauld. 

We headed back to the tube, stopping at the Blackfriar's Station to admire the old black friar, before going home for lunch.  After lunch it was time for more art and we struck out for the Tate Modern for the afternoon.

So what can I say about modern art???  I hate most of it.   I have never visited a Modern Art Museum that I thought was worth an hour of my time, and yet, silly me, I keep going. 

At the Tate, which is located in a famous building that used to be a power plant, we saw uglier versions of Monet's Water Lilies and several works by Matisse and Cezanne, and those were the better things.  We also viewed "art" of flourescent lighting tubes (they had a sale at Mr. Bricolage), heating ducts, bundles of sticks and four walls of giant canvases which looked like the wall scribbles of a two year old with huge red color crayons.  There were the standard compositions of empty canvases painted plain white or all black, chunks of dowel glued to a board, and dripping paint.  One sees these at every exhibit of modern art.  There was a nice selection of Picasso works, but you all know what those look like.

The exhibit that really got our goat, and we have seen similar exhibits at every modern art museum we have ever visited, was the grainy, choppy video photography on display.  Don did better work with his clunky old first video recorder.  The subject matter is not interesting, the filmography is poor and the quality is horrible.  Who pays thousands of dollars, euros or pounds for this stuff????

The gallery exhibits a number of works by 20th century artists too.  Among them was a work by Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, who I think must be a relative, since the spelling is consistent with ours and we also have the da Silva line in our genealogy.  Her work was ok, certainly with more merit that most of the rest.

We also enjoyed the Mondrians, but mainly because they are reminiscent of our beloved Eichler style.  After all, they are just white canvases criss-crossed by black horizontal and vertical lines with a few of the resultant squares and rectangles filled in with red, yellow or blue paint.

Well, we had had enough of that, so home again for dinner and rest before we tackle the Victoria dn Albert tomorrow.