6 days in London

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We’ve been in London for about 4 days now and have almost another 2 days left. We aren’t going to get to do everything that we had hoped we’d do despite the fact that we’ve been busy tourists the whole time that we’ve been here.

We arrived in London late on Friday afternoon after driving to Gatwick from our accommodation in the New Forest. We had a couple of hours to fill in if we didn’t want to sit in a park in London, before arriving at our London apartment, so we decided to doing some sight-seeing on the way. We purchased a National Trust membership early in our travels and so we visited one of the Gardens-Historic Homes that they own. The property that we chose was called Hinton-Ampner. This was a historic house that had been rebuilt following a devastating fire in 1960. The owner of the house at that time rebuilt in the Georgian style but with modern bathrooms for each bedroom and he filled the house with magnificent furniture, china and stoneware. He also designed a lovely garden. Interestingly, the property was the location for one of the major battles of the English Civil War with some 20,000 troops fighting it out in the front garden.

We arrived at Gatwick about 2:00 pm, dropped off our hire car and caught the Gatwick Express (train) into Victoria Station and then the Underground to the station nearest our apartment. This turned out to be about 100 metres from our apartment and so not much of a walk for us with our luggage. We had a brief explore of our neighbourhood that night but only enough to find the closest supermarket to purchase supplies for the following morning. To be honest we were both looking forwards to having dinner “at home” with a bottle of wine to share, rather than needing to go out to eat. Our fish and chips were just OK and we won’t be racing out to repeat the experience in a hurry. Friday night must be party night here because it seemed awfully noisy out on the street all night but we haven’t noticed the noise since.

Saturday morning was a nice sunny day and we started our London experience by walking up Portobello Rd through the Notting Hill market. There were a few locals around purchasing fruit and veg from the stall holders but most of the people at the market were tourists just like us. Our idea was to just walk through the market to the next station and then catch the train into the city. We had purchased London Pass tickets before we left Australia and they were supposed to be delivered to our first B&B accommodation in Bury but unfortunately that didn’t eventuate – we picked them up at Charing Cross on Saturday morning.

From there we walked into Trafalgar Sq., down Whitehall past the various government buildings, Horse Guards and visited the Churchill War Rooms for our first tourist stop. I was surprised at how interesting I found this. The Churchill War Rooms were the secret underground bunker that the government basically ran the war from. There were offices and sleeping accommodation for Churchill, his wife, various government ministers and officials plus dormitories for lower ranked employees. They also had a Cabinet Office down there for Cabinet meetings, a radio room for speeches and communication with the US plus the map room. After the war rooms we walked to Westminster Abbey but soon found out that it was closed for the afternoon. Option 2 turned out to be Kensington Park Palace which we eventually reached after a combination of train and bus rides. It turned out that various track works were being undertaken over the weekend and so that determined, to a certain extent, where we visited over the weekend. From Kensington Palace we walked back to our apartment at the northern end of Notting Hill. I should be wearing my pedometer still because we are getting a few miles under our belts each day.

We are seeing most of the standard tourist sites and Sunday was Tower of London day followed by a walk across the upper deck of the Tower Bridge and a bit of a walk amongst the flash restaurants and apartments that line this part of the Thames. We started our Tower visit by following one of Yeoman Guards (Beef Eaters) for one of the guided walks before heading off to explore on our own. The highlight of the visit was the Crown Jewels but there was some pretty impressive gold plate-ware in the vaults as well. The doors of the rooms containing the Crown Jewels are anything but old. They are massive steel doors, each of which weighs 2 tonne and they are about 8 inches thick – they looked like something out of a James Bond movie.

Monday started with a Thames River cruise from Westminster to Greenwich and the day spent walking around the Old Royal Naval College, National Maritime Museum and the Royal Observatory. We managed to get to the Royal Observatory just before 1:00 pm (12:00 midday) and so the photos of us straddling the Greenwich Meridian line has our shadows lying along the line also. 1:00 pm is also the time at which the ball that used to be used to inform the populace of the time was raised and then lowered – this is apparently the origin of the saying “keeping your eye on the ball”. Our main reason for wanting to visit Greenwich was to see the Harrison clocks. These clocks were developed by Harrison in the 1700s in response to a “competition” to solve the longitude problem. In those days, sailors were unable to accurately determine their east-west location at sea but they could tell where they were in the north-south direction. This meant that sea voyages were longer and more dangerous than if they accurately knew their position. Ever since Terry and I read the book “Longitude” by Dava Sobel we have wanted to see the 4 clocks that Harrison built and that ultimately solved the longitude problem – they were beautiful pieces of craftsmanship. The Royal Observatory is a 10-15 minute walk through Greenwich Park from the docks at the riverside. At present this is a hive of activity as workmen dismantle the infrastructure that was put in place for the Olympic Games equestrian events. They still have heaps of work ahead of them and don’t expect to have things completed until November and after that they still have to reseed the lawns etc. The other highlights of our day were the Painted Hall and Chapel of the Old Royal Naval College. The Painted Hall was the dining room of the Naval Hospital (as in old sailors’ retirement home) and took 19 years to complete.

Tuesday was “Royalty and Religion”. We started off at the Royal Mews but were advised that our London Pass also covered the Queens Gallery and we should get tickets for that before doing the Mews as tickets are for a particular entrance time. This was good advice and we only needed to wait about 10 minutes to get into the “Da Vinci Anatomica” which was an exhibition of Leonardo’s anatomical drawings which were purchased by Edward VII a couple of hundred years ago. I think it’s reasonable to suggest that we both probably appreciated this exhibition more than we would have an exhibition of paintings. We could hardly exit the Queens Gallery as so many tourists were lined up as we left. Next tourist stop was the Royal Mews which is home to the royal carriages and stables followed by a walk through St. James Park to Westminster Abbey.

We spent well over an hour doing the self-guided walk through the Abbey – we know it was this long as we experienced the 3:00 pm and 4:00 pm prayer. We saw lots of impressive tombs to long dead kings and queens but we also saw tombs and memorials to scientists (Newton, Maxwell, Faraday, Dirac, Hershel and Australian medical scientist Florey), poets/authors (Bronte sisters, Hardy, Chaucer, Dickens, Shakespeare, Auden …) and musicians (Handel, Britton). By the time we had finished the Abbey, walked through the cloisters, visited the Chapter House and saw the Throne Chair it was just about time for Evensong so I convinced Terry to stay. I wanted to hear the Westminster Choir and this seemed like a good way to do it. We were amongst the first in line and so were given “good seats” for the service. Initially these were front row at the high alter, pretty much where the Queen sat for her mother’s funeral, but before the service started we were invited to sit in the Quire itself; the 6-7 year old “apprentice” choristers were seated directly opposite. They looked rather sweet in their red robes with white ruffled collars although I’m under no illusions that they are still a bunch (11 actually) of little boys with all the mischief that entails.

Following Evensong we headed across the river to the London Eye (the big Ferris wheel) and did a round on that. The views were pretty good and were helped along by late afternoon sun which was starting to set as our trip was finishing.

I wrote the above last night and so since then we’ve had another day of touristing. Today (Wednesday) was “The Arts and an afternoon of religion/history”. Our first stop was the Tate Modern. This is a gallery of modern art that is housed in an old power station. We spent a few hours here and saw paintings by Picasso, Kadinsky and Matisse to name a few. There was quite a lot of art that I found difficult to appreciate, but it was interesting to see the paintings/photos/installations that made us think.

Our next stop was the Globe Theatre. This is a reproduction of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre and is built a few 100 metres from the original theatre – this was destroyed during the great fire of London in 1666. We participated in the tour through the theatre but for the tour that we were on this was a silent tour as they were rehearsing “Twelfth Night” in the theatre. We sat and watched the rehearsal for 15 minutes or so. One of the actors rehearsing was the fellow (Roger Lloyd-Pack) who plays the farmer (Owen Newitt) with an unhealthy relationship with his animals in the “Vicar of Dibley” – he was playing the part of Sir Andrew. On our way from the theatre Terry literally rubbed shoulders with Stephen Fry. He was ascending the narrow, spiral staircase that we were descending and was “disguised” in a beard and sunglasses. The beard was for his part as Malvolio in 12^th Night but the sunglasses were an attempt at anonymity.

Our final stop for the day was St. Pauls Cathedral. I remember first becoming aware of St. Pauls when I saw Mary Poppins at the local drive-in and thinking that one day I’d visit there. This is the second time that I’ve been and I think it’s a wonderful space both externally and internally. I hadn’t remembered the paintings and mosaics that cover the ceiling of the dome, quire and high alter but they are magnificent. The paintings that cover the dome were completed by Sir James Thornhill who is the artist who painted the Painted Hall at Greenwich. Following our tour around the cathedral itself we climbed the 528 steps to the Golden Gallery at the top of the dome stopping at the Whispering Gallery and Stone Gallery on the way.

After leaving St Pauls we walked through the Covent Garden area before catching a train “home” as Terry’s arthritic knee had had enough. We got off the train at Notting Hill Gate and walked down Portobello Rd looking for somewhere to eat. We eventually settled on a Spanish restaurant that we had enjoyed a few nights previously – our waiter reminded both of us of Manuel out of “Fawlty Towers”.

Tomorrow is our last day in London and currently we are thinking that we will visit the British Museum and hopefully have a bit of a walk around the city before returning to the apartment, collecting our luggage and battling the crowds on the train on our way out to Heathrow. Our flight leaves at 10:00 pm and we have few nights in Singapore on our way home.

Not many photos attached as the WiFi is awful.

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Photos

Antiques end of the street
Early in the morning but already lots of people.

A foot both ways
At Royal Observatory Greenwich straddling the meridian line. It was 12OO UTC (GMT).

Our apartment
Our apartment was the corner apartment on the middle floor

Comments

[London Property]

London Property
BTW, there really is no way to see everything you've listed or wanted in 6 days without running yourself to the ground; or simply just overdosed (no pun intended) on art museums and galleries.

[Moira]

Wow!
Can't believe that your holiday is almost over. I have really enjoyed your travels. Talk when you get home.