Before flying home to the US, we broke from our explorations of the rural UK countryside and spent our last few days in London. We drove south from Yorkshire, dropped our rental car off at Heathrow airport, and took the Heathrow Express high-speed train directly to downtown London (just a 15 minute journey). We checked into a hotel in the Kensington section of the city for a five-night stay.
Many of our readers have probably been to London or seen lots of pictures, so this blog post will focus on our particular explorations rather than a travelogue of the whole city.
One great thing about this trip has been the chance to visit friends along the way. We spent one of our London days with our former next-door neighbors Julian and Anne Litchfield. You may recall from our last blog post that we visited our former neighbor Mike Bullock during our time in Edinburgh - both Mike and Julian had served as Royal Navy representatives at the British Embassy in Washington.
Julian now serves as Clerk (like the CEO) of one of Britain's trade groups which represents a wide range of transportation-related companies and organizations, including the London Tube.
Trade groups are similar to industry associations in the U.S., except their focus is more on promoting the trade/industry and less on lobbying. They are also known as "livery companies" or guilds, and there over 110 of them in the UK, many with long histories going back to medieval guilds. Julian's group has the official name of "The Worshipful Company of Carmen" and has its origins in pushcarts plying the London streets 500 years ago.
Anne and Julian had offered to take us on a tour of the City of London, a one-square-mile area encompassing the most historic part of London. The City of London is a separate political entity from the rest of London, with its own mayor elected from the ranks of the London-based livery companies.
The boundaries of the City of London roughly match those of the ancient city of Londinium, the capital of Roman-occupied Britain 2,000 years ago. Remnants of the ancient Roman wall built around the City can still be seen today.
We started our tour at the new headquarters of the Carmen. For much of their almost two-hundred-year existence as an independent guild, they had offices located in another guild's building. In the past year they moved into their own guild hall in space leased from the church of St. Dunsten's in the West. Outside the office are two notable statues. The first is of Queen Elizabeth I, and it originally sat in one of the four gates guarding the entrances to the City of London.
The second set of statues, moved from a location where they once overlooked the Thames, are of King Lud and his two sons. Lud was a pre-Roman king credited with founding the city of London.
In addition to offices and conference rooms, the Carmen guild hall includes a small museum and pictures of past "Masters" (an annual position like Chairman of the Board). HRH Princess Anne (the "Princess Royal") is a past Master of the guild. You can see her likeness in the upper right of the quilt below and in the photo of us and the Litchfields above.
The Carmen guild hall is on Fleet Street, once the home of London's newspapers and journalists, which have now moved into other areas of the city.
Walking out into The City we visited the Temple Church, founded by the Knights Templar who fought in the Crusades. They also played a key role in developing the Magna Carta. The oldest part of the church is round, built in the style of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. Effigies line the floor. The church was damaged by bombing during the Blitz, but was rebuilt and repaired.
As we walked around The City, we passed through several wards. Our favorite name was The Ward of Cheap, also known as Cheapside.
We walked through Guildhall square, home of the historic Guildhall (we couldn't go in because an event was going on) and also the offices of the Mayor. Each year, the Carmen organize a vehicle parade, showcasing hundreds of years of vehicle development, that passes through the Guildhall courtyard.
We also visited the Plasterer's Guild, where the Carmen's offices had been located until recently. Plasterers are responsible for ornamental ceilings and room decorations, and their guild hall showcases their craft.
Some of the larger guild halls, such as the Plasterers, have large rooms used for guild gatherings but also considerably in demand for corporate events, weddings, and such. These help cover the guild's costs. Not only did the Plasterers have a magnificent hall, but also a huge commercial kitchen to support it.
We walked all over The City, past St. Paul's Cathedral, the Tower of London, the Bank of England, and The Mansion (the Mayor's residence). We ended with a dinner of fish and chips at a pub near Julian's office. It was great renewing old acquaintances.
London's West End is famous for its theaters, so the two of us decided to see a show while we were in town. We picked the play "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child." It's a show you watch in two parts: one in the afternoon and the other in the evenings. Each part has two acts, so the play is about 5-6 hours long in total. The show takes place when Harry is an adult, and involves one of his children almost more than it does him.
We enjoyed the play very much. The special effects were very well done (this is a play about magic, after all).
Another day we decided to "scrape the surface" of the British Museum (that's all you can do in a day).
Viewing the Rosetta Stone is similar to trying to see the Mona Lisa in the Louvre. You need to wait patiently for your turn.
It sits in a large gallery with other Egyptian treasures.
Many of these had been removed from larger sites. A status of Ramses II included some photographs of the site from where it had been taken (leftmost statue), and a reconstruction of what it probably looked like when it was in one piece.
What looked like, for all the world, a stormtrooper helmet turned out to be the backside of a scarab.
We wandered through other parts of the museum, marveling at the treasures.
Moving to some upstairs galleries we'd never visited before, we looked through the Sutton Hoo treasures, taken from a Viking ship burial found in the English countryside right before World War II. One of the treasures was a gold helmet (original, and then a reconstruction).
We also viewed the famous Lewis chessmen, found in the Outer Hebrides, carved from walrus tusks in the 12th Century.
We finished up with a visit to the Elgin Marbles, sculptures taken from the Parthenon.
Before we departed London we also visited the Victoria and Albert Museum, our first visit there. It's focused on practical arts and various crafts. We toured the newly opened photography galleries, endowed in part by Elton John. Jeannette also loved visiting the theatre collections, which included not only costumes but models of stage sets. A number of students were sitting around with sketch books.
In the jewelry collection was a royal tiara worn by Queen Victoria. She could wear it either on top or on the back of her head (as in the portrait).
We were in London on a Sunday, and worshiped at the Hammersmith Friends Meeting. They believe they have the newest Quaker Meeting House in the world, having only opened up earlier this year.
One day we decided to walk along the Thames from the Tower of London area to the houses of Parliament in Westminster.
After a Tube ride from a station near our hotel, we passed through Trafalgar Square on the way to Tower Bridge.
From the southern banks of the Thames, you can see the sharp contrasts between historic buildings (like the 1,000-year-old Tower of London) and new, modern office buildings.
These newer buildings are not universally loved, and many have been derogatory names like The Shard...
...the Cheese Grater...
...and The Gerkin (sitting behind the Cheese Grater in the picture below).
We walked along the Thames for about three-and-a-half miles, seeing two icons of the Millennium celebrations. The first was the Millennium Bridge (foot traffic only)...
...and the second was the 443-foot-high London Eye, originally designed to be only temporary but now an established part of the London tourist scene.
We took the thiry-minute spin which provides commanding views of the London skyline.
The sun was low in the sky when we finished our ride and walked across the Thames to see Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament.
We grabbed a quick dinner and walked back down the Thames to the Globe Theatre, where we watched an energetic and gender-fluid performance of As You Like It.
In Shakespeare's original, the heroine Rosalind spends much of the play in disguise as a man. In this performance, there were men playing both men's and women's parts, and women playing both women's and men's parts. Some of Shakespeare's songs in the play were set to modern tunes (like rap music and "Chapel of Love"). The performance was crazy but fun.
At the end of the performance, we walked across the Millennium Bridge to the Old City before catching the Tube back to our hotel.
It was a beautiful evening.
We departed London the next day from Heathrow.
We'd had a wonderful four weeks in the United Kingdom. Thanks for sharing it with us, readers!
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