LONDON

26 Craven Street

We rented a 3-level flat at 26 Craven Street in Westminster. Craven Street is right up against the west side of Charing Cross Station between Trafalgar Square and The Embankment, so we were right there in the middle of things. Except for the Highgate and Hampstead outing, we pretty much walked (at least one way) everywhere.

The house was fantastic. One entered through the door on Craven Street, went down a corridor and up two or three steps to the door to the top floor of the flat. On that floor was the kitchen and sitting room which was very high and airy, with windows overlooking the street. Stairs led down to the next level where there were several bedrooms. Ours was at the front of the house and had windows which gave out onto a tiny "area" below the street. Our bathroom was lovely - all marble and glass partitions, plus a couple of alien-looking appliances and outlets. ANOTHER flight of stairs led down to the third level. On our last day in London I read the first couple of chapters of the sixth Harry Potter novel which had just been released and which I purchased in a Covent Garden bookshop. I curled up in a closet on the lowest level, imagining that I was in Harry's "cupboard under the stairs". Yeah. Geek.

Camden Town

John had brought a wonderful book of London walking tours and we decided to tackle the Highgate and Hampstead route outlined therein. We started by taking the Tube to Camden Town and walking around the lock and the market. At one entrance to the market at the edge of the canal I had my first celebrity sighting since 1981: I saw Simon Callow and another gentleman walking a couple of little dogs. They were having difficulty getting through a small crowd of people at the entrance and as they emerged into the clear, M. Callow, with a look of great disdain, said "c***s!" Far too late, I wanted to say "Charlotte, it's Mr. Beebe! Oh Charlotte, we can't leave now!" Leaving Camden Town by bus, we made our way toward Highgate.

Hampstead

Alighting from the bus, we began following the route outlined in John's walking tour book. It was a day for spooky fictional settings - we walked past Highgate Cemetery where a number of famous people are buried, including Karl Marx, I think. The cemetery serves as the setting for part of Bram Stoker's novel Dracula - poor, sweet Lucy is buried there after falling prey to the Count. The place is amazing - wildly overgrown in parts, the gravestones all but obscured by brush and vines. After walking past many lovely houses and churches we entered the wide, wild park which is Hampstead Heath.

Hampstead Heath

Hampstead Heath is immense. We walked along wooded paths, through meadows, flew kites atop Parliament Hill from where we enjoyed sweeping views of the city. Happily, we were there to see an art installation, 'The Writer' - an immense chair and desk set up at the base of Parliament Hill. The sculpture had to have been at least twenty feet tall. It began to drizzle while we were there and a number of people took shelter underneath the desk to wait it out. Two more spooky locations. The Heath was used in 'Dracula' as the haunt of the mysterious 'Bloofer Lady', the figure in white who lured young children to their doom. Upon emerging from the Park into Hampstead proper, I realised that we were at a location used in the film 'An American Werewolf in London'. 'It's those hooligans in the Park again, dear.'

Trafalgar Square

We walked through the square many times on the way to and from the house on Craven Street. It's an amazing space - the Admiralty Arch, Nelson's Column, the Four Grumpy Kitties, The National Gallery, St. Martin in the Fields, the fountains - fantastic! There were pigeons, but not the huge, dense flocks I've seen in the pictures.

Oxford

Paddington Station turns out to be the jumping-off point for Oxford as well as Heathrow. We emerged from the Tube station into the immense, vaulted space that houses the platforms. I VERY carefully picked a spot to take pictures - Londoners are understandably impatient with holiday snappers getting in the way - I wedged myself between an advertising sign and a rubbish bin to take a panorama of the station.

After a pleasant ride on the train, watching the towns of Slough, Ealing and Reading flick by, we alighted at Oxford and walked from the station to the University.

Christchurch

Christchurch College was first - after walking through a lovely garden we toured the entrance hall, refectory and quadrangle. The first was used in the Harry Potter movies as the entrance stairs at Hogwarts. The quadrangle is dominated by Tom's Tower and is a beautiful, elegant space. We continued by exploring the chapel with its beautiful vaulting and intriguing memorials and inscriptions. It was in the chapel that I had one of my "what I'm I doing here - I'm ignorant - I don't know anything about what I'm seeing" crises. I flatter myself that I'm not the world's MOST ignorant tourist ("Big Ben? Who's Big Ben?") but I felt very inadequate at that moment. My mind went back to UVA and the Lawn when I saw a student wearing a bathrobe and holding a towel and pail walking (presumably) to or from the showers. Click here for a larger view of a courtyard in which I backed into and knocked over an entire line of chain-linked posts while trying to take the picture.

Botanical Gardens

The gardens were fantastic. Tall masonry walls separated one section from another and provided these wonderful, mysterious doorways through which one emerged into space after beautiful space. I remember a succession of aromas and colors and the drowsy humming of bees. In the conservatory there were Victoria waterlilies the size of card tables and a wonderful, spooky display of carnivorous plants - pitcher plants and Venus' fly traps. Click here for a larger, panoramic view of the gardens.

Punting

We rented a punt and set off along the Cherwell (a quick look at a map makes me THINK it was the Cherwell). The trip was everything one might hope it was - trailing willow fronds, swans, grassy banks, lovely cheesy nibbles brought along by someone. I was the designated punter and consider that I did very well indeed (though I say it, who shouldn't). The minimum standard of success is, of course, not getting the pole stuck in the bottom and falling out of the boat trying to unstick it. I won't say I didn't nearly lose my balance a couple of times or come dangerously close to getting the upper part of the pole involved with some low tree branches, but it really did go very well. Hot work it was - I was "soaked in nature's fecund blessing" (to quote Stella Gibbons) before the end of it.

Magdalen College

Behind the gothic (gothic?) buildings is a flowerbed-edged lawn with a wonderful classical structure at its other end. To one side, a footbridge crosses a stream. There's a deer park across the stream from the college. It's one of the many quiet, secret spaces we encountered that day.

Pub lunch

We found a great pub with a lovely outdoor seating area, accessed through a wonderful, mysterious passageway from the street. Our server was great - he began to withdraw when he saw that I was taking a picture from the steps above the courtyard. I said "no, don't go" and he then cut a little caper. Funny.

St. Mary's

For some reason, Paul and I went up the tower of the University Church of St. Mary the Virgin while the others remained below, hence the straight-down picnic table shot. The view from the walkway at the base of the steeple was fantastic - on one side the towers of All Souls College and the Radcliffe Camera, on the other the High Street and the town and countryside spread out behind. Lovely.

Greenwich

On one of our mornings we walked to the Embankment to a spot most of the way along toward Westminster Bridge where one can board tour boats to sights up and down the river. We bought tickets to Greenwich and got on board. Nora spent some time in the saloon writing postcards. Eventually we all assembled on deck and watched the sights along the Thames glide by: County Hall, the Eye, Charing Cross, St. Paul's, Tate Modern, the Millennium Footbridge, The Tower of London, City Hall, Tower Bridge. After passing the Canary Wharf cluster of highrises on the Isle of Dogs, we pulled up at Greenwich directly in front of the main complex, until recently the Old Royal Naval College.

Nearby we could see the round pavilion which houses the stairs down to a pedestrian tunnel that crosses under the Thames. Since then we've seen it featured in the horror film '28 Weeks Later'. Skeery, skeery!

Just ashore is the Cutty Sark, the old clipper ship now being restored. Little did we know that the ship was to burn just a couple of years later. Fortunately, much of the planking had been removed at the time for restoration - the damage wasn't as bad as originally thought and the ship is to reopen in 2012. The ship was wonderfully displayed - visitors could view it from near the waterline and walk down into a sort of amphitheater in which the vessel sat. I was intrigued by the complicated pattern of the rigging viewed against the sky.

While in Greenwich, we explored the Naval College complex, strolled in the park and walked up the hill to the Royal Observatory where one can straddle the Greenwich meridian marked out in the pavement. From the top of the hill there were fantastic views of London - the lawn sloped away down to the College with the Millennium Dome beyond, then Canary Wharf and then the towers of the city proper.

On the way back on the boat, we enjoyed repeat views of the same wonderful sights, this time bathed in warm, late afternoon light.

British Museum

I don't care what my brother John says, I love the Great Court. (arms crossed) Hmph! I love the shadows cast by the facets of the roof and I love the sweep of the stairs around the former library building. The Palace of Plunder is a truly astounding place. Room after room of foreign treasures. If it wasn't nailed down, it's in the British Museum. The Elgin Marbles, for God's sake. The Assyrian Bulls are a favorite, sorry - favourite of mine. They make a brief appearance in the film 'Maurice' - "Mine's got five legs!"

Day Walks

We had many lovely walks through the city, most with a certain destination in mind, some were destinations in themselves. John consulted his book and found a route through Lincoln's Inn Fields which we found very enjoyable.

My photos seem to tell me that we visited the Tate Modern twice. I see John and Stephanie in one set of pictures, but I know that Paul and I went there by ourselves to see the Frida Kahlo exhibit (which was fantastic). To get to the museum, we walked along the Strand which then turns into Fleet Street. We goggled at Saint Paul's for a while and then went south to the Millennium footbridge, having a shufti at the College of Arms on the way. This last featured in the Bond movie "On Her Majesty's Secret Service".

The footbridge is beautiful and its appearance didn't suffer much at all with the addition of the anti-wobble pistons. I wonder if the demise of the bridge as depicted in the sixth Harry Potter film was a poke at that whole episode.

The Tate Modern is housed in an old power station on the South Bank and has a vast, central space - the Turbine Hall where, presumably, turbines used to live. There was some sort of immense art installation in the hall at the time but I can't remember what. I think it involved tubes or ramps or something. As I mentioned, the Frida Kahlo exhibit was fantastic. It represented a significant percentage of her oeuvre and included a lot of biographical information about Kahlo and Diego Rivera. I found her paintings at once whimsical and creepy (particularly the ones showing the insides of bodies).

Night Walks

On one of our evenings we walked through Leicester Square to Chinatown and had dinner at a lovely Chinese restaurant. Not being that much of a people-picture-person (I am trying to reform), I'm very grateful for having taken the photo of our group sitting 'round the table.

Around the time of our visit, I learned that the statue known as "Eros" really is meant to depict not the Greek god of sweaty fumblings but the spirit of Christian charity. Piccadilly Circus is a very exciting place - cars, buses, and the occasional Lamborghini whizz through the intersection, people throng the sidewalks and shops and the crazy neon display throws an insane, ever-changing light over the whole scene.

London Eye

What do you get when a bicycle rogers a carton of eggs? We had the great good fortune to have Eye tickets that coincided with sunset. The sun actually dipped below the horizon as our pod was on its way back down. The changing light on the river, Westminster Palace, the Post Office Tower and the bridges was gobsmackingly beautiful.

Globe Theatre

At The Globe, we caught a performance of 'A Winter's Tale'. Strange play. I'd never seen it or read it - I'm glad that my first (and perhaps only) visit was to see one of the plays for the first time. The performance was preceded by music performed by a costumed renaissance band. Lovely.

The Old Vic

'Philadelphia Story' has always been a favourite film of mine - seeing the Story performed by two favourite actors, Jennifer Ehle and Kevin Spacey was a wonderful treat. During the trip, we also went to a performance of the musical "Billy Elliot" at a theater in Victoria.

Covent Garden

Another film location destination - Alfred Hitchcock's 'Frenzy' was shot in and around the old Covent Garden fruit and vegetable market in 1972, one of the last years the market took place there. Henrietta Street, along which we walked to get there from our flat, is referred to in the film and is where one of the characters lives.

The main building is now a mall full of quirky shops, my favourite of which was Benjamin Pollock's Toy Shop where I bought paper models of the Globe Theatre (which I've built) and an Italian Theatre (which I've not yet built).

At the southeast corner of the plaza is the London Transport Museum, which we explored. Lots of fun. One could go inside the old buses and climb the spiral stairs.