Final Thoughts and Tips

Final Thoughts and Hints for the Traveler.

Prices: as a general rule, things in London cost as much in pounds as they do in dollars in Los Angeles. Food (prepared), alcohol and hotels are good examples. Theaters are an exception; tickets cost about the same in both places.

Transportation: do not rent a car in London. Public transit is more than adequate. Buy a Travelpass for the time you will be there and don’t even bother to compare single ticket prices to the pass. It’s cheaper. It covers tube and bus, but not the Docklands Light Rail (DLR) or trains or river transport, but with a valid Travelpass you get a discount on those tickets. You can buy a Travelpass at any tube station, including the one at Heathrow. The price depends on the zones you need to be in; we found zones 1&2 covered everything but the trip to the airport.

Weather: as I write this on Saturday morning, the BBC is going on about how cold the winter has been and how late spring is this year. Thank you very much. Always bring layers and a good raincoat. We knelt down every day and gave thanks that we brought gloves and warm hats.

Photography: with very very few exceptions, nobody wants you taking photos indoors.

Bargains: with one exception nothing is cheap. Some things are good value.

• That one exception is museums. Most major museums are free (British, V&A, National Gallery, both Tates, etc.). One exception we know of is the Royal Academy of Art. All of them are worth a visit.
• If you are staying for a week or longer, check out apartment rentals; they will cost less than hotels if they are off the beaten track, and public transport keeps you close in time to major attractions. Buying groceries and cooking light meals will save you lots of money in a week, plus it’s really convenient to have snacks and a fridge in the room.
• Many but not all theaters and musical venues have what they call ‘concessions’ – discounts for students, disabled, and senior citizens (60+). They usually kick in an hour before performances and depend on the house not being sold out. If you qualify, you get best available seating for a very low price. There are many discount ticket sellers in the theater district; only one is ‘official’: “tkts” is its name. The best price is the concession, but if it is not available try tkts.
• We can’t speak about shopping, because we didn’t do any. We bought two washcloths, a tea towel and a piggy bank in the shape of a mailbox.

Strangest Anomaly of the Trip: in London, the wind is in your face 76.2% of the time. I kept track.

Biggest Thrill of the Trip: for Alice, the two nights at the Royal Opera and Ballet. For me, our target opera and the first act and a half of the Flying Dutchman. We’ll leave the pub-crawling and beer tastings for another trip.

Biggest Disappointment of the Trip: not being asked for I.D. for concessions.

A Day of Surprises

A Day of Surprises, Friday 3/17. [photo: after touring the Burlington Arcade, Chuck has a premonition of doom as he approaches High Tea at Brown’s.] First surprise – it’s St. Patrick’s Day and we didn’t see any drunks.

It’s our last day and we started at the V&A to look at England 1760-1900. We were hoping to see some Regency furniture but surprise – just as Chippendale was ending and the display cards were saying things were getting more classical and simpler, the exhibits skipped right into Gothic revival. When we looked in on Europe 1800-1900 it was the same thing – all carvings and marble inlays and no Biedermeier. Obviously the V&A really likes the ornate stuff.

We walked up the street and stopped at a couple of antique dealers to look around. Then in the Burlington arcade I saw a cute little pin of a Cardigan Corgi (the kind with a tail), a perfect gift for Nancy. It was 15 karat gold and we gulped and got ready for a $100 price tag. Surprise! It was ₤800!! Sorry Nancy. We continued in the arcade and saw a pearl bracelet with five strands of small pearls for a mere ₤7,650 and we knew we had strayed into the Twilight Zone of the Rich and Famous. These were prices that made Rodeo Drive look like Woolworth’s.

Just two blocks from the arcade is Brown’s Hotel, one of the four places in the londontourist.org site recommended as a good place for a traditional English tea. They said the dress code was coat-and-tie, and prices began at a semi-reasonable ₤12. Throughout our trip this guide had been reliable. When I called on the phone they said dress code was now a shirt with collar – no t-shirts. I didn’t ask the price. Surprise! When we got there, and were committed to eating there, the menu said, well, I can’t even print the price. It was twice as much as Fortnum & Mason. People who buy ₤800 Corgi pins probably have tea here all the time. But, we had planned this stop and we went through with it. It was a good tea: sandwiches with the crusts cut off, fruit scones, clotted cream, strawberry jam, cakes (all you can eat) and seven kinds of tea. We ate all we possibly could, probably about $10 worth. Oy.

Our last event of the trip was to go to Wigmore Hall, probably the premier recital hall in town. There is a program almost every night, so we went everywhere else first and took potluck for this night. When we arrived we asked for the senior citizen discount and got really good seats for ₤10. It was a piano recital by Francois Killian and it was marvelous. He played Mozart, Beethoven, Liszt and Paul Juon (1872-1940), a name we had not heard. Well, we hadn’t heard of Mr. Killian either, and one of his trophies is the International Chopin competition.

Nothing could have been more different from our other piano concert. Mr. Killian had technique, touch and taste. Of course taste was not required for the Liszt, but that was the last part of the program, and by then he was in the clear. ‘Kakteen’ (Cactuses) by Juon was the most interesting. In his time he was called “the Russian Brahms” and “the missing link between Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky,” and if you add Ravel into the mix you get an idea of what we heard. You could hear these influences but it was not derivative. At the same time I could not tell you just what the unique voice of Juon is. It’s very dense, and these pieces were all over the place, so more listening is required.

After the concert we took the tube and bus back to the flat and had our last night walk on the Thames path. Man was it cold. Back in the flat the windows rattled from the wind. We’re sorry to leave with so many things undone, but we will be glad to get back to a little warmth and sun.

From Russia with Angst

From Russia with Angst, Thursday 3/16. [photo: Having taken a life-saving wrong turn just outside St. Petersburg, Lensky (Rolando Villazon) waits for Onegin to show up for their duel.] The weather outside was frightful and the radiators so delightful, we decided to spend the day reading and watching the boats go by. The sun never came out, the wind blew, and enough light rain came down to make us feel we made the right choice.

However, we had those opera tickets (quiet, Houn) and made a real evening out of it, going to the Amphitheater Restaurant at the opera house for dinner. First impressions weren’t perfect, as the décor was functional and the tables were faux marble with no tablecloths, and on the menu it said, “Minimum food service per person ₤18.50,” ($33). Since we had modestly priced seats, we figured it would add up in the end to the same as the top tickets without food, so we felt a bit better.

Dinner turned out very well. We paid close attention to the menu (unlike yesterday), translating into everyday English where needed, and what we ordered was delicious. Then we took a real luxury option and ordered dessert for the intermission, had coffee, and went in.

(Note on theater logistics: the Royal Opera seating capacity is 2658, only a few hundred less than the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Their facilities for eating and drinking are miles ahead of the Pavilion. They must have had five or six venues for patrons of all classes, from the founder-types on down. The food was more than good, and they were able to serve a whole bunch of people and get them out the door in time for the performance. In the intermission they were able to serve not only desserts and sandwiches, but main courses as well. It wasn’t cheap, but it was certainly no more expensive than a decent London restaurant either. Since the weather is always dodgy, it is a great convenience to be able to check your coat and relax for the entire evening in one place.)

(Note on the photo above: on the Spring schedule for the Royal Opera and Ballet, Mr. Villazon is on the outside and inside front cover, posed in a saguaro forest. What did this have to do with the season? He was in only one production, Eugene Onegin. Was that production set in Mexico? As it turned out, no. We could only think that he was the bright young new star and a full-blown publicity campaign was under way, complete with an exotic set of photos. When we passed the opera gift shop we saw an entire window loaded with his records and videos, which seemed to confirm the New Star approach.)

The stage design was very clever and very effective. There was a scrim which had a changing design of figure paintings as if of statues. They all had an ‘intimations of mortality’ theme: contemplative man, sleeping woman, and for the duel scene, a recumbent dead man, just in case we missed the pistol shots. The set itself had a real pool of water across the middle third of the stage. When people wanted to show how carefree they were they tended to get in the water and splash about. Behind the pool was a low mound, again running the width of the stage, and behind that a backdrop of the sky. Overall the impression was of a country house looking out on to a vast flat plain. The lighting was key; for the first two acts it was warm and summery and the basic colors of the white house, the green mound and the red-and-white dressed peasants made the whole set look like a Rousseau painting. In the last two acts the scene changed to winter: the pool was frozen and we even had ice skaters on it, the mound was covered with snow, and the lighting was bluish and subdued. For the duel we were in a forest of bare trees, and for the last scenes we were on a low hill overlooking St. Petersburg.

The singing and acting was terrific. Tatyana (Amanda Roocroft) was near-perfect in the letter scene, only stretching for a couple of top notes. Onegin (Dimitri Hvorostovsky) was excellent in an unsympathetic role. His Russian diction was, naturally, perfect. Lensky (Rolando Villazon) began badly, in our opinion. He sounded very constricted, almost as if he were marking. Mr. Villazon looks a lot like Rowan Atkinson (“Mr. Bean”) and he sounded as if he was Mr. Bean trying to sing like an opera star. In his duet with Olga (Nino Surguladze) he finally began to loosen up, and in the second half his aria, “I hope Olga will still love me when I’m dead,” (doesn’t get any more Russian than that) he sounded like a primo tenore and the crowd loved it. Unfortunately, a minute later he was shot and that was that.

At curtain call time, the two most appreciated singers were Villazon and Eric Halfvarson (Prince Gremin), who has only one appearance but sang a long and beautiful aria. The singing was wonderful, the orchestra was excellent (is it a different orchestra for the opera and ballet?), and in the end most of the players were either dead or extremely disappointed. Nas drovya!

Photo Problems

Blogger is refusing to take photos, so for the moment we'll have to do without them, even when there is a [photo:] line in the blog.

Batting .333

Batting .333, Wednesday 3/15. [photos: Twinings Tea House; Imperial War Museum.] Today we decided to go to one of the recommended restaurants, “RSJ”, for lunch. Overall, not our best meal, and partially our own fault. Alice ordered a calamari salad with coriander, which she hates – a sudden attack of old-timers disease. Then she ordered salmon and did not see the word “seared” – she hates underdone fish. I ordered decent things, but in this case the management was guilty of hyperbole. The “terrine of ham hock” turned out to be Spam – good Spam, with real meat fibers, but there’s no getting around the fact that Spam is, indeed, a terrine, and with the ham hocks you get ham toes, ham lips and ham ears, so Spam is a better deal. My “braised beef on creamy polenta” was pot roast and grits. Good, but easily reproduced at home. One goes out for stuff you can’t do at home.

Today we split up after lunch. I went to the Imperial War Museum which turned out to be good, but the parts I saw were not the must-see the guides describe. I wandered the Great Wars exhibits and found lots of trivia, but it was a bit short on strategies and politics; those weren’t missing, but pride of place was given to memorabilia. After two hours I was ready for something deeper, but had no time. They have a Holocaust exhibit which is highly thought-of, and which I had passed on because we went to the Holocaust Museum in Berlin just last year and I didn’t think I could take it.

The two guns in the photo are 15” naval guns built in WW I and used in both great wars. The yellow things are the approximately one-ton shells. They accurately throw the shells about 20,000 yards. I read a description long ago that brings numbers like this into perspective. These guns can effectively shoot an old Ford Pinto 12 miles into the pool in your back yard where, naturally enough, it explodes.

Alice went off to see the interior of the Temple Church by day and found it closed for electrical work. Arrgh. She then took a long walk from the Temple, found lots of very old half-timbered buildings, Fleet Street, the Twinings Tea House, through the theater district and up to Covent Gardens. Then she walked all the way to St. James Park and on to Westminster Abbey, giving her sole title to Longest Walk in One Day, and that’s where I met her to pick up our tickets for Elijah (Mendelssohn) in Westminster Abbey.

Oops. Alice had already tried to get in and nothing doing. There was no concert that night, and the doorman said almost never a concert. “Try down the street at Westminster Cathedral,” he said. Rats. We had fouled out at lunch, taken an intentional walk at the War Museum, hit a long fly ball out at the Temple Church, and now it looked as if we had struck out at the Abbey. What a day – but wait, the catcher has dropped the ball and the umpire rules it a foul-tip. Still batting.

We walked down the street about 15 minutes to the Cathedral and the concert was there. The Cathedral is quite young, only a bit over 100 years old. It is designed in the Italian-Byzantine style with lots of multi-colored marble inside; the outside is massive but not aesthetically overwhelming. They are working furiously to cover the walls and ceilings with mosaics, which will take another hundred years at least (money trouble). Acoustically, it’s another huge stone building and the reverberation time makes concerts with large numbers of performers interesting.

The performers were the Philharmonia Orchestra and Chorus, who are top-class musicians (no missteps from the trumpets tonight). The soloists were all very good, including a boy soprano who had a small role he sang from the pulpit. We realized that we have been here a long time, because two of the soloists we had seen before, in Sir John In Love. Our Elijah was Mr. Ford, and our all-purpose mezzo (Angel, member of the Crowd, and with a red shawl over her white dress, as Jezebel!) was Mistress Ford, who had sung ‘Greensleeves’ in the opera.

Alice went out to see the Cathedral about 20 minutes before the start, and she didn’t come back. Since I had just finished reading a very gory Patricia Cornwell murder mystery, I spent the first half with one eye on the performance and another scanning the crowd, the passageways, and all the other places she might be. It turned out she had been caught in the line to the Ladies’ Room and could only take a seat on the side until half-time. During the second half we were both able to enjoy the show, and it was a good show. The second half starts with a chorus, “Be not afraid …”, that was very English indeed. I wouldn’t be surprised if it shows up frequently at Proms concerts. For the major climaxes the organ added rumbles, and with 125 people in the chorus, the stone church rocked. Home Run.

A Royal Day

A Royal Day, Tuesday, 3/14. [photo: satisfied customer at the Pie House.] We took it a bit easier today. First we bussed back to Greenwich for a midday concert in the Naval College chapel by the Trinity College of Music. They played some ‘Water Music’ by Telemann and Haydn’s ‘Midi’ symphony. The sound was very good; the curved ceiling makes for excellent acoustics. The playing was good, but on this day we could feel we are pretty spoiled by having the USC (and UCLA) music schools in Los Angeles.

We then had a farewell lunch at Goddard’s Pie House. Alice now says she has eaten enough steak-and-kidney and is looking forward to a good high tea.

After a couple of hours at the flat we were off again to snatch cheap theater tickets. We were disappointed to find that our target play (“Honour” starring Diana Rigg) did not offer ‘concessions’, and we read the playbill which described the play as “devastating”. Somehow we had thought it was a comedy. Anyway, we decided to go up the street to the Royal Opera House and try them. Although the official playlist for the house says that half-price tickets are available 4 hours before the performance, my request for ‘anything for two impoverished senior citizens’ was met with a smile and no discounts. Then I said that Romeo and Juliet was playing all over town (there is a symphonic performance scheduled for Friday) and he said, “But this is the Royal Ballet…” Game over. He had a few singles, a few standing room, and we paid full pop for the only pair of seats remaining, two in the Stalls Circle. Overall ticket prices for the ballet are a bit less than the LA Opera; these were good if not great, and considering all the guidebooks warn that the Royal is the most expensive show in town, we felt pretty lucky.

The ballet itself was very well done. They had a terrific Juliet (Alina Cojocaru) and a very good Romeo (Johan Kobberg). We do not keep up with the ballet world – perhaps these are famous names. They ought to be. The corps de ballet was excellent, the secondary dancers were excellent, the orchestra was competent except for the trumpet section which could have made a blooper highlight tape from this night alone. Also, most people hear this music played by a full symphony; it’s a bit of a letdown that you can’t fit that many players into the pit, so it always sounds a bit thin. Still beautiful, though, and the dancing of Romeo and Juliet was very very good.

Housekeeping note: we checked our heavy coats. Afterwards the reclaiming of coats most closely resembled a Japanese subway train at rush hour. It was bleeping unbelievable the number of people trying to get in and then out of the cloakroom area. Dignified gentlemen in $2000 suits pushing and shoving like colonials, and little old ladies pushing right back at them. All done politely, of course, but not for the claustrophobic.

Before the performance we were looking at the coming attractions and saw that on Thursday the Royal Opera will be doing Eugene Onegin with Dimitri Hvorostovsky. I hot-footed it through the incoming crowds to the box office and this time there were, according to them, only two tickets left in the whole house, partially obstructed in the balcony. It is opening night. I grabbed them.

Correction and Note

Correction and Late Note, Tuesday, 3/14. Above is a photo of the ceiling of the St Peter & Paul chapel at the Royal Naval College. Obviously when I described it I was thinking of something else – we’ve seen many ornate ceilings and I’m sure one of them is composed of “huge circles made from small trapezoids.” Alice doesn’t like Jasperware, but we both like this ceiling.

For those of you interested in computer games, the other photo is a poster in the Temple underground stop. We have not seen this poster anywhere else. One wonders why the advertisers think that the lawyers’ underground station is the one they chose. If you can’t read the small print, it says release date is March 24^th.

Last known correction: the gilt chariots in the Coliseum auditorium are drawn by three gilt lions, not gilt horses. Simple mistake. Anyone could have made it.

Tradition Wins

Tradition Wins, Monday 3/13. [photos: a touristy day, so we have the Tower Bridge and the Tower itself, as seen from our commuter catamaran.] Forecast was for sun (and a high of 40) so we decided it was a good day for the river trip. We bussed down to Greenwich but found that winter schedules weren’t even as good as in the official schedule book, so we had to go to the next stop upriver. This meant walking under the Thames at the Greenwich Tunnel, where we found that at high tide we would be 53 feet below the surface of the river. Not enough I say. (We were amazed at the tide difference on the Thames; it has to be 10 feet. The first day we walked the Thames Path we had water slopping over our feet. Today it would have been a painful fall to the waterline.)

We walked past more apartment houses built on the sites of a dye factory and the docks where they built the Great Eastern, largest steamship of its time and an economic disaster. Begun as a passenger ship it ended up laying transatlantic cables before being broken up for scrap. We live in an actual wharf building, refitted for apartments, that used to be the Navy Victualling Yard. On this spot were baked billions of ship’s biscuits and other treats.

The river trip was on a ‘commuter’ catamaran. There are lots of tours and cruises which we felt weren’t worth the extra money, but maybe in the summertime an open boat would be more fun. Either way, it’s a nice change from the underground to go to downtown London on a boat. Lots of photo-ops, with which you shall not be bored until we treat you to the Slide Show at home. We first got off at the Tate Modern, intending to spend a couple of hours, but were totally unimpressed with the building (a former power station) and the art within it. We’re not fans of modern art, so we’re a hard sell. After 15 minutes we were done and on our way back to the docks.

Last stop on the commuter run is at the Tate Britain where everything British that isn’t at the National Gallery lives. Alice insisted on having lunch at the restaurant in the museum. This is usually a bad idea; somebody once said that the food in art museums is no better than the art you find in restaurants. This restaurant, however, comes recommended by our guidebook and it was right. We had a roast parsnip and chanterelle mushroom soup which was wonderful. I had a steak and ‘hand-cut chips’, aka steak fries, with béarnaise sauce and Alice had sea bass over marinated fennel with rosemary new potatoes. We won’t mention the price; it would be undignified.

Admission is free to the Tate, as it is to most of the major museums. It doesn’t make up for the price of food and lodging, but it does give you a warm miserly glow to think you can absorb all this culture at no extra charge. We worked our way through on a time line, slowing down when we got to Constable, speeding up again in the pre-Raphaelite room, and then finishing in the Turner Galleries which are spectacular. I remember that at the van Ruisdael exhibit my favorite was a tiny painting. It was the same here – my favorite Turner was a small (8x10) watercolor of choppy seas at a harbor entrance, titled “Ramsgate.” Alice’s favorite was a Sargent (the museum has works painted by Brits, of Brits, and by people who painted in Britain) of two girls lighting Japanese lanterns.

We spent about four hours at the Tate and then it was time to find the 6:45 concert. Alice knew it was in the Temple Church but it took a while to find it in the rabbit warren that is the Temple. That’s where all the lawyers live, and it’s one of the oldest parts of London. The church was built by the Knights Templar and completed in 1185. The new addition, a Gothic choir, was finished in 1240. It was damaged in WW II but has been completely restored. The original church is a round tower modeled after the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. The Gothic addition contains an altar screen by Wren (1682) and the ceiling is textbook Gothic stone arches – very simple, very aesthetically satisfying. There are carved knightly statues of men who died shortly after Magna Carta (without more research we don’t know if they are actually buried in the original church). After a while one begins to think of the church/library in the Indiana Jones “Last Crusade” movie, and one itches to chop through the floor to see what treasures are buried there – Maltese falcons, sacred spears and the like.

There is a lot of reverberation in a 100% stone church. The concert was a Bach cantata, an instrumental sonata by Georg Muffat (?) and a Stabat Mater by Vivaldi. The reverberation blurred the Bach but the Vivaldi came out very clearly. It wasn’t an overpowering musical experience, but the atmosphere was right. Afterwards we wandered about in the church reading memorial tablets while the flower of British law had an invitation-only champagne reception among the Knightly effigies.

Scrumpy Jack

Scrumpy Jack, Sunday 3/12. [photo: Alice in front of Goddard’s Pie Shop.] On our first day we had visited the chapel at the Royal Naval College, been told about the marvelous organ from 1787, and were invited to return for a service. Today we went. There was enough sun to light up the windows and the interior and it really is a beautiful church. The ceiling is a pastel blue with those Greek revival ivory-white plaster overlays that Wedgwood Jasperware still features. Separations are mostly dentil molding, and the dominating ceiling features are huge circles made from small trapezoids of plaster, rather like monochromatic mosaics (it’s hard to describe; I’ll try for a photo). Anyway, the chapel was designed by Sir Christopher Wren but it burned about 20 years after it was completed, and the interior was redesigned by James ‘Athenian’ Stuart. The plaster sculpting work was one of the last ceilings to be done completely by hand.

The organ does sound great, and the choir equally so. It turns out that the St. Charles wing of the college has been leased to Trinity College of Music (the Navy left in 1998), so the musical quality of the services is very high. For the recessional the student organist played a very difficult piece that I’m pretty sure we heard at Disney Hall last year in their organ recital series. Very few people stayed to listen – too bad.

Afterwards we were accosted by a parishioner and invited down into the vaults for tea, and various gnarly tales were a’told then, mark’ee. Arrh. It seems one of the deacons (yeoman? warden?) was a wee Italian lad of 15 when he got a job as a gopher at the Naval College. On his first day he was sent upstairs to a room where naval officers were poring over plans for a torpedo. The one in charge looked at him, saw no nametag or worse, no security clearance, and had him literally thrown off the property. He had stumbled into a top-security project (bad marks to the one who sent him there). Fair broke his heart, he told us, and yet the wheel turned and everything was made whole.

30 years later he claims he was involved in the negotiations, before the Falklands war, where the Americans, Brits and Argentines agreed to let Argentina buy the battleship that became the Belgrano. Apparently he is a naval engineer in private practice. Comes the Falklands war and our friend is contacted by an agent for the British government to build a something (he wouldn’t say what) that would be used on board a submarine. This something was then used on the submarine that sank the Belgrano! The Argentine commander who had participated in the negotiations to buy the Belgrano was a captain (the captain?) on the Belgrano that day, and survived.

Several years later on, our friend was at a dinner mostly of naval people (he never served) and he sat next to an officer who told him that the ‘something’ was still being used, still a valuable part of a submarine.

Warming to his task, our friend then told a ghostly story about the subterranean vaults of the college. It was built on the ruins of an older palace where Elizabeth I and her sister (Bloody) Mary I were born, and underneath that are Roman ruins. There are a few stories about people in the excavations seeing Roman soldiers march by, but this is mere hearsay. The real story was about The Black Cat.

Every now and then the Maritime Trust, which actually owns the land today, allows tours away from the normal tourist areas. A few years ago one such tour took place near Halloween in the subterranean vaults. There were about 5 groups of a dozen or so, each led by a ‘yeoman’. They all went separate ways in the many corridors, in the dark. Our friend was careful to point out that they are several hundred yards away from houses, businesses, and the river, so loose pets are simply not encountered there. Nevertheless, during his trip a black cat appeared and followed them around for a while before it disappeared again. When the groups met up again his group asked the others if they too had seen a black cat. Oh yes, they said. When, he asked? One after another, they answered it was at 10:00 o’clock. They knew because they heard the bells chiming.

It turned out that every group had seen the black cat at the same exact time. Our friend turned to one of the ladies present and asked for verification, which she gave. Everyone saw it, and everyone saw it at the same time. If you don’t believe in ghosts, you have to believe that five real black cats appeared and disappeared at the same time in a place where cats are almost never found. What do you believe, mateys?

We followed another passageway out to the open air in search of lunch. The “Let’s Go” city guide told us about Goddard’s Pie House, the apparent equivalent of our own Philippe’s, where beefsteak and kidney, shepherd’s and other meat pies are served up hot and eaten on long tables, family style. Alice ordered the BS&K while I had a regular minced beef pie and mash with gravy. I also had a rhubarb pie (“Momma’s little baby loves rhubarb, rhubarb …”) with warm custard sauce. Alice ordered hard cider and it came in a bottle marked “Scrumpy Jack” which nobody understands, but ties in neatly with the title of today’s blog. 6% alcohol and felt like it. The food was just what we had been looking for – hot, good tasting, and by far the most calories per dollar yet encountered. They do like their crusts, though; next time I’ll have the shepherd’s pie which has mash on top instead.

No entertainment tonight. On Sundays most theaters are dark, so we’ll spend it in our flat admiring the view or possibly the soccer highlight show on TV.

PS: TV turned out to be Best In Show night at Cruft’s, and an Australian shepherd dog from California won it all. Border collies took most of the agility medals.

The Four Seasons

The Four Seasons, Saturday, 3/11. [photos: Amsterdam scene, Jakob van Ruisdael; London Soloists at St. Martin-in-the-Fields.] Signs are up warning us that streets will be closed tomorrow for parades, and they are setting up booths in Trafalgar Square for a week-long Irish festival leading to St. Patrick’s Day. What with drunken soccer fans and Irish parades, tomorrow looks like a good day to be somewhere else.

But today we went to the van Ruisdael (rhymes with ‘Drysdale’) exhibition at the Royal Academy. It’s quite a show, including his most famous one, The Mill at Wijk-something-or-other. The audio guide told us that in Holland this painting is as familiar to people as Constable’s The Haywain is in England. Alice’s favorite was a view of Amsterdam and mine was a tiny one of sand-dunes facing the sea in a strong wind. In case you’re interested, the exhibition was a joint venture with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (!) so I guess we could have waited.

Next we went back to the National Gallery, had tea in their café, and focused on the East Wing (1700-1900). Lo and behold, there was The Haywain, and you could easily see the links between Constable and van Ruisdael. Alice’s favorite was a vase of flowers by Gauguin, and some Pissaro landscapes. We both liked a country snow scene by Pissaro which turned out to be done near London. My favorite tends to be whatever’s on by Turner, but I was impressed by the life-size portrait of Whistlejack, an Arabian stallion. Only the horse is there – no background at all. I can’t remember the artist, unfortunately, and have no Internet access to research it. This horse, unlike many others in, for instance, Stubbs’ work, had a properly-proportioned head. We saw somewhere in the museum that it was sometimes the style in full-length human portraits to make the heads slightly undersized to give the sitter a more majestic impression. Stubb’s horses all seem to have very tiny heads, and it always made the horses look idiotic. Hmm.

Speaking of changing ideas, we also saw the famous van Eyck painting known as the Arnolfini Marriage (1434) where the happy bride was obviously pregnant, and it took two pages just to list the symbolic details in the painting. Well now it turns out she is not pregnant, but as our guide says, “… her rotund shape conforms to contemporary ideas of female beauty.” Also, it’s not a wedding but merely a very formal portrait. Those of you with old art books should get out the Redacting Pen and remove the accusatory moral symbols from the text.

For dinner we took a chance and went to one of the many Italian restaurants (Bella Italia) in the theater district. Not so bad. Their Caesar salad was a joke (I guess you just can’t run an Italian restaurant without offering a Caesar salad) but the rest of dinner was fine. Alice had duck leg in plum sauce and I had a chicken-pesto risotto. The couple next to us ordered a huge ice cream and brownie dessert for two (the ‘Godfather’, £6.95 and a bargain) and one of the children at the table on our other side asked if we could all share it. We could have. The Brits love their ice cream; we have seen Haagen-Dazs parlors all over, still open when the temperature is barely above freezing.

After dinner we went to St. Martin-in-the-Fields church for one of their Music by Candle-light concerts. Tonight it was a group of string players, the New London Soloists, who did Bach, Purcell and Vivaldi the first half, and Vivaldi’s Four Seasons series of violin concertos in the second half. Being as we were in church, there was a Question and Response (a ‘Dismissal’ in the Anglican church) between players and the audience. Every slow movement asked the question, ‘Can the audience please be quiet?’, and the response was the traditional Creaking of the Pews. St. Martin’s was built in 1732 and the pews sound like they were purpose-built to inform the pastor whenever his sermon was running too long and people got the fidgets.

The place was nearly full – we had to get seats one behind the other – and very enthusiastic. People clapped after every movement until well into the second half. I read later that these concerts were ‘tourist-oriented’. Well, it’s a nice way to get people into a classical concert and the best seats were only $32!

The band played an encore, “Oblivion” by Astor Piazolla. A tango, of course. What would George II have thought of tangos in church? It was beautiful, really showing off the solo violin, and a perfect encore to two hours of Baroque music.

A Question of Taste

A Question of Taste, Friday 3/10. [photos: Alice on an Egyptian Escalator Balcony at Harrod’s; the Dale Chihuli glass sculpture in the reception hall at the V&A.] Tonight’s entertainment would be a piano recital in Chelsea, so we decided to drop in on Harrod’s for lunch and two washcloths. We dined in the Georgian Room and chose the buffet because it was our main meal of the day. It was good if not great. I’d say it was overpriced too, except that the place was full for Friday lunchtime. They know what they’re doing.

Alice did buy two washcloths (there weren’t any in the flat) and I made her pose with the mannequins on the Egyptian Escalators (see photo). There a huge Pharaoh’s head at the top, and all the balcony rails are supported by snakes (with hoods like cobras - do ‘asps’ have hoods?). The store is huge and stocks everything, but what makes it unique is the number of staff. It seemed at times that staff outnumbered customers, and the store was crowded.

We walked west in the cold rain about one tube stop to the Victoria & Albert Museum, another must-see in London. In the two hours we had we visited only the English Galleries, following a time line from 1500 to 1760. There are standard museum things like silver, clothes, glass and books, and there are also several whole preserved rooms. We saw the Great Bed of Ware, which is a double-king-size canopy bed that has been a tourist attraction for 400 years. It has graffiti on the headboard from 1676. The V&A is also known for its interactive exhibits, including book reproductions you can touch and turn pages in and a computer room where you design your ‘family crest’. We each did one and then emailed the images home.

Thrown out at 5:45, we continued walking in the rain. We stopped at an Internet café and then at a real café for coffee. Finally we got to Leighton House, our concert venue. LH was the home of Frederick Leighton, PRA (President of the Royal Academy). He was very eclectic; among other things he collected Islamic tiles and decorated an entire room with them. He painted at the time of the pre-Raphaelites and some of his work is in that style. There are paintings by him and by Burne-Jones hanging in the house. Neither of us have been able to understand the appeal of the pre-Rs; perhaps the style was imitated too much by book-cover artists. He also did some very good portraits, but the best in the house is of him by his neighbor and friend Watts.

The concert was a recital by Marcella Crudeli. Like Leighton, her biography shows that her reputation is strongly academic. She’s given hundreds of recitals all over the world and we had never heard of her. She started with two sonatas by Cimarosa which she had unearthed and edited herself. Then came three sonatas by Scarlatti. All these were done in a very free style, and especially in the Scarlatti some extreme tempi. Then came the Beethoven sonata “Les adieux” (the concert was sponsored by the Beethoven Society of Europe) which was played very forcefully indeed. In spite of her very sweet smile, Ms. Crudeli was not a shrinking violet.

The last piece of the first half was modern (Calligaris) and dedicated to her. It was demonic, as if Balakierev and Busoni had gotten together to write variations on ‘do re mi’. A lot of work, but not much music.

The second half was Chopin and it was an amazing disaster. She plays Chopin as if it were Beethoven – extreme dynamics and tempi within very short spans of time. No lines were sustained; they were all broken up like firewood. We heard the murder of the 1st Ballade, 2nd Scherzo and the Andante Spiniato and Grand Polonaise. Since much technical skill was on display, and it was Very Loud, the audience persuaded her to do an encore. What would it be, I wondered. What does she consider her sure things? To my total surprise, it was more Chopin – the Fantasie Impromptu with the melody someone stole and turned into “I’m always chasing rainbows …” This received the same treatment as the first three.

Would the audience insist on a second encore? It would. It was the Military Etude and this time she played it very well. Maybe it’s because all the other were played so violently this pretty aggressive piece didn’t stand out, but really she kept the line and didn’t mess with the composer.

Fortunately we were near the door and before she could come downstairs and stand behind the table with her CDs on it, we escaped into the clear but cold night and a refreshing double-decker bus ride.

Dutchmen Everywhere

Dutchmen Everywhere, Thursday 3/9. As it was raining, Alice left her camera behind today. Of course as we came out of the tube station in Trafalgar Square, the sun was shining brightly. But, no pictures today. We went to the National Gallery and straight to the Dutch Landscapes (in the Orange section of the floor map – go figure). There are just too many great paintings here to take in. We ended up staying for 2 ½ hours and left most of the museum unseen. Perhaps this is because every time I saw a Turner I listened to the audio guide commentaries?
We had what is sure to be our knockdown luxury dinner for the trip at Sheeky’s. It’s a fish restaurant; there is a tiny box on the menu that says, "Meat dishes available" but nobody cares. Londontourist.org says, "Food in London can be dreadful, unless money is no object. … Think £50/$90 a head and then some at a good restaurant, or one that's any way near fashionable. We think the best strategy is simply to survive without injuring your wallet or digestive system. If your visit to London is part of a European tour, save gastronomy for France."
Hear, hear. They are right, but tonight was the night we went off the financial rails. Sheeky’s was on their short list of high class restaurants ("theatreland haunt of well-paid actors and expensive fish. Much cheaper and easier than its star-studded cousin, the Ivy.") Well, Alice had crab bisque (good) and pan-fried cod on a crab risotto (great); I had broad bean soup with Queen’s scallops (decent, but 3 bay scallops for $14??) and a monkfish and prawn curry (very good, but again, 2 shrimp for $35??). For dessert we shared a winter fruit crumble which was, again, only good. We had a great time watching the other R&F customers and we enjoyed our food, but thank goodness we can prepare most of our meals in the flat.
After dinner it was off to the Coliseum for the Flying Dutchman with Bryn Terfel. The singing was magnificent but until we check the reviews when we get home the names of the other singers are unknown (programs were $6 and we know the plot). The direction was uneven, let’s say. It began well but became obscure and labored about half-way through. The stage design was a high metal catwalk that served mostly as the deck of Daland’s ship. Below the catwalk were movable screen/partitions which used videos as sets. Ship scenes were illustrated by engine rooms and various other large machinery videos. When the Dutchman and/or Senta appeared there were recorded videos of them in extreme close-up. The director told the actors to spend a lot of time walking in and out of sight behind the partitions, which became silly in the second half.
However, the opening aria of the Dutchman brought a literal spine-tingling to us both. We were in the front row and when the singing and acting is that good it’s an experience never to be forgotten. The same goes for Senta’s spinning song in Act II; when we first see her she is wandering around the stage with a magic marker drawing a large eye on everything (the eye stands in for the portrait of the Dutchman in the libretto). She is obviously disturbed and/or obsessed, which gets us over the dramatic hurdle of trying to figure out why a nice girl is so ready to throw herself into the ocean for a man she has known for a few hours. The director is telling us that this drama has nothing to do with free will; the actors are being manipulated by higher powers. Not a new idea for the opera, but it’s told very well.
The chorus was very good (this is the Welsh National Opera, after all). Particularly at the beginning of Act III when everyone came to stage front, the sound blew us away. Unfortunately they chose to have the crew of the Dutchman’s ship sing over loudspeakers instead of offstage, and more unfortunately, the director decided that all sailors (dressed as gunnery crews with sound-blocking earpieces on their hoods) are evil and Daland’s crew went about defiling the village girls, who were dressed up as blond schoolgirls in gingham dresses so they probably deserved it (mind of the director speaking here …). More design notes: in the spinning scene the women (dressed here as Orwellian factory workers) spun fiber optic cables that descended from metal tubing that resembled a spider’s spinnerets. There were videos of 1940/50-style telephones (?) and lots of video of the kind of centrifuge where pilots and astronauts train for high-G flying (?). When the crew of the Dutchman’s ship ‘appeared’ they were represented by three space suits, illuminated from within, coming down from the rafters (?). We guess that the director had a thing about the dehumanizing effect of modern technology, but at no time was he able to tie this into the story. Just how a village spinning circle is related to industrial factory workers was not made clear. After a while it was just stupid. At least Arte Johnson did not appear in his disguise as the Dirty Old Man (see Julie Taymore’s version, the Flying Women’s Libber) so it could have been worse.
On the tube going home we met one of the violinists. The orchestra was also confused by the production, he said, so we felt a bit better. We made sure to compliment them on the musical part, which was wonderful. All the singers were excellent to superb, and the orchestra played like Trojans (it was done non-stop for 2 hours and 20 minutes). Wouldn’t have missed it.

Oh Pshaw! Wednesday 3/8. [photos: granite sarcophagus; the Garrick Theater in Charing Cross.] The weather forecasts are unambiguously unsettled for the foreseeable future. Every day there is going to be rain, sometimes heavy and sometimes with wind. But, it’s not nearly as heavy as what we think of in LA as ‘rain’, and we’re getting used to it, so today we decided to go to the British Museum and then take a chance on rush tickets for the theater.
First I tried to find an Internet café near our flat. On the way I found the worst flea market ever – used DVD players, record players and books all uncovered in this light rain. Sheesh. The bits of old machinery were getting most of the attention, but all I could see was junk. Anyone who wades through all this and finds that 200 year-old teacup deserves his good fortune.
Down the street was the café and thank goodness I brought a flash drive; most of these places do not let you use your own computer. Starbucks does, but we’re so far out in the toolies that there aren’t any within reach. Really. It’s like living in some off-kilter parallel universe. I could not get one of the photos to display, but otherwise was able (as you can see) to upload the blog. Later in the day in London we must have seen half a dozen more Internet cafés – were they always there and we just missed them? – so on future trips I will carry the flash drive always.
The British Museum needs no introduction. We went straight to the Assyrian and Egyptian wing and marveled. Alice’s favorite piece was a granite sarcophagus completely covered with hieroglyphs [see photo]; mine were the two massive (12 feet tall) winged, human headed, five-legged evil-spell-deflecting Assyrian statues. The five legs are intended to represent only four legs, but unless you put five on then from some angles you only see three. Well, that’s the explanation they gave. Since these are mythical creatures, who knows?
The King’s Library room is unique. The title of the permanent exhibit is "The Enlightenment." It purports to be a demonstration of a new interest in science, history and natural history, but IMHO it is a perfect example of Rich Brits (no offence intended; every culture has its dominating moments and we’re just getting over ours) and their Magpie Complex (now this *is* a British Thing) which forces them to collect for the sake of collecting.
Our recollection is that this was the first part of what became the British Museum, so grateful thanks are due. The room itself is magnificent: a football field long, 50 feet wide and high, lined with book and exhibit cases, and with waist-high glass cases all over the place. It was closed for a long time and reopened in virginal condition and has that classical/Wedgwood look to it: pastel colors, gilt decoration, austere but beautiful echoes of Athenian pottery design.
The displays are Magpie heaven. There are Etruscan helmets, Inuit scrimshaw, obscure histories of the Peers, Roman cameos, stuffed birds – it’s all there. The museum tries to make sense of it all but there are just too many threads. The only way to see it is to browse and stop at whatever takes your fancy. I stopped at the stuffed bird case, of course, and found an error! One shelf had labeled the four birds out of order! My letter to the Times will be scathing.
The Reading Room has been restored and re-packaged courtesy of Readers’ Digest (it’s dedicated to the Annenbergs). Virtually all the books have been moved to a new location, but ‘readers’ can use a computer system instead. At the entrance are bookshelves and selected biographies of former readers such as Lawrence Durrell and G.B. Shaw, who spent 8 years reading about 300 books a year to make up for his lack of higher education. In his will he named the museum as one of his three legatees in gratitude. There was a bust of him perched nearby, so we took it as a good omen for the evening.
We walked from Bloomsbury to Trafalgar Square in the rain. Traffic was busy both on the sidewalks (umbrella collisions were frequent) and in the streets. We passed by a movie premiere for "V for Vendetta", complete with klieg lights and a dozen people costumed as the lead character (a cross between the Phantom of the Opera and the Scarlet Pimpernel). We have traveled 6000 miles from Hollywood to see this? We inquired at the Garrick Theater and were able to buy ‘concession’ tickets as senior citizens (60+) for 15 pounds on the list price of 40. The play was "You Can Never Tell," by Shaw, directed by Peter Hall, and the marquee player was Edward Fox (aka "The Jackal").
The Garrick was very much like the Duke of York from last night. The ground floor (‘stalls’) is below ground, and in this case it seemed like two stories. There are three levels and 8-10 boxes, the ones closest to the stage being used for lights and loudspeakers. We think seating capacity is 500-700 people – not large. Both theaters are over 100 years old and ancient playbills are framed on the walls. At the interval you can buy tiny cups of ice cream for $3.60. Décor is more restrained than the Coliseum, but then, how could it not be?
"You Can Never Tell" is typical Shaw. There are outrageous people who get taken down several pegs, lots of long witty speeches, and over-the-top emotional outbursts, most of them played for comedy. This play is lighter than most. It takes place at a seaside resort where the waiter (Mr. Fox) is the all-knowing authorial presence. As the playbill goes, "Mrs Lanfrey Clandon and her three unconventional children celebrate their return to England after eighteen years of living abroad. However, a chance encounter with the staunchly traditional father (ed. note: this is a major euphemism; he brushes his teeth with laundry soap because he was once punished by having his mouth washed out with it) they had previously abandoned entangles them in a series of wonderfully comic events."
At the British Museum Shaw’s short biography included the note that he wrote comedies because he couldn’t get people to listen to his ideas in more serious formats. He certainly fires salvos of theories on women’s liberation, manners, and social position in this play. However, the thrust of the play is that everything is a gamble, your preconceptions are no more likely to be right than not and in the end, "you can never tell." Submit to fate and your feelings; it’s as good a way to go as any.
The acting was superb. The run started in October and the timing was perfect, as one would hope, but the acting was fresh too, as if it were the first night. This was the kind of experience everyone would want from a London night in the theater.

The Veil Descends, Tuesday 3/7. [photo: none taken today in the rain, so here is a view from Trafalgar Square back into the theater district with the London Coliseum’s globe (it lights up and revolves at night) in the distance.] It began to rain this morning, lightly but at 40 degrees you feel every drop. We decided to go in to the theater district and try out the half-price ticket sellers. Alice had her eye on a play starring Jeremy Irons, but this one was not on their lists for the discount. We went to the theater itself and bought tickets at full price for that night, but we also found out that for senior citizens (60+) one can buy rush tickets at many theaters – we’ll be trying that next time.

Then we got back on the tube and went to Leighton House where we knew there were going to be piano recitals a la the Chamber Music in Historic Homes we have in Los Angeles. The guide did not say “Closed on Tuesdays” which it was, but luckily one employee had come in and gave us a brochure. We’ll pick one and use the telephone. Since the rain was getting harder, we went to a bus stop, bought sausage rolls in the nearby shop, and went back home until theater time.

The play was “Embers”, ostensibly a 2-man and in reality a 1-man play (Jeremy gets 80% of the dialogue) from a Hungarian novel of, “love, friendship and betrayal set against the backdrop of war-torn 1940s Europe …” For those who prefer answers to life’s persistent questions, listen to Guy Noir. Here it was more important to know the question than find out the answer. It was very well acted and worth the trip, but it really was more like a novel than a play. We saw a short play by Edna O’Brien a few weeks ago and it had the same ‘problem’ – more musing than drama and plot. Fortunately the actors were top-class and were able to carry it off.

Hampton Court Palace

Hampton Court Palace, Monday 3/6. [photo: Hampton Court, main entrance.] Another sunny morning! We took the tube to Waterloo and then National Rail to Hampton Court, about a 35 minute trip. They gave us a 2-for-1 deal on admission because we took the train, and since the train trip cost 4 pounds and each admission cost 12 pounds, we felt we were being treated like kings.

Hampton Court is the most beautiful of the royal palaces, and it has been restored to original quality. It was built by Cardinal Wolsey, but when he fell from favor Henry VIII nicked it from him. Subsequent kings up to George II lived there, many adding to it. Henry VIII’s grand hall is amazing, with its all-wood roof. William of Orange’s apartments are the most impressive, including a guard-room with hundreds of rifles, bayonets and swords arranged on the walls. Everywhere were Flemish gold-and-silver threaded tapestries, each worth a king’s ransom. The kitchen tour is most illuminating; on our day there were many school groups being entertained by costumed guides trying to light the kitchen fire with flints. Unfortunately, as in most attractions here, no photography indoors, so you’ll have to visit it yourself.

It’s not a good time for the gardens (the roses are bare and much of the statuary is wrapped up), but we did see the bulbs (crocus, daffodil, snowdrop) coming up through the lawns. The huge evergreens have been sculpted into broad mushroom-like cones. Lawns cover 90% of the grounds. There’s a maze that took us a while to solve.

From Easter to October you can take a river cruise from Hampton Court to London, but we were too early. So, as the clouds rolled in and a few drops of rain fell, we hustled back to the train station and commuted in. On the way home we stopped at a Tesco (the UK version of WalMart) and bought the necessaries. Then it was another relaxing evening admiring our view and watching a BBC mystery. Castles and murder with tea.

Meeting Bettina

Meeting Bettina, Sunday 3/5. [photo: Hannah, Bettina and Alice in front of Spenser House.] Rain is on the horizon, but not for two more days. Today was uneventful, mostly. We met cousin Bettina, down from school north of London with her classmate Hannah, at Fortnum & Mason’s for lunch. Not bad. They do have a large supply of raw materials to cook with. F&M is the iconic upper-crust food store, leaving Gelson’s in the dust.

After lunch we went to Spenser House, built in 1770 by one of Diana’s ancestors who was fabulously wealthy. The guide told us his diamond shoe buckle was worth 30,000 pound at the time! The house has been restored to original glory, if not with the original contents. Much had been sold over time, and all the rest was sent to the country during WWII and is still there. So, although much is real, most was not in the house in 1770. The restoration job is incredible, down to carved copies of the marble mantels which took between 3000 and 6000 man hours each. The Rothchilds have the lease for the next 100 years or so and have spared no expense.

We walked around a bit afterwards, had tea and coffee, and the girls set off back to school. We went back to F&M and did a little shopping: as much uniquely UK ham, cheese, tea and biscuits as we could carry, much of which disappeared at dinner time.

The Play's The Thing

The Play’s The Thing, Saturday 3/4. [Photo: Sir John Poster.] Another sunny day. This morning several shells, from 8-man to single sculls, went back and forth on the far side of the Thames. It might have been sunny, but it was still barely above freezing. Stout fellas.

We decided that since we had the opera this evening, we would make a test tube run to the Leicester Square station and see how long it took to get to the theater. During the trip we heard news of a “man under a train” that closed one line. We noticed that many stations had a multi-gated wall that would prevent people from falling on the tracks; perhaps this is planned for all stations. Our ride was accident-free. It was also very crowded towards the end, and everybody wanted to get off at our stop.

Leicester Sq. dumps you in the middle of the theater district, next to a discount ticket seller. It’s non-stop theaters and shops. We found the London Coliseum a few minutes away and clocked our trip at 45 minutes. We decided to see if there had been any returns for the sold-out Flying Dutchman, and we scored two seats front-row center! This was turning out to be a great day.

The rest of our first day was a walking tour from Trafalgar Square down to Whitehall where I was posed in front of the most recent statue, Winston Churchill, across Westminster Bridge and by the London Eye. This immense Ferris-type wheel is pooh-poohed by londontourist.org who say that a view of London from on high isn’t that great, and you’re better off with the free view from the Greenwich Observatory. Plus, those glass cages can get very hot in the sun. And boy, was it sunny. We photographed and moved on.

Across the river in Southbank we found a recommended restaurant but it was closed for lunch. We took a chance on Chez Gerard and it was just fine. Three times as expensive as the Trafalgar Tavern, but they served actual food. Then we walked to Waterloo Station and came home to a tremendous traffic jam, making us add a mental half hour to our opera trip.

The shower in our flat has to be added to the not-so-good half of the ledger. The cold water pressure is so low that any hot water overwhelms it. The result is that if you don’t want to be burned, you have to set the water flow so low you could drink it as fast as it comes out. I had a bush shower in Malawi that was more vigorous than this.

The trip back took an hour. We spent some time mastering the coat-check bicycle locks in the theater and found our seats. The Coliseum is very ornate, not quite up to the Paris Opera but thematically stronger. There are Roman busts lining the base of the ceiling dome expressing awe, fear, laughter and amazement; gilt chariots with riders and four (!) horses in the front corners below the dome, a few SPQR standards here and there – you get the idea. Lots of gilt and again, the feeling you were inside a very fancy piece of Wedgwood. We were on the floor, and I think there were four balcony sections.

But, the play’s the thing. “Sir John in Love” is why we came, after all. Instead of being set in Elizabethan times, the producer put the players in Edwardian dress. Falstaff wore tweed plus-fours and had a very Edwardian mustache. Ford was in a pinstripe suit and played, in the beginning, a rather dull businessman. It didn’t seem to matter. As the program pointed out, this version of The Merry Wives of Windsor was about middle class mores and is more or less timeless. The set was a pair of wooden houseframes that moved and turned to change scenes. Trees came and went, and Windsor Castle was a silhouette on the backdrop.

The opera was wonderful. We knew only one artist, Robert Tear, and only one other seemed to have made it as far as San Francisco. They were all excellent actors, good to excellent singers, and it worked perfectly. Ford (Alistair Miles) was particularly fine, and I was a little disappointed that the beautiful aria he sang as “Mr. Brook” was played for laughs (and it was funny). If there is a problem with the opera it is that none of the melodies are allowed to last very long. It could have done with show-stopper treatment a few times.

Andrew Shore was a great Falstaff. He sang well, went over the top just enough, and also managed to chug-a-lug a pitcher of ‘sack’ without missing a step. It may not have been beer, but drinking anything during a performance is a risk. The audience appreciated it. The biggest laughs, other than from Falstaff, came from Dr. Caius (Robert Tear). I can only surmise it was because he was playing a silly Frenchman and the audience was English. We thought he was mildly amusing; the audience was enthusiastic. One of the musical surprises for me was his singing of the French chanson d’amour that didn’t really impress me on the old recording; Mr. Tear did it beautifully (they stopped laughing, thank goodness).

The final scene at Herne’s Oak was where they spent all the design money. During the orchestral interlude the huge oak descended, backlit by Windsor Castle at night with a starry sky. The fairies, imps and goblins were dressed Arthur Rackham style, with lots of rough-cut gauzy clothes and faces that looked like the turnip and jicama bins at the farmers’ market. Falstaff tried to escape by climbing the oak, but they set fire to it! It was a grand ending to a great night at the opera. Our trip is already a success.

Greenwich

Greenwich, Friday 3/3. [photo: Alice straddling the Greenwich Meridian at the Old Royal Observatory.] Cloudy and cold, but no rain today. We had coffee and crumpets for breakfast and admired the view until leaving around 9:30. It was a longish walk, about 2 miles through not very inspiring territory before we got to the Cutty Sark and turned right up the slope to the National Maritime Museum. Some of it is for kids, including a particularly annoying interactive video that would speak two sentences and ask you to press GO to continue. Most of it is for adults, though, and there were boats of different kinds including a splendid Royal Barge (1732) and the first single-engined boat to break the 100 mph barrier (1932?). The Nelson exhibit, although missing a lot because they’re preparing a special exhibit for later this year, had the star attraction still on display: the coat he was wearing when he was shot at the Battle of Trafalgar. The musket ball came from the rigging of the French ship nearby and traveled down through his shoulder and broke his spine. Next door was a computer/video war-room style recreation of the battle and around the walls many paintings of the Last and Nearly Last Moments of Nelson.

We had coffee and a scone and admired the collection of nautical instruments and Admiralty Silver, but time was passing and I wanted to see the clocks so we went up the hill to the Old Royal Observatory. The view was great, one of the best in the city, and if it hadn’t been so cold we might have stayed outside longer. The first clock was on the outside wall with a display of exact measurements – markers for a yard, a foot, half-foot and one inch.

In fact this observatory could also be called the Museum of Exactitude. The first Astronomer Royal holed up here and spent 40 years compiling star charts. The reason for this was longitude; it could not be calculated without either a very accurate clock (and at sea there was no such device, yet) or with a precise star chart and a lot of mathematics. Sir Christopher Wren designed an observatory room, they put a bunch of clocks in it, including one with a 13’ pendulum, and the astronomer went to work.

Downstairs was a fascinating exhibit about the invention of the chronometer. In the end, the chronometer made the star charts obsolete, but at the time both goals were being pursued – nobody knew which would happen first. Over a period of 30 years or so Mr. Harris created four “chronometers”, the last of which proved to be, as the museum put it, one of the most important inventions in history, because it made safe and efficient navigation at sea possible. And all four of these chronometers are there. The first three are huge – the size of 20” televisions. During the building of H3 Mr. Harris realized he had to do something radically different, and H4 is the size of a Bendix alarm clock. It’s just a very large pocket watch, but it was accurate to within a second a month.

The rest of the museum had more modern clocks, including the one that for years sent the ‘six pips’ signal to the BBC where it was relayed all over the world, allowing people to synchronize to Greenwich Mean Time.

After resetting our watches we went back down the hill to the Queen’s House, formerly home to Queen Henrietta Maria (Charles I), and 100 years ago home to a school for boys intending to serve in the Navy (with a large ship on the front lawn for practice, everybody up at 5 a.m. for a swim in an unheated pool), more recently a place where Queen Elizabeth spent part of her childhood, and much more recently restored to its original splendor. But, much much more recently the London Guide says, “… in a major act of cultural vandalism, the interior decorations of the Queen's Apartments have been ripped out and replaced with a display of third-rate naval paintings.” I agree. My taste in paintings isn’t highly developed, but it did seem as if they wanted to display everything they had, good or not. There are two Reynolds, and the main piece is the Battle of Trafalgar by Turner, which is, after all, a Turner. Huge painting, perhaps 12x20 feet.

So it was natural to want to head for the Trafalgar Tavern. On the way we stopped at the former Royal Naval College, now part of what’s called Greenwich University, and saw the Painted Hall where Nelson lay in state, and the chapel which was like being inside a piece of Wedgwood.

Greenwich, it says in many guides, is a terrible place for food. The Trafalgar did not let the guides down, but it had great atmosphere and sits right on the river, so the view is good too. Take the guides’ advice and go there for a beer only.

We walked back to the Cutty Sark, on the Thames Path, and the high tide got our shoes wet a couple of times. Alice had voted for a return bus trip hours before, so we took the 199 back to the Riverside Youth Club and walked back to our flat. Good or bad, the pub food had been enough so we skipped dinner and went to bed early. We seemed to have either missed jet lag or walked it off!

Our Second Home

Our Second Home, Thursday 3/2. [photo: view east along the Thames from our flat, with Greenwich in the distance.] At LAX we got through check-in and security in 30 minutes. Must be the lowest traffic time of the week (Wednesday afternoon). Our flight was uneventful, just the way we like it. The super-economy seats do have more legroom and lowering the seatback does not threaten the person behind you. Plus, you get to check in online and go to the Fast Bag Drop at check-in. In winter the super-E fare is lower than the economy fare was last summer, so we think it was worth it (British Airways).

After baggage claim we rolled downstairs to the Heathrow Tube Station and bought Oyster Cards for the London Transport System. Two weeks of unlimited travel by tube and bus in Zones 1 and 2 (central greater London, and as the ticket seller said, there isn’t much to see outside Zone 2) cost about $80 per person. Not cheap, but cheaper than single tickets, cabs or rental cars. We also threw in a little money to get out of Heathrow (Zone 6) and off we went. It took about 80 minutes to cross London to the East Side and the mysterious flat.

The flat could not be better. It’s on the third floor (well, I guess it could have an elevator, but we only have to schlep the bags once) with three large windows overlooking the Thames. Only one other flat in the two-building complex has the same view. Far to our left is ‘up-river’, going north and turning west towards South Bank and the City; far to the right we can just see the Cutty Sark and the Royal Naval College at Greenwich (see photo). Next to our building (a converted warehouse) is an abandoned navy works yard, so it’s very quiet indeed. All you can hear are the gulls and the occasional barge or river commuter boat. Home run!

We went walking to check out the minimarkets (2) and places to eat (zero) in our neighborhood. It’s extremely cold, probably in the 30s right now and headed for below freezing tonight. We walked with enthusiasm. We bought two Sainsbury meat pies for dinner (surprisingly good) and wine and cheese and butter and bread and juice and so on for breakfast and snacks. Tomorrow the weather is supposed to stay dry, so we will walk to the right and visit Greenwich. We will also check out the community center and see if they will let us share some bandwidth. The only other problem with our building is that there aren’t any Wifi access points (at least that I can steal).

As I type the rain is coming down in Los Angeles - a fitting prelude to a trip to London in winter. Presumably we will not get as wet as Falstaff did when they dumped him into the Thames.

This adventure began in 2005 when I discovered there would be a new production of the opera "Sir John in Love" in March 2006. I have an old LP of the Sadlers Wells production and have always loved the music. It hasn't been seen on the stage since that production in 1958!!! Incredible. And you can't blame it on American parochialism; it hasn't been seen anywhere.

So, with low winter airfares, an apartment on the Thames, and two weeks to explore London, we are going to do this right. We've read the guidebooks, Googled everything else, and we're ready. The plane leaves LAX on Ash Wednesday evening (Better a Hung-over Pilot than a Drunken One is our motto). Our next dispatch will come as soon as we find an Internet connection in Londinium.