A Full-time Life

HAMPSTEAD HEATH

July 31, 2007

On Monday, July 30th, our very last possible day to journey about London, we went to Hampstead Heath, in North London. It’s the highest point in London, and is known as the "lungs of London" because of the clean air! The Heath is a beautiful, quiet wooded area. Remarkable because we reached it by walking just a few blocks from our underground stop in the busy district of Camden. This is the view when we reached the top (it’s called Kite Hill).

Hampstead Heath is 792 acres of woodlands and dells — in the middle of the city.

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In this view from the top, the faint tower, furthest to the right on the sky line, is at Crystal Park, in Sydenham where we live.

Going home, we took a train from the edge of the heath through a tunnel to the far edge of Hampstead, where we caught the tube back to London Bridge.

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We found this street sign as we walked along a quaint litle alley toward the Heath — appropriate for the last day of our London Adventure. Here’s to new endings and new beginnings!
GETTING AROUND IN LONDON

July 31, 2007

"Sydenham, this is Sydenham. The train now standing on Platform 1 is for London Bridge, calling at Forest Hill, Honor Oak Park, Brockly, New Cross Gate, and London Bridge, where this train terminates."

That’s the message on the speaker whenever we go to the depot (about four blocks from our flat). If we happen to miss that train, we only have to wait 10 minutes for the next one. This is the direction we usually travel. London Bridge is the oldest station in London, and is centrally located. We can also get on the train on Platform 2 and go to Victoria Station, on the western side of London– there are a few more stops that way. The in-city trains are all electric, the rails are welded, and the trains seldom sound their horns (there are no track level crossings for cars or people). It is a very fast and quiet way to travel, except for the incessant use of cell phones by passengers!

"Mind the Gap". This sign is at one of the train platforms at London Bridge but it is best known for the announcement at many Tube stops on the Underground. (It is correct to say either Tube or Underground, but not subways–the latter are under-street passageways that can be complex at some intersections)

When we’re going further than the area around the train station, we pop on a LONG escalator and go down two or three flights to get on the underground.

These pictures are of the Jubilee Tube Line.

There are 12 underground and at least 10 above ground train lines in the city. Maps and route plans are available on the internet, so that you can enter your start and end destinations the night before and print out your own individual travel plan for the day.

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The distinctive underground sign (like on this building in Hampstead) makes it easy to find your station when you’re ready to go home from wherever you’ve spent the day (not always the same station where you got off).

When you get back to London Bridge station after your journey on the tube, you have to check the reader board to see which platform your train will be on. Because the trains run so frequently, they don’t have regular platform stops at the large stations. Here are a bunch of people at rush hour checking to see where to go next. ——————————————————————————————————————————

There are other ways to get around in London without a car.

Buses are great for errands or outings in nearby districts — and for scenic tours. One day early in our stay, we hopped on one just to see those five districts where our usual train stops. You don’t see the most interesting parts of an area from a train station, but can get a great overview from the bus, as you go down the high streets and some of the residential areas.

A bus will arrive at any stop every 8 to 12 minutes during the day, and night buses run every 30 minutes. You could go all over London just by transferring on the bus. It’s cheaper just to buy a bus pass, so lots of people do that — but of course it would take much much longer.

You can go a lot of places along The River Thames via a boat. There are regularly scheduled boats and several docks on the river, all part of the Transport For London System. We went to Kew Gardens on one and came back by bus/underground/train. And took a shorter hop from Greenwich to the Thames Barrier and back.

The Docklands Light Railway runs on the eastern side of the city. It is an elevated computer controlled system that runs without a driver–you can sit in the front seats at the windshield. It moves a lot of people fairly quickly from the edge of downtown, throughout the Docklands, crosses the river to Greenwich, and continues to the SE side near us. It has proven to be so successful that plans for future expansion of the Tube will also be above ground. It reminds of a model railroad layout, with all the trains switching around without engineers.
HAMPTON COURT PALACE AND GARDENS

July 30, 2007

We almost waited too long to go to see this castle and world famous gardens. The day we’d planned to go, the rising river caused the Thames Cruise Boat to cancel trips. But a couple of trains got us there just fine. (It was from the road next to the castle that we took those two pictures of the high river.) And, after all, it turned out to be a lovely day.

The castle, which was first the home to Henry VIII, is magnificent inside and out, but our favorite parts of the tour were where we learned about how the working people and servants who supported it lived and worked. Also, the sixty acres of formal gardens really make Hampton Court a must-see. We are glad we didn’t miss it.

Good old Henry took over a courtier’s country home and transformed it into a magnificent palace. It was his summer home. A chapel dating from this era is still in use (for anyone now). Self-guided tours take you there and into the Tudor-era royal rooms, public and private.

The only part of the inside tours where you’re allowed to take pictures is in the reconstructed Tudor kitchens and other work areas. There are great stories about how many "support persons" the royal court needed — several hundred — and about how the food was ordered and prepared. Anyone could show up at the castle, and assuming they were reasonably well dressed, could request to "say hello" to their ruler. They could also stay for dinner, mostly meat and bread, but the records show that they did buy a lot veggies also. The different European kings tried to outdo each other with their hospitality. This castle fed as many as one thousand people each day. Food historians actually cook in the same way they did back then. You can smell food cooking. The picture of the pies show how they baked a lot of meat and vegetable dishes–the shells were simply flour and water paste, and were discarded after the food was removed. The huge boiling pots looked almost like the ones in today’s institutional kitchens, except these were heated by wood fire underneath. They also had six huge fireplaces with several spits placed before each one–it was very warm with only one fire going–it must have been almost unbearable with all of them roaring away.

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After the Tudor era, sometime in the 1600s, the royals of the time, King William III and Mary II, commissioned Christopher Wren to design a remodel of the palace. But the plan was only partly completed (the queen died of smallpox and the king lost interest in the project). So half the palace remains Tudor and the other half all that elegant baroque style of the Georgian era, that’s so pleasant to look at (since somebody else has to dust). So you really get to see two palaces for the price of one, assuming your feet hold out. The gardens were actually put in during this time. Earlier, the land was mostly used for hunting.

Art works from the times are displayed and there are furnished public and private rooms of the royals, with the self-guided audio tour giving you some good stories.

Again — you can’t take very many pictures of the castle insides, but (if you are us) you can make up for it in the beautiful gardens. We took a land-train around the periphery and then walked until we couldn’t any more. There’s a pretty cool maze, where we managed not to get lost, and the Guinness-certified largest vine in the world — a grapevine. (There are gardeners just to take care of it.)

Here are some garden pictures:
GLOBE THEATRE

July 29, 2007

We went to the Globe Theatre on Bankside. It was opened ten years ago and stands near where the original sixteenth century Globe Theater was, here in London’s Southwark district.

The original Globe which was built in 1576 and rebuilt in 1613 after a fire (during a performance when a cannon ignited the thatched roof). It was demolished after the Puritan Administration closed all the theatres in 1642. We saw the original site — it was demolished then to make room for tenements; now there are nicer apartments there.

The design and the techniques used in building the new Globe were accurate to the original. Green oak was cut according to the practice then; oak laths and staves support lime plaster mixed according to original recipes. The roof is made of reed thatch, based on samples found in excavation of the original theatre.

It was interesting to learn that an American director and producer, Sam Wanamaker, initiated the rebuilding project after his first visit to London in 1949. It took a long time to get the funding and finish the project. It’s under a trust now and does all kinds of educational theatre activities as well as its performances.

We saw Shakespeare’s comedy "Love’s Labor’s Lost". It was easy to imagine, in these surroundings, how it would have been for people at the original theatre to enjoy such a performance. It’s a little bit raucous and it’s funny.

Here are pictures of the musicians who played before the play started and in intermission. The people standing around the stage have cheap tickets — but by standing, they are closer to the action, just like the "groundlings" were in Shakespeare’s time. We chose the second level though — we had a great view — and we could sit down.
ARE YOU BEING SERVED?

July 29, 2007

We visited Harrod’s, England’s most famous and most elegant department store, on Knightsbridge near Piccadilly Circus. A little bit different from our usual shopping experience.

It’s an enormous (full square block) eight-story Victorian Building that looks — inside and out — like no other department store we’ve ever seen. It has doormen at each entrance and three-hundred departments.

The food area is lushly lighted and decorated. Everything looks wonderful. There are rooms for vegetables, fish, meat, fruit, sweets, coffee and tea….. It’s a very upscale grocery shopping area in the middle of an upscale department store. Places to eat are scattered all about. They include a coffee bar (we had a latte), tea shop, sushi bar, lunch counter (definitely not Woolworth’s), wine cellar, and a chocolate room.

Everything is beautiful in there — a shopper’s Disneyland.

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We browsed a bit in the housewares section and were actually asked "Are you being served?". Wish we could blog the posh British accent.

And then, of course, we had to visit the toy department.
DOCKLANDS

July 28, 2007

Docklands is the section of the city from Tower Bridege to Woolwich. Up till about 1986, both sides of the river were lined with docks and warehouses. There are very few docks, now, and none in use. This view is from the River Thames.

The 2012 Olympics will be held in this area and preparations are already underway.

These scenes are from West India Dock on the Isle of Dogs. (The Tudors used to keep their hunting dogs here.) This dock is where banana and sugar boats used to come in and unload for the city. The area has totally changed now and it is the most modern looking district of London. Glass office skyscrapers house many of Britian’s top banking and insurance firms and such. The new City Airport is nearby; it is the fastest way to fly in and out of London. So of course, the area is a haven for yuppies, with many modern and expensive high-rise flats.

We went on a Sunday afternoon and the restaurants were busy with early afternoon brunch crowds. Docklands Light Railway is a fast and convenient way to get there. You can see the train above the waterway here.

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This floating pedestrian bridge connects the waterfront area and its restaurants and bars to an office and shopping complex.

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The old boats and sculptures in front of the new buildings are a nice contrast and visual of how the area has changed. There are still a few working boats docked at the wharf, but they are used as restaurants and meeting places.

Few of the old buildings survived the WWII bombing. The Docklands Museum is next to this one.

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From West India Dock, we took the DLR to LImehouse, an older part of Docklands. We stopped at Island Gardens Park for a last look at Greenwich, which is directly across the river.

We had planned to walk to the Grapes Pub for dinner. It is a pub frequented by Charles Dickens and is the model for the one he describes in "Our Mutual Friend." It was no longer serving food by the time we got there, though, so after looking around, we walked on and ate at a very good Italian Restaurant in Mosaic Square before hopping on our train for home.
SCENES FROM THE NEIGHBORHOOD

July 27, 2007

Penge is the next district to Sydenham, just a few blocks from our flat. We found our favorite Indian Restaurant, Tamarind, there early in our stay, because they left a flyer on the doorstop; later, we decided to explore the town a bit more and took a walking tour.

These cottages (there are 164) were built in 1866 by the "Metropolitan Association for Improving the Dwellings of the Industrious Classes". They’re privately owned now, but it It’s listed status gives it a a charming story-book look, like a real version of a child’s block village.

Penge was the most heavily bombed part of London during the Blitz because a major rail transportation tunnel lies within it. So a lot of it is relatively new — not many pre-Victorian buildings survived. Thus, the high street is all kind of blah 50s architecture.

In addition to the cottages for industrious people, there is also a lovely old building built in 1848 as an almshouse. It was built at the request of Queen Adelaide in memory of her husband William IV as a "Royal Naval Asylum." It provided residences for twelve widows or orphan daughters of naval officers. That building is now privately owned flats. I don’t know if I’d want to live there — sounds like a good candidate for a haunted house.

This is Gipsy Hill. This district is two stops west of us, on the loop toward Victoria Station. We found a favorite restaurant here too. The kind we like, great food and informal atmosphere. It was a good place to stop on the way home from London. The trouble is that the rail station is at the bottom of that hill and the restaurant is at the top. Nice view though — and a good excuse to eat, in order to recover your strength.

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Every block of every district in London has a greengrocer. These are little hole-in-the-wall shops displaying their wares outside. Mostly they are run by immigrants and the produce varies depending on which country. This one in Sydenham is called "Istanbul". Others in Sydenham are Pakistani, Indian, Halal (we looked it up — it’s the Arabian version of Kosher), Caribbean, and Iraqi. Every block also has an "off-license" shop — meaning you can buy beer and wine to take home, and what is called a pound store or cheap store (of course, like our dollar stores, but smaller and more crowded) and just as useful for certain necessities. We’ve also found a good barber shop, a beauty shop, and a small supermarket right on our own high street. The most fun about our high street, or any other, is that they are so lively and vibrant — there are always people. We found a couple of malls (called centers) in two of the larger districts nearby, so they exist and with a lot of the same stores there are in any mall anywhere in America, but they haven’t killed the high (main) streets, like they pretty much have there.
PUBS

July 27, 2007

You can’t stay in England for three months and not say anything about pubs. They’re such a big part of the culture. There’s one on every block in every district and village. British pubs (at least in the daytime) are friendly places where people could (and presumably do) hang out all day long. The ones we’ve stopped in have had comfortable sofas in odd corners, a patio or courtyard outside, and an atmosphere that (except for the booze) seems more like a coffee-house than a tavern.

The two pictured are more or less at the end of Sydenham’s six-block High Street, with five others at various spots between. We’ve only tried a couple here in town, though.

There has been a pub on the site pictured above, The Greyhound, since 1713 and part of the present building dates from the 18th Century.

We went into the Prince Alfred here because we liked the name. Same with a pub in Penge called The Crooked Billet, when we were thirsty in the middle of our walking tour.

Pub names are just wonderful. Here are a few favorites in nearby districts. Alas, they are favorites in name only — so many pubs, so little time: Copperfield’s, Little Dorrit, Goose on the Green, Fox and Firkin, Hare and Billet, Jolly Farmer, The George, London and Rye, The Two Halfs, The Golden Lion; and The Barrow and Banker.

Most of them have a pub sign with the appropriate picture in a terra-cotta like material. Historically, the picture signs told people who couldn’t read what the building was. Many started as inns or gathering places for certain activities (besides drinking). Thus, the Greyhound was the meeting place for local hunting groups.

So, if you had enough time and the right constitution (neither of which we do) you could do a pub crawl all around London and call it a historical study. The pubs have a wide range of beers–it’s hard to pick a favorite, because the next pub will have entirely different beers (exept for Guinness-they all have that, but we’ve yet to see anyone drinking it).

Yes, this is a picture of a menu. In English pubs, you order and pick up your own drinks at the bar.

So Bill does that and I grab the table — and (in this case only) take a picture whilst waiting. The Three Tuns was a nice place where we ate after touring Windsor. The pub keeper was very interested in America and later she came over to our table and we had a great conversation.

I snapped the picture because of the neat name — it’s a crossword clue that I’ve never seen used anywhere else until now — and because of what it told about the history of the area.
THE FLOOD

July 26, 2007

The floods in England are really bad. Paper says more than a million people have been affected–loss of houses, no electricity, no drinking water. Now the livestock is starting to hurt–no clean water for the animals–dairy cows here use more than 1 million liters of water per day. Field crops are ruined, food prices are predicted to go sky high, military has been called out to control the people trying to buy everything in the markets. No visible effects here yet.

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We went to Hampton Castle yesterday. It’s about 20 miles upstream from London.

We wanted to take the boat, but they weren’t running that far (have to use two locks to get there) so we took the train. The river is high, the fixed docks along the banks look to be under several feet of water.

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We took pics of a pub on the bank that has all its decks under water. We had a beer in the pub next to it and noticed that they have sandbags ready to put across the door. If it gets that high, It will probably get into the castle as well.

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Predictions are that London will be ok from the flood water which is expected in 2-3 days. But, methinks ’tis time to get out of here. Good thing the plane tickets are secured.
WINDSOR CASTLE

July 25, 2007

This is Windsor Castle, the largest and oldest occupied castle in the world, and Queen Elizabeth’s favorite residence. It dates from 1080 and was William the Conquerer’s first castle.

(Notice, if you click to enlarge the fourth picture, that even the Queen is not far away from the noise of airplanes flying over–the castle is under Heathrow’s flight path.)

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This is a "loophole" or arrow slot. These slots are V shapes on the inside of the castle, allowing a wide field of fire for the archers.

There is a self-guided tour of the lavishly decorated State Apartments and an extensive art gallery, with several original Leonardo da Vinci sketches among other artworks the Royal Family owns.

These views of the servant’s quarters behind the Castle, now used as offices and homes for people who work there, are good examples of REAL half timber construction, not the copies found in the States.

This garden seemed to belong to people who lived there, rather than a formal part of the public tour.

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Windsor is in Berkshire, so for this journey, we were technically out of greater London. But it’s only 30 miles from the city center and an easy trip.

Here is Eton College, across the River Thames from Windsor, and a view of the town of Windsor from the castle grounds.