London 3 off line blogs.

Dear one and all. We have finally connected to our hotel internet. However it will be only until our Sunday at noon. I hope to convince Bill that the 8 pounds for 24 hours is worth it for our evening and early morning times in the hotel. All is going well and here are a few blogs that I wrote off line during our week.

June 12, 2007
Here we are in London. History, culture, politics, and entertainment are just a few of the things one can expect from this city.
I stepped off the plane and felt the ages of the last two millennia all around me. Maybe it was just the jet lag.
In my opinion, there is nothing better than a castle, an abbey, or a tower that has architecture from a thousand or more years ago. I try to imagine building these magnificent things. I try to imagine how. How did they get there supplies? How did they get the blocks up one on top of the other? How could one imagine such a structure? How did they rally the people together to help? How long did it take to build it and did they see the fruits of their labor? Did they imagine that their building would still be standing this far into the future?
Then I wonder why I did not pay attention to my history classes? You know all that stuff about The Battle of Hastings, or the whole monarchy succession thing? I barely remember hearing about the Magna Carta. I still think that history is wasted on the youth. Our children are way too busy making there own history to be learning about the history of “dead people” in “faraway places”; and for that matter to understand its impact on them.
These are the things that I am thinking about in my first few days in London. The sights are treats for the eyes. I crane my neck to look up at things that were done so many years ago that the locals have long since forgotten about them. They probably see them, but really don’t see them if you know what I mean?
It is a pleasure to be able to read and make sense of all that is written around the buildings, statues and monuments.
WKH


June 14, 2007

Did someone say we were on vacation? I have said this before, and I will say it again, sightseeing is hard work. Today we planned to see Westminster Abbey and we did.
The pamphlet says, “Experience a thousand years of history.” Maybe it was a warning that I did not heed.
One thousand years! That is twenty times my life on this earth. Perhaps almost 20 generations of kings and important people. Actually that is a lot of dead people. And along with those dead people came their history and their life contribution to the history of London and perhaps in the bigger sense, the history of the world.
I understand there are 3000 tombs in this architectural wonder. Of those there are 29 kings and queens entombed here. There is a poet’s corner with some of the more famous names I vaguely recall from University English class. The tombs and memorials are endless. This meant I could not walk anywhere without stepping on someone’s tomb or memorial.
We rented one of those audio guide things. We paid our 4 or so pounds each and then set forth on our own personal tour. It is actually quite a good way to go through Westminster. You can go at your own pace and you don’t have to worry about not hearing the guide. You know meek old Wendy actually shushed several adult women. We were on the Thames cruise and these “tourists” were talking louder than the guide with a microphone. They were also using their cell phones. Oi! Halfway through the trip, I finally had enough and turned around with finger to lips and let a big shush out. That worked for about 5 minutes. What are you going to do?
Meanwhile back at Westminster it was quite quiet as you would expect from a tomb like building holding 3000 dead bodies. It is a beautiful church. I don’t know why we never seen it before.
Later that day we went to the National Gallery Museum. I cannot truly appreciate the dimensions to an art piece. I was over hearing a guide from a nearby guided tour group. He was speaking of its irony; it’s subtleties of light to allude to sarcasm. He found it a bit too sarcastic. After he went on to another painting with his group I looked at the picture. It was a picture of the virgin mother and Jesus. What part of my eyes and brain are not connected to it’s allusion of sarcasm?
I go to see the portraits made by famous painters. I people watch. I see the children with their pens and papers seeking their answers to their day trip questionnaire. That was probably me. I see the elderly group of women or men who gather tightly around the picture whispering to one another about the painting I suppose. Of course in my world of people watching, I imagine them sharing their favorite recipe for desert. I also watched a young man stand and stare at a Van Gogh sunflower for a very long time. I wanted to know what he was seeing. What was holding his attention? What was the detail that fired up his passion? I suppose I will never know. However I do know that there are many people who are smitten with this art form.

Our day was cultured. It was okay. Later that evening Bill and I went out to our local pub for a beer. I must say that I got a bigger kick out of the pub pictures hanging at our local pub.
We have so much more to do and see.
P.S.
I am the one feeling the lack of Internet. At 7pounds (15 dollars) per day we are choosy about going on line. The hotel has it on from noon to noon and we are gone most of the day and out after breakfast in the morning. That makes it kind of costly.
Talk again soon.
WKH


June 16Th
That is a guess.
We are slowing down. Betty is tiring easily from all the walking. Bill and I are not far behind. Bill is struggling with a cold or allergies. The heat beats us down and the humidity finishes us off. As you would expect the heat is the worst in the tube system. I really don’t understand how they travel in such “sultry” conditions.
The tube system is still the best way for any person in London to get anywhere. On our first two days in London we took a “hop on hop off” tour bus. It is one of those double Decker open to the sky chariots. I have to commend the drivers of our buses. Since we were last here in 2001, we have noticed the biggest difference in the traffic. This is in the city center even though there is a very prohibitive congestion tax just to enter the centre. It was 1030 am and the cars, buses, tour buses, taxis and yes the cars were bumper to bumper. Horn honking is the norm. Sirens are going constantly and goodness knows how they get through. At times I was more concerned if our bus was going to make it to the next stop at all.
The last time I was here, I think I wrote about the difference between the local Londoners and tourists is that the tourists wait for the walk light and the rest just go at will. They seem to make it across the road without incidence. I am still trying to figure out where to look for the traffic. It came to me how it is that little children always seem never where to look when crossing the street. We tell them to look both ways before crossing and usually they look the wrong way. I could never understand why they didn’t look automatically to the left and then to the right. Well now that I have to retrain the brain to look right then left, I understand it is not automatic when learning. I have no concept of driving on the left hand side of the road thus through learned processes, I look automatically left. This does not do much in London except maybe get you killed.
Betty and I went to see a Florence Nightingale museum. We both enjoyed it. I learned more about her and was impressed with her as a woman who was born 100 years too early. The changes she proposed were phenomenal given the time and that women were not emancipated yet. She was a brilliant women coming from an influentially wealthy family. Her father taught her Latin, Greek, French, Spanish, German, and English, math, all sciences and statistics. Ms Nightingale was a poet, painter, and kept exceptional records of her life and achievements. She became a nurse against her parents’ wishes as it was a job for the lowest of classes of women and not her. She went to Germany to learn medicine. Her biggest contributions were those she achieved in the Crimea War. She brought many improvements to the sick camps. She brought bandages, medicine, proper nutrition, cleanliness and many other things.
I have never read her story and plan to when I get home.
While we were in the museum the men went to check out a shopping mall at Canary Wharf. They tell us it would be just what we would love to shop through. We probably would but we have so many other things to see that this might just be really low on our list. Yes you heard that from Betty and me.
Today was Trooping of The Guard, the celebration of the Queen’s birthday. We decided to stay away from the masses. We walked in Hyde Park during a thunderstorm with torrential rain. It kind of dampened our spirit, but gave us a good rest for the second week in London.
WKH