Return to London

We went into London from Reading several times.

We rode Great Western Railroad to Paddington then the Underground around London

    SuperBloom at Tower of London was one of the first places we visited.  In honor of the Queen's Jubilee, they planted 3 of the 4 sides of the moat for the Tower of London with wild flowers that are planned to bloom throughout the summer.  The moat has had grass in it since 1845.  It was really pretty with just waves of colors changing as we walked around the tower.   I recognized most of the flowers but there were some that were new to me like one from the brochure called Annual Toadflax or another called Viper's burgloss.

London Bridge in background

Kensington Park and the Victoria and Albert Museum - our original trip plan had us staying in the Kensington area in a flat for 2 weeks, but alas Covid ruined that plan so visiting is all we did.  Have to admit walking around Kensington and Hyde Parks made me wish we had gotten to stay here.  Kensington and Hyde Parks are in very nice residential areas.  After we wandered around the parks we headed to the Victoria and Albert Museum.

The museum is considered to be a museum of art and design.  It is arranged by geographic and time periods.  You find a room full of artifacts from the Singh's during 1500s say and another that is full of things from artifacts from early 1900s Europe.  On top of that, the building itself is amazing.  All of the memorials and halls related to Victoria and Albert are quite simply beautiful.  The buildings often have an area with underlying meaning.  For example, on the Albert memorial below, each corner is a region with a statute with related topics such as an American Indian in the Americas region.  While in the museum café, the walls above the windows were tiled with words of wisdom.

Memorial to Prince Albert.

Inside Victoria and Albert Museum

the bed from a lord's bedroom

really like this chair makes me think of the rag rugs my grandma made.  In the current room display.

    Gordon's Wine Bar - on another day, we went into London to go to the musical Six and then to visit Gordon's Wine Bar which a cousin had recommended.  Gordon's is the oldest wine bar in London and has been open for over 130 years.  The indoor portion is under ground and the seating is in caves - no electricity in that area - only candles at the tables.  It is also known for its port and sherry wines some of which are served from the cask.  Like most people we got a glass of wine and stood around waiting for a table.  It was Father's Day and were asked to move away from a beat-up old photo by a group so the 2 men could take a photo in front of it.  The one guy then proceeds to tell me how he had come here many times with his father who always went to that photo.  It seemed that the photo was dad's platoon in the Boer war in South Africa.  We talked with the couples for a few minutes and then we had a table.  The wine we had was nice and then we shared some fortified wines since it was their specialty! It is definitely a unique place.

at our table in the cave

Six is based on the six wives of Henry VIII.  In London, all of the theaters are small so there is rarely a bad seat.  Six is so popular Jeff and I had to accept individual seats a few rows apart.  We enjoyed the show once we got used to the accents.  It is almost a concert with a storyline, there are no set changes, I would recommend the show.

St Paul's Cathedral - on our last trip into London, we visited the St Paul's Cathedral, The Globe Theatre, picked up some whisky and went to an Italian restaurant.  Our timing had been off before and had not been able to visit either St Paul's or the Globe so better late than never.  

While in Oxford, we had seen the Sheldonian Theatre that Christopher Wren had designed early in his career and now off to his masterpiece - St Paul's Cathedral.   Easy part first - it is gorgeous inside.  The bright gold patina on wood and plaster and oh my all of the mosaics and all of this on top of a very nicely designed church/cathedral.  We opted out of the audio tour and chose to walk around and read the placards.  The prior St Paul's Cathedral burned in the great London fire of 1666.  In 1668 Wren starts to design the new/current cathedral, it took until 1711 for it to be completed.  Since this is after the reformation, there are no icons in the building instead you will find a lot of statutes to military leaders and war memorials.  Many of those are on the first floor, there is a crypt in the basement with even more memorials and stones/monuments to people although in the crypt there is an artist corner so you do find people other than the country's late warriors.  Oh,  Jeff and I had a laugh.  There are plaques for all of the lead organists for couple of hundred years.  Jeff said I can hear it now in the interview - we can't pay you well, but you will be remembered for eternity by the plaque we make for you.

As we wandered, I noticed a sign that said the above window's stain glass was lost to a bombing in 1940.  Per a write up I saw part of the cathedral was hit on Dec 29th, 1940, but it was a small area.  Said there were a couple of other times when out buildings were hurt and some walls were thrown out of alignment.  We overheard a tour guide describe how many key items and statutes were removed from the cathedral before the bombings began, but there was one statute that was left behind.  The main caretaker at the time regularly slept by that statute and had a saying that he (the statue) was looking after him.

In the crypt, they had an exhibition set up for the Queen's Jubilee.  They had pictures from her past jubilees and from the previous kings and queens who had jubilees.  Seems it is part of the jubilee tradition to have a mass of thanksgiving at St Paul's.  The exhibition had a cloak that the bishop had worn at an earlier jubilee mass.  It was impressive.  An embroidery school had stitched together this large cape like garment with buildings and symbols for much of the Commonwealth.

Shakespeare's Globe Theater - the Globe Theater and St Paul's Cathedral are close to each other.  They are on opposite sides of the Thames River with the millennium pedestrian bridge connecting them.  I will be honest I went to the Globe because I thought I should.  I am happy I went because I really enjoyed the tour.  This is a very good reproduction of the theatre that Shakespeare would have appeared in during his lifetime.  It was opened in 1997 after 50 years of research and slow construction.  When I say very good reproduction, I mean they used the same type of wood that was common in the day (unseasoned even), they used the same materials for the plaster like walls and thanks to carbon footprints and some old drawings were able to deduce the most likely building layout including the fact that many patrons are in a ground area standing.  The theater is an active theater for Shakespeare plays.  While we toured, we saw a group rehearsing a modern-day version of the Tempest. It was an enjoyable 50 minute tour.  Unfortunately, since they were in rehearsals for a new play that has not been reviewed yet we were not able to take any photos. Don’t ask where these came from.   

Whisky Exchange - note the UK spelling.  We had found a whisky we really like in Scotland and wanted to take some home.  That was easier said than done until we learned of this place and able to order it from them.  It was a very nice and interesting shop.  This is the entire width of the shop.

Bar at the Shard as in the large office building called the Shard.  While on the train going to Stonehenge/Salisbury.  I ended up sitting next to guy and talking with him.  He suggested that one of the best views of the London skyline was from the bar of the Shard.  We had some time to kill before dinner and by shear chance were right at the Shard so up we went.  This was after we visited the Borough Market which was nearby.  If you are in London and need some nice quality food, go to this food market the food looked wonderful.

We are a fan of Stanley Tucci’s Searching for Italy on CNN.  On the last episode we saw he visited London, where he resides instead of a region in Italy.   On the show he introduced us to “The Mammas” at La Mia Mamma restaurant.  Each of their 3 restaurants features a different region of Italy with Mammas from that region on a rotating basis.  Click here to watch a 62 second clip from the show.  On one of our last evenings in Britain, we made reservations and did variations of their tasting menu for the evening.  The restaurant we visited was hosting mamas from the Sardegna region of Italy.  We had to hurry to get there on time, but enjoyed our evening once we relaxed.  It started with an Aperol Aperitif and ended with a small panna cotta and cheesecake.  In between a huge antipasta plate, some pasta and a main dish.  The antipasta plate had probably 10 different things on it from fried ravioli to olives to small dishes and bread.

And finally, we ran across this whimsical art installation in the area of St Paul's.

There is room for two people to join these characters at the dinner table.
I should have taken a Panoramic photo to capture the entire table.

Stonehenge & Salisbury Cathedral

We almost made a horrible mistake in our planning for visiting Stonehenge.  We had booked everything for the day before the Summer Solstice.  By chance, went to London the day before that and ran into some partiers from the Salisbury area who warned us that tons of people go there on the Summer Solstice and we might want to change our plans.  Boy were they right, on June 20th there were already traffic jams on the country roads so we quickly rebooked for the following Friday.

To get to Stonehenge, we took the train from Reading and grabbed a variation of a hop on hop off bus that does 3 sites:  Stonehenge, Salisbury Castle and old Sarum.  You can add an option for entrance into the sites which we did.  Salisbury is a quaint old English town with a very tall church cathedral.  The bus picks you up outside the station and off you go into the countryside.  When we got to Stonehenge, there is a nice new visitor center with parking for all the tour buses and then there is either a 1.3 mile walk or short bus ride to get to Stonehenge itself.  We first did the visitor exhibition in the visitor center and then walked to Stonehenge and rode the bus back.  Part of the route is through a field that was part of Stonehenge proper/landscape. 

 We got to Stonehenge itself and had to show our timed entry tickets and then started the audio guide on our phones as we walked around the ring of stones.  Now a days most tourists cannot get inside of the stones rather you are kept back a ways on a roped off walkway.  Still it was impressive to see.  Jeff and I were surprised to learn that the horizontal rocks (lintels) did not just sit on the rocks they crossed but that there were joining pieces in the vertical rocks to hold it all together.  Part of our audio tour pointed out that the gentle moundings in the dirt was not natural but had been done as part of the building of Stonehenge.  As we walked to the site we had been near part of the moundings/pathway.  The audio pointed out that there had been some burials around parts of  Stonehenge and that throughout the neighboring fields were mounds that were also burial areas.  None of the mounds are anywhere near the size of the Indian burial mounds you find in Collinsville or St. Louis, but they were distinctive.  Jeff and I enjoyed Stonehenge, but were somehow a little disappointed.  We suspect it is because up in Orkney Scotland we had seen a large ring of stones and another spot with the large stones like this that we were able to go right up to and touch.  I understand the need to protect the area.  I just think we were a little prejudiced after our earlier site visit.

arrow shows where the sun light hits on the 2 solstices

From Stonehenge we went to Salisbury Cathedral in downtown Salisbury.  The cathedral is right in town and was built in the 13th century.  The cathedral is special because it has the tallest church spire in all of England, large cloisters and because it has one of the 4 remaining copies of the Magna Carta.  Since the cathedral is so old, it was originally a Catholic church.  I point this out because the room that the Magna Carta is in was a former room specifically for the monks. In that room there is a stone frieze of some common biblical stories.  Another interesting thing about the church is that it is built in an area that in at least modern times has a very high water level.  Very high as is they have a spot in the floor where they lift up a stone to check the water level with a stick - think checking your car's oil level.  A few years ago the water did rise up and flood the church (I think inch or 2 not bad).  As you wander around the church you find the crypts and stones for prominent townspeople over  the years and some distinct chapels.   Also it is because of the catholic monks that there are a lot of very old books and documents that the church owns such as the Magna Carta.  We wandered around the inside of the church some and then went to the chapter house to see the Magna Carta. 

Baptismal Font

The chapter room has a display about how the document came to be.  Seems the king at the time (King John) had run up some serious bills and was trying to unduly tax the nobles who weren't too happy about it.  They threatened him with a civil war.  The document guaranteed certain civil liberties and all was good except the nobles had to force the king to follow it.  Later kings would use it to their political advantage thus it has been amended some since its original writing.    When it was our turn to see it, we entered a small dimly lit enclosure with a light sort of shining on the document.  Meaning you see it, but you aren't going to read it - not really.  The document was written on sheepskin in very small writing.  Yes I could see start and stop of words, but I couldn't make anything out and it was probably old English that I would not have understood anyway since it was written in 1215.  But hey I can mark that off some bucket list!

After the cathedral, we walked around town some and then headed back to Reading.  We skipped Old Sarum which is a medieval town.  I guess you could say it was the original town of the area before Salisbury.  There is the foundation of a cathedral there that the Salisbury one replaced and other medieval time period buildings (remnants).  

Oxford and Windsor

We did a day trip to Oxford from Reading.  It was an enjoyable day and I could see where it would have been nice to spend a couple of days there - in some ways we did squeeze 2 days into 1!  Oxford is an old town with 45 colleges in it of which 39 make up Oxford University.  I have to admit that most of the college's names went in one ear and out the other.  We did a hop on hop off bus tour with 2 walking tour options which we did both and there was overlap - those are the colleges I remember.  Additionally at the end of the day we did a Thames River cruise.  Like I said we squeezed 2 days into 1.  We did it partially because we visited Oxford on one of the days the rail workers were not on strike.  The next day there was very little rail coverage and thus would have been hard for us to get to Oxford.  There is a castle in Oxford that  later became a prison, but we skipped it so be ready for lots of pictures of neat old college campuses.

downtown Oxford

All of the college campuses are enclosed within walls.  Students choose their college.  This is where they will live and will be tutored by a professor, but all of the classes are taught within the walls of Oxford University Buildings.  Their school year is very different than an American one.  Once they hit University they will only take classes in their major and only one per 8 - 10  week period.  If I understood correctly, they write a ton of papers - like 1 a week and then have some written tests at the end.  Oh the cost to attend such a prestigious university?  9,900 pounds per year per the government.

All Souls College - is a school only for post doctoral students.  The guides like to say there are no students there and then say only fellows.  The school's physical distinction is it is full of turrets on the roofs of its buildings.  After the walking tours we were able to walk in parts of some campuses including the quadrangle  and chapel of All Souls.

All Souls

All Souls Chapel

Lincoln College - was one of the campuses we were able to peak in.   This is the school John Wesley attended.  There is a bust of him in the central area of the campus.

John Wesley bust in upper photo also appears on right of lower photo

New College - we actually could walk in a significant portion of this college.  It is known for its choir which we could hear practicing in the chapel so we could not tour the chapel.  The cloisters of this school were in a couple scenes for a Harry Potter films.  There is a large oak tree in a corner that was in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.  When we looked at the tree, we did recognize it.  We also saw their "hall" which is their dining hall  - think the dining hall in Harry Potter and you get an idea of the dining halls at these schools.  We also got to walk around their gardens (tourists stay on the path, students lying around the yard).  The gardens were nice and quiet but the real reason they let tourists go there is that the school has the original city walls built into its campus.  They are required to keep the wall maintained.  The city walls are from the 12th century.  I got a flyer from the tour and it says there are 600 undergrad and 60 graduate students enrolled at the school.

Dining hall with exterior on bottom

City wall

Cloisters used in several Harry Potter movies

Christchurch  - gets the award for the most commercialized campus.  Jeff had heard it was a good one to view so we went to that end of town to discover we had to make an appointment which we could just still do for the day and the tour included an audio tour.  Somehow that audio tour turned us off and when we saw the cost (triple other schools) we passed.  However, there was a very nice garden there that anyone could walk around and we did.  Even had cows in their pasture.

Sheldonian Theatre - was built by Sir Christopher Wren who also built St Paul's Cathedral in London.  It is known for being one of the first buildings with roof trusses that went a significant distance (no supports in the middle of the building to ruin the view).  Surrounding the outside of the building is a wall with a lot of busts of men.  Turns out these are just ordinary people up there.  No one special is in the busts and they do replace them when they get worn down by the weather.  Oh yeah it is a 350 year old building.

Radcliffe Camera - it is a round building that is currently a reading room for the Bodleian library.  It was built by William Radcliffe who was a  medical doctor. 

Bodleian Libraries -  only toured the outside but I thought of my book loving friends here.  By law, every book that gets a copyright must give a copy of the book to this library.  They said there were several floors of books below our feet as we stood in the courtyard of the building. (Nearby modern addition to the library has 3 floors above ground and 8 floors below.)   The reading room is needed since you cannot take a book out of this library; you must read it inside their walls.  Click here for virtual tour including the Radcliffe Camera building.  

Bodleian Library

 Alice in Wonderland ties - as an old and major university, Oxford can claim ties to several major authors such as J.R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Agatha Christie and Lewis Carroll.  The one they really key in on is Lewis Carroll.  On the tour they pointed out how Lewis Carroll was a mathematics lecturer at one of the colleges when he met the dean's daughter Alice.  As we walked around they pointed out unusual parts of a building that is supposedly where Carroll got an idea since he would have walked this way to class.  There is also a story about how he started the idea of the book as a story for the real Alice.  Another point in our walks, the guide pointed out that Tolkien regularly would have gone down this street and see a very large tree (cut down in 2014) that may have inspired the character of Treebeard from Lord of the Rings.  Alice in Wonderland is the one the town has truly embraced though with a shop and an annual day.

Alice Shop

Thames River Cruise - after walking around for several hours, it was time to enjoy a boat ride. The Thames River meanders through Oxford so we selected an evening cruise.  We enjoyed the river scenery and learned about the strong rowing culture amongst the Oxford Colleges and the townspeople.  We saw some rowers out with coaches on bikes along the river tow path.  Also from the pictures below there were a lot of canal boats along the banks.

We had the back seat on our boat

Windsor Forest and Great Park  - on the next non railroad strike day we ventured over to Windsor with the plan of renting bikes and exploring the Great Park.  We thought we knew what we were getting into.  We both thought the Windsor Great Park was going to be this nice manicured park like Central Park in NY or Forest Park in St. Louis - um no.  Officially it is a former king's dear hunting ground  and is now a big (great) park that is mostly wild.  People go there to walk their dogs, horseback ride and bike ride.  But it is mostly meadows, no water fountains rarely nicely mown grass  and for the longest time we could not figure out where the iconic long walk was.  We knew it had to be around because the bike rental place warned us to stay off of it or he and us would be in trouble.  Do you like the herd of Windsor cows we found in the picture below?

Royal Cattle

View during our bike ride

Interestingly, there is a small village in the middle of the park so we headed that way in search of bottles of water.  When we got there, we found a store and several cute houses all with names.  The lady in the store suggested we head for the Seville Gardens which were right past the gate.  She assured us she was talking a mile or 2 so off we went.  With a little trepidition,  we went past a sign about limited entry or something and then found the back entry to the gardens.  They looked like quite nice botanical gardens, but we were in search of some food which happily they also provided.  After our break we headed back the way we came.  THEN we finally found some scenery other than grass meadows.  We stopped on our way up a slight hill because the grass was mowed in an area (caught our eye) and there was the view!  The castle one way and a statute the other.  Yippee!  Seems we had the view at our backs on our way so going back was much more interesting.

The Long Walk below is a straight 2.64 mile avenue from Windsor Castle Gates to the ‘Copper Horse’ statue of (mad) King George III.  We were not allowed to ride our bikes on it, but our bike route intersected it at the photo below.    

“The Long Walk”

We got back to the bike shop and turned the bikes in to go wander the town some. Windsor has the neat, old shops and houses of much of the "quaint" England and this one really big old place right smack at the edge of town. We walked the length of town and up to the castle gates and then started exploring the streets more. We passed on touring the castle because we had done that years ago plus the more inclusive tours would not start until July.

Getting closer to the castle

Windsor Castle from a street in town

Replica of the royal train at the Windsor Station

Windsor pedestrian shopping street

After taking so many pictures of painted Snoopy and Cows, I had to get a British Lion 

Odd leaning building