Science museums of all types having been visited, along with various instantiations of history museums, there remained one type of museum that we hadn't yet managed to visit—the art museum. Admittedly, we'd stopped in briefly at the National Galleries shortly after we arrived, but we'd only stayed for perhaps half an hour, and been in perhaps four rooms, in particular those rooms that had seats. (Perhaps when we leave we can jointly author a book called The Benches of London.) Now Blaise is really a modern art person (and I'm really not, but I'm beginning to tolerate it somewhat better than I once did), and so, rather than returning to the National Galleries we headed to (the) Tate Modern.
It was, well, a modern art museum, housed in what used to be a power plant, which I have to admit was a pretty cool building. Also, it had drinking fountains that actually worked, though I don't think we used them. It lost lots of points with Blaise for lacking benches in the exhibit rooms, and then regained them for having a really cool view out over the Thames. There was a lovely piece lamenting the loss of the River Bièvre, and a large Mapplethorpe exhibit which we skipped, and a lot of other art that we didn't skip, including the Donald Judd sculpture that became even more famous when some parents let their kids climb all over it.
Afterwards, we wandered along the Thames for a while, stopping for an hour in a little park on our way to Mass at St. Patrick's, which turned out to be a little tiny church administered by the Franciscans. And then we headed for home, Blaise and the little kids getting off at Swiss Cottage and Sapphire and I riding on to Finchley Road where we bought food for dinner.
Monday, July 14, 2014
In which we see rocks and decorative arts
Remember, if you will, that in our two trips to the Natural History Museum (NHM) we still hadn't seen the entirety of its collections, even ignoring those that weren't on display and those that had admission fees, so on Friday we headed back to South Kensington station to go to the NHM and to the Victoria & Albert Museum (V & A) with whatever time was left. Halfway through the train ride I realized that my phone wasn't in my purse, and couldn't remember whether I had put it into my purse that morning (which would have been bad) or not (which would only have been annoying), and so for the rest of the ride I racked my brain to figure out how I would have managed to forget my phone, or, alternately, when someone would have had the opportunity to take my phone out of my purse without my noticing, given that the station and train hadn't been particularly busy, but without success. Fortunately, Blaise had his cell phone with him and my phone has Find My Friends switched on, and the NHM has free wifi, and so I decided that once we'd gotten to the museum I'd ask him to use his phone to try to locate mine, which meant admitting that I'd been scatterbrained enough to either forget my phone or get it stolen, neither of which reflected particularly well on me, but it seemed better than spending the entire day worrying about it.
And so, once we'd gotten to the museum and gone up to see the mineral collection, I asked Blaise to see if he could find my phone for me. An agonizing twenty minutes later, he finally managed to connect to the wifi (I never said it was good wifi) and located Cherry's iPad in our apartment, but not my phone. Of course, that didn't necessarily mean anything, but things weren't looking very good, and I knew that the entire day would be miserable for me if I had to spend the entire time worrying about where my phone had gotten to so I decided that the smart thing to do would be to go back to that apartment and look for my phone and then meet Blaise and the big kids (Cherry decided that she wanted to come with me) back at the museum. Before we left though, Blaise needed to use the restroom, so the kids and I walked though a bit more of the collection while we waited, and Ezio told me that he didn't think that Blaise should be mad at me if my phone got stolen because he (Papa) got his phone stolen in Madrid when he'd only had it for five months. After what seemed to be an interminable wait, Blaise returned from the bathroom with the news that, after several attempts, he had finally managed to get my phone to come up, in our apartment, and so we continued with our visit.
Now, imagine a room the size of a high school gymnasium or maybe a biggish church filled with display cases full of minerals of various types and sizes and colors and you'll have some sense of what the mineral collection at the museum looked like. And remember that this is really only part of their rock and mineral collection—much of it is housed in the red zone and we had already seen it. The cases were arranged by types: sulfates, sulfites, quartzes, zeolites, and on and on and on. Red, green, blue, purple, orange, yellow, iridescent and shiny metallic, cubes, octahedrons, tetrahedrons, anything you can imagine, almost, on display in the mineral room. And tucked away in the back, The Vault, repository of Martian meteorites, gigantic emeralds, and a collection of nearly 300 diamonds in every color they naturally take.
By then, we'd spent more than two hours in the mineral collection, so we headed downstairs to the picnic area for lunch, along with those school groups that also hadn't eaten at a reasonable hour, and then across the street to the V&A. We spent a couple of hours wandering through fabric and dishes and furniture and clothing from the last 500 years or so of British (and I suppose, more generally European) history while listening to alarms going off roughly every forty five seconds. Blaise proclaimed it a most excellent museum because the density of benches was very high. Cherry and Ezio liked the Clore Discovery areas where they could try on hoop skirts and Inverness capes and design monograms. And I'm glad that we can say that we went, but the twenty percent or so of the collection that we saw was ample. I have no desire whatsoever to go back.
And so, once we'd gotten to the museum and gone up to see the mineral collection, I asked Blaise to see if he could find my phone for me. An agonizing twenty minutes later, he finally managed to connect to the wifi (I never said it was good wifi) and located Cherry's iPad in our apartment, but not my phone. Of course, that didn't necessarily mean anything, but things weren't looking very good, and I knew that the entire day would be miserable for me if I had to spend the entire time worrying about where my phone had gotten to so I decided that the smart thing to do would be to go back to that apartment and look for my phone and then meet Blaise and the big kids (Cherry decided that she wanted to come with me) back at the museum. Before we left though, Blaise needed to use the restroom, so the kids and I walked though a bit more of the collection while we waited, and Ezio told me that he didn't think that Blaise should be mad at me if my phone got stolen because he (Papa) got his phone stolen in Madrid when he'd only had it for five months. After what seemed to be an interminable wait, Blaise returned from the bathroom with the news that, after several attempts, he had finally managed to get my phone to come up, in our apartment, and so we continued with our visit.
Now, imagine a room the size of a high school gymnasium or maybe a biggish church filled with display cases full of minerals of various types and sizes and colors and you'll have some sense of what the mineral collection at the museum looked like. And remember that this is really only part of their rock and mineral collection—much of it is housed in the red zone and we had already seen it. The cases were arranged by types: sulfates, sulfites, quartzes, zeolites, and on and on and on. Red, green, blue, purple, orange, yellow, iridescent and shiny metallic, cubes, octahedrons, tetrahedrons, anything you can imagine, almost, on display in the mineral room. And tucked away in the back, The Vault, repository of Martian meteorites, gigantic emeralds, and a collection of nearly 300 diamonds in every color they naturally take.
By then, we'd spent more than two hours in the mineral collection, so we headed downstairs to the picnic area for lunch, along with those school groups that also hadn't eaten at a reasonable hour, and then across the street to the V&A. We spent a couple of hours wandering through fabric and dishes and furniture and clothing from the last 500 years or so of British (and I suppose, more generally European) history while listening to alarms going off roughly every forty five seconds. Blaise proclaimed it a most excellent museum because the density of benches was very high. Cherry and Ezio liked the Clore Discovery areas where they could try on hoop skirts and Inverness capes and design monograms. And I'm glad that we can say that we went, but the twenty percent or so of the collection that we saw was ample. I have no desire whatsoever to go back.
Sunday, July 13, 2014
In which we discover that the Borough Market sells French Cheese
Of course, that wouldn't be a problem, were it not for the fact that it seems that none of the shops in the market seemed to sell British cheese, but I digress. We had three goals for Thursday:
1) Go to a British market,
2) Go to a cathedral (Church of England this time), and
3) Go to the Museum of London.
Our first stop was the Borough Market, which seems to be the oldest market in London, though it's changed somewhat in nature since its founding in the Middle Ages, which it probably would have sold more British cheese and less French cheese. At this point it seems to have reinvented itself as a French market that has a few stalls selling meat pies, which would have been more appealing were it not for the fact that we'll be spending the next year in France, and that England is well known for two food groups, one of which is cheese.
From there we wandered over to the Southwark Cathedral for a while, which is much older than the current instantiation of St Paul's Cathedral, and also much less pricy. It was founded as an Augustian priory in the early twelfth century before becoming a diocesan church upon the decision of Henry VIII to break with Rome and the accompanying shuttering of the monasteries.
From there, we headed to back to the Underground and over to the Museum of London, which tells the story of London, from Paleolithic times up to the present. We learned, for instance, that while London (Londonium) was founded by the Romans in the first century, it was abandoned in the fifth century because conflict on the continent required that they consolidate their forces. At that point, the city was left abandoned for four centuries, only being repopulated in the ninth century when its walls were used as protection from Viking raids.
We learned about the Black Death and its effect on London, and the nearly two centuries that it took for the population of the city to return to its pre-plague levels. We learned about the conversion of the country under Henry VIII and its effect on the land holding of the Church in London. We explored a debtors' prison cell (why imprisoning someone for debt (and thereby preventing him from working) is supposed to solve anything I will never understand) and the names carved into its walls. We walked through a 17th century pleasure garden and a Victorian shopping district and watched 1950's era children's programming. Apparently it was very interesting because my kids are now quoting Blaise Pandy rather than Airplane. I haven't yet decided whether this is an improvement.
And then, after a stop at the bathrooms, a wander back to the Underground station via a system of elevated sidewalks, and then back home.
From there we wandered over to the Southwark Cathedral for a while, which is much older than the current instantiation of St Paul's Cathedral, and also much less pricy. It was founded as an Augustian priory in the early twelfth century before becoming a diocesan church upon the decision of Henry VIII to break with Rome and the accompanying shuttering of the monasteries.
From there, we headed to back to the Underground and over to the Museum of London, which tells the story of London, from Paleolithic times up to the present. We learned, for instance, that while London (Londonium) was founded by the Romans in the first century, it was abandoned in the fifth century because conflict on the continent required that they consolidate their forces. At that point, the city was left abandoned for four centuries, only being repopulated in the ninth century when its walls were used as protection from Viking raids.
We learned about the Black Death and its effect on London, and the nearly two centuries that it took for the population of the city to return to its pre-plague levels. We learned about the conversion of the country under Henry VIII and its effect on the land holding of the Church in London. We explored a debtors' prison cell (why imprisoning someone for debt (and thereby preventing him from working) is supposed to solve anything I will never understand) and the names carved into its walls. We walked through a 17th century pleasure garden and a Victorian shopping district and watched 1950's era children's programming. Apparently it was very interesting because my kids are now quoting Blaise Pandy rather than Airplane. I haven't yet decided whether this is an improvement.
And then, after a stop at the bathrooms, a wander back to the Underground station via a system of elevated sidewalks, and then back home.
Friday, July 11, 2014
In which we see another third of the Natural History Museum
Perhaps you remember back a few days ago that I said that we'd only managed to see about a third of the collection at the Natural History Museum when we went the first time. And perhaps you remember that, unlike the British Museum, my kids thought the Natural History Museum was both fun and interesting. Well, it seemed a bit of a shame to only see a third of a cool museum, and so on Wednesday, we went back, one of the perks of spending two weeks in a city. (Being able to spend a day reading and playing video games on vacation is another perk.)
We headed for the blue zone to start out this time. The bulk of the blue zone is made up of taxidermied animals (most of them several decades old, since the museum is no longer collecting new specimens), skeletons of more ancient animals, and replicas of what they would likely have looked like, given the skeletons. Have you ever wondered what the ancestors of elephants looked like, several iterations before mammoths and mastodons roams the land? Pretty bizarre if you ask me, with giant tusks jutting out of both upper and lower jaws.
The blue zone also had a fairly interesting exhibit on human development, which seemed to have a strange fascination with childbirth. Not, mind you, with pregnancy, nor with infancy, but only with childbirth. I don't have an explanation either.
From there we headed to the orange zone, which has two main parts. The first is a big outdoor garden which attempts to show flora and fauna (ok, bugs, it isn't that big) from all over England, complete with little doors that we could open to see the layering of the soil on different parts of the island.
The cooler part though is called the cocoon, and it is a big scientific research area for the 300 or so scientists that the museum has in house. The top two floors, out of seven, provide an opportunity for people to learn a little bit more out what scientists do.
From there we headed back inside to the dinosaur exhibit, which may, as they claim, be wildly popular, but which is also rather lame. It starts out promisingly enough, with the standard skeletons of the giant dinosaurs before herding visitors up a narrow staircase to a sort of catwalk flanked by skeletons of smaller dinosaurs—gallimimus, compsognathus, ornithomimus—and then a ramp down past a horrid roaring animatronic T. rex. It all went downhill from there, at least figuratively. We we're happy to escape as quickly as possible.
We finished our visit with a trip to the treasure room—stuffed great awks, an original copy of The Origin of the Species, a dwarf elephant tooth—before heading for home.
In which we play a lot of video games and I read Little Women in its entirety
There actually isn't a whole lot more to say about Tuesday. Cherry and I were the only people to even leave the flat, and we only did so because the alternative was to eat pan-fried paperboard with salt for dinner.
Thursday, July 10, 2014
In which we hate the British Museum
Whenever anyone found out that we were going to London, they were always sure to tell us that we absolutely must go to the British Museum. After all, that was where they had the Elgin Marbles (for the big people) and mummies! for the not quite so big people, and it's the most visited tourist site in London and, therefore, must be really, really, really great, right?
To begin, Monday was the day that the Tour de France was in London, which meant lots of people, but also lots of road closures and public transportation disruptions and a suggestion on the tfl.gov.uk (Transport for London) website that the Green Park station, which we normally transit through, would be so insanely packed that they would actually have to actively manage the queue in order to make sure than nobody got trampled and everyone could get out if there were a fire. As that didn't sound very appealing, we decided that it would be a good day to go to the British Museum as that was best reached from our flat by a combination of Overground and bus.
After a bit of a tussle with the ticket machines to get day passes for Sapphire and Ezio, we were off to London's Euston station, and then by bus to Russell Park. (Which were, though I didn't realize it until later, very near the site of the 7/7 London bombings.) From there we walked to the British Museum.
I went in expecting to like it, and expecting the kids to like it fairly well also, and Blaise was really excited about seeing their Greek and Roman collection. After all, it's famous and has cool stuff, and everybody says you have to go there. It's also insanely packed, which meant that we saw glimpses of the Rosetta Stone from between the shoulders of taller (and ruder) people who shoved in front of us, and got pushed through the Marbles and the Assyrians. We had to choose between being close enough to the exhibits in those rooms to read the descriptions, or far enough back to see the art properly, because the crowds were not conducive to moving back and forth. The mummies were yet worse, because now the crowds of people were primarily kids, who seemed to be attempting to simulate Brownian motion, bumping off of people and cases and heading in appeared to be a randomly determined direction each time. After about an hour and a half of that, we decided that we'd had more than enough, and headed back to Russell Square for lunch, and then to the British Library.
Now, nobody told us that we absolutely must see the British Library while we were in London, and we didn't anticipate that our visit there would take more than fifteen or twenty minutes. We knew there was a copy of the Magna Carta, and that they had some old Bibles, but really, how long can it possibly take to look at a few books? An hour and a half later we had seen original scores by composers from Thomas Tallis to Mozart to Paul McCartney; dozens of illuminated Bibles and other sacred texts; diaries and sketches from Michelangelo; original copies of Beowulf and Shakespeare; and, of course, one of the four existing original copies of the Magna Carta. We'd also decided that Pope Innocent III was a bit of a jerk for issuing a papal bull that declared the original Magna Carta null.
An attempt to stop at the Wellcome Museum (a dedicated health sciences museum) failed because only the gift shop and cafe are open on Mondays, and so we headed for home, a bit earlier than expected.
To begin, Monday was the day that the Tour de France was in London, which meant lots of people, but also lots of road closures and public transportation disruptions and a suggestion on the tfl.gov.uk (Transport for London) website that the Green Park station, which we normally transit through, would be so insanely packed that they would actually have to actively manage the queue in order to make sure than nobody got trampled and everyone could get out if there were a fire. As that didn't sound very appealing, we decided that it would be a good day to go to the British Museum as that was best reached from our flat by a combination of Overground and bus.
After a bit of a tussle with the ticket machines to get day passes for Sapphire and Ezio, we were off to London's Euston station, and then by bus to Russell Park. (Which were, though I didn't realize it until later, very near the site of the 7/7 London bombings.) From there we walked to the British Museum.
I went in expecting to like it, and expecting the kids to like it fairly well also, and Blaise was really excited about seeing their Greek and Roman collection. After all, it's famous and has cool stuff, and everybody says you have to go there. It's also insanely packed, which meant that we saw glimpses of the Rosetta Stone from between the shoulders of taller (and ruder) people who shoved in front of us, and got pushed through the Marbles and the Assyrians. We had to choose between being close enough to the exhibits in those rooms to read the descriptions, or far enough back to see the art properly, because the crowds were not conducive to moving back and forth. The mummies were yet worse, because now the crowds of people were primarily kids, who seemed to be attempting to simulate Brownian motion, bumping off of people and cases and heading in appeared to be a randomly determined direction each time. After about an hour and a half of that, we decided that we'd had more than enough, and headed back to Russell Square for lunch, and then to the British Library.
Now, nobody told us that we absolutely must see the British Library while we were in London, and we didn't anticipate that our visit there would take more than fifteen or twenty minutes. We knew there was a copy of the Magna Carta, and that they had some old Bibles, but really, how long can it possibly take to look at a few books? An hour and a half later we had seen original scores by composers from Thomas Tallis to Mozart to Paul McCartney; dozens of illuminated Bibles and other sacred texts; diaries and sketches from Michelangelo; original copies of Beowulf and Shakespeare; and, of course, one of the four existing original copies of the Magna Carta. We'd also decided that Pope Innocent III was a bit of a jerk for issuing a papal bull that declared the original Magna Carta null.
An attempt to stop at the Wellcome Museum (a dedicated health sciences museum) failed because only the gift shop and cafe are open on Mondays, and so we headed for home, a bit earlier than expected.
Wednesday, July 9, 2014
In which we remember Diana
Sunday is Mass day, which is, due to a certain British monarch whose name will remain unmentioned, a bit harder than one might think if one were to just look at all the churches littering the city, most with proper saint names, and then, off in the corner or down at the bottom, the little CE that means Church of England, and not Catholic after all. But they aren't unheard of anymore, for the English are no longer in the habit of executing men for the offense of being Catholic priests. So we poked around the internet a bit, and found that, in addition to Westminster Abbey, which is Church of England, an absolutely necessary tourist stop (which we aren't planning to go to), and quite pricy unless you have a letter from your C of E vicar, there is also a Westminster Cathedral, which is Catholic, not on any tourist tour, and completely free.
So, having figured out where we were going to mass, we had to figure out how we were going to get there, which we discovered was going to be a bit tricky on Saturday evening when we discovered the signs at the underground saying that "our" station was going to be closed on Sunday morning so that they could work on the tunnels. Options:
So, having figured out where we were going to mass, we had to figure out how we were going to get there, which we discovered was going to be a bit tricky on Saturday evening when we discovered the signs at the underground saying that "our" station was going to be closed on Sunday morning so that they could work on the tunnels. Options:
- Figure out how to get to the Cathedral using some other means of transpiration, either buses or the overground, and make the 10:30 mass
- Accept that the major accomplishment of the day was going to be going to mass, and go to the noon mass, which would mean that we could catch the train after it started running again at 11:00
- Find a different church.
Well, we didn't really want to find a different church, though there are, in fact, lots of them, and a certain laziness meant that I didn't really want to figure out the other means of transportation, and so we ended up opting for the noon mass, and having a rather leisurely morning before heading to the Cathedral.
After mass, we found a bus to take us to Kensington Gardens, and walked on in to the Diana, Princess of Wales, Memorial Playground. I think the kids mostly had fun, though I confess that I'm not entirely certain. There was a big ship that they played on, or rather, the younger two played on, because Sapphire promptly found someone to talk to, and they sat atop the cabin and chattered away. And they spent some time trying to leap from the back of one wooden sheep to the next; Ezio finally announcing that, since he'd managed to get one foot onto the last sheep before touching the ground on two separate occasions, that was as good as getting two feet onto the sheep once, and so he considered himself to have met his goal. We filled up water bottles on the way out, again discovering after having drunk from them that the water at the playground was not recommended for drinking. (Since we haven't yet felt any ill effects from any of the unrecommended water that we've drunk, I'm beginning to suspect that this is some sort of a racket to increase the income of the little food and drink stands all over the place.) Then, buses all the way home, where Blaise and the younger kids went up to the apartment, and Sapphire and I hiked up to the Waitrose, which had added an extra constraint to our day by closing at 5:00 on Sunday afternoon (and not opening until 11:00 that morning).
Tuesday, July 8, 2014
In which we visit the science museum
Saturday we decided to brave another museum, this time the London Science Museum, and, this time, we were prepared for our troglodyte walk through the tunnel to the museum entrance. After spending an entire day at the Natural History Museum, and finding that we'd only managed to cover a third of it, I was a bit apprehensive about the Science Museum, which, as it turned out, was a fair bit smaller than Natural History, and a good thing too.
We started with a room that detailed the history of the steam engine, full of both scale models and actual historic steam engines, with one massive running machine in the middle, dripping water and sending off puffs of steam. Several of the machines that we saw were in use for over a century, which seems pretty impressive in our disposable economy. Then it was off through the "Making the Modern World Exhibit," which was either
We started with a room that detailed the history of the steam engine, full of both scale models and actual historic steam engines, with one massive running machine in the middle, dripping water and sending off puffs of steam. Several of the machines that we saw were in use for over a century, which seems pretty impressive in our disposable economy. Then it was off through the "Making the Modern World Exhibit," which was either
- arranged according to some schema that made sense to the organizers at the time it was set up, or
- arranged in accordance with some writings of the French philosopher Jean d'Alembert.
It wasn't clear to what the principle was, though I'm fairly confident that it wasn't chronological. In any case, the room was fairly interesting, if somewhat crowded. We finished off the ground floor, or at least as much of it as we were going to see, with an exhibition of flight, both airplane and space.
Up the elevator we went to the third floor, where we discovered that we had entered some weird nothingness space in the museum. On the plus side, there were definitely not any crowds there. On the minus side, there were also not any exhibits there. A bit of poking led us to a big open area with tables and a stand in the corner selling smoothies, so we plopped ourselves down at an open table and I went off on a quest to find a drinking fountain and fill our water bottles. Reasoning that drinking fountains in museums tend to occur in concert with bathrooms, I used the handy map hanging on the wall to figure out where the nearest bathrooms were. I soon discovered that the lovely maps that were hanging all over the museum left off one important detail—walls, or at least internal walls. So after walking the length of the big room I discovered that the bathrooms that I wanted were on the other side of the wall, and that all of the doors in that particular wall were exit only from the other side. Fortunately, someone had failed to properly shut the door, and so I managed to slip through and, avoiding the many small children rattling around the room, make it to the bathroom and, since there was no drinking fountain, fill the water bottles at the sink. (I later discovered that many of the bathrooms in the museum had big red signs up warning us not to drink the water from the tap. We're still alive though, so I'm going to assume that whatever we drank was benign.)
We spent most of the afternoon in a variety of medical exhibits, beginning with a small room full of historical veterinary tools. Let's just say that I'm extremely glad that I wasn't a 19th century horse. From there we headed to a giant winding exhibit on the history of modern medicine, beginning with the Babylonians and Egyptians and progressing from there through the Greeks and Romans all the way up through modern times. I was alternately amazed at what the ancients had managed to figure out, and shocked that anyone managed to live long enough to reproduce back then. We saw some medieval books of herbal cures, various wooden statues of saints that were supposed to offer some protection against various diseases, terra cotta votives that were supposed to be offered as thanks for healing at the Temple of Asclepius, various set ups for treating diabetes, and much more.
From there we headed down the stairs to a room of life size dioramas, depicting the state of medical treatment over the last couple of centuries. (Apparently the British National Heath Service is very fond of a sort of sickly green on the walls of hospital rooms. I'm not sure whether this is because the color is so hideous that patients have an additional incentive to get better quickly.) Then on to the next floor down, and still more medical equipment, including an iron lung, which my kids generally agreed seemed barbaric.
Then, on to an exhibit on energy, and one on the history of agriculture. It appears that in ancient China and India they had no need of oxen to pull the plow because they had women. Maybe the men were doing the laundry and tending the children, but I somehow doubt it. Finally, we headed back down through the second half of the steam engine exhibit, and back to the flat.
In which we superficially see a lot
It's difficult to know how to write about what we did on Friday. From one perspective, we did a great deal. From another, we did almost nothing. Or rather, we saw a lot of different things, but none of them at any great depth. Therefore, I will write a blog post of similar lack of depth.
We took the Underground to the Westminster station and headed along the Thames for a bit until we could see the London Eye on the other side of the river and decide that we had absolutely no desire to ride it. The we headed back the other direction, past Big Ben and Parliament, until we got to Victoria Tower Gardens where we pulled out our delectable ham and cheese sandwiches and oranges for lunch.
After lunch we headed back through the Little Dean's Yard at Westminster Abbey toward the St James Underground Station to meet friends who wanted to show us a little more of London. We headed through Saint James Park to Buckingham Palace, then over to Trafalgar Square before spending half an hour (much too long, according to Cherry) in the National Galleries looking at paintings. Then it was off through shopping and theater districts to Piccadilly Circus and finally Oxford Circus, where we caught the underground back to the flat.
I'm not really sure what to say beyond that. It felt like we saw a lot of things, but so quickly that none of us really had time to process any of it, which meant that it kind of felt like we didn't see much of anything. The Parliament complex is impressive, at least from the outside. Since we couldn't get in, it's entirely possible that the inside is decorated entirely in mauve and aqua. Sapphire was amused by the signs in Saint James Park admonishing us not to feed the pelicans, given that, while there were lots (and lots) of water birds present, none of them were pelicans.
We took the Underground to the Westminster station and headed along the Thames for a bit until we could see the London Eye on the other side of the river and decide that we had absolutely no desire to ride it. The we headed back the other direction, past Big Ben and Parliament, until we got to Victoria Tower Gardens where we pulled out our delectable ham and cheese sandwiches and oranges for lunch.
After lunch we headed back through the Little Dean's Yard at Westminster Abbey toward the St James Underground Station to meet friends who wanted to show us a little more of London. We headed through Saint James Park to Buckingham Palace, then over to Trafalgar Square before spending half an hour (much too long, according to Cherry) in the National Galleries looking at paintings. Then it was off through shopping and theater districts to Piccadilly Circus and finally Oxford Circus, where we caught the underground back to the flat.
I'm not really sure what to say beyond that. It felt like we saw a lot of things, but so quickly that none of us really had time to process any of it, which meant that it kind of felt like we didn't see much of anything. The Parliament complex is impressive, at least from the outside. Since we couldn't get in, it's entirely possible that the inside is decorated entirely in mauve and aqua. Sapphire was amused by the signs in Saint James Park admonishing us not to feed the pelicans, given that, while there were lots (and lots) of water birds present, none of them were pelicans.
Monday, July 7, 2014
In which we go to the Natural History Museum
Our first day in London, which was really just a partial day, we didn't manage to accomplish much of anything. We established that the Tesco Express that is just around the corner from our apartment has rather limited options, and that the Waitrose, which is a half mile walk from our apartment, has pretty good options, and that spiced pudding with treacle, which is something like cake with caramel, is really pretty good. Also I discovered that our windows open from the top as well as the bottom, and that every single outlet in our apartment, err flat, has a little on/off switch next to it, which allowed us to solve the mystery of the washing machine that failed to wash.
By Thursday, though, we were, more or less, ready to go out and explore the city, and so, after a delicious breakfast of crumpets with Guernsey butter and lime marmalade we braved the walk to the London Underground which, evidently, is the actual name for the Tube. (And if you're thinking that crumpets are properly eaten for tea, you may be right, but the shop had them with the breakfast foods. And I didn't see black sausages.) Anyhow, we ended up successfully making the trek to the station, and figuring out how to buy tickets and get to the proper platform.
Twenty minutes and one transfer later, we were escaping the station at South Kensington, only to discover that the route to the Natural History Museum involved walking through a further quarter mile of tunnel before emerging, blinking, into the sun. (Actually, we weren't really blinking, but I've always wanted to write that.) We soon discovered that the museum was divided into four zones, red, orange, blue, and green, with each zone including three or four large levels of exhibits and the obligatory gift shop. We began with the pliosaurs and ichthyosaurs (green zone), moving into the birds (still green zone), and then got distracted by a massive metal globe with an escalator rising into it and disappearing (red zone).
After a leisurely stroll around the outside displays of the room, which were full of mineral specimens
from all over the world, including this very cool piece from Cyprus in which the wood in a mine prop has been almost completely replaced by copper, we headed up the "escalator of doom." I'll leave it to you to guess who named it that. Upstairs we went through an exhibit on volcanos and earthquakes, and experienced a simulation of a grocery store during the 1996 earthquake in Kobe, Japan. Amazingly, the people of Kobe had the forethought to firmly fasten all of their goods to the shelves ahead of the earthquake, because none of the boxes or bottle in the shop fell to the floor, despite the fact that the shelves were moving like crazy. It's not clear to me how anyone could have bought any of them though…. We saw lots and lots of gold and silver and gems, and learned about how advances in metallurgy allowed for other advances. We saw fossils of all types: animal, vegetable, water, and traced the evolution of life from single celled organisms up to the present day.
By that time, it was almost five o'clock, the museum was closing in half an hour, and we'd barely managed to cover a third of their collection, despite having been there since shortly after eleven. Also, we had no food in our apartment, and we weren't sure whether the fact that the kids' transit day passes were off peak was going to be a problem (answer: no), so we figured that it might be time to retreat to the tunnels and head for home. After a stop at the Waitrose on the way home to pick up something for dinner, as well as more crumpets for breakfast and stuff to pack a lunch for Friday, we headed back to the apartment, where I "made" dinner (sausages, mashed potatoes, and salad) and the kids worked on French and started their blogs.
By Thursday, though, we were, more or less, ready to go out and explore the city, and so, after a delicious breakfast of crumpets with Guernsey butter and lime marmalade we braved the walk to the London Underground which, evidently, is the actual name for the Tube. (And if you're thinking that crumpets are properly eaten for tea, you may be right, but the shop had them with the breakfast foods. And I didn't see black sausages.) Anyhow, we ended up successfully making the trek to the station, and figuring out how to buy tickets and get to the proper platform.
Twenty minutes and one transfer later, we were escaping the station at South Kensington, only to discover that the route to the Natural History Museum involved walking through a further quarter mile of tunnel before emerging, blinking, into the sun. (Actually, we weren't really blinking, but I've always wanted to write that.) We soon discovered that the museum was divided into four zones, red, orange, blue, and green, with each zone including three or four large levels of exhibits and the obligatory gift shop. We began with the pliosaurs and ichthyosaurs (green zone), moving into the birds (still green zone), and then got distracted by a massive metal globe with an escalator rising into it and disappearing (red zone).
After a leisurely stroll around the outside displays of the room, which were full of mineral specimens
By that time, it was almost five o'clock, the museum was closing in half an hour, and we'd barely managed to cover a third of their collection, despite having been there since shortly after eleven. Also, we had no food in our apartment, and we weren't sure whether the fact that the kids' transit day passes were off peak was going to be a problem (answer: no), so we figured that it might be time to retreat to the tunnels and head for home. After a stop at the Waitrose on the way home to pick up something for dinner, as well as more crumpets for breakfast and stuff to pack a lunch for Friday, we headed back to the apartment, where I "made" dinner (sausages, mashed potatoes, and salad) and the kids worked on French and started their blogs.
Sunday, July 6, 2014
In which we transit once again
There is a lot of transiting involved in our summer so far—from Urbana to the Keweenaw, from the Keweenaw to Chicago, from Chicago to London, and, still to come, from London to Rome and from Rome to Marseille.
It is difficult for me to imagine that anyone really wants to read a detailed account of our trip to London. (If I'm wrong, please let me know, and I'll type out a moment by moment account, just for you.) The highlights (or lowlights as you prefer):
It is difficult for me to imagine that anyone really wants to read a detailed account of our trip to London. (If I'm wrong, please let me know, and I'll type out a moment by moment account, just for you.) The highlights (or lowlights as you prefer):
- Our flight to London was already delayed as of 8:00 Tuesday morning, more than 14 hours before it was due to depart. As it turned out, that was because we were flying a brand spanking new Dreamliner that had to be checked out before it was permitted to depart London. We all celebrated with cake before boarding the plane, and then proceeded to spend the next seven hours with our kneecaps in our ears. I highly anti-recommend it for people who are taller than four feet. Also, there were no barf bags in any of the seat pockets. Unfortunately, that became relevant.
- Security in Chicago took all of ninety seconds. Passport control in London took more like ninety minutes, made worse by the fact that we got shunted into the "fast line" just in time for them to close three of the five open windows, and by the fact that a certain member of our party was still feeling rather queasy.
- Blaise didn't trust me to manage to use public transportation to get us from the airport to the apartment, so he booked a car for us, which meant that he was outside the apartment building waiting for us when we got there.
- Our apartment can best be described as cozy, with one room that serves as living room, kids' bedroom, and dining room, with the kitchen and laundry wall mostly not hidden behind a set of double doors. There are also a very small bedroom and a bathroom (which is surprisingly large). And six flights of stairs every time we want to go in or out. And four very busy sets of train tracks outside our window, so that it seems hardly a minute passes without some train hurtling past or pulling into the station.
Saturday, July 5, 2014
In which we go north
Over the years I have learned that "up north" is a relative term for most people. It seems to just mean any place that is a few hours north of where they normally live. "Up North" for me is a very specific location though, the cottage that my parents have been renting on the shore of Lake Superior since I was in second grade, when the birth of my youngest sister led them to decide that they might have outgrown the hotel room that they had previously rented. But the woman they rent "their" cottage from is now into her nineties, and it is far from clear how much longer her children will allow her to go to the Keweenaw Peninsula alone.
So I wanted to make sure that we headed up north this summer since we won't be in the States next summer, and since it seems like any year might be the last year that my parents head up there. (If you look at the webpage for the Shoreline though Mom, it looks like they are now renting out both a two bedroom cabin and a three bedroom apartment. Just in case you were interested.) My original plans were to finish moving out of our house on Friday afternoon and start the trip up north yet that evening, staying somewhere around Beloit, WI. By Thursday night I'd scratched that plan, and determined that we'd in fact leave around 7:00 on Saturday morning, which would give us plenty of time to stop for breaks and still make it up to the cottage by dinnertime. By Friday evening it was clear that we'd never be done with the house that evening and so the new plan was to quickly finish up the house on Saturday morning and be on the road by 9:00. We made 9:00, Mountain time.
The drive up was uneventful, other than a stop for lunch at the World's Largest Culver's, along with every boy scout troop in the upper midwest, and a near collision with a deer 15 miles south of the cottage. Oh, and a spirited debate in the gas station convenience store over whether or not there existed a kind of gum that all three kids would actually be willing to chew. Answer, possibly, but we haven't found it yet.
I'll spare you the details of our eight days up north. The kids went hunting for copper on a tailing pile with Grandpa once, and hunting for agates and thomsonite along Lake Superior once. And we went to the Seaman Mineral Museum once, where Sapphire saw a third of the collection very thoroughly with my mom, and the rest of us saw the entire collection considerably less thoroughly with my dad. We went to Fort Wilkins, which was only actually occupied as a fort for about five years, but which has been a state park for nearly a century. We also spent nearly four days without hot water, spent most of the first five days we were there wearing coats in the living room because it was so cold, and provided food to a host of mosquitos, black flies, and noseeums. We did make it to the beach the last three days we were there, and were only chased away by the black flies the last day, and went to mass the first Sunday at Holy Redeemer Church in Eagle Harbor and the second Sunday at Saint Paul the Apostle in Calumet.
And then we headed back to Chicago on Monday morning, racing to beat both the car rental return deadline and the storm that was impending.
So I wanted to make sure that we headed up north this summer since we won't be in the States next summer, and since it seems like any year might be the last year that my parents head up there. (If you look at the webpage for the Shoreline though Mom, it looks like they are now renting out both a two bedroom cabin and a three bedroom apartment. Just in case you were interested.) My original plans were to finish moving out of our house on Friday afternoon and start the trip up north yet that evening, staying somewhere around Beloit, WI. By Thursday night I'd scratched that plan, and determined that we'd in fact leave around 7:00 on Saturday morning, which would give us plenty of time to stop for breaks and still make it up to the cottage by dinnertime. By Friday evening it was clear that we'd never be done with the house that evening and so the new plan was to quickly finish up the house on Saturday morning and be on the road by 9:00. We made 9:00, Mountain time.
The drive up was uneventful, other than a stop for lunch at the World's Largest Culver's, along with every boy scout troop in the upper midwest, and a near collision with a deer 15 miles south of the cottage. Oh, and a spirited debate in the gas station convenience store over whether or not there existed a kind of gum that all three kids would actually be willing to chew. Answer, possibly, but we haven't found it yet.
I'll spare you the details of our eight days up north. The kids went hunting for copper on a tailing pile with Grandpa once, and hunting for agates and thomsonite along Lake Superior once. And we went to the Seaman Mineral Museum once, where Sapphire saw a third of the collection very thoroughly with my mom, and the rest of us saw the entire collection considerably less thoroughly with my dad. We went to Fort Wilkins, which was only actually occupied as a fort for about five years, but which has been a state park for nearly a century. We also spent nearly four days without hot water, spent most of the first five days we were there wearing coats in the living room because it was so cold, and provided food to a host of mosquitos, black flies, and noseeums. We did make it to the beach the last three days we were there, and were only chased away by the black flies the last day, and went to mass the first Sunday at Holy Redeemer Church in Eagle Harbor and the second Sunday at Saint Paul the Apostle in Calumet.
And then we headed back to Chicago on Monday morning, racing to beat both the car rental return deadline and the storm that was impending.
Friday, July 4, 2014
In which we transition (part the second)
(continued)
Fortunately, we live(d) only a half mile from Meijer, and so, with no further ado, I forced Cherry to walk with me and buy the things that we most needed. And quickly came to the conclusion that we needed a car. I really didn't want to rent one yet though, since that seemed like it would be really expensive. So, naturally, I called my mom and suggested that she might have some deep-seated subconscious desire to come to Urbana and provide me with transportation for awhile. And, amazingly, she found that she did have a deep-seated subconscious desire to do so, but not until Monday afternoon.
In the meantime, we would have to get where we wanted to go by foot, bus, or some combination thereof. Sunday, we walked to Meijer to catch the bus to campus for mass, and from there to the movies since Sapphire's friends were getting together a group to watch The Fault in our Stars and then the bus back home (via campus) and the hike back from Meijer.
Monday, Mom arrived, and so for three and a half days we had a car. Life would have seemed almost normal, except for the fact that we had boxes all over the house and every time I had a brilliant idea for something to make for dinner it turned out that some critical component was either packed or tossed and the fact that we perpetually had stuff all over the front porch for someone to come and pick up for Freecycle. Oh, and that there were a whole bunch of bonus eleven year old boys there on Tuesday night.
On Thursday she left, and was replaced by two delightful eight year olds who (unfortunately) did not come with vehicles but did come with dolls and sleeping bags and pillows and did an impressive job of taking over the family room. They were picked up Friday morning, and we promptly packed up our swimsuits and towels and figured out the bus route to the swimming pool. (Walk to Meijer, take the Red to the Illini Union, walk to the nearest ATM (ok, that wasn't actually part of the bus route, but I needed cash for the swimming pool), walk back to the Union, get on the Blue to the pool, get off and walk to the pool, arriving thirty minutes before it opens. Timing with the buses is tricky, OK?)
Sunday we rode the bus to mass again (this time at our regular church) and then we were done with the buses, at least in Urbana-Champaign, at least for now. Well, not quite. I still had to ride the bus to pick up the car on Monday afternoon, in between Ezio having a friend dropped off for a sleepover and Cherry getting picked up for a sleepover, and me dropping Sapphire off at a sleepover. (Did I mention that this was complicated?) But, at least we had a car, and a deadline, and one more farewell celebration (for Sapphire), and one more birthday party (for Cherry's friend), and one more trip to the swimming pool (for Ezio and Cherry), and a whole bunch of stuff to put into boxes. Also a reservation for a twenty foot rental truck that I was terrified to drive, and an agreement with the neighbor across the street and his friend to help me load the truck.
Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday are perhaps best not thought about, but somehow, by bedtime on Thursday, everything (almost) was in boxes and taped and ready to be loaded on the truck, and Sapphire's (fifty ton) desk was disassembled and on the living room floor, and Ezio's bunk beds had been disassembled so that they could get through the door, and nearly everything that I wanted to Freecycle had been picked up.
Moving on Friday took six hours and three trips to the storage unit and I did not, in fact, drive the truck into anything that I shouldn't have until I was trying to gas it back up and got stuck on the little protector things that stick out of the ground around the gas pumps. And then I went back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and stayed stuck until some lovely gentleman got out of his car and laughingly directed me out of my predicament. Alas, we weren't actually done yet. There were still things that needed to be thrown out or recycled and so it wasn't until Saturday morning that we were finally able to get on the road for the next step in our journey to Marseille.
Fortunately, we live(d) only a half mile from Meijer, and so, with no further ado, I forced Cherry to walk with me and buy the things that we most needed. And quickly came to the conclusion that we needed a car. I really didn't want to rent one yet though, since that seemed like it would be really expensive. So, naturally, I called my mom and suggested that she might have some deep-seated subconscious desire to come to Urbana and provide me with transportation for awhile. And, amazingly, she found that she did have a deep-seated subconscious desire to do so, but not until Monday afternoon.
In the meantime, we would have to get where we wanted to go by foot, bus, or some combination thereof. Sunday, we walked to Meijer to catch the bus to campus for mass, and from there to the movies since Sapphire's friends were getting together a group to watch The Fault in our Stars and then the bus back home (via campus) and the hike back from Meijer.
Monday, Mom arrived, and so for three and a half days we had a car. Life would have seemed almost normal, except for the fact that we had boxes all over the house and every time I had a brilliant idea for something to make for dinner it turned out that some critical component was either packed or tossed and the fact that we perpetually had stuff all over the front porch for someone to come and pick up for Freecycle. Oh, and that there were a whole bunch of bonus eleven year old boys there on Tuesday night.
On Thursday she left, and was replaced by two delightful eight year olds who (unfortunately) did not come with vehicles but did come with dolls and sleeping bags and pillows and did an impressive job of taking over the family room. They were picked up Friday morning, and we promptly packed up our swimsuits and towels and figured out the bus route to the swimming pool. (Walk to Meijer, take the Red to the Illini Union, walk to the nearest ATM (ok, that wasn't actually part of the bus route, but I needed cash for the swimming pool), walk back to the Union, get on the Blue to the pool, get off and walk to the pool, arriving thirty minutes before it opens. Timing with the buses is tricky, OK?)
Sunday we rode the bus to mass again (this time at our regular church) and then we were done with the buses, at least in Urbana-Champaign, at least for now. Well, not quite. I still had to ride the bus to pick up the car on Monday afternoon, in between Ezio having a friend dropped off for a sleepover and Cherry getting picked up for a sleepover, and me dropping Sapphire off at a sleepover. (Did I mention that this was complicated?) But, at least we had a car, and a deadline, and one more farewell celebration (for Sapphire), and one more birthday party (for Cherry's friend), and one more trip to the swimming pool (for Ezio and Cherry), and a whole bunch of stuff to put into boxes. Also a reservation for a twenty foot rental truck that I was terrified to drive, and an agreement with the neighbor across the street and his friend to help me load the truck.
Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday are perhaps best not thought about, but somehow, by bedtime on Thursday, everything (almost) was in boxes and taped and ready to be loaded on the truck, and Sapphire's (fifty ton) desk was disassembled and on the living room floor, and Ezio's bunk beds had been disassembled so that they could get through the door, and nearly everything that I wanted to Freecycle had been picked up.
Moving on Friday took six hours and three trips to the storage unit and I did not, in fact, drive the truck into anything that I shouldn't have until I was trying to gas it back up and got stuck on the little protector things that stick out of the ground around the gas pumps. And then I went back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and stayed stuck until some lovely gentleman got out of his car and laughingly directed me out of my predicament. Alas, we weren't actually done yet. There were still things that needed to be thrown out or recycled and so it wasn't until Saturday morning that we were finally able to get on the road for the next step in our journey to Marseille.
Thursday, July 3, 2014
In which we transition
It seems now that there is so much too write about, and at the same time, too little. Blaise flew to Paris on the 1st of June, and the kids finished school on the 2nd (a full day this year since the diocese has evidently decided that the school is no longer allowed to count Mass and distributing report cards as a day of school).
And then the race was on: our plane tickets were set for the first of July, and beginning on the 21st of June, we wanted to join my parents at the cottage they rent on Lake Superior every summer. In between, we needed to pack everything in the house and move it into a storage facility (which we still needed to rent), sell the car, and squeeze in birthday/farewell parties for the girls and a farewell party for Ezio. At least renting the house out was already taken care of.
Two weeks before we were scheduled to head to the cottage, I listed the minivan on Craigslist, anticipating that it might take some time to sell it. Fifteen minutes later I started getting emailed inquiries, so I put the kids in the car and headed for Target to look at suitcases and Lowes to get a new light fixture for the ceiling fan in the living room which was (evidently) melted (which explained why replacing the bulbs failed to result in a functional light fixture). By the time we got back, I had half a dozen messages, so I picked the one that seemed most likely and emailed them back. Ninety minutes later I had $1700 in cash and no car. And the sudden realization that we had no milk.
To Be Continued. . .
And then the race was on: our plane tickets were set for the first of July, and beginning on the 21st of June, we wanted to join my parents at the cottage they rent on Lake Superior every summer. In between, we needed to pack everything in the house and move it into a storage facility (which we still needed to rent), sell the car, and squeeze in birthday/farewell parties for the girls and a farewell party for Ezio. At least renting the house out was already taken care of.
Two weeks before we were scheduled to head to the cottage, I listed the minivan on Craigslist, anticipating that it might take some time to sell it. Fifteen minutes later I started getting emailed inquiries, so I put the kids in the car and headed for Target to look at suitcases and Lowes to get a new light fixture for the ceiling fan in the living room which was (evidently) melted (which explained why replacing the bulbs failed to result in a functional light fixture). By the time we got back, I had half a dozen messages, so I picked the one that seemed most likely and emailed them back. Ninety minutes later I had $1700 in cash and no car. And the sudden realization that we had no milk.
To Be Continued. . .
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