What I learned in London
My husband and I finally took a just-for-us vacation together, after 4 years. We went to London for a week this March. It was fantastic to get away from work and from everyone and just spend a week relaxing and doing whatever we wanted, without getting up at 6 a.m. EVERY DAY to walk the dog.
London is a fascinating place, I was there in 1985, the year I studied abroad, and in 1995 with my sister. Well, in the past ten years they have seen an economic boom and it is now one of the hippest and trendiest places to be. After all, Madonna lives there, right?
Many things struck me, but among them are:
1. London is old. Not in the Europe-is-old-America-is-new sense. But in the sense that London has been continuously inhabited for thousands of years. One of the best museums we visited (they were all great) was the Museum of London. You could walk through the timeline from 2000 B.C. to the present, examining artifacts from daily life from Prehistoric through Roman through Medieval through Victorian to now. One day we went to the Tower of London and it was amazing to hear that the complex was used as a castle/home/defense/prison etc for about 1000 years. And it still looks good! A picture of the White Tower is below.
A corollary to 1. is that I am old. Well not old, and certainly not as old as London, but older than I was when I traipsed around town the first time. I remember being drunk with friends, waiting for the Tube at midnight, walking all over the place, having endless energy. Then I was living in France, so was on the same page time-wise. This time, jet lag hit me in the ribs, and made me feel old. It didn't help that I had a killer cold and could hardly drag myself out of bed before ten am, and then was unable to sleep at night. It also didn't help that M was perky at 7 am (apparently he has not heard of jet lag) and spent some of the time I was in bed running throughout London training for his marathon! Anyway, I definitely felt that things were different this time. we managed to go to pubs in the evening, but no drunken wandering through town, or late nights at the dance club. A good side effect of the cold was that M was easily able to find me in museums, he said he knew I was wherever that person who was constantly blowing their nose was.
2. London is jam packed with history and culture. Obvious I know, but who is not impressed with the contributions of England/Britian/London to world culture. It was amazing to walk the streets that Dickens walked, that Queen Elizabeth walked, that Shakespeare walked, that Jane Austen walked (actually did she live in London much? I don't think so). We stayed in Bloomsbury, home to Virginia Woolf, E.M. Forster, Lytton Strachey, etc.
You really get a sense of this in the V and A museum, the British Museum, the National Gallery, and the National Portrait Gallery. I guess part of it is loot from other cultures (especially the British Museum, probably the reason I am not fond of that museum, it is basically a collection of stuff the British "acquired" from other places). But there really is an incredible accumulation of stuff of all kinds, representing every type of artwork, cultural artifact, political movement, literary accomlishment, etc. It makes your head spin. We went to the pub that Karl Marx frequented, right by the British Museum. We saw all the little blue plaques that certify historically important people's homes. We saw movie footage of Queen Victoria's funeral procession. We saw more silver tableware than we wanted to see. We saw the original Alice in Wonderland book that Lewis Carroll wrote. We saw the Rosetta Stone. It was overwhelming.
3. English history is fascinating. I am not sure why, but I was always more interested in English history than French history, for example, even though I am a francophile as well as an anglophile. Maybe because it is possible to imagine the English monarchs as people, or maybe because there are more women involved, or maybe because they aren't all named Louis. One really good movie is A Lion in Winter, about Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine. Even though it is fictional, you can really imagine how being ruler of a country would affect a person's life and their family interactions and all personal interactions. The National Portrain Gallery and the Tower of London and the Museum of London do a good job of summarizing English history for the casual student.
4. London is cute. Don't you just love all the neighborhoods, little towns within a bigger town, all the English conventions like tea, and ploughman's lunch (disappearing in the face of the gastropubs) and Fortnum and Mason's, and Liberty fabrics, driving on the "wrong" side of the road, the Tube iconography, English accents, Winnie the Pooh, the Mini, the word "luv". WE liked to just walk through the neighborhoods and look. Look at everything. Below is a picture of a street in Mayfair, walking through there just felt like being on a movie set.
5. I could not live in a big city. I need green grass on every street. I hate places that are paved from house to house across the street, right up to the foundations of the buildings. Even London, a city famous for its parks (a view of Whitehall from St James Park is shown below), has way too much concrete and not enough grass for me.
6. London is now. All the associations I have of London are historical, but we saw some very present day events too. While we were there it was the third anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, and there was a massive protest. Here is one picture I took.
London also has a memorial to the victims of 9/11. The text reads "Grief is the price we pay for love."
7. Free museums are cool. We went to almost all the major ones: The National Gallery (seeing religious paintings from 1565 isn't as painful as I remembered); the National Portrait Gallery (had not been to that one before, I loved it); the Tate Modern ( a bit disappointing, since 1/3 of the collection was being rearranged, and thus was off limits, but the building was stunning); The Tate Britian (one of the high points, full of Preraphaelites, Turners, and with a special exhibit based on The Nightmare, by Henry Fuseli (more info here) which was the high point of our entire trip, absolutely stunning, with many prints by William Blake, one of my all time favorite artists); The V and A (full of decorative objects of all kinds, maybe more of a chick museum???); the Natural History Museum (kind of disappointing for the home of Darwin, for crying out loud); the Museum of London; the British Museum; and the British Library. Whew.
8. I'd go back.
London is a fascinating place, I was there in 1985, the year I studied abroad, and in 1995 with my sister. Well, in the past ten years they have seen an economic boom and it is now one of the hippest and trendiest places to be. After all, Madonna lives there, right?
Many things struck me, but among them are:
1. London is old. Not in the Europe-is-old-America-is-new sense. But in the sense that London has been continuously inhabited for thousands of years. One of the best museums we visited (they were all great) was the Museum of London. You could walk through the timeline from 2000 B.C. to the present, examining artifacts from daily life from Prehistoric through Roman through Medieval through Victorian to now. One day we went to the Tower of London and it was amazing to hear that the complex was used as a castle/home/defense/prison etc for about 1000 years. And it still looks good! A picture of the White Tower is below.
A corollary to 1. is that I am old. Well not old, and certainly not as old as London, but older than I was when I traipsed around town the first time. I remember being drunk with friends, waiting for the Tube at midnight, walking all over the place, having endless energy. Then I was living in France, so was on the same page time-wise. This time, jet lag hit me in the ribs, and made me feel old. It didn't help that I had a killer cold and could hardly drag myself out of bed before ten am, and then was unable to sleep at night. It also didn't help that M was perky at 7 am (apparently he has not heard of jet lag) and spent some of the time I was in bed running throughout London training for his marathon! Anyway, I definitely felt that things were different this time. we managed to go to pubs in the evening, but no drunken wandering through town, or late nights at the dance club. A good side effect of the cold was that M was easily able to find me in museums, he said he knew I was wherever that person who was constantly blowing their nose was.2. London is jam packed with history and culture. Obvious I know, but who is not impressed with the contributions of England/Britian/London to world culture. It was amazing to walk the streets that Dickens walked, that Queen Elizabeth walked, that Shakespeare walked, that Jane Austen walked (actually did she live in London much? I don't think so). We stayed in Bloomsbury, home to Virginia Woolf, E.M. Forster, Lytton Strachey, etc.
You really get a sense of this in the V and A museum, the British Museum, the National Gallery, and the National Portrait Gallery. I guess part of it is loot from other cultures (especially the British Museum, probably the reason I am not fond of that museum, it is basically a collection of stuff the British "acquired" from other places). But there really is an incredible accumulation of stuff of all kinds, representing every type of artwork, cultural artifact, political movement, literary accomlishment, etc. It makes your head spin. We went to the pub that Karl Marx frequented, right by the British Museum. We saw all the little blue plaques that certify historically important people's homes. We saw movie footage of Queen Victoria's funeral procession. We saw more silver tableware than we wanted to see. We saw the original Alice in Wonderland book that Lewis Carroll wrote. We saw the Rosetta Stone. It was overwhelming.
3. English history is fascinating. I am not sure why, but I was always more interested in English history than French history, for example, even though I am a francophile as well as an anglophile. Maybe because it is possible to imagine the English monarchs as people, or maybe because there are more women involved, or maybe because they aren't all named Louis. One really good movie is A Lion in Winter, about Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine. Even though it is fictional, you can really imagine how being ruler of a country would affect a person's life and their family interactions and all personal interactions. The National Portrain Gallery and the Tower of London and the Museum of London do a good job of summarizing English history for the casual student.
4. London is cute. Don't you just love all the neighborhoods, little towns within a bigger town, all the English conventions like tea, and ploughman's lunch (disappearing in the face of the gastropubs) and Fortnum and Mason's, and Liberty fabrics, driving on the "wrong" side of the road, the Tube iconography, English accents, Winnie the Pooh, the Mini, the word "luv". WE liked to just walk through the neighborhoods and look. Look at everything. Below is a picture of a street in Mayfair, walking through there just felt like being on a movie set.
5. I could not live in a big city. I need green grass on every street. I hate places that are paved from house to house across the street, right up to the foundations of the buildings. Even London, a city famous for its parks (a view of Whitehall from St James Park is shown below), has way too much concrete and not enough grass for me.
6. London is now. All the associations I have of London are historical, but we saw some very present day events too. While we were there it was the third anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, and there was a massive protest. Here is one picture I took.
London also has a memorial to the victims of 9/11. The text reads "Grief is the price we pay for love."
7. Free museums are cool. We went to almost all the major ones: The National Gallery (seeing religious paintings from 1565 isn't as painful as I remembered); the National Portrait Gallery (had not been to that one before, I loved it); the Tate Modern ( a bit disappointing, since 1/3 of the collection was being rearranged, and thus was off limits, but the building was stunning); The Tate Britian (one of the high points, full of Preraphaelites, Turners, and with a special exhibit based on The Nightmare, by Henry Fuseli (more info here) which was the high point of our entire trip, absolutely stunning, with many prints by William Blake, one of my all time favorite artists); The V and A (full of decorative objects of all kinds, maybe more of a chick museum???); the Natural History Museum (kind of disappointing for the home of Darwin, for crying out loud); the Museum of London; the British Museum; and the British Library. Whew.
8. I'd go back.
posted by Shelly at 9:14 AM
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