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Walking the City

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Monument to Great Fire of London Our final two days have been a chance to revisit some unfinished museum expeditions: Imperial War Museum, and British Museum -and to do some more walking of the city.  The underground is so efficient that it is easier than walking and I have found it more difficult to get my above ground bearings of the city than for others - Rome, Paris and Athens. According to John it does not rain properly in London but only drizzles and the last two days have had some of that.  On London Bridge towards Houses of Parliament On our walks we went to the Great Fire of London monument designed by Sir Christopher Wren (1677) which is adjacent to Pudding Lane where the fire supposedly started.  The next day we did a circuit from Westminster Underground through Parliamentary Square, up Whitehall past all the government buildings included a shut off Downing Street and eventually to Trafalgar and return.  The streets around Whitehall were gridlo...
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Cambridge

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We took the fast train to Cambridge with John who was visiting one of his Supervisors at the Maths Department.  The train station at Cambridge is about 20 minutes walk from the city centre and this was deliberate as the Colleges did not want students easily travelling to London to fraternize with the opposite sex and vice versa. In a brisk walking tour of the city we learned how it developed since the 12th Century as a training centre for religious life - not always with the support of the locals who rioted against the students times during the 14th century.  The town was a puritan centre during the reign of Elizabeth 1st and suffered during the puritan rebellion with many of the Catholic colleges being damaged.  The birthplace of Oliver Cromwell was nearby so Cambridge aligned with the Parliamentary forces against the Royalists during the Civil War of the 1640's.  The rivalry between Oxford and Cambridge can perhaps be traced to this period as the Charles 1 ...
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The Duty to Remember

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Maureen at Kings Cross Station After 2 weeks in London we are becoming accomplished travelers on the London train system.  In most cases there is a variety of routes one can take to any destination and it is fun trying the different routes.  I did find it challenging sitting on the train all in a row with the same opposite- it is like two Police line-ups viewing each other and to avoid the awkwardness most seem to use their mobiles - perhaps before them people talked.....  The Central and Victoria Lines seemed warmer, busier and more polluted that the others and we often preferred travelling to the London Blackfriars Bridge station with great views of the river before taking the underground.  On Sunday 12th January we visited the Imperial War Museum - again too big for one sitting so we focused on the excellent WW1 and Holocaust galleries. As I wound through the recounts of the Western Front I could not forget the words of Wilfred Owen in Anthem for a Doomed...
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Tales from Canterbury

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Part of Canterbury Cathedral exterior When he was sent to convert Britain with 40 Benedictine Monks in 595 AD St Augustine of Canterbury was so afraid that he turned tail back to Rome and had to be re-sent by Pope Gregory.   The reluctant arrived in 596 beginning a legacy, centred on Canterbury, that cemented Britain as a Christian land for the next 1500 years.  Nearly 800 years later  The Canterbury Tales , written by Chaucer as 24 stories, tells the tales of some 30 pilgrims walking from Southwark to Canterbury on a pilgrimage to the shrine of St Thomas Becket. Augustine,  Beckett are Chaucer the fascinating central characters in the story of the city of Canterbury, originally a Roman town, to which we traveled today. The bustling streets of this compact university city were full of establishments (pubs and businesses) hundreds of years old that have served visitors and pilgrims over the centuries.   On our l ittle p...
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The Royal Zoo

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Maureen at Buckingham Palace The daily ritual of changing of the Queen's Guard at Buckingham Palace attracts thousands and we were among them watching the marching up and down of the band in their grey coats and black bearskin hats as the guards changed. The crowd was about 10 deep peering in through the  iron fence and I wondered who was really in the zoo - probably us! At the end of the 45 minute process the   ‘old’ Guard are matched back to Wellington Barracks  and the new troop to St Jame's Palace down the Mall. All quite a spectacle.   NZ War Memorial Multiple pylons shaped  as a vertically oriented cross Close to the Palace up Constitution Hill are significant War Memorials including that for Bomber Command 70 years in the making.  The controversial carpet bombing of Dresden and other German cities at the end of the war led to the reluctance to recognize the ~54K British and allied airmen who died in the air war - two of my Fa...
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I'm not throwing away my shot - Alexander Hamilton

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The opening lines in rap go: How does a bastard, orphan, son of a whore and a  Scotsman,  dropped in the middle of a forgotten  Spot in the Caribbean by Providence, impoverished, in squalor  Grow up to be a hero and a scholar? So we attended Alexander Hamilton at the Victoria Palace telling his remarkable life story as a key figure in the founding of the USA.  Apart from the stunning production, music and acting, this story has so many other relevant messages about living life to the full, love won and lost, not being afraid to be bold and of saying goodbye.  The experience of nearly 4 hours passed like 5 minutes and we laughed, cried and reflected on our own lives and that we should 'not throw away our shot' .  Our thanks go to our daughter Therese who encouraged us to attend and we now understand why she has been 3 times!  The morning was spent continuing our exploration of the National Science Museum at Kensington.  I particular...
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Natural History Museum

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The famous central atrium of the Natural History Museum below the Blue whale skeleton is a mandatory stop for photos and we joined the throng before reprising  our knowledge of dinosaurs that was so sharp when the children were little and we knew the 'The Land Before Time ' series of movies by heart. Given the British founded the sciences of modern geology and mineralogy those galleries were outstanding and we enjoyed the sections on volcanoes and earthquakes.  The 2011 Japanese earthquake featured in displays but the simulated earthquake pad did not quite live up to that at the Te Papa museum in Wellington which seemed to be a step higher on the Richter Scale when we visited there with the children some years ago! ' Lucy's tooth ~  Australopithecus afarensis living ~3.7 million years ago I was looking forward to the gallery on human evolution having recently become very interested in this subject and was not disappointed.  The history is complex with ...
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