LONDON, Part II

So, I'm writing this from my cousins' place in North Wales, and this is what the view looks like from partway up the hill behind their cottage:

More on that, later--I just wanted to give you some context for where I am now, as I'm writing this post, because I think for most of the last couple of months, this blog has been rather haphazard and a bit chronologically challenged. There's not much to be done about it, however, because I've been so delightfully busy that nearly each day I do something else or see something that really deserves its own blog post, and I just don't have enough hours in the day to write about everything right away. (I am loving my time here in the UK, if you haven't gotten that sense already.) Anyway. For now, I'll try to present here, in this post, the rest of my adventures in London. I have just under three weeks left in the UK, but I'll only be spending three more days in London, as I'm here in Wales for the next week and then have one day in London to do laundry, basically, and then I'll be off to Scotland for another week or so! I suspect that my few days left in London at the end of August will be busy with packing and perhaps one final wander through the city, but perhaps not much post-worthy. So, for now at any rate, here's the rest of my London time--in a random, not necessarily chronological order.

First off, my visit to Buckingham Palace the other day didn't quite work out, because, in case you didn't know, London in August is filled with tourists, and, well, they all had the same idea I did. I went to the palace, naively thinking that I would have no problems getting in, but they were already sold out of tickets for the day. But it all turned out fine in the end, because I went to visit the Royal Mews instead. The Royal Mews are the stables where they house the coach horses that pull the royal carriages. (The horses the royals ride and play sports on are apparently usually kept at Windsor Palace or elsewhere.) The Royal Mews are right next to Buckingham Palace, and they were not as busy as the palace itself, so it worked out quite well. It turns out that I went during the horses' summer vacation, though, when they're all sent off to yet another palace where they have more space to run around and actually get dirty--because when they're on duty at Buckingham Palace, they're bathed every day and exercised, and I don't think they get turned out much. At any rate, they had two of the horses there for show, just munching their lunch in their stalls while a steady flow of tourists went by and took their picture. There's over thirty coach horses all together; I suspect they cycle through the horses during the summer to make sure visitors have at least some to see.

The Royal Riding School!

The inner quad of the Mews.

The grooms and other people who work closely with the horses live in these flats around the Mews so they're always on hand.

One of the Queen's limousines. Once upon a time, royal transportation would have been only done by horse and carriage, of course, but today the Royal Mews is also in charge of the Queen's fleet of limousines. Each one is painted this unique "claret" colour, lacks a licence plate (because technically they don't belong to anyone), and is custom-made extra high inside so that the Queen can stand up before getting out, so as not to ungracefully shuffle across a seat. And let's avoid any Britney-like moments, huh.

The old stables, which they don't use anymore because the stalls are too small. But when the Queen comes down to see the horses, they move them into here because it's cleaner than the other one.

The Gold State Coach (complete with fake horses and riders!).

The Gold State Coach again, used for all coronations since George IV in 1821. It weighs about 4 tonnes and is pulled by a team of eight horses. It takes three days just to get it out of the stables because they have to dismantle a wall to get it out.

One of the famous Windsor Greys, specially chosen for royal carriage duty because of their colouring and temperament.

Having not been able to get into Buckingham Palace itself, I decided to walk across Hyde Park to Kensington Palace instead. I was actually quite underwhelmed with Kensington Palace, although I liked how open it was to the public, at least the part that I saw. It just opens right into Kensington Gardens, which in turn bleeds into Hyde Park. But the palace itself was not anything very special. Mostly, this had to do with the weird exhibits they had set up in the various old state rooms of the palace. They were these weird, diorama type things, with blue neon lights and cardboard cutouts of cartoon-like kings and queens. It was all very Tim Burton-esque, and there was very little information there, too. It made me sorry I had paid what I had paid to get in there. The best part was the fenced off fountain and garden behind the palace.

Kensington Palace.

The only decent room I saw. The King's Gallery.

The garden.

For Angie.

Queen Victoria, reigning over her childhood home.

Kensington Palace in black and white, from across the Round Pound in Kensington Gardens.

I also spent some days over the last month exploring various neighbourhoods in London. One of my favourites was Notting Hill. I went twice to Notting Hill--the first time on a sleepy Sunday and the second time just last week, on a market Friday afternoon. I got all giddy seeing places I recognised from the movie. The really posh part of the neighbourhood funnily enough reminded me of San Francisco. Maybe it had to do with the grand townhouses, I don't know. The famous colourful row houses were not very San Francisco-like, but they were pretty cute and cheerful on these unusually warm and sunny London summer days.

That store, now a shoe store, was Hugh Grant's travel bookshop in Notting Hill!

Portobello Road market, on a quiet, non-market Sunday!

The beautiful, colourful homes of Notting Hill.

Mews.

George Orwell lived in that house, people!

Got flowers?

I was a bit disappointed by the Portobello Road Market. I suppose there were some nice antique-y things, but for the most part there was a huge divide between expensive vintage stuff and cheap, tacky clothing and scarves, with not much in between. It was still nice to walk through it, of course, but still. I enjoyed Broadway Market a great deal more, maybe because it's right now at this great level where it's popular enough to attract some quality vendors and decent crowds, but it's still small enough to feel authentic.

One Sunday morning, I decided to try my hand at a different kind of market, and made my way to the famed Columbia Road Flower Market. This was another case of a very popular market that was thronged with tourists, but it was so compact--really just one short street in an otherwise quiet, un-noteworthy neighbourhood--and it was so colourful and lovely that I actually quite enjoyed it. It's this lively scene, where the vendors shout and cajole passersby, trying to sell their wares the same loud, yet lighthearted, way the fishmongers famously do in Seattle's Pike Place Market.

This was how busy it was!

It's easier going, although somewhat less colourful, if you walk along the sides, behind the flower sellers.

If I hadn't had plans to go to a museum afterwards, I would have bought some flowers to take back to the house with me. As it was, though, I went afterwards to the nearby Geffrye House Museum, which came highly recommended to me by friends who had been to London before and my cousins themselves. It's a small-ish museum set in these surprisingly grand former almhouses, and it showcases the evolution of the London home, focusing on the family/living room, from the 1600s to the 1990s. I've always enjoyed looking at old furniture in museums and imagining people using them back in the day, so I quite enjoyed my trip to the museum.

The Geffrye Museum.

And, its gardens.

And again.

Taking the long way home from the Geffrye Museum. Spitalfields.

And again.

I hit up another couple of museums, as well, including the Imperial War Museum. Andrew, a friend from my German class in Berlin (which in many ways already feels like a lifetime ago), is from London and recently returned from Germany after spending the month or so after our class bumming around Berlin. The Imperial War Museum was closed for a while for renovations in preparations for the centennial of the First World War next year. A lot of it is still closed off, but the Holocaust exhibition was open when we went. It was pretty effectively done, actually. They had a scale model of Auschwitz at one point, and you thought to yourself, oh my God it's massive--until you read the placard and realised that the model only covered a tiny corner of the camp, and then you really felt floored. I'm working up to one day going to Auschwitz itself, which I had originally thought might be something I would do on this trip, but after some self-reflection I decided that I'm not quite ready emotionally to go there. The logistics aren't right, either--I'd be travelling alone, which I don't think would be wise, for emotional or practical reasons. One day I will make that pilgrimage, but that day will have to wait a bit.

The Imperial War Museum.

Andrew and I.

Another day, I went to visit the Churchill War Rooms, which are in fact part of the Imperial War Museum. I have long been wanting to go to the War Rooms, which were used as British central command during World War Two and particularly during the Blitz (September 1940 to May 1941), when the country was heavily bombed by the Luftwaffe in Germany's attempt to conquer England. The War Rooms provided a fascinating glimpse into the very highest echelons of power in England during that time, including some insight into Churchill himself. There were quite a lot of personal accounts from people who had worked in the War Rooms, basically along the lines of how Churchill was a hardass and not the easiest guy in the world to work for, but my God they wouldn't have chosen to been anywhere else at that time.

When the war ended, the War Rooms were either used for storage or closed up. It wasn't until the seventies, I think, that they were able to open it up again an restore the rooms that had been emptied out back to what they had been during the war, based on photos and reports from people who had worked and lived there at the time. Some of the rooms had been left untouched since the war ended, including the map room, which had been in constant use from the moment the war broke out (perhaps even earlier) to the day the war ended in August 1945--on that last day of the war, the lights in the map room were turned off for the very first time in six years. The room was simply shut up until the museum was created.

It's fascinating stuff, walking through those hallways and imagining what the mood must have been like there during the war. Churchill and his wife had rooms built in the bunker where they could sleep and live if they wanted to, although Churchill being Churchill preferred to be standing on roofs, defiantly watching the bombs fall around him. The War Rooms were built in 1938, when war seemed to be quite likely to break out. They were built underneath one of the government buildings near Westminster, and were supported with a heavy slab of thick concrete. Somehow all this construction was undertaken without anyone realising what they were doing. The concrete, though, wouldn't have protected the War Rooms from a direct hit--really, the men and women who worked in those rooms were not much safer than they were anywhere else, but Churchill, knowing the truth, did not say anything, and so the workers went along, most of them none the wiser.

Visiting the War Rooms really gave me an appreciation for Churchill and his importance as a historical figure. I don't want to fall too deeply into the trap of focusing on old rich white men, because that's been a longstanding problem with the study of history, but it is undeniable that Churchill was quite the figure. At the very least, one can argue that war would certainly have turned out very, very differently had Britain fallen to the Germans. The political and military strategising that went on in those War Rooms...just thinking about it lends such a gravitas to that space. Visiting it reminded me a bit of the Diefenbunker outside of Ottawa, built at the height of the Cold War as a nuclear-safe bunker for the Prime Minister and other important figures--except, of course, important things actually took place in Churchill's War Rooms.

One of the highlights of my trip.

The building across the street from the one the Churchill War Rooms are in--it looked virtually identical.

Today's museum entrance. During the war, the real entrance was guarded by a police officer, or maybe a soldier. Can't remember.

Most of the rooms were glassed off, and the lighting was fairly low down there, so unfortunately my photos are not very clear. But this was the conference room where the War Cabinet met, complete with mannequin.

The map room, and more mannequins. These ones were at least more authentic than the spooky ones in the U-Boat museum in Hamburg.

Churchill had this sign placed in the hallway by his office. Sounds like a fun guy.

People who worked in the War Rooms had the option of sleeping there, as well. Officers and other important people had their own bedrooms, and there was a general bunk area on an even lower level for the secretaries, typists, and various other personnel. The bathrooms were in a separate area. Could you imagine bumping into Churchill in your pajamas, ont the way to the bathroom one morning? People could go many days without leaving the war rooms, so they had these weather signs in the corridors, which the custodian would change, so that they knew what it was like outside. "Windy" infamously meant bombings were taking place.

Just the other week, a couple of days before leaving for North Wales, I went to Greenwich, my cousin Peter's favourite part of London and home to the famous Royal Greenwich Observatory. Greenwich Mean Time is here, as is the Prime Meridian. There's also a grand maritime museum, which I did not go into, a gallery and a beautiful, lovely park with some fabulous views of the city.

Canary Wharf, on the way to Greenwich. Glass and steel. Could be anywhere.

Greenwich Market, where I grabbed a delicious grilled halloumi wrap for lunch.

Ship in a bottle, outside the National Maritime Museum.

Looking up the hill towards the Observatory.

Queen's House. Now an art gallery for mostly maritime art.

The Tulip stairs, inside Queen's House.

Stellar view from the Royal Observatory.

Note the standard imperial lengths reference at the bottom.

The Prime Meridian.

Obligatory shot.

The Royal Observatory.

General Wolfe on the hill overlooking London.

So, I am finally caught up on the London things I've done over the past month! Next up are posts about my trips to Bath, Stratford-upon-Avon and Winchester, and then, of course, the adventures I'm getting up to here in North Wales--and then I'll have Scotland to write about. We have one more night here in the cottage before heading to Ludlow, where we're going to spend a couple of nights with friends of my cousins who live in a countryside cottage near the medieval walled city. The Internet has been working here, but it's been slow to load pictures, so we'll see what the situation is like in Ludlow.

Until then!