No Queues at Kew

Vicki and Sheryle took a taxi to Heathrow at 6:30 this morning to catch their flights home, leaving me to my own devices today.

Once again the weather forecast called for rain that never materialized, so it was a great day to visit the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew.  And there were no queues - except when I arrived at exactly the same time as not one, but several school groups.  

Scared me a little at first, but once inside the gates I hardly saw them again.  Kew's a big place.

Not surprisingly, the azalea garden

and the extensive "Rhododendron Dell" were ablaze with color.

But there was more than just rhodies and azaleas to enjoy.

There are several glass houses, but the "Temperate House" is the most famous - it was once the largest greenhouse in the world, and is now the largest remaining Victorian glass house.

It's scheduled to close this summer and not reopen again until 2018 so that it can undergo major renovations.

I was glad I got the chance to go in.

En route home I popped into Covent Garden Market - 

looking for a few last-minute souvenirs among the craft stalls.  Alas, the only handcrafts today were jewelry and textiles (mostly scarves) - other than those, it was all tee shirts and the usual tacky souvenir shop stuff.  There was a very entertaining group of musicians playing, though -

The finale for my last day in London was a great dinner with Jenny and Jono in West Hampstead - and, despite making a point of taking my camera so that I could take a picture of them, I forgot to.  They are doing great and it was so good to see them.

Tomorrow morning after breakfast I will take a taxi to Heathrow to catch my flight home.  Last night at dinner, Sheryle, Vicki, and I tried to decide what the best part of the trip had been.  But as we remembered all of the great times, we couldn't pick just one - or even a top three or top five - there were just too many.

And now it's time to go home.

British Museum & British Library - Lots to see!

With only one day left in London for Sheryle and Vicki, we had to made some choices about how to spend our time, and the British Museum and British Library won out.

The British Museum never fails to astound me - what a collection!  

The only way to avoid being utterly overwhelmed is to just pick a room - only one - and leave the rest for another day, which is what we each did.  I chose the "Enlightenment" room (17th and 18th centuries), which was particularly interesting, because this was the time period during which the museum was founded, so it included both artifacts from the time period and information about the initial collections that formed the beginning of the museum as it now exists.  

After exploring our respective rooms, we met for tea.

And as we were about to leave, we discovered the Anglo-Saxon and Viking exhibit that's still being arranged, but was very interesting, nonetheless.  

We walked back to the hotel through some of the University of London and Gordon Square in the heart of Bloomsbury.  After dropping off our museum gift shop purchases, we then headed over to the nearby British Library, where we had lunch in their restaurant.  

Vicki and I explored the "best of" exhibit room - 

followed by the special "Propaganda" exhibit, which just opened a couple of days ago.

The "new" British Library building has been open for about 15 years now, and I've always considered it London's best kept secret - it has never been crowded like the British Museum can be.  Today was an exception - mostly because there were several school groups visiting - must be field trip season.  It wasn't packed, but it was certainly busier than usual.

It's still an essential stop whenever I'm in London.

Since Sheryle and Vicki need to leave early tomorrow morning, they will need to spend this evening getting packed.  Looks like a return visit is in the future - there's so much more to see!

Sunday in London

Much of yesterday was spent traveling from Cornwall to London, first driving to Truro to drop off our rental car, then taking the 5-hour train ride to Paddington Station.  Let's call it an entertaining trip - we seem to have ended up in the ill-behaved children car.  I really should have dug out the camera to take pictures - especially the unbelievable mess made by two little girls sitting in front of us (garbage everywhere, crayons and junk food - which mum fed them nonstop for the entire trip - ground into the carpet under their seat, scribbles decorating the table and window, etc.).  Then there was the toddler who kicked Sheryle's back and screamed like a banshee until he and his apparently deaf and oblivious parents got off, only to be replaced by the undisputed kings of mayhem, Jack and Zach, whose thankfully brief trip to visit Auntie Helen left us all saying, "Thank goodness Auntie Helen live close by," and "Poor Auntie Helen."

Where's "Nanny 911" when you need her???

Today has been blissfully free of such excitement.

We began the day (after, of course, our hearty Full English Heart-Attack-on-a-Plate Breakfast at the Alhambra Hotel) by attending the Choral Mattins (that's how they spell it in England) service at St. Paul's Cathedral.  It was a beautiful service - the Cathedral Choir is amazing, and the message inspiring.

Following the service we walked along the Thames to Trafalgar Square, passing by the memorial to the volunteer firefighters who kept St. Paul's from burning during the bombings of World War II.

This iconic photo says it all -

We walked through Whitehall Gardens - in glorious bloom.

We had a great Sunday lunch in the Crypt Cafe of St. Martin's in the Field (where one of Sheryle's ancestors was married - before she was hanged for being an outspoken Quaker).  We couldn't pass up the warm crumble for dessert -

We can diet when we get home.

Well fed, we walked on toward the West End theatre district where we got tickets to the 5 pm matinee of "Jersey Boys" - a highly recommended musical about Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons.  Hooray for "senior discounts"!  We were able to get "best available" seats for much less than the regular price - and they were pretty good seats, at that.

We had some time before the play, so we headed to Harrod's.  it was a busy place, but always fun to see.

I found just the thing for John's office -

A desk with an intricately inlaid map of the world - for a mere £85,000 - about $140,000.  The very talkative salesman said that it took 600 hours to create, and would take five minutes to sell to someone from China, Saudi Arabia, or Qatar.  And they wouldn't think anything of the price.  He had lots of opinions, which he entertained us with for 20 minutes or more.

The play was outstanding - I had always thought that it was just a "Mamma Mia" wannabe, but it far exceeded my expectations.

The crazy street scene after the play was fun, but it was nice to escape the madhouse and walk home through the quiet streets of Bloomsbury, past the British Museum, and through Russell Square, which was full of people enjoying the warm evening.

If the weather's as nice tomorrow, we plan to take a boat trip up the Thames to Kew Gardens.

Ahhhhh...

Last day in Portreath

We woke to beautiful sunshine and only a light breeze, so it was the perfect morning to hike the Coastal Path for a few miles, where we watched a Royal Navy rescue helicopter hover in place over the ocean for a long stretch of time - we assumed that it was a practice maneuver, since the seas were calm and there was no sign of an emergency.  And we tackled another of the incredibly steep sets of steps cut into the hill that substitutes for switchbacks here - this one from the cliff top down to the tiniest creek at sea level, then back up again.  And, of course, taking it one direction meant having to do it again on the way back.  Whew.

But the views were amazing.

Having worked up an appetite, we had lunch at the pub, then set out for Lanhydrock, a Victorian mansion and gardens that is owned by the National Trust.  Unlike many of their holdings, this one isn't lived in, so all the rooms are open to the public (about fifty of them), and they are furnished like they were in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The bright, sunny morning had disappeared behind clouds, as we've come to expect in the afternoons here, and, true to form, the rain was pelting down in earnest when we arrived, but the National Trust had big golf umbrellas for our use as we walked down the long avenue to the house.

We got the "Upstairs, Downstairs" view, with both the servants' areas and the family's set up as they would have been.

I think this cheese may have been sitting there for a while.

Pool, anyone?

The gentleman's bathroom, which he didn't share with his wife.

The drawing room, which I recently learned was short for "withdrawing room," meaning the room where you could withdraw to from the public rooms (like the formal dining room).

This is the view from the morning room - I wouldn't mind having a second cup of coffee here.

To further add to the realism, a pianist was playing popular tunes from the 1920's on the Steinway in the long gallery.

The house was spectacular, and the gardens even more so - and the rain had let up while we toured the house.

There are formal gardens near the house (that's a parish church behind the house, not part of the National Trust).

And there are acres upon acres of woodland gardens, full of rhododendrons, camellias, magnolias, and carpets of bluebells.

That's a single rhododendron bush (tree!) in the background - this is a perfect climate for them.

We couldn't pass up a "cream tea," served in the housekeeper's room.

A perfect way to end our time in Cornwall.

Padstow

Today we ventured to the beautiful old village of Padstow to visit Gill and Mike Evans -

Despite the forecast for rain today, it was the nicest day ever - no wind, with sun shining through the clouds.  It was a great day to walk around the town.

Mike led us on a walk out along the estuary of the Camel River to where it meets the ocean.

Across on the other shore is the town of Rock where the royals (Princes William and Harry specifically) are reputed to vacation.

This is the first stile I've seen in Cornwall - much handier than vaulting over a fence.

After our walk, Gill and Mike treated us to a great lunch at a small cafe.

Sheryle and I had a Cornish pasty filled with steak and Stilton cheese - yum!

We hated to say goodbye, but we did have to get going - but not before getting a group photo at the Metropole Hotel where Mike and Gill are staying -

We headed back to Portreath via Truro so that we could find where we were going to drop off our rental car on Saturday morning - Truro is a pretty good size city, and we don't want to wander around lost and miss our train to London.  The Avis office was easy to find, and they said they'd call a taxi for us - ordinarily they'd take us to the station, but Saturdays are really busy and they won't be able to do that.

While it did rain briefly this afternoon, we arrived back in Portreath to an absolutely beautiful evening - clear sky and calm wind.  It doesn't get any better than this!