London Calling

Our trip from Oxford to London was easy and fast.  We checked into our unit in Bayswater and I headed out (reporting a few Issues to reception en route.  Full disparaging reviews can be seen on both booking.com and Tripadvisor).  Once I figured out how to read the tube diagrams I was very excited to meet up with a few good friends - with a posh tea for the first of us to arrive, then off to a nearby pub so the after-work crowd could drop in and out.  Matt managed to find us a bit later and afterwards Bettina walked us to the tube as we admired the sunset view of London from the southbank.

What a sunset!

Jolly big ferris wheel!

We were so pleased that that sun had come to London with us and decided for our first full day to take a ferry to Greenwich.  The trip up river showed us our first sight of many of London's most iconic places and once we alighted our first stop was the meridian point where traditional photos with one foot in the east and one in the west were taken.

We went through the free sections of the observatory, admiring the equatorial telescope and the early timepieces.

Statue honouring Yuri Gagarin, the first human in space.

A visit to the Maritime Museum was next on the agenda where I admired Nelson's uniform, complete with bullet holes and blood stains.  Matt considers this an unhealthy obsession, I wondered what was unhealthy about being ghoulish?  I also liked the ship's figureheads collection.

High tide near the river.  Not a flood.

Heather had suggested a visit to the Trafalgar Hotel to round out our visit  and it was certainly a pub with a wonderful view (we were amused to see the same things on a Michael Portillo TV show within hours of us getting home!).   Sitting there certainly made us realise just how enormous and powerful the tides of the Thames.  As you can see from the photos above of the Tower from our ferry trip, where sandy (muddy?) beaches were, the water was now several metres deep.

We also took the time to admire the Cutty Sark but not enough time remained in their opening hours to spend the quite large amounts of tea (maybe gin or beer) money they wanted to see over her!

I decided the next day was to be a little more bookish and we started with a walk through the nearby Kensington Gardens until we reached the Peter Pan statue.    I may have "issues" with the story as an adult but I did love that old movie as a kid, so Second Star to the Right and Straight on 'Till Morning it Was (leaving feminist and colonial issues aside for now).  I also like the fact the  profits still go to the renowned Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital (but not all of them, see http://www.gosh.org/about-us/peter-pan/faqs for further information).

If you think your dog or cat has a cold wet nose just wait till a
BEAR sticks its nose in your ear! ;-)

Once we'd had our walk in the park it was off to the station. Paddington Station to meet a young refugee from Peru.

We also took the time to visit the home of one of the greatest minds in all of history, however, the queue was so long to go in we decided to skip the museum and head off to our next stop.

After a morning of visiting book locations we were looking forward to meeting with Heather and admiring the view from the Shard.  You can go up to the top viewing plataform for a moderately extortionate sum to admire the view - or you can cross your fingers that you are well enough dressed and go to the Shard bar for an overpriced drink and the same view.  Guess which option we selected!

Loo with a view. 
This is what the ladies see when washing their hands.

But our day wasn't yet over!  More excitements were to come as we walked along the riverbank to meet up with a few more friends, Nicky and Shirley (somehow these friends escaped having photographic evidence but I believe there were some Pimms Cocktails involved).  On the way we got to go over the Golden Hind and saw the New Globe.  I can't express in a brief blog post just how exciting London was, how much we saw (and how much we didn't have time to fit in seeing).  

The Golden Hind.  Checking a few details for this post I was
GUTTED to discover this was a replica ship.

Detail near the Nav. station on the rotten replica.

Remains of the Rose Window in Winchester Palace ruins

 

Late at night we found some food trucks
Mmmmm  Hot Diggity Dogs!

I was lucky enough to have been gifted a trip on the London Eye so the next day I left Matt to his fate and joined the long long queue.  Did I mention that the queue for the view was very very long?  I did see some wonderful sights from up high.

From street level all you see here is a wall!

Our final afternoon in London involved a few museum visits.  We SAID we'd only spend half an hour in each of the V&A and the Natural History Museum but naturally we were there until we were chucked out.  I thought the instructions in the V&A on how to build your own nuclear bomb shelter were a timely reminder.
 

Naturally, my favourite section was the fashion room although we also found the Cast Courts really interesting.  They are plaster models of statues that were made fashionable in the 18th century.  These days they are used as reference when the originals - damaged by time, war, pollution, and just old age - are being restored.
 

ultimate waist training! 

I wonder what he's wondering?

 Over the road at the Natural History Museum we visited the dinosaurs and the famous blue whale skeleton.

we couldn't go past the dinosaurs.

Some of them quite big.

So enormous, the blue whale skeleton is over 25 metres long!

It was a great end to a wonderful holiday and we spent much of our long flight home wondering how soon we could do it all again (when I wasn't binge watching the entire season one of Riverdale).  Obviously our blog has been very much a "best bits (or best disasters)" but overwhelmingly we had a great time, ate food that went from barely recognisable to amazing, and met some wonderful people.   Would we do it again?  Like a shot! 

An English education - Stratford-Upon-Avon to Oxford.

Once we had driven around Stratford-Upon-Avon a couple of times trying to work out the one-way streets we found our hotel was another delightful quirky building (modernised enough to have modern facilities).  We stayed at The White Swan, parts of which dated back to 1450.

Having learned from bitter experience that it could be hard to find anywhere interesting to eat on Sunday nights (and yes, I know many restaurants are closed on Sunday/Monday back home, it's just more inconvenient when I'm on holidays) we decided to use the discount voucher they gave us to encourage us to eat in the restaurant and while enjoying our salad discovered a wall fresco that dated back to the 1600s.

Sorry about the flash glare, it's understandably behind glass these days!

We could have done with the fire being lit but despite a chilly evening we woke to see the sun.  After a late breakfast we set out for a visit to the tourist information and a pleasant and easy walk along the river to Holy Trinity Church, where Shakespeare was buried just two days after his death.

 

We decided to stop for lunch as we strolled back through the pretty streets and decided we couldn't miss a pizza cooked by Marco Pierre White.  I don't think he was actually in the kitchen - but it was while we were enjoying our meal we had a message from our niece Alice giving us the very exciting news that she and her lovely partner Marco were engaged!  Congratulations to  you both and wishing you much love and happiness.

Visits to a few old houses as a change from old castles were next on the agenda!  As always, I'm a sucker for a multi-pass ticket but knowing we had time constraints I stuck to the three sites within the town.  Hall's Croft was the first one we passed.  It was the home of Susanna Shakespeare and her husband, John Hall.  Hall was a doctor and the displays included a medicinal herb garden and some of the tools he might have used.

 Next up was Shakespeare's New Place which I didn't find as interesting.  Only because I really wanted to see old houses and how the Elizabethan's lived, not modern artworks and interpretations.  I still enjoyed it, just not in quite the same mindset.

The last of the Shakespeare family homes I visited was Shakespeare's birthplace.  When he became rich and famous he rented it out and it was turned into a pub - it was still operating as such when it was bought by the Shakespeare Trust.

Old pub sign.  Interesting name.

The glass in the bedroom has been replaced as you can see - once there was a fashion
for visitors to scratch their names into it

We spent the remainder of the afternoon prowling the tourist shops in Henley St but saved our pennies for dinner instead of tat!  

Mmmm, Thai food with plenty of chilli!

We were due to return our car in Oxford so set off the next morning just as the rain returned.  We spent the afternoon wandering around the town and following directions from the tourist information centre ended up at the Turf Tavern.  I can't imagine why they sent us there.

The Bridge of Sighs. 
We sighed as we got wetter.

Outside The Bodleian.

We had received an invitation to dine at Keble College with my friend Ann so we set off for a university experience of the type neither of us ever experienced in our student days.  We had a lovely (three course!) meal on plates which bore the college crest and enjoyed both the general conversation around the table and our pre and post dinner personal conversations with Ann. The conversational subjects were certainly wide ranging!  We really enjoyed experiencing this little taste of Oxford University life.  

I had always wanted to try out another quintessential Oxford experience and go punting on the river but we nearly drowned just walking there so decided to leave that for another trip. 

view from the tower

I also wanted to tour the Bodleian. Alas, the tickets were sold out.  I did manage to take a leaf out of Nicola Marlow's book and climb all the stairs of Carfax Tower to see the view of the "dreaming spires".

This part of our trip being a bit of a literary experience we couldn't miss a stop at the "Bird and Baby" - AKA The Eagle and Child, the pub where the Inkings met.

We also made a stop at the pub over the road, the Lamb and Flag.  We urge everyone to patronise it as it is owned by St John's College and profits go to providing PHD scholarships!  (Also it's got a great beer list.  Ed.)

The next morning saw us heading off by train to the final destination of this trip, London, which is, according to Oscar Wilde, a city of beautiful idiots and brilliant lunatics.  Not to mention the museums...