The Continuing Adventures of Dr Dzoe

Like many women, Julie travels with a well-stocked purse.  One thing she’s just taken to bringing is baby aspirin, having recently read that immediately giving baby aspirin to someone who is having a heart attack can make a huge positive difference.

But that’s not the only attacks she’s ready for.  This trip, she’s also carrying a set of watercolors and a sketch book in case, as she says, she gets an Art Attack – a sudden urge to draw something that she sees.

She hasn’t had an art attack yet.  But tonight at the Tate Modern, I had one.  Upon encountering this piece:

I decided to try a technique I’d read about in camera books.  You set the camera to an exposure of 1-2 seconds, and while the shutter is open you zoom in the lens.  The result is something like this:

The shadow is Kate, who happened to be walking by.

Coincidentally, she was also walking by when I tried it with another piece of art:

And so I made it through my art attack, without even needing an aspirin.

If you were to ask me what is the most beautiful place that I’ve ever visited, I’d be hard pressed to pick just one.  But somewhere on my short list you would find Leeds Castle.

Leeds is a castle associated with various queens of England.  The castle is nice, but the grounds are stunning.  Every viewing angle is carefully designed to maximize the visual pleasure.  It’s a treat to just wander the grounds with eyes soaking in the scenery.

Today we went on our second bus tour of this trip.  The first stop was Leeds.  Here’s a few pictures I took there.

See what I mean?

The second stop was hardly a stop at all but instead a drive through Dover.  We drove by the major sites and stopped for a ten minute photo op.  Here’s Julie and me with the cliffs in the background.

Then it was off to Canterbury where we visited the cathedral, and where I made a point of reading the Canterbury Tales while riding the bus into town.  Funny stuff – that Chaucer fellow has a real future ahead of him.

Much of the cathedral was off-limits to visitors as there was a school graduation going on (this is graduation week in England, and we’ve seen groups of robed students throughout our travels).  The downside: we did not get a chance to see where Thomas Beckett was killed.  The upside: there was live organ music in the cathedral for much of our visit.  And there were still plenty of lovely things to see.

And by the way, this is the gyrations your humble photographer goes through to get a shot like this:

Given my knees, and figuring in the weight of the camera and flash that I carry around all day, you should appreciate how I suffer for your enjoyment!

Then at last we stopped at Greenwich where we took a boat ride up the Thames to the heart of the city.  The boat was a strange thing, jet propelled and making several stops at various docks along the river, feeling like a subway-on-the-water.  But the scenery from this water-subway was a lot better than had it been underground.

I am happy to report that London Bridge did not fall down when we passed beneath it.  (Not that this is a picture of London Bridge, which is a rather boring thing to look at.)

Then it was time for dinner, then a visit to the Tate Modern, London’s best modern art museum, which is open late on Fridays.  Much fun was had by all.

What’s my favorite thing I saw at the Tate?  Actually, it wasn’t a piece of art at the Tate at all.  On leaving the Tate, we crossed the Millennium Bridge, a lovely walking bridge across the Thames.  And at the end of the Millennium Bridge is a marvelous view of St Paul’s, as previously mentioned one of my favorite buildings in the world.  So I was able to bask in the view of St Paul’s at dusk.  Marvelous!

It’s getting late, and we have an early morning tomorrow.  So just a quick recap.

First I went off on my own on an early morning jaunt to the Churchill War Bunker.  This is the underground shelter that housed Churchill’s government during WWII.  I had visited there back in 2001 but had read that they added a new Churchill museum.  It did not disappoint.  Nice stuff for the history geek.

On the way, I spent a little time sitting in the beautiful St James Park, a place where every view is perfectly choreographed and where even the waterfowl are scenic.  Here’s one of their pelicans.

Then we all met up at Buckingham Palace to see the changing of the guard.  It’s an interesting ceremony, but it’s probably the worst example of crowding that we encountered in London.  This is definitely tourist season – there are vast crowds of people in the various places we’ve been, and this was an example.

Then it was off to Westminster Abbey via St James Park.  Here’s Andy and Kate against one of those choreographed views.

I love Westminster Abbey, a place where vast numbers of really famous people are buried.  There are not only all those Shakespearian monarchs (Elizabeth I, Mary, Mary Queen of Scots, Henry V, Henry IV, Edward the Confessor, Edward I, Edward III, Richard II – okay, not all of those are in Shakespeare plays), but there’s also Darwin and Newton.  No photos allowed, though, so no photos here.

Then Diana took a break from crowds while Julie, Andy, Kate, and I visited the British Museum.  Here’s a couple of pictures from there.

Then it was dinner, and we all went to see “Doctor Faustus” at the Globe Theater, a reproduction of Shakespeare’s Globe.  Here’s the kids in our box.  Well, sort of, anyway.

And one last note: I love London cabs.  We never have trouble getting a cab.  It’s cheaper for five of us to ride a cab than the Underground.  And unlike American cabs, you can fit a family of five in one taxi without any problems.  Of course, two of those five have to sit backwards, and given that Diana and Julie get motion sickness when riding backwards, I’m pretty much always one of the two.  So here’s a standard view of one of our cab rides.

In America, we know that right is right and ever shall be.

Sadly, other countries haven’t achieved the same realization.  Even some of our best friends in the world, places like England, haven’t discovered this simple truth.  They persist in following a wrong course, even though they have our sterling example set before them.  They will only accept that right is right if there is no other option.  At all other times, they refuse to recognize that right is right.

I refer, of course, to the proper side of the road for driving.

But every now and then a man has an itch to put aside the right and drive on the left side of the road.  They tend to frown on that sort of thing when you’re driving the Beltway, so today I took the opportunity to take a turn to the left.  And so we rented a car and drove to Windsor Castle, a place where I’ve wanted to visit since Julie and I came to England in 2003.

Windsor didn’t disappoint.  It’s a magnificent castle – absolutely huge, with plenty of medieval defenses and a lovely chapel – practically a cathedral – that featured the graves of a number of people that excited me.  I got a chance to stomp on the burials of Charles I and Henry VIII, two kings that I particularly despise.  (I take my history seriously!)  And I got to pay my respects to several of whom I think better, including George V and VI and Henry VI.  Here I am with guidebook in hand and the Round Tower in the background.

The living quarters at Windsor are also quite nice.  When Julie and I visited England last, we visited a number of palaces and occupied castles.  With the exception of Brighton Pavilion, which is a delightful place, they tended to feel awfully stodgy.  But we rather liked Windsor, even if there are an awful lot of portraits of Charles I hanging there.  (Then again, Julie rather likes Charles.  One of my complaints about the man is that he was a profligate spender, leaving England bankrupt.  But one of the ways he spent all that money was by patronizing artists, something of which Julie approves.  And something that tends to leave you with lots of portraits of yourself.)

Meanwhile, Kate got a chance to join the guard.  Here she is, learning how to march.

Wipe that smile off your face, Private Kate!  You’ll never make it that way!

In the evening, Julie, Kate, Diana, and I went to see “The 39 Steps.”  This is a comic version of the classic Hitchcock movie, performed by a manic cast of four.  Diana did a project on it in a stage management class and wanted to see it.  It was a fun show, but not amazing.

Meanwhile, Andy decided he wanted a day by himself in London.  I’m not sure what he did all day, but I suppose I’ll find out tomorrow.

And a last note about the weather.  It’s been terrible.  Every day it’s rained at least some.  In fact, we never know when we go into a building whether it will be raining or clear when we get out.  We’ve taken to carrying umbrellas everywhere, and picking up new umbrellas to replace damaged ones.  Here’s a typical view from our touring.

Ah well, nothing’s perfect.

When I travel on a tourism vacation, I typically put together a long list of things to do.  This includes the top tourist attractions of wherever I visit, or things that I really want to see for my own reasons.  I rarely get to see everything on the list, but have fun trying.

Kate has her own list for this trip.  A rather unusual list, which should surprise nobody who knows Kate.  Today and yesterday have been great days for Kate for knocking items off her list.

• She minded the gap.
• She heard somebody say, “Bloody hell.”
• She ate fish and chips.
• She saw a fuzzy-hat guy.

Getting everyone up and out in the morning can be quite a challenge.  So much so that I’ve gotten in the habit of taking short journeys in the mornings until everyone is ready to go.  (By this you should note: Dad still has the most stamina for tourism, something I was wondering about now that the kids are all in their twenties and the years are growing on my own roster.  Go Dad!)  This morning, Andy and I walked to the Imperial War Museum, a rather excellent museum containing tanks, planes, really big guns, and various exhibits about Britain’s wars from WWI to the present.  Here’s Andy with Montgomery’s tank from WWII:

Then it was off to lunch, and then one of the great tourist sites in the world: the Tower of London.

One of the things that makes the Tower of London such a great tourist destination is that it has some of the best tour guides in the world.  The Beefeaters, or Yeoman Royal Guard, are all retired sergeants from the British army.  (Well, some are former marines, navy men, or airforce.  But traditionally they were army.)  They do a terrific job giving tours that focus on the gorier parts of the Tower’s history, with detailed descriptions of the more gruesome beheadings that took place.  Here’s the one that gave us a tour today:

Now there’s one thing you should know about this guy.  He was showed up in a most embarrassing manner by a certain American tourist.  See, the guide mentioned that Henry II was Edward I’s grandfather.  Silly him, everyone knows that Henry II was Edward I’s great-grandfather.  Which a certain uppity colonial told him (while in a break between stops – that colonial isn’t completely uppity!).  The guide had his doubts, but a quick perusal of Google shows that the colonial was right in this case.  Hooray for America – we know more about British history than the Brits.  (Well, some of us do, anyway.  Some of the more obnoxious of us who love nothing better than to correct a tour guide!)

Then it was off to St Paul’s Cathedral.  This is my second-favorite building in the world (the first is the Taj Mahal).  I loved the trip – a quick dash up the spiral staircase to the dome, a quick descent down to the vault under the cathedral.  Alas, no pictures – they wouldn’t let us take any.  But we paid our respects to Lord Nelson and the Duke of Wellington, both of whom are interred here, and I basked in that lovely white marble dome.

We went back to the hotel for a short break, then it was off to the first of the plays for which we have tickets this week.  “Much Ado about Nothing,” featuring David Tennant and Catherine Tate as the leads.  If you are of a certain geeky disposition, you’ll know that these were the leads in the British science fiction series “Doctor Who” a couple years back.  We Dzikiewicz’s are of such a disposition – the girls in particular have a crush on Tennant – so this was a real treat.  It didn’t hurt that the production was absolutely marvelous.

Note: you won’t see many pictures of Diana in this blog.  She’s here and having a good time – I assure you!  (She’s smiling next to Kate in the pre-cropped version of this picture.)  But she doesn’t like having pictures of her posted online, so the couple of times she’s appeared here, it was with her express permission, for which I am grateful.

Today we went on the first of our day-long guided bus tours for sites near London.  First stop, Stonehenge!

It was a dramatic cloudy day, just the thing to imagine all those ancient Britons dragging rocks across the field for whatever reason they dragged all those rocks.  We had a grand time.

And here’s a Kate-and-Diana henge, visible through the stones:

Then it was a matter of who could do the best impression of the frowning stone.  You tell me – who wins?

Then it was off to Salisbury, a town near Stonehenge, where they have a terrific gothic cathedral and plenty of Elizabethan architecture.  In fact, Kate looked at buildings like this one and said that she always thought that kind of thing was just a spoof in amusement parks.  She found the real thing to be quite disorienting!

I particularly like the way that the British include a little modern art with their ancient buildings.  They had several plastic statues of modern folk around the cathedral.  Here’s one of my favorites:

And here’s the modern baptismal font, complete with reflection of the cathedral ceiling.

Interesting factoid: William Golding, author of Lord of the Flies, was a teacher at a boy’s school in Salisbury.  Yes, that’s right.  Lord of the Flies was inspired by its author’s time spent teaching young boys.

Then it was off to Bath, including the Roman baths there.  Where, interestingly, we ran into our guide from the Jack the Ripper tour last night.  (Good thing too – he owed me a piece of candy for knowing who the current Duke of York is, which he paid off today.)

Here’s the baths, with Kate in the foreground:

But my favorite thing that happened in Bath was when we hit the gift shop.  There was a copy of a guide of the Bath Fashion Museum.  Fashion museum, said Diana?  We still had forty minutes before the bus had to leave, and it was only a ten minute walk to the museum, so Diana and I put on our rocket boots and sped our way through the lovely Georgian streets of Bath.  We did a mad tour of an exhibit on movie costumes, including the following from Young Victoria:

Then, confident that we had twenty minutes left, allowing for a leisurely wander back down the hill and a visit to the Bath Abbey (where Julie, Andy, and Kate went instead of the Fashion Museum), we turned a corner and found – there was another whole floor of period clothes!

Yes, we did that floor.  Yes, we picked up a book for Diana in the gift shop.  Yes, on the way back we did a quick pass through the abbey.  And yes, we made the bus on time!

I do love adrenaline siteseeing!

It’s our first full day in London.  And what did we do today?  I’m glad you asked.

As usual, I woke up early and had to GET OUT AND DO SOMETHING!!!! So while all the lay-abouts were lying in, I went on an early morning walk to Hyde Park.  No great pictures, but I had fun.

We all gathered for breakfast at 10.  (Well, Julie and I had eaten earlier, before I walked and she decided a little more sleep was in order.  But we sat with the kids while they ate.)  Then it was off to the Victoria and Albert Museum of Design.  I got a chance to let out my inner peasant:

The V&A is a terrific museum.  The first time I went, I didn’t know quite what to expect.  I mean, a museum of design?  Really?  But the place bowled me over.  It’s full of strange statues, medieval tapestries, unusual ironwork from around the world, and just about anything else to surprise you.  As Andy described it, every time you turn a corner you’re likely to run into something weird and completely unexpected.  We all loved it.

Then it was the Natural History Museum, which is right next door.  Ooh boy, was it crowded!  Julie seemed to want to roll up her sleeves and kill someone.  Probably me.

But we still had a great time, though in the butterfly exhibit, Kate was attacked by a particularly vicious butterfly.

But an unfortunate note: Diana is fascinated by clothing and costume, but the clothing gallery was closed for renovations at the V&A.  Kate is fascinated by dinosaurs, but the dinosaur gallery was closed for renovations at the Natural History Museum.  Some days are like that, even in London.

Then it was time for the Science Museum, something that Andy likes to visit.

We then grabbed dinner (nothing particularly noteworthy), then Julie, the girls, and I went on a Jack the Ripper tour.  This was a guided bus tour focusing on the darker side of London, followed by a walking tour through Whitechapel where we visited the places where Jack the Ripper made his kills.  There really isn’t much left from those days (the site of the last and most brutal killing is now a parking garage, though at least it’s reported to be a haunted parking garage), but the guide was superb and there was an eerie feeling from walking the streets where Jack walked.

At one point, the guide was talking to us, describing one of the killings.  Julie and the girls happened to be standing next to him, so I started snapping pictures.  Suddenly, he turned to me and said, “Are you a newspaperman?”  (And with the Murdoch scandals leading the news, right now reporters in London are about as popular as old Saucy Jack.)  We got that resolved, but there was that strange moment of confrontation.

Of course, there does seem to be something about Whitechapel that brings out the worst in some people.

I’ve been to London twice before.

The first was the summer of 2001.  I was on a business trip to Dublin and arranged a lengthy layover in London.  The eight hours I was there allowed me to see the Tower of London, St Paul’s, ride the London Eye, visit the Churchill War Bunker, walk through St James and Hyde Parks, passing by Buckingham Palace, and almost get beaten up by a punk for taking his picture.  A busy day!

The second time was fall of 2003.  Julie and I spent four days in London and another four driving through southern England.  We visited a great deal more of the sites and had lots of fun.

This time, we’ve taken the kids.  Yesterday was our first day here.  Not surprisingly after a redeye, Julie and the kids were fairly jetlagged, so once we had lunch they all collapsed in the rooms for several hours.  But not me!  I was off, walking past Buckingham Palace (there were tons of tourists), wandering through St James Park (there was a brass band playing Gershwin that I tarried to hear), visiting the Guards Museum (nice uniforms and stuff, not terribly noteworthy), passing through Trafalgar Square, wandering through Whitehall down to the Thames where I saw Cleopatra’s Needle (an Egyptian obeslisk: Julie and I visited it’s twin in Central Park a couple weeks ago), and passing by Big Ben and Westminster Abbey.  Here’s Cleopatra’s Needle:

and here’s Big Ben:

I got back to the hotel around 4:30.  Julie and Kate were up for some wandering, so we set off back to Westminster Abbey and Big Ben.

Then dinner with all.  Andy was still tired – he hadn’t slept on the plane at all.  So Julie, Kate, Diana, and I went out and saw Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, a most delightful and cheesy haunted house, and rode the London Eye.  Here’s some pictures.

It was an odd weather day.  When I had been out on my solo walk, it alternated between partial-cloudy and light rain.  When I got back to the hotel, Julie wouldn’t trust my weather report.  Looking out and seeing clear skies, she said she’d risk going out with no raincoat or umbrella.  Cue the rainstorm!  But by the time we went for our post-dinner wander, the sun had come out and the skies were blue.  There remained just enough clouds for rainbow fragments and strange coloration.

But all in all, a great start to what should be a great trip.

Julie and I are both in need of new clothes for the Egypt trip.  Our shopping experiences go like this:

Julie:

• Spend several hours on the web deciding on a store that has just the right collection of clothes.  Narrow it down to three choices.
• Spend several more hours picking out boots.  Order five pairs in various styles and sizes.
• Go to stores at two malls.  Reject first store out of hand.  Spend an hour in second store picking out several hundred dollars worth of stuff.
• Go back to second store two days later.  Pick out another several hundred dollars worth of stuff.
• Delivery guy comes with boots while at mall.  He’ll bring them again tomorrow.  Tragedy!
• Agonize over purchases.  Decide that a couple of items aren’t right.  Bring them back to store.
• Boots arrive.  Pick out favorite pair.  But there’s a problem: they fit too well.  (Joe confused: fitting too well is a problem?)
• Return all but favorite pair of boots.  Determine that can return them within a year if perfect fit turns out to be a disqualifier.
• Wardrobe ready, for now.

Joe:

• Notice that the JC Penney website is having a sale.  Favorite washable silk hawaiian shirt is only $20.  Order a dozen in various colors and patterns.  Get free delivery.
• Shoes are no problem: last time I bought favorite shoes, I got two extra pairs to keep in closet for when the first pair wears out.