Trip to England - Part 7

Thursday we were entirely free to roam, so Mom and I started off by heading to the British Museum. We had printed off a map at home and marked the exhibits we wanted to see, so we didn't spend any time wandering! Some might be horrified by the thought, but with SO many things to see in London, you have to cut corners somewhere... The first of the wonders we saw:

The Rosetta Stone. It was so incredible to be able to see this in real life!! Of course everyone else thought so too, hence the tourist in our picture.... ;-)

The Colossal Bust of Ramesses the Great

Assyrian statue (and exuberant Asian tourist)

The Parthenon sculpture room- we didn't realize until we got the picture back how many people were staring at us here! Slightly disconcerting....

An Easter Island statue (!) Apparently we were most impressed with the large stone sculptures...

And to mix it up a bit: the Mummy of Katebet

Our next stop: 48 Doughty Street, former home of Charles Dickens and currently the Dickens House Museum

The drawing room

After exploring the museum, we started on this Dickens walking tour. First up:

Staple Inn, dating back to 1576.

From the side, so quaint!

Just on the other side of Staple Inn, a beautiful and peaceful garden. As you can tell in the previous pictures, Staple Inn is on a very busy road, but once you are in the garden you can't hear a thing! I could have stayed here all day!

Our walking tour lead us around London's Inns of Court, stopping to note places Dickens included in his books, particularly Bleak House and Great Expectations. Our directions described the beautiful gardens behind Staple Inn as "secret niches". A very good description as if you're not actively looking for the passageways to them, you could pass by 100 times and never know! We were told there would be a sign dating from Victorian London just inside the gateway that would read "The Porter Has Orders to Prevent Old Clothes Men and Others From Calling "Articles for Sale" Also Rude Children Playing and No Horses Allowed Within This Inn.", but all we saw was an empty space for it. :-( I can only hope that it was just down for repainting... On our way to Lincoln's Inn (the Inn of Court featured in BH), we passed by:

No. 15- "Mr. Snagsby's" House (Bleak House)

Inside Lincoln's Inn all was peace and quiet (and green!!).

It still houses offices for lawyers and they still have their names painted on signs like these.

The Court of Chancery!!! We were actually there!! :-D (I'm afraid only Bleak House enthusiasts will be able to understand... See Kathryn, now you need to read/watch it so you know what I'm talking about! ;-) )

After lingering about Lincoln's Inn, we ventured into the busy, noisy streets and made our way to Sir John Soane's Museum, just a block away. Sir John was an architect (he designed the Dulwich Picture Gallery) and also an avid collector. His home is fascinating (in a bizarre way) as he wanted to showcase his impressive collection of ancient stone sculptures, while using as much natural light as possible. The result is a conglomeration of skylights above, narrow hallways, and sections open to the lower level (to get natural light in there). I don't think I was a fan of the house. Kind of just looked a museum... He did have some fun stuff, though! He had a room filled with Hogarth paintings and a sarcophagus downstairs covered in hieroglyphics. The British Museum refused to pay £2000 for it, so Sir John decided to add it to his collection!

Just around the corner and past "Mr. Tulkinghorn's" House (from BH), we saw this:

While it's not the real one (and I hated the book!), we were right there, so we had to take a picture... :-)

The fountain in the Middle Temple courtyard. Dickens wrote about this courtyard in "Martin Chuzzlewhit".

Prince Henry's Room, a former tavern c.1610

Dr. Johnson's House. We aren't huge fans of his, but after reading "Cranford", we decided to walk past as it was close by. The ironic thing is that his 300th birthday was the day after we went! They were going to have free admission AND birthday cake! *sigh* Oh well, we were pretty museumed-out by then anyway...

To get to our next destination, we hopped on the tube to Southwark. While in London, we found the tube very easy to navigate (as opposed to the buses!) and relatively clean. Our first couple of trips were made using the uppermost level, but when we took the Central line, we realized why it's called that: it's practically in the center of the earth! To get to the "deep down" lines, we had to take a staircase, an escalator, more stairs, and then a huge escalator. Makes me glad I'm not claustrophobic!! Also, the farther in you go, the gustier it gets when it comes in! In the movie "Prince Caspian" I thought they were just being overly dramatic when the children got blown away to Narnia because of the incoming subway. Well, now I know that they were exaggerating, but not nearly as much as I thought!

Getting close!

And closer!

And closer!*

*We were actually headed in the wrong direction when we saw these street signs, but in the name of artistic license, I think you can let it slide...

St. George the Martyr Church, and...

Our destination: the Marshalsea Prison! Lest you think we're nuts (well, more than you already do...), the Marshalsea was a debtors' prison and John Dickens (Charles' father) was imprisoned here for a short time. It is also a primary location in the book "Little Dorrit", which we both read and watched this year. Mom described this part of our day as "a sort of pilgrimage". So yeah, we enjoy traveling thousands of miles to visit prisons. What's weird about that?!?

After the walking tour, we obliged our sad feet by going back to the hotel to rest and have bread and cheese (and scones and clotted cream!) for supper. That evening we went to St. Martin in the Field's for an "Elgar's Serenade for Strings" concert, which was a lovely way to end our delightful stay in London!

Inside St. Martin's. We got this picture of the lovely interior before we realized that photography wasn't allowed. Lest you think this is a regular occurrence, it really only happened twice!!

Next up: Jane Austen's House!

Trip to England - Part 6

Our Wednesday started out with sleeping in,an acne-cream-mistaken-for-toothpaste fiasco (thankfully it was realized before it was used!), a sleeping-pill-accidentally-taken-at-8:15AM disaster, the power in our room going out, and getting a call from Jennie (our tour leader) at 8:45 saying that she left a message last night saying that we were going to meet in the lobby at 8:15. Our answering machine at the hotel didn't work. Great. Thankfully, the day got better from there! :-) The group went on in order to make their appointment, and Matt and Lindsay kindly waited for us as we frantically ran around getting all our things in order for the day and grabbing a roll-to-go from the breakfast buffet. We ended up getting to Greenwich (our destination for the entire day) only 20 minutes after we had originally planned. Our morning was free, so we started off by wandering around the Old Royal Navy College yard.

The College was built to flank Queen's House, the building in the center background.

First stop was the Painted Hall. A very impressive entirely painted room (designed by Christopher Wren in 1698) that was originally intended to be used as a dining hall. After taking 19 years to paint, it became too grand and too much of a tourist attraction to be used as originally intended.

A fun faux window; there were 3 real windows in the room, so in order to preserve the symmetry, they painted a window for the 4th!

Just outside is the Colonnade. Look familiar?

How about now?

So of course we had to take some pictures.... ;-)

And a picture of the back to satisfy a certain someone.....

The Royal Observatory

Next up was the Royal Observatory, home of Greenwich Mean Time and the Prime Meridian. We had been looking forward to this, after all, it's not every vacation that you can stand on the Prime Meridian! :-)

Inside the Octagon Room which was originally designed by Sir Christopher Wren to be used to observe eclipses, comets, etc. We took this picture before we realized that there was no photography allowed.... Oops!

At the Observatory, they had several exhibits telling the story of the attempt to find an accurate way to calculate longitude. After reading 75% of the information, Mom turned to me and said, "Do you understand this?". While I didn't follow everything, we certainly came away with a big appreciation for all the thought, calculations, and time that went into finding it! We were also kind of glad that Dad didn't come with us. If he had, we would have been there for at least 2 hours! :-)

In the eastern AND western hemispheres!

The view from the Observatory. Queen's House and Old Royal Navy College in front, ugly modern junk in the background. ;-)

Next up was our tour of Queen's House, designed in 1616 by Inigo Jones for James I's wife, Anne. While it really isn't spectacularly attractive from the outside (at least in my opinion), the inside is a different story!

Queen's House was also used in the filming of Little Dorrit. The main entry room (or whatever it's name is!) was used for the first room in the Circumlocution Office. For filming, they added bookshelves to make it into a small room (it is really very large!), while still being able to highlight the awesome floor!

The Tulip Stairs, named for the tulip designs on the railings. It was the first centrally unsupported staircase in England.

And was also used in Little Dorrit, also for the Circumlocution Office. It was such a beautiful staircase! *sigh* Maybe I could have that in my house, too! ;-)

After seeing the delights of Queen's House (and being stopped by inquisitive employees!), we made our way to the Fan Museum, stopping by a charming cafe for a latte and iced coffee. We met up with half the group for a tour of the Museum, which is 2 converted Georgian townhouses filled with fans!

This was one of my very favorites (from the 1910s, I think)

This impressive fan may look like lace, but it's really carved ivory!!

The Orangery- not as nice as Kensington's, but really, who am I to complain about tea in England?!?

After our tour, the whole group met in the Orangery for tea, scones, and cake (a very common combination, we found! Also very sweet... ;-) ). Jema Hewitt came as our guest speaker and shared pictures of some of her lovely creations!

Our group (and Jema!) all together one last time before part of the group left for home. And yes, I'm hiding behind Catherine. I wanted to make sure my running shoes didn't make it in the picture! :-D

Stay tuned for more Little Dorrit and Dickens fun- up next on Day 7!!

Corn in the backyard 2009, week 19

September 27

Although not hot, we had had some decent drying weather until the week before the 27th. Since then we are back in our cool and rainy pattern, which doesn't make the farmers any less anxious. We'll pray the crops continue to dry so they can be harvested without a lot of extra expense, and so nothing rots in the fields. Check back in a few days for a view of the corn on October 4th. Thanks for visiting!

Trip to England - Part 5

Well, I hope these posts aren't getting too tedious! I was kind of relying on the hope that they were "one thing very interesting" as putting out 2 "moderately" interesting posts a day would be about more than I could do! ;-)

Tuesday started out cloudy with a chance of rain, so my hopes to wear historical clothing to Kensington Palace were put aside for another day. That turned out to be a good idea as it rained steadily for most of the day. I do have to say though, the weather during our trip was superb and definitely not normal! Tuesday was the only day we had ANY rain and we always had warm, but not hot (yay!) days! We truly were blessed!!

On our way to the Palace, we walked past lots of streets filled with houses like these. This is most definitely a favorite style of mine!

Kensington Palace from the side

Princess Victoria's bedroom- where on June 20, 1837, she awoke to the news that she was to be Queen.

The Red Gallery. Actually, I just made that up. I forget what it's called, but I think it was something like that!

Just looked it up: It's really the Kings Gallery. Bummer.

Kensington Palace was lovely, featuring historical rooms, a display of Princess Diana's dresses (yawn!), and a few Court Dress ensambles. Below is one of the latter:

This also had matching breeches and a waistcoat, but those pictures were too blurry for publicity... Once again, if Lindsay got better pictures of them, I'll be sure to update this post.

Closeup.

This outfit was embroidered (as was usual for this period), but this time with ribbon embroidery! I was very excited, as ribbon embroidery is so much faster than regular, and I had yet to see a historical garment from this period with it. The design is so simple, yet makes a big impact from a distance. I also like the added textural interest as well...

After touring the Palace, we went to the Orangery for a delightful and delicious lunch! Jennie had arranged for Cathy Hay (of Your Wardrobe Unlock'd) to come as our guest speaker. Cathy also shared a recent project of hers: a Worth gown that she recreated! Cassie was fortunate enough to model it for us, so we got to see all the beautiful underthings and get the full picture. I had been following the construction of this dress online for several months, so it was a delight to see it (and touch it! :-) ) in person! The pictures really don't do it justice....

In the Orangery. This was such a beautiful room! Airy and simple (all white) and yet very detailed. (just look at that trim and those pillars!) I wouldn't mind having a room like this in my house.... ;-)

Our adorable centerpieces!

Cassie in the stunning dress. Of course, it does look better without the blue shirt underneath, but the lack of changing rooms being what they are in the Orangery.... ;-)

Just look at all of us admiring all of the months of handwork that went into the oak leaf decorations! Truly an inspiration...

And us with Cathy (L) and Suzi (R).

After Kensington, we all braved the elements and trooped off to the Museum of London. We had an appointment with the costume curator, and she agreed to show several items in their collection of 25,000 (!!) to us. (Just think of that! 25,000. *sigh* What a job!) While the first half went downstairs, the rest of us explored the museum. Now, it might be overly obvious to some, but I thought the Museum of London would be a museum IN London, not a museum OF London. But museum OF London it most certainly was! They had artifacts of London from Roman times up which were certainly impressive, just not quite what we were expecting.... After looking all through it for a clothing exhibit (they don't have one now as they're in the midst of a big remodel), I did find a few things of interest, but I must admit that I was disappointed. Oh, and did I mention that it's a museum most definitely geared toward kids? When our turn arrived to go behind the scenes, we were able to enjoy the delights of a pair of lovely 1780's stays, a pair of doll's regency stays (a beautiful dark brown with contrast stitching and embroidery!), an embroidered muslin 1780's dress, a bonnet of Queen Victoria's (lovely 1840's with beautiful coral ribbon!), and several others. The only downside of this all is that I am unable to put any of the pictures online..... ;-( So, the short story of the Museum of London is: don't go (at least before the remodel) unless you can get an appointment with the costume curator!

Aylwen (one of the ladies who went with us) was able to arrange a visit to Meg Andrews' house to view her current collection of antique clothing, so we headed off for her house with Aylwen and Elizabeth. After arriving too early, we went to some nearby grocery stores to while away the time, and stay out of the rain. You remember how I said it rained that day? Well, it still was, and our shoes were soaked. :-) We've found that grocery stores give you a feel of the average inhabitant very well, and we always find it interesting to see what British people eat. :-) First off, their potato chips, er, I mean crisps have very weird flavors. Like "Prawn", or "Ready Salted". (we later found out that this is because some crisps come un-salted, with a mini packet of salt!) Also, they take their cream WAY too seriously. There was Single Cream, Double Cream, Extra-Thick Single Cream, Extra-Thick Double Cream, Pouring Cream, Whipping Cream, and many more! I mean, really, what's the difference between "Extra-Thick Single Cream" and "Double Cream"? Except of course the label....

When we went back to Meg's, she very graciously served us tea (which very much helped us feel warmer! ;-) ) before we dug in! I can't say enough how gracious and helpful she was! We were able to look at and examine her garments inside and out! She had everything from a piece of 17th cen. embroidery to a gorgeous blue silk 1770s polonaise (in remarkable condition!) to men's vests and waistcoats to a late 1830s day dress to a striking and one-of-a-kind Regency open robe to the most gorgeous embroidered wool shawls to pristine toddler Regency gowns! This was without a doubt on of the major highlights of the trip! Meg was so friendly and personable, she let us stay late just ohhing and ahhing over all of her things! Thank you so much Meg!! :-)

Next up- Our charming day in Greenwich, and the morning that almost ruined it all! (Now if that isn't a suspenseful synopsis....)