A Farewell to London

Last day in London. Sad. Even though I'm not a big-city person, the place has really grown on me. It was a beautiful frozen morning, too - very cold but magical in its frigid stillness. My last memories of the city (for now) will be of wandering Hyde Park watching people walking hand-in-hand as their dogs gamboled on the pale grass, a horse or two passing by, the birds pecking disconsolately on the frozen ponds. And so another season has passed.

A Day in Westminster

Two days, three royally-linked destinations, three changing of the guard ceremonies. WIN.

The first was the horse guards at Whitehall, near St. James's Park in London, which made me realize, more poignantly than ever, how desperately horse-deprived I feel. I arrived early (after a gorgeous walk by the frozen, sun-dappled lake), in prime time to see the mounted guards ride in, all in red capes on black horses, and line up. The horses were only ten or so feet away, and I could smell them, smell their hoof polish and see the gleam in their eyes as they tossed their heads and fidgeted with their bits and tried to pester each other. Asking ten horses to line up square and stand patiently for several minutes isn't easy! I can't say how much I miss having these magnificent animals in my daily life. Especially since these were nice horses, with wonderful faces full of curiosity and character.

My next stop was Buckingham Palace, which I've seen before, but on a day when the changing of the guard was cancelled because of rain. Today's weather was the opposite of that day in September - clear, crisp, and brilliantly sunny for London. You really learn to appreciate the blue sky when you've been oppressed by gray clouds and mist! The crowd around the palace was a little nuts, and trust me, my view of the guards wasn't always this clear - I was being crushed in on all sides most of the time, and it's lucky my camera has a nice zoom function or I wouldn't have been able to get some of my shots!

In the afternoon, I finally checked two much-anticipated museums off my list: the Victoria and Albert and the Tate Britain! The latter had an exhibit on Leland Stanford and Eadward Muybridge's famous horse motion-picture photos on loan from the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford - which had me excited, except they spelled it Standford. Oh dear.

Soane Museum and Christ Church Regatta

Some days in Oxford feel like I'm overscheduling myself to the brink. Today was one of those.

This morning I was off to London for an architecture class field trip to the Soane Museum, the rather eccentric home of preeminent 19th century British architect John Soane. In describing this building, let me emphatically repeat myself: eccentric beyond belief. Photography wasn't allowed inside, so I only have this lone shot of the exterior, but in any case I don't think pictures could capture the quirky feel of the entire building. John Soane was a man who lived for architectural whimsy, it seems, and who was also captivated by the ideals of his own designs, especially in terms of the romantic and the sublime. His house (actually, three connected London townhouses) is a rabbit warren and mirror-gallery and exhibit-hall of antiques and unique architectural inventions. The ceilings vault and curve, there are unexpected nooks in the corners, walls give way to hidden painting displays, and the entire back portion is devoted to a gallery containing ancient stone fragments, contemporary paintings, and a chamber where Soane liked to imagine that a solitary monk lived. Light plays throughout the building in odd ways, shining through colored glass here before creating an intentional sense of gloom there, all striving toward a strangely dramatic and melancholy mood. The oddest part is that the house was this way when Soane lived there over 150 years ago, and has only been preserved for the museum! Probably the strangest house I've been to, by far.

After a whirlwind tour of the Soane Museum, during which I got to see some fun London streets and squares I hadn't encountered before, I headed right back to Oxford. The reason? This week is the annual Christ Church novice regatta, in which my Corpus Christi boat was participating. I say was because, unfortunately, we lost this afternoon after winning yesterday's second-round race by a whopping six lengths. No quarterfinals for us tomorrow. But no regrets: we rowed as well as we ever have, and I (for once) got to experience a competitive sport that doesn't involve horses. Rowing all-out for the duration of a race is hard! I go back to the saddle with a fresh appreciation for other sports, as well as a newfound sense of gratitude that my normal life doesn't involve horribly early mornings turning into an icicle out on a pitch-black river. Rowing is quintessentially Oxford, though, and I'm happy I embraced that.

Photo by Celine Zeng. I'm the one in the stroke seat. How strange that I'm leaving so soon, yet these Oxford people will continue to go about their lives...

Harry Potter Puts Me in the Thick of Things

I. Love. The. U. K. Today's reason: because I got to go see the new Harry Potter movie, captioned!

I won't take up space in this post talking about the film itself (which was pretty good if a bit scattered at times) - what really pumps me up is that this is the first time, ever, that I have been able to go to a film during its opening weekend. That bears repeating: the first time EVER. For someone who has so often felt frustrated and left out of pop culture because of lack of accessibility, this is huge. At home in the US, it takes seemingly forever for the captioned version of a film to hit the theaters, and then by that time most of the buzz has died out. There's still a big buzz about Harry Potter (so much so that, walking out of the theater, I bumped into a group of other Stanford students on their way in to see it), and, for once, I am part of that buzz. For once, I have seen a movie at the same time as everybody else, and even before. I don't know what makes the accessibility options so much better in the UK, but they are, hands down. YESSSSSSSS.

That said, seeing Harry Potter while studying abroad in England was especially fun, because I recognized some of the English-type scenery in the film - plus of course London. One of the London streets featured early on in the storyline, I'm pretty sure I saw just last weekend. And the actors' curiously British mannerisms? Yep, I recognize those too.


One of the many Harry Potter ads all over London - this one from a bus stop near Marble Arch. Hey there, Tower Bridge in the background! I know you!



Another Day in London

The more I see of London, the more I like it. So many faces to the city, so many things to see and discover. It's an amazingly diverse city, but with a strong sense of history, and I feel lucky to have the opportunity to spend so much time there. Every time I go back, I come away feeling like I've experienced something different. Here's a short chronicle of my very fun day yesterday:

The world-famous Portobello Road market in Notting Hill is every bit as amazing as you'd expect it to be! The area and streets themselves are colorful and eclectic, and there's so much cool stuff for sale, from antiques to clothes to food, as well as street musicians and an incredible amount of energy. Because it is famous, though, it's swarming and crowded, and the people-watching is at least as interesting as anything else.

 

I made sure to stop by and see The Travel Bookshop, featured in the Hugh Grant/Julia Roberts film Notting Hill! Although the interior has been remodeled a bit since the days of the film, it still looks pretty much like you'd expect. How weird that it's a real place.

My morning in Notting Hill over, I headed over to Trafalgar Square and the National Gallery. Coming up out of the tube station into the grand, expansive square, with its central column and lions and fountains and fine surrounding buildings, all swarming with people and life, was an experience in itself. I found the entire place too massive to photograph.

One of the fountains with the National Gallery in the background. I spent about an hour and a half in the gallery, which has an impressive range of paintings and artists, including some names that are quickly coming to feel like old friends: Rembrandt, Monet, Van Gogh, etc. I've enjoyed seeing these artists' range of work during my travels in Europe, as well as coming to a greater appreciation of their influence. The interior architecture was interesting too: very colorful and baroque, with marble columns and gilded ceilings. Probably one of the most baroque buildings I've entered so far, excluding Blenheim. After the National Gallery, I spent an hour or so in the National Portrait Gallery next door, which I almost liked better - the contemporary photography was excellent, and I enjoyed seeing old paintings of famous Britons during the Victorian era.

My next stop: the Natural History Museum, also remarkable for its architecture. I met up with a few friends and we roamed the halls of fossils and plant/animal displays together. (And how awesome is it that virtually all of London's museums are free?!)

Wandering London at night after all the museums had closed. The Brits like Christmas, I can already tell you that, and Picadilly Circus was alight with fun displays like stars, trees, and (as here) gift boxes. Several places have already laid out ice skating rinks and hot chocolate. Plus we walked past a "Winter Wonderland" event being set up in Hyde Park. I'm excited to see what London feels like once it's really December!

Various Views of St. Paul's

...from several different times in London, and inspired by a paper I just wrote on the subject. (Oh yeah, I'm cranking out those papers!)

A Small Sampling from Tate Modern

I spent several hours yesterday afternoon at Tate Modern, London's gallery of modern art. Many works were, well, radically modern. They challenged my perception of what art could be, sometimes raising such strong feelings as infatuation or disgust. I just regret that I didn't get photos of the Dalis/Pollocks/Picassos!

Borrowing from everyday objects - some other works did this to much more extreme effect

This one made me feel sick in person - a little less so in photograph

A horse? It was very abstract, very futurist and mechanical-looking, but I liked it

Meditation on portraiture in an irreverently cow-wallpapered room

Greenwich

View from the Royal Observatory, Greenwich - wow!

I feel like I've been to a cornerstone of the modern world: Greenwich, England. I still remember sitting in science class (in eighth grade, I think it was) learning about the prime meridian and being told that Greenwich was pronounced "Grenich," not "Green-witch." How fantastically strange, then, to see it with my own eyes, and to stand on the spot of the prime meridian itself.

 I ended up in Greenwich for an architecture class field trip, during which we saw several famous examples of 17th-century buildings designed by such architects as Inigo Jones,

One of the stargazing rooms and old telescopes

Christopher Wren, and John Webb, including the Queen's House and the former palace and sailors' quarters (now a naval school). But the highlight of the trip by far was the Royal Observatory. After class was adjourned, I went with a group of people up a hill to see the building, which was pivotal in the development of accurate star charts used for navigation - and which is also the site of the prime meridian, or 0 degrees longitude. It has since been turned into a museum, which in its displays of telescopes, maps, and intricate old clocks (designed with the aim of keeping accurate time with Greenwich Mean Time, which would assist in mapping one's exact coordinates while at sea) had me fascinated. Granted, I love old clocks already, but here I really got the feel of a challenging but exciting time in history, in which shipping, travel, and exploration all exploded and changed the world. (Some big names here too - Richard Halley and Sir Isaac Newton among them.)

After visiting the Royal Observatory, we did some window shopping and eating in Greenwich and then London before heading to see a play in the evening. It was called The Woman in Black and was very well done, with innovative uses of the stage and light and sound effects, but also rather scary. (Suffice it to say, I did not scream like some others in the audience did!)

Tower, Cathedral, Theatre

Yesterday we wrapped up a long week of orientation with a trip into the city for some unbelievable sightseeing.

Our first stop, the Tower of London, is a 12th-century relic right beside the Thames, surrounded by the sleek modern-looking buildings that have sprung up in recent decades. (Interesting contrast, right?) It's served several functions over the centuries, from a fortress guarding the far end of London, to the onetime residence for the royal family, to (most infamously) a feared and bloody prison. It contains the spot where Mary, one of the wives of Henry VIII, was executed, as well as Lady Jane Grey and seemingly innumerable others. Some of the towers still bear writing on the walls that prisoners carved during their time there, from little doodles to outright pleads to God. Very spooky - and the British called themselves civilized! On a more positive note, the royal crown jewels are also stored there, in an extremely high-security vault, and I enjoyed seeing so many crowns and scepters from times of old all the way to the present Queen Elizabeth II.

After our quick whirl through the Tower of London, we were off to St. Paul's Cathedral, which is - for lack of a better word - stunning. In fact, it's almost physically overpowering in person. The attention that went into every aspect of the cathedral, from the physical layout to smaller things like paintings, friezes and engravings, and statues, is mind-boggling. I'm taking a British architecture class while at Oxford, and it was a little surreal to see the structural and design details we've discussed and read about so far, all realized so magnificently. Plus, the view of London from the gallery halfway up the dome was incredible, even with the rain.

To cap off our day, we all reconvened a few hours after St. Paul's to see a performance of Henry IV, Part I at Shakespeare's restored Globe Theatre, on the other side of the Thames. Admittedly I didn't enjoy the play as much as I had hoped; following Shakespearean dialogue with a sign language interpreter is an absolute nightmare, especially when neither you nor the interpreter is at all familiar with the plotline! Perhaps if it had been a play I'd studied in great depth, like Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet, my evening would have been better. But it was still (yet another) surreal experience to see the Globe in person, the actors decked out in period attire, the stage and seats just like I'd seen in reproduced drawings. This would have been Shakespeare's vision, and I felt privileged to witness it, if not to understand it completely.

Now if only the weather hadn't been so rainy - umbrellas or not, after splashing through torrents and puddles back to the bus from the Globe I think we all felt soaked!

Tale of Two Cities

Europe: week one. The Oxford term hasn't started yet, so I've kicked off my travels via a whirlwind foray through London and Paris. This is the first time I've had access to free wireless internet in a week, but part of me has enjoyed the disconnect. It's made me feel free, rambling, untethered to the routine obligations of life in the U.S. But then again, that could also be an effect of the sights I've seen. This week has been a compressed tale of two cities, both very different but very enjoyable.

Here's a compressed comparison of the two.

Sightseeing

London and Paris, while both swarming with tourists, are very different in the layouts of their monuments and must-see destinations. Our first night in Paris, we took a boat ride down the Seine, which provided a stunning view and introduction to the city. Eiffel Tower, Invalides, Louvre, National Assembly, cathedral of Nortre Dame, all in a row! A bit mind-blowing. We spent our days exploring these districts, mostly on foot (I quickly became sore from walking), never quite dispelling the illusion of timelessness and refinement. I see why Paris is often considered the most beautiful city in the world!

London, on the other hand, is more of an odd mix. The area around Buckingham Palace, which we visited on Friday, was more of what I'd pictured the city might look like, with fortresslike stone slab buildings clustered around such spectacular sights as Westminster Abbey, Parliament, and Big Ben. But the rest of the city revealed interesting layers of time, space, and culture. A stone fortress from 1200 on one block, a soaring modern glass tower right beside it. A jarring mismatch, something like a time capsule. Paired with more crowds and bustle, exacerbated by the way Brits really do drive on the wrong side of the road! But destinations like Buckingham Palace (where we got to tour the state rooms) had a jaw-dropping elegance that almost surpassed anything we'd seen in Paris.

Parks

Coming from the desert, all I have to say is wow. We visited the Luxembourg gardens on a perfect sunny day and sat around the fountain basking in the sun, then strolled the manicured lawns swarming with joggers and bench-loungers. I must say Europeans better know how to enjoy their leisure than Americans. In Paris many couples sat on the banks of the Seine, and grass-lawn picnics seemed a popular activity, especially beside the Eiffel Tower. In London, too, the parks were spectacular - none more than the St. James's park, where beautiful birds dotted the water and over-inquisitive squirrels tried to climb up our pants legs. What greenness, what color!

Food

In the eating department, Paris wins out - no surprise, since I received many precautions about British food before embarking on this trip. What a wonderful variety of breads, wines, and cheeses! The crepes, even from street vendors, were quite good. And don't get me started on the chocolates and pastries...

British food, on the whole, is rather bland, but in a hearty, stick-to-your-ribs sort of way, reminding me of old Dickens novels where orphans line up in the cold for their morning helping of porridge. I've had porridge since I've been here, as well as the standard English fare of fish and chips and roast and potatoes. All fine for a hungry tourist, but not as good as the Lebanese cuisine we tried our second night in London.

Still, not all British food is completely awful. I've had a few good muffins and scones since arriving here, and the chocolate tart and hot chocolate we enjoyed at Buckingham Palace were wonderful, not to mention adorable.

Museums

Tough call, but I enjoyed the London and Paris museums about equally. Paris, of course, has the Louvre, which was stunning in architecture but did have me a bit tired of cherubs and Madonnas by the end. I loved the marble sculpture displays, and the later paintings (18th and 19th century) were stunning. Disappointingly, the space in front of the Mona Lisa was crammed, bustling, and not at all suited for real artistic reflection - too many tourists! But as fun as it was to see the Louvre, perhaps more enjoyable was the Musee d'Orsay, with its collection of more modern, realist, and impressionistic art. Van Gogh's self-portrait was amazing to see in person, as were the collections of work by such artists as Monet, Cezanne, and Renoir. As always, I loved the Rodin sculptures, maybe especially so because they made me think of Stanford.

In London, we visited the British Museum, which was astonishing in the breadth of its collection of artifacts. The Rosetta stone, large chunks of the Parthenon's frieze, the bronze bust of Augustus - they were all here. As well as sphinxes, ancient coins from around the world, mummies, Mayan and Incan art, Greek pottery, and so much else that I felt as if I could have spent days roaming all of the exhibits rather than mere hours. British imperialism = a good or a bad thing?

Weather

Paris had picturesque weather, around 70 and sunny, with the leaves just starting to turn and the late summer rays floating through the trees - which made it even harder to arrive in cold and rainy London on Wednesday. I went from basking in T-shirts to shivering under an umbrella in no time at all. Still, what else did I expect of England? The weather when we arrived at Oxford yesterday was warmer at least, so hopefully I'll get in a few pleasant days before real winter starts. I'm going to miss that California sun...

Culture and Communication

Europeans so far seem like friendly people (the occasional rudeness of street passersby notwithstanding), happy to help or offer directions, often not in such a rush as some Americans. Being in Paris made me wish I spoke French (or at least read it better than I do with my Latin-roots background), especially since the people we met in restaurants and on the streets were so courteous about communicating with tourists who obviously did not speak their language. Without fuss or disdain, they made themselves understood. Americans aren't always so accepting.

As for British accents, it's hard but I'm trying. The Brits so far have been extra polite when they see that I'm struggling, which is gratifying. I was pleased to see that many of the venues we visited in London openly advertised their British Sign Language interpreting services - not something you often find in America! (Now if only I understood BSL...)

Cars

Okay, so European cars deserve a final comment. I was infatuated with all the Mini Coopers and other similarly tiny cars in Paris (and the motorcycles! and trimly dressed professor types on bicycles!), but London is equally quirky with all its double-decker buses and 1940s-period taxi cabs. I'm even getting used to looking on the right sides of the road when crossing the street!