The next batch of posts are all about our trip to the UK. We headed across the pond here for a choral tour…Connie is singing a couple of concerts with John Rutter who’s like the Arthur Fiedler or John Phillip Sousa of modern choral music…she’s really happy to get to sing with him. The tour consists of a total of four choirs with about 230 people from across the US singing at two concerts in various combinations of the four groups. After that’w over they’ll be doing some vacation up in the northern part of England for a couple of weeks before heading back home.

They packed up and left the house earlier this week…but since it’s now hurricane season Neil put up the hurricane shutters over our windows before they left just in case any storms come a-calling before they get back home. They drove over to Miami and had a non stop flight from there.

The flight over on British Airways  was mostly uneventful…except for the guy that tripped and fell in the middle of the night and on getting up tossed his cookies all over a lady in the row behind us…she was not happy. That naturally resulted in all the lights coming on and everybody getting woken up while they cleaned up and air freshened the area. They never figured out whether he just fainted, fell, and hit his head resulting in the problem or whether he was drunk or otherwise ill…but it seemed like he just fainted as best as they could tell. Once that was over they tried to go back to sleep…and probably got about 2 hours each of off and on dozing before landing in London at 0730 local or about 2230 the night before by body time. They went through immigration and customs…which was amazingly easy…in fact it was the easiest customs clearing either of them had ever had…basically the passport was scanned automatically by a machine which then compared the photo in it to a photo it took and then let you through. Picked up the luggage and headed through the Nothing to Declare line and then they were out…without seeing a single actual human involved in either customs or immigration. They hung around the airport for an hour or so waiting on another flight and their bus to the hotel before arriving at the Novotel West about 1100 only to find out that they couldn’t check in until 1500. That seems an oversight by the tour management company but they were at least able to store the luggage until 1500 while they went and looked for food and something to be kept awake by…based on a suggestion from the tour company they headed for Covent Gardens which turned out to be a shopping area and not an actual garden.

I’ll eventually get to some actual photos worth looking at…but for the next bit while they’re in London it will mostly be snapshots rather than fine photography…with lots of awkward angles and people in the shots and the like…but that’s what happens on tours to see the sights…so bear with me and eventually we’ll have something more interesting to look at.

Once they dropped off the luggage and found their way to the nearest tube station they made the trek to Covent Gardens and decided to stop for lunch…spotting the Nags Head Pub…which actually turned out to be a gay establishment they think…they went in and ordered a couple pints of Aspall Cider which turned out to be mighty darned tasty..

They split an order of duck croquettes and an order of Thai Chile Chicken bites for lunch based on their hunger level…the idea being that they would eat what they felt like at normal lunch and dinner time and stay awake as late as possible although by this time they were going on 27 hours awake…hoping that waking up the next day they would be over jet jag…which turned out to be mostly true as long as they had an afternoon nap the next day as it happened. While Neil was off ordering Connie noticed that although the pub was completely full of couples…there was only one male/female couple besides them and that couple was also from the US…every other one was two men or two women. Nothing wrong with that of course…they don’t care…but between that and the Pride Month flags all over the place she figured it was most likely a gay establishment. Nonetheless…the cider and lunch was pretty good. After lunch they were sorta running out of gas and it was almost 1500 so they headed back to the hotel and checked in…then decided it was late enough to head out for dinner.

Dinner was at The William Morris…a pub maybe a quarter mile from the hotel…Connie had a spritz which is kinda like a wine cooler but with liquor in it instead of wine…hers was a Tanqueray and tonic flavor and Neil’s was a Peach Belini flavor…and they had a couple of burgers and salads to go with them. All was pretty tasty again and they headed back to the hotel and crashed into bed about 2100 with an 0530 wakeup time on Friday morning.

Friday after breakfast (full buffet as part of the tour package) they had a tour organizational meeting which consisted of about 10 minutes worth of useful information jammed into an hour and a half including the question and answer period…most of the questions were about the dress for the concert and the info was passed along to the various directors weeks ago…so since everybody is already here Neil really hoped that they had planned better ahead of time to make sure they brought the appropriate things to sing in.

After the meeting the headed off to the Southbank section of the city along the southern bank of the Thames River…it’s one of those rehabilitated gentrified areas across from the Globe Theatre and Tower of London…they wandered along the river for a mile or so before deciding that (a) they were hungry and (b) it was late enough to call it dinner instead of Lunch so they stopped in a pub for dinner.

First up as they strolled along the river on the Queen’s Walk after getting off of the tube (the subway here in London) at London Bridge station was the Golden Hinge…well, actually a full scale replica built in the 1970s using the traditional methods of construction…which served as Francis Drake’s flagship on the his around the world journey in the late 1500s. The replica has itself also done a circumnavigation trip and if you remember the mini series Shogun starring Richard Chamberlain as John Blackthorne from the late 1970s it served as Erasmus which was his ship. Blackthorne was the Navigator of the ship and was known as the Anjin which is Navigator in Japanese and they add -san to the end which essentially means Mister. Neil was known as Anjin-san on his last ship in the Navy as well as he was the Navigator and uses it as his nom de plume on various forms he participates in. The replica is currently in dry dock undergoing restoration, the Thames is just beyond the stern of it in the photo below.

They then headed east a bit to take in Southwark Cathedral…spotting this knight looking sculpture as they approached.

Then heading inside they looked up the nave towards the altar.

And also spotted the cathedral cat and some nice stained glass windows…although to be honest there are dozens to hundreds of really nice stained glass windows in just about every cathedral and church ‘round these parts.

As they wandered around looking at the various chapels, burial sites and such in the cathedral there was some nice organ music playing and eventually they found both the pipes for the organ and the organist toiling away at his task. The pipes here are about 30 feet high from the base to the top and are in the right transept with the organist being in the choir section in the nave…I’ll ‘splain what that means after the photos.

Ok…in Romanesque or Gothic churches (which comprise essentially all of the old ones in Europe and the US as well)…is essentially shaped like a crucifix when looked at from above…this is called a cruiciform church. The center section that represents the upright of the crucifix is named the nave and the cross part is the transept. Generally speaking the altar is at the top of the cross in the nave and the organ, choir, and VIP seating sections are in the nave from the altar down to the transept…and the congregation sits in both sides of the transept and the bottom portion of the nave. Here’s a basic drawing…the black dots are columns, the center portion of the roof is arched and the side portions in the nave either smaller arches or flat and the same in the transepts. The area between the choir seat pairs is open so the congregation in the left and right transepts and lower nave can see the alter at the top.The sides of the nave are generally walking aisles and there is another aisle around the top of the nave outside of the choir seats and either behind or in front of the altar. The organist above is at the yellow dot behind the right hand choir section and the pipes are in the right transept at the blue dot…this is generally their location although the organist is sometimes inside the choir section so they can see the altar and the pipes may be inside and above the choir section as well. If you remember the photo of the late Queen sitting by herself after her husband’s funeral…she was sitting in the left side choir section in that photo.

After leaving the cathedral we walked past HMS Belfast…a WWII cruiser preserved as a museum.

And then after walking under the London Bridge…no, not the famous one…it was sold to a group who moved it to Arizona back in the late 1960s and was replaced by the new London Bridge which is your basic flat modern bridge…they spotted this skeleton hanging in a cage…as far as Neil could find out this is a real skeleton…he says it shows what the consequences were back in the 1300s if you dined and dashed.

Wandering through this little covered shopping area and spotted a neat little sculptured fountain as they read the various menus to decide on dinner.

They decided on dinner at Harrimans at Hayes which is…you guessed it…a nice pub.

Dinner was a spritz (Connie likes them, she had gin again) and Neil had an Old Fashioned…then they had some Chardonnay and for eats some beef croquettes along with some smoked salmon on sourdough bread…the latter and the wine were so good and they were still hungry so they had another salmon order and a 3rd glass of wine which they shared.

Sated and tired…they headed back to London Bridge station and after a pair of transfers arrived back at Hammersmith station near the hotel. Neil spotted this advertisement on the wall of the platform at one of the stations. The Central Line is one of the tube lines here…and like most subways ‘round the world the smell inside them is not too enticing and the air conditioning is…lacking.

After another good nights sleep…they got up at 0500 because according to the planned schedule breakfast was at 0615 and they needed to load the buses at 0745…only to find a note under the door moving breakfast to 0700 instead. After another buffet breakfast…pretty decent actually…they loaded the buses for the 40 minute trip over to Westminster abbey for their first tour. Organized tour groups get in an hour before the general public admission but it was still…well, crowded would be an understatement. The only place Neil has ever been that was more crowded are Japanese subway trains.

Again…I apologize for the people, cars, buses and what have you in the shots…but it is what it is.

The front of the abbey.

Looking up from the rear off the nave…the screen in the middle is just past the transept and back in the day you had to be escorted by one of the monks (it actually started as a monastery) to go into the upper portion of the nave.

The coronation chair…it’s back in the rear off the side of the face most of the time but is moved to the high altar for an actual coronation…every English monarch since the 1200s has been crowned sitting on this chair which was built originally to contain the coronation stone of Scotland…Edward I was the first king of both countries and had this chart built in 1296 for his coronation.

The tomb of Elizabeth I…the daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn…Elizabeth was the one who deposed and executed Lady Jane Gray. It is a shared tomb with Mary I…Bloody Mary who preceded her…

A small organ in a side chapel near Elizabeth’s tomb.

Near the left transept is the tomb of Isaac Newton…ya know, the one that the apple fell out of the tree onto…he’s in the little box under his statue.

And just underneath that is the tomb of Stephen Hawking the physicist. Hawking was an avowed atheist and didn’t believe in a god or religion…which makes it seem strange he’s buried in the holiest church in the Anglican faith. The royals wanted to bury him there and he agreed but only if he was buried right next to Newton…the owner of the disembodied hand holding the MidAm sign at the lower left is standing on top of his marker…which contains the formula for the Bekenstein–Hawking entropy equation which he co-developed. 

I dunno who this guy is…but he was a mathematician so perhaps their favorite (and only) daughter in law Jen knows who he is since she is a math teacher.

This is a section in the upper nave of the ceiling…it looks like lace but is actually carved stone.

Finally…in the right transept just before our tour ended we were in an area known as Poet’s Corner because it’s populated by tombs and memorials to a bunch of poets, writers and the like…we spotted the tomb of this interloper.

Handel was of course…a German composer who moved to England and worked for the royal family.

And finally…as we left the abbey we spotted this horse drawn carriage carrying…no, not anybody from the royal family since they’re clearly Orientals of some sort…but rather a recently wed couple.

And with that…our tour of Westminster Abbey was done…after a brief walk back to our coach #2 with our tour guide Pauline…we boarded and were back at the hotel an hour later…nothing like the joy of driving through downtown London in the middle of the day on Saturday…it’s eerily similar to trying to drive through the middle of NY City during the middle of the day.

Sorry…no interesting things found on the net today…I’m tired and need a little nap before dinner. Connie’s off at rehearsal so I’ve got 45 minutes to snooze…well, maybe just a couple then.

Cyas.