When last we left our heroes…they had completed their visit to Westminster Abbey on Saturday June 24 and headed back to the hotel. This post covers the remainder of Saturday and Sunday through Tuesday and I gotta admit…it’s been a pretty exhausting 3 days, particularly Tuesday…when we had to both hoot with the owls and scream with the eagles as they used to say in Uncle Sam’s Canoe Club, it was a long, exhausting day with several examples of poor planning by the tour company that arranged the various services for the choral group…let’s just say that planning, organizing, and efficiency aren’t really in their wheelhouse. That isn’t really surprising though…at the initial get acquainted briefing last week the founder of the company told us in great detail how he only hired people with a music degree since you could teach music people how to organize things but you couldn’t teach non music people how to do music. Seems to me that one should hire the best people for the job and let music people plan the music but let travel people or accountants or other qualified people handle the parts of the business that require that sort of talent set…by hiring only music people he’s just signing up for failures like we’ve seen. It’s been our experience that most creative types are good at creating but not as good at organizing, planning, and getting the details right…there are exceptions and I’m not assigning any blame to creatives for being that way…it’s just not what they’re best at. But I digress…at least for now but the full telling of the last 3 days will require discussing some of the issues we’ve found.

Saturday evening they wandered just around the corner and had dinner at Turtle Bay Caribbean…Connie had a beer concoction with Red Stripe beer (the Bud Light of the islands, mon) and watermelon, Neil had a dark Old Navy cocktail and they each had curry for dinner…chicken for her and shrimp for him…they were excellent but spicy…then they wandered back to the hotel and that was the end of the day. Their original plan was go to go Mass on Saturday afternoon but that was foiled by the extra rehearsal that got added to the schedule by the tour company…and she already had one scheduled for Sunday AM so we ended up having to skip Mass this weekend.

Sunday she had her rehearsal in the morning followed by our scheduled tour to the Tower of London. While she was rehearsing Neil went on a walkabout down to the Hammersmith bridge which is about 175 years old and is currently closed to cars but open to walkers and bikers while it’s being refurbished. It’s a suspension bridge of a somewhat strange construction. This is the view from the far side of the bridge…he walked down from our hotel which is about a half mile out of frame to the right and a bit away from the river.

The strange part about this bridge is that instead of large multi stand cables for the support sections…this is what most suspension bridges like the Golden Gate and Brooklyn use…they use a cable made out of steel plates that resembles a bicycle chain writ large.There are double over/under ‘cables’ each composed of links with 8 or 10 plates about a foot wide and an inch thick…with each link joined by bolts about 5 inches in diameter. I guess that is an easier construction method compared to stringing the stands of cable and then bundling them together into the larger suspension cable. The vertical strength members down to the bridge deck are steel rods…we’ve seen this part before but sometimes the vertical part is actually another stranded cable.

There are walking/biking/running trails along both sides of the river and he saw numerous shells being rowed as they were out getting their workout in on a Sunday morning, and he spotted a Great Blue Heron and Laughing Gull off the side as he first entered the bridge.

With rehearsal over…we headed off to the Tower of London…and our 3 hour tour actually turned into a 1 hour or so tour as the travel company was unable to have buses arrive on time and the 3 hour tour actually included the 40 minutes each way the bus took…things seem to have a habit of changing a lot with their schedule.

One of the royal families animals…dunno if they had actual live animals but today it’s just some sculptures of the various ones that I guess used to be there…with some cats and ravens the only permanent residents these days beyond the yeoman warders (the guys and gals in the red uniforms with the tall hats that are known as Beefeaters) and their families.

This is the White Tower located in the central area of the Tower itself.

We were free to wander the grounds but the only place we were allowed inside was to see the Crown Jewels…and no photos were allowed in there. Suffice it to say that there are hundreds, probably thousands, of pounds of gold crowns, jewelry, wine goblets, and pretty much everything else you could think of…along with a 50 gallon drum full of assorted jewels including several large diamonds attached to various things. Connie wanted to see them but they were too cheap to pay the extra 30 pounds it took last time they were here…but then pounds were worth over $2 back then as opposed to $1.254 today.

After our tour we snapped a shot of the Tower Bridge.

And also wanted to get one of the small gate we went in back years ago to witness the Ceremony of the Keys which is where the chief Yeoman Warder goes around and locks up the Tower gates…this military ceremony has been going on nightly since the 1300s. You need to get a ticket ahead of time and can’t take any photos of it either…and it was sold out through July already when we looked a month or so back to see if we could get tickets to see it again. We’re pretty sure this is the gate we entered through…but hey, it was a long time ago so we ain’t exactly sure. This is the East Gate and Neil recalled that we went in over on the east side…so it’s got that going for it anyway…and even if it’s not the exact one it is pretty similar based on what we remember.

After another 40 minute trip back to the hotel…they were tired but after a short rest walked over to Swan’s Pub for dinner…Tanqueray gin and tonic for Connie and Kracken rum and ginger ale for Neil…she had Bangers and Mash and Neil had Fish and Chips.

Monday started with a scheduled 3 hour tour of Windsor Castle [Neil note…with all of these 3 hour tours we’re having I keep lookin’ around for Gilligan.] which is where King Charles has chosen to live most of the time…he wasn’t in residence when we were there but we would not have seen him anyway as the inside tours we were allowed to do were only the State Apartments which are used for banquets and receptions and the like and Saint George Chapel which is where Henry VIII and the late Queen are buried. Again…we spent a lot of time standing around waiting in lines and out of our 3 hour tour essentially had just over an hour to actually see things…which turned out to be plenty of time.

As we waited in the first of 4 lines it took to actually get into the castle…the security was very similar to TSA when you go into the airport…we spotted this bird of prey overhead…it’s a Red Kite which is about the size of a Bald Eagle with a 6 to 7 foot wingspan. It’s a lousy shot and he had to crop way, way in to get something more than just a bird dot…but you can see the iconic fork kite tail which is the trademark of the species. Like the Bald Eagle…their numbers were diminishing and it was approaching extinction but habitat conservation and making it a protected species have pretty much stopped that and the numbers have increased so that’s a success story.

This is the front gate of the castle which was actually the exit for the tour.

Once through the assorted security and ticket check lines…we entered the castle through the Moat Room, picked up our audio tour guides and then into the adjoining room with a model of the entire castle.

The round tower in the middle was the original castle surrounded by its moat…and then subsequent kings and queens expanded it Into the fortress it became. The entrance through the Moat Gate is right under the kid with the yellow lanyard at the center…and the entire palace slopes down from the far left to the far right with most of the vertical change in the right half of the castle as viewed here.  This model does not show the Chapel…who knows why…but the State Apartments are to the far left end of the grounds while the Chapel is down in what is called the Lower Ward to the right side. 

The original tower and its accompanying moat…which makes it a real castle according to Neil. The moat was drained and used for other things once the outer walls were built and its was no longer needed for protection.

View from next to the chapel looking down the Lower Ward towards the main gate which is just to the left side of the arched section you can see. 

Most folk think of “small” when they hear the word chapel…but clearly the St. George Chapel is a mite bigger than that…this is the side of it and it was taken from down on the reddish cobble stoned open area by the arched section. For a “chapel” it probably seats around 700 people.

We spotted some of the guard face doing the changing of the guard which happens hourly.

And Neil walked through the arch and got a shot of the front of the chapel while Connie turned in their audio tour equipment.

Then it was back to the hotel…where they had an hour to eat lunch and walk the 0.7 miles down to the other hotel used by the group for the rehearsal in the afternoon. The day before…Neil had suggested to the tour company that they just tell people to bring their music on the Windsor tour and then drop off at the other hotel to save the walk…but this suggestion clearly fell into the “not invented here and therefore not acceptable since you’re not a music major” category. They ended up having a granola bar for lunch since they were running short of time. Connie practiced 3 hours with John Rutter who was to be the guest conductor for Tuesday evening’s concert in Bath Abbey…Neil hung out in the Hilton lobby while that happened…then they stopped by the Albion Pub on the way back to our hotel for a pizza and beer/wine. 

Then it was Tuesday…and the hardest day of the trip. We were up at 0500 for an 0915 departure for the 2.5 hour bus ride down to Bath…arriving just about lunchtime with another scheduled rehearsal with maestro Rutter at 1400. After some deliberation…they went with a beef wrap for lunch since they had reservations at Square Grill for a nice dinner between rehearsal and line up in your concert dress time.

The front of the Abbey.

Then they moved around to the right side where there is a square with some benches where they had lunch.

The Abbey is a a typical Gothic cathedral with what is known as Flying Buttresses…these are required since the walls are pretty thin (3 feet maybe) and tall (about 80 to 100 get to the roof) and then there’s a stone roof on top unlike what Notre Dame in Paris has that burned in the fire a couple years back. The weight of the roof tends to push the walls out and they would fall due to their thin construction without the buttresses. You can see the brown buttresses extending from the top of the tan columns up to the upper w alls between their windows…here’s a closer shot of a couple of them. Since it was built in the 12th century…it’s an all stone building even though the Romans used concrete many centuries before…but in Western Europe cathedrals are almost always stone construction.

Here’s Connie doing her Vanna White thing alongside the poster for the performance…tickets ranged from 7 to 30 pounds or up to about $38.

Before rehearsal…Neil wandered over to the Avon River and got a couple of shots for ya.

Then he followed the choir in and sat in the cathedral while they had their rehear sal…here’s a shot of maestro Rutter working his charges out.

Then it was off to dinner at the Square Grill…Neil had an Old Fashioned and then a glass of Pinot Grigio with his pumpkin and ricotta ravioli and Connie a gin spritz with her beef carpaccio. After that…it was back to the Abbey where they all changed into their concert dress while Neil headed around to enter the audience section. His seat was A9 or front row, right side, aisle seat…practically in the orchestra. The soprano soloist sat in A8 the seat you can see on the far left of the shot…and when she stood up to sing she was almost as close to the conductor as he was but when seated he could literally have reached out and touched the conductor of taken the bow out of the cellist’s hands…not that he’s uncouth enough to do either of those.

He’s got a couple of short videos of the performance that will be posted to YouTube as soon as he gets to it…and there was another oopsie by the tour company involved with that. The norm for any concert is that no videos, photos, or recordings are allowed…that’s pretty much universally true. However…when the tour company was asked if there was going to be a video recording the answer was yes but it won’t be live streamed and you’ll be told the url for it later. A follow up question about recording resulted…twice…in them assuring us that recordings were specifically allowed at this performance…hence a lot of the non singers were doing so. At the intermission the harpist told Neil that it wasn’t allowed…he said it was authorized for this performance…and she said it was union rules and they were *never* broken to allow patrons to record or video the performance. So…he and his cohorts stopped recording after intermission. He originally thought that perhaps it was a missed communication between the Abbey folk and the tour company…but on further review decided that it was more likely a complete lack of communication by the tour company and they just pulled the “it’s authorized” line out of some orifice or another.

After the concert…we piled back onto the buses and Neil commented to Connie that he was coming down with a cold or something as he had drippage and a sore throat…but then by t his morning she’s got it too so our evaluation is that it wasn’t a case of one of him getting it and giving it to her but a case of somebody giving it to both of them. But…cold pills and Advil to the rescue and they’ll just have to HTFU and bore on with it. We arrived back in London at the hotel at 0025 or so and since there wasn’t anything scheduled for Wednesday until 1400 they slept in until 0700…then popped a whole pile of pills each before breakfast…then a nap before Connie washed her hair. She’s off to rehearsal as I type…and then we’re headed off to Tuffnel Park tube station and then to the Boston Arms pub for dinner and a 2 hour talk about the backstage at the Tour de France  by one of her bike racing commentators that we got tickets for…I’ll report on dinner there in my next post.

Then tomorrow is the second concert of the tour at St. Paul’s church…we report to the lobby at noon with the singers in concert dress for the bus ride to the church followed by another rehearsal, dinner where they’ll have to eat neatly, and then the concert with return to the hotel about 1030. The concert is pretty much the end of the choral tour…there’s another tour Friday morning and a farewell dinner at Bill’s Pub that evening…then the tour group people depart Saturday via bus back to the airport. We’re staying in this hotel Saturday and Sunday and given their colds will probably not do much Saturday but do have a concert at St. Martin in the Fields Sunday afternoon and we’ll do that and inner over there in Trafalgar Square on Sunday unless they just feel too lousy. Monday we pick up our rental car and head north.

Interesting things found on the net.

And…we hadn’t had one of these in awhile…

Bad Ass of the week.

Back in April 1989 Marilee Thomas of Beaver City, Nebraska took this photo her daughter Audra with a tornado 2 mile behind her as it came across the family farm. Marilee entered it into a Kodak photo contest and won second prize…and Audra went viral before viral was a thing.

Cyas.