A little work, a little play

April 17, 2025 Amy OLeave a comment

So we were back in London for the week and, as has been the case the last few times, I worked from London. But this time is different because I am retiring at the end of May. My replacement has already been hired and she is a good one, rapidly coming up to speed. So while I did work every day and almost put in a full week, it was also pretty chill. Every day I got up and put in an hour or two of work and then my husband and I had a planned activity. We’d enjoy that, have lunch, and then I’d go back to our room to work until dinner time.

There are a series of “Pub & rooms” in London where a small “hotel” stands above a historic pub. We’ve stayed at one before, The Bull and Hide. This time we tried The One Tun Pub & Rooms near Farringdon station, a pub supposedly patronized, in some earlier version, by Charles Dickens. From the outside, the pub didn’t seem like much and it wasn’t as thronged as other pubs nearby. When I finally saw the inside of it on–I’m ashamed to admit–the last day, it was so awesome. Cozy, fun, with delicious Asian food.

The rooms had a separate door, up some steep stairs. There were 3-4 rooms on our floor and more up a level. Cute and large room with lots of character. We were just above the pub. About 3:30 each day the noise from people gathering both downstairs and in the street outside and music playing would ramp up until about 9 p.m. By 10:30 each night it was pretty quiet.

The location was great. Farringdon station was a block away, so it was easy to get where we wanted to go, and there was a good selection of coffee shops, restaurants, and pubs nearby. This was the first time we visited London where it was more convenient to take the Elizabeth line than the Piccadilly line to and from the airport. Have to say the Elizabeth line is an easy way to travel. New, spacious cars, and there was never a time when we had to schlep our stuff up a bunch of stairs. Hotel excepting. I only packed a carry-on, but a week’s worth of crammed-in stuff is still kind of heavy for a near-retiree.

In the daily “fun hour” we managed the following attractions:

Siena: The rise of painting 1300-1350 at the National Gallery. This exhibit explores the art movement in 14th century Siena, dominated by Christian themes, drama, bright colors, and metallic finishes. That is a big oversimplification from an unsophisticated viewer of art. We sprung for the added mobile audio tour, which I highly recommend especially if you are an occasional art dabbler like me. It helped set the stage and provide details around what to look for, what was unique about the pieces it focused on. We’ve visited the National Gallery before and it has some great works with free admission. We only did a speed walk through the gallery on our way out of the exhibit this time. It felt a bit sinful to walk past Van Gogh’s sunflowers with only a sidelong glance.

War and the mind exhibit at the Imperial War Museum. The Imperial War museum is a great little attraction and it often has interesting exhibits. They are always thoughtfully done and thought-provoking, and this exhibit on “War and the Mind” was no exception. It covered how people become motivated to start and accept (even support) war, the impact war has on the psyche (and the reverse), both for soldiers and civilians, and then how we are motivated to bring war to conclusion, and think about it in the aftermath. There have been no wars on the mainland of America in the lifetime of anyone I’ve known, but things are different in England. Although the exhibit was not just about impact of war on England, the rich examples and artifacts available particularly from the second World War drew you in, made you think about things at a different level than you might normally. Than I might normally. Excellent exhibit, and I highly recommend it.

Giuseppe Penone: Thoughts in the Roots at Serpentine Gallery. The Serpentine gallery is located in the Kensington gardens. The day we went was sunny and springlike and the walk over to the Serpentine gallery was peaceful. Every dog in London seemed to be out for a happy romp among colorful flowers.

It was the perfect precursor to the Penone exhibit focused on the relationship between humans and nature. There were cool installations of fabricated trees just outside the gallery which we enjoyed until the gallery opened. The exhibit inside the gallery was also awesome. I might be guilty of overusing the word peaceful, but that is what I felt while seeing Penone’s works. My favorite exhibit was in a room in which the installation included sections of encased laurel leaves from floor to ceiling. There were also fabricated tree stumps that were probably the main point of the exhibit and they were lovely, but the smell of the Laurel leaves and their appearance, well, it was amazing.

Shopping at Harrods’ food halls. No matter how long you’ve read this blog, never have you ever heard me talking about shopping in London other than at The Emirates. I hate shopping, hate to be in stores. In this case, I took a special trip over to Harrod’s because I’d long heard about the food halls and I was hoping for some Easter candy inspiration. (My husband was on a loftier and more diverse quest elsewhere to London Wetlands, the 24-hour Pianothon at Liverpool Street station, and Traces of Belsen exhibit at Wiener Holocaust Library. Maybe I can convince him to tell us about it here.) The Tube station is right next to Harrod’s and it took some strolling through the departments before I located the Food Halls at the back of the building. If I felt out of place among expensive purses, shoes, scarves, and impeccably-dressed sales people, I clearly was not the only one. Not one person I saw in the store probably had any business shopping there. Anyway, the Food Halls were a special-occasion exception. I visited the room with chocolate, the one with cheeses and meats, and the one with teas, jams, etc. Every thing was so beautiful it was an experience just to look. I ended up buying some chocolate and tea.

Cream beignets at Fortitude Bakehouse. My niece long ago found out about Fortitude bakehouse online and every time for the past year it’s been on my list to get there. This is a bakery that has a famous cream beignet. I understand that people line up for them for hours. They are ready at 11 a.m. and are available until they sell out each day. But somehow I’ve never managed to get there. I made a mental note on my way from Harrod’s that I had to change trains at the station closest to Fortitude, Russell Square. The bakery is only about a block away from the train station. It was my lucky day because I arrived at about 11:30 to find a bunch of people sitting outside the bakery gorging on cream beignets and other yummy- looking pastries. And only a few people in line ahead of me. It appears they make one flavor each day. On the day I was there it was was pistachio and rose, something like that. What I have to say about the hype about the beignets is that it is simply not enough. Flaky, fried dough dipped in granulated sugar, split and coated with jam, then filled with thick, delicious whipped cream, and glazed on top, in this case with pistachio glaze and nuts. One cream beignet was all I could manage for lunch that day. That, and enough tea to wash it down. It occurs to me that I wrote significantly more about cream beignets than about any other activity. This is not an error.

Dear England at the National Theatre. We had intended to attend the play, Three Sisters at Shakespeare’s Globe, but on the day it was supposed to play we received a notice that they had to cancel that evening’s production. We scrambled and found a very different alternative, Dear England, written by James Graham. The play covers the foibles and fortunes (mainly misfortunes) of the real England national soccer team during England’s history and especially Gareth Southgate’s tenure as National Team manager. It’s named after an actual letter that Gareth Southgate wrote during the Covid era before England’s participation in the Euros, the tournament held for only European national teams. How to characterize the real letter? It’s a reflection on the importance of football to the English as well as sort of a plea to take it easy on the very real people who play for the team. The staging was wonderful, the play was interesting, and the characters both lovable and laughable. We thoroughly enjoyed it. The only nit was the poor football technique of the actors. But considering how much of the play focused on England’s misfortunes with penalty kicks, maybe that was intentional?

We went to the play on a beautiful warm night and were able to enjoy lovely scenes along the Thames on our walk back home to the One Tun.

Peace Sandwich

May 30, 2023May 30, 2023 Amy OLeave a comment

After a great few days in Dublin, we took the train to Belfast. We arrived late in the afternoon, dropped our stuff off at our hotel, The Europa, and hurried out on the Titanic walk over to the Titanic museum.

Belfast is in the Northern Republic of Ireland, a different country than Ireland, and part of the UK. Why am I telling you something you probably learned in third grade? Because I myself forgot that. The biggest difference I noticed right away is that in Dublin, every sign is displayed in Irish and English. That is not true in Belfast. I made the incorrect assumption that the people of Northern Ireland were comfortable being part of the UK. The truth is significantly more complicated.

Because it was late in the day when we arrived, the Titanic Museum was fairly empty. We had a few hours to explore before it would close, just enough time to take it in. Ireland of the late 1800s and early 1900s, like many European countries was experiencing industrialization, with many people transitioning to life in city centers, and migration both to and from the country influencing products in development. Belfast was (and still is) the home of a large ship manufacturer, Harland + Wolff. In the early 1900s the company build a number of luxury ships, including the Titanic.

The company spent two years building the hull of the ship, at which point it was moved into water, where all the finishes and mechanics were added. That took another two years. When the ship was finished in time for its planned maiden voyage, many of the employees involved in the project were rewarded with trips on that voyage. The ship set sail for Southampton, where it picked up the actual passengers on their way to New York. We all know the rest of the story. The ship hit an iceberg within a few days of setting out and sunk within hours, killing more that 1,500 people. Belfast was devastated by the loss of a ship that had been so carefully worked on by many of its citizens so soon after they proudly sent it on its way, and by the many lost citizens who had been on board.

Because the ship was built after the advent of photography, the museum includes photos of progress from the start of the project, plans, and recreations of both the ship building environment and the ship itself, including life-sized models of sleeping quarters. It also includes a recreation of the sinking, what was learned about the cause and the great loss of life during the sinking, and efforts to locate the ship many years after it sunk.

The exhibit was excellent. I learned a lot, and the exhibit also struck an important understanding of the emotional toll. Kind of a dark, sad day.

The next day, we registered for a bus tour of Giants Causeway, a place I have always wanted to visit. Using touring companies is often a great and inexpensive way to get to more remote locations while traveling. We searched using Viator and ended up on a bus run by Paddywagon Tours.

On the way to Giants Causeway we stopped and walked at the Dark Hedges, a road lined with Beech trees. As the only person on earth who never saw Game of Thrones, I take it on faith from our guide that the Dark Hedges appear in Season 2.

That was followed by a visit to an ancient castle, Dunluce Castle, where we walked among the ruins above a wild sea.

Finally, we had a few hours at the main event, Giants Causeway. As we walked from the parking lot down a steep hill, I started to fear that, while beautiful, it was nothing like the pictures I had seen that made me wanted to go for so many years. When we really got to the site, that fear was hugely unfounded. It was beautiful and, as my husband said, like a playground for grownups. We spent a long time climbing on the rocks, and a long time watching the waves crash on the rocks, just enjoying a sunny day above a craggy sea. I always feel so peaceful near the sea, even a wild one.

On our final day in Belfast, we took one of the Black Cab Tours called Politics & Murals, basically a private tour by a cab driver to sites associated with the Troubles. Our particular driver had been active in one of the splinter groups associated with Catholics. He told us our hotel, The Europa, had been one of the most bombed hotels in Europe, all due to the Troubles. It had been bombed more than 30 times times. He took us to various sites in the city where killings took place and where “Peace walls” still exist today. Although he assured us that things were changing, I realized how naïve I’d been about the peace that actually is in place. It is true that people are not being killed daily by feuding factions in Belfast. But that peace is still clearly uneasy. For example, it is still the case that the Peace wall gates are closed every evening to keep Catholics and Protestants separate from each other. My husband asked the guide if he had any friends that were Protestant. He hemmed and hawed a bit and said there are Protestants with whom he is acquainted, but in the back of his mind he could not forget about Catholic people he had known who had built trust with Protestants and were betrayed.

Our driver seemed to think that it was only a matter of time before demographics would be changed enough for Northern Ireland to vote itself out of the UK. But does that mean a unified Ireland? Our driver did not think so. There are a lot of mines to avoid in this particular field.

The tour was excellent and thought-provoking, but it was hard to stop thinking about the futility of avoiding conflict, not just in Northern Ireland, but everywhere. On the surface, the Belfast conflict is between Protestants and Catholics, but I could not detect much about the conflict that has specifically to do with religious differences. In the United States of the present, what was being described was not so different from gang warfare. You could see how issues and misunderstandings could take this even further. A group lives in some poverty which feels to be influenced by discrimination. People struggle to reach agreement about how to tackle the problem, with varying levels of violence involved. Opposition is dehumanized. Rumors are rampant. We kill for rumors because some part of us can believe them to be close enough to truth. We kill for actual vengeance against killings of our own. Things escalate quickly. And solutions come hard, over many years. Or maybe never come, not completely.

We returned to England the same day. Once we got to London, we saw that the Imperial War Museum we had visited in the past had an exhibit starting on The Troubles, so we headed over to learn more in the morning. In this exhibit, a very careful attempt was made to provide balanced coverage of the Troubles, for Catholics, Protestants, and the British. From all angles, it tried to look at how it started, why it continued, how it stopped. A very good exhibit, although we came to no happier conclusions.

On our way into the exhibit, we overheard a fellow attendee telling someone that he was from Belfast. After we finished the exhibit I excused myself to find the rest rooms. When I returned, my husband was deep in conversation with the guy who had said he was from Belfast. I’ve told you how my husband just meets people wherever we go. This guy looked like a business executive you’d meet at a friend’s cocktail party. Turned out he was one of the IRA participants interviewed for the exhibit. He’d been jailed twice during the Troubles and was incarcerated for many years, ultimately having been released as a part of the agreement that ended the conflict. My husband asked him if he’d ever bombed The Europa hotel, and he laughed a bit. He said everyone bombed The Europa.

And this is the thing. We were talking to someone who seemed to be a perfectly reasonable guy. This perfectly reasonable guy at some point of his life concluded that there was only one, probably violent, way to solve the problems he and his people faced. Are we all this guy?

See it, say it, sort it.

October 28, 2019October 28, 2019 Amy OLeave a comment

All across the world, as we deal with acts of terrorism, we have formed pithy ways of encouraging citizens to be vigilant against threats. In the US, we say, “if you see something, say something.” But here in London, announcements on public transit encourage travelers that if they see something suspicious, that should say something, and the authorities will sort it out. This is then abbreviated into, “See it, say it, sort it.”

I think of myself as naturally suspicious, so I recognize I would have to see a WHOLE lot to legitimately “see” something of interest to the authorities. They would be sorting their days completely away. That was on my mind after visiting the War Museum late in the day, which I’ll tell you more about in a few.

Some of you may remember a time when I visited The Breakfast Club in Shoreditch few years ago where our service was so slow the manager insisted on giving us our entire breakfast complimentary. She said, “I hope you’ll give us another chance,” and it turned out that yesterday, we did just that. I like this chain a lot. I think they have interesting spaces and a nice menu at a decent price. The one we tried this time is the one in City, near Spitalfields market. I had the blueberry granola waffle, and my husband had the Mexican Eggs. Both yummy, and much better service.

We stopped by the market, but it was only just being set up. We’ve been through there several times but never at a time when it was operational. So we headed for our first planned destination of the day, a pub that was playing the England v. New Zealand Rugby Word Cup semifinal from Japan. When we watch Premier League games in California at a bar, it’s always early in the morning, so it wasn’t a stretch to watch a sporting event at a pub in the morning in London.

20191026_102020 The pub closest to us that was having a viewing party was the Goose Island pub near Shoreditch. Yes, Goose Island is a brew pub originating in our previous adopted home of Chicago, but we were assured by signage that this beer is brewed in Shoreditch. The pub was thronged with supporters of both countries, although the All Black supporters were clearly outnumbered. I have watched very little rugby in my life, and most of it has been when I was visiting London. Even for someone with little expertise in the sport, it was fun watching the fans cheer and sing until the final whistle blew with England (easily) on top above the previous world champions. But why “Swing low, sweet chariot,” and “Chelsea Dagger”? You got me. England has so much musical talent and history, it’s hard to imagine needing to borrow from slaves and Scottish musical groups. I’ll admit the songs are great.

After the match we headed over to the Imperial War Museum in Lambeth, a recommendation from a friend. It was extremely worthwhile and interesting. I’ve never seen an exhibit that did such a good job evoking the environment under which the wars began and were conducted, and their aftermath. We spent most of our time in the World War I and II exhibits. A few things that struck me: First, I’m not sure that humans are remotely good at learning from the past, or at least learning the right things. Second, we aren’t good at Seeing, Saying, or Sorting. We are driven by herd mentality and fearful of sticking our necks out, and complacent. Let someone else do the right thing. The Holocaust exhibit was especially powerful, and dire.

We left the museum in the rain and made it to Spitalfield market minutes before it closed. Spitalfield market is on the site historically associated with the textile industry and wool trade. Now it has numerous vendors selling from stalls for which merchandise is set up in the morning and removed at night. Interesting clothing, bags, hats.

My husband was interested in stopping in a pub we saw earlier in the day that had London Pride beer, the Astronomer. Unfortunately, it and other pubs and restaurants close to The Bull were so crowded we ended up again close to Spitalfields at a gastropub called The Grocer. It was a wet and raw night and we were happy to be in out of the cold. No London Pride. I had steak and my husband had grilled chicken. To ensure that the ice cream search debacle was not repeated, we both had Eton mess for dessert. I am a big fan. Ice cream, meringue pieces, fruit, and whipped cream. Delicious. My husband later wished he hadn’t eaten so much. Meanwhile, I wouldn’t have minded eating some of his (in addition to mine).