Karl and I spent a weekend (Friday July 20 - Monday July 23) in London! It was one of the cities we wanted to be sure and visit while we were here and when it was announced several months ago that the last Harry Potter book would be released July 21st, we thought that would be a good weekend to see London!
While we were there we experienced all the things that make London...well, London: the art, the tea houses, the Beatles, Shakespeare...
So, here's our very English weekend in London!!
London is...Art
Of course we visited several art museums...I mean
I planned this trip after all. I had seen a lot of London 5 years ago when I spent three weeks at an Art History Summer School program at the University of Cambridge, so there were actually only a few of the big museums I hadn't had a chance yet to visit.
On our first day in London, I took Karl through a quick tour of the
National Gallery in it's last hour and a half before closing. This is an amazing collection of the best of the best and I loved seeing it again. After closing we walked around the corner to the
National Portrait Gallery which I had never visited before. We had a couple of hours to explore this wonderful museum of British portraits. We saw everyone from King Henry VIII and his wives to the Brontë sisters to Princess Diana to Ricky Gervais.
On our last day in London we visited the great
British Museum. I most wanted to see the
Elgin Marbles...these are the statuary and friezes from the Parthenon in Athens, taken by the British Lord Elgin 200 years ago. They were stunning! And the rest of the museum was pretty amazing, too.
London is...Cambridge
My study abroad at the University of Cambridge just outside of London was one of my best months ever. I completely fell in love with the little college town of Cambridge and its nearly ancient university! I've been dying to take Karl there ever since. So on Saturday Karl and I took a train up to Cambridge.
We walked around the old city center and explored a few of the beautiful colleges and then I took Karl to one of my favorite places in the world: the Orchard. We walked along a 2 mile path known as the Grantchester Grind to the little village of Grantchester where we wandered between some trees into the most wonderful tea house. The Orchard is just that, an orchard, where, in 1897, some Cambridge students asked to be served some tea. The little tea house is still a sprawling yard of fruit trees and lawn chairs.
This little, simple tea house has had an interesting history and has served some of the university's best known students. It even housed the great British poet Rupert Brooke who would punt (boat) up and down the Cam river between Grantchester and the university and drink tea in the orchard with his friends including Virginia Woolf, E.M. Forster and other greats.
Karl and I ordered scones, lemonade and a light lunch and sat in the most comfortable green lawn chairs under a tree for a couple of hours, reading and dozing. Time stops and worries leave you and you feel you have entered into a place that defines what it is to be English in all it's wildness and civility!
London is...Harry Potter
On Friday night we went to Piccadilly to
the largest bookstore in Europe to attend the
Largest Potter Party in London! We adore the Harry Potter books, but we had never attended a midnight book release party. We decided this would be our last chance so we might as well do it right...or at least memorably. We arrived at the bookstore a little after 9 pm to find a line of Potter fans wrapping around the bookstore...we followed the line, enjoying the different costumes and having fun...and three blocks later, finally found the end of the line. After a bit of debate, we decided to get in it. As the hours ticked by we watched the line get longer and longer behind us, chatted with a girl back-packing Europe from Washington state beside us, got to know a Swedish father and son also in line with us, and were entertained by musicians and fellow party-goers. It was actually fun sitting on the sidewalk in the chilly night surrounded by kids, teenagers and nerds in wizards hats...no really, we had fun!
Finally at midnight, the line eventually started to creep forward. And creep. And creep. And at 2:30 am...we finally walked into the bookstore and got our books! And yes...it was worth it!
It was interesting to see reports of the party later...apparently there were about 2,000 people in attendance, and I guess those in the front part of the line had a lot more going on than those of us in the later 2/3 of the line. But that's ok...the people at the very front of the line had been there since Wednesday so they deserved a little extra something. But we still got a glimpse of a lot of creativity and fun as we wandered down the line! Here's a report of the party and another one.
Oh yes...and we visited Platform 9 3/4 at Kings Cross station!
(By the way...the book was WONDERFUL!!)
London is...Shakespeare
On Sunday afternoon, we attended a play at the
Shakespeare's Globe Theatre. This theatre is a reconstruction of the
original Elizabethan playhouse that Shakespeare wrote and performed for standing very near where the original burned down. And the whole experience of attending a play here is also very much like it might have been 400 years ago! Karl and I bought the cheapest tickets...which I think are the best seats! If you can call them seats. Because the cheap seats have no seats...we stood on the ground in the courtyard in front of the stage where the poorest of theater goers would have stood in the 1600s, gaining the nick-name Groundlings. So Karl and I were Groundlings for a fun performance of Shakespeare's
Love's Labour's Lost. We stood right next to the stage, leaning our arms on it. One of the fun parts of a performance at the Globe is that the actors include the audience a lot...especially the Groundlings since we are right there at thier feet (in fact, Karl and I got fed cheese from one of the actresses). The play was tons of fun!
London is...Beatles
(Album cover image from wikipedia.org.)
Of course, I had to make a Beatles pilgrimage in London! On Sunday morning, Karl and I took the tube to a very nice quiet neighborhood where a trickle of tourists can be seen aggravating motorists as they repeatedly walk across a crosswalk...yes, my friends, we saw Abbey Road Studios!
We read a lot of the Beatles graffiti on the wall in front of the studios and took turns walking across the famous crosswalk that John, Paul, George, and Ringo walked across almost 40 years ago. How cool is that!
London is...Texas??
Yes, apparently, Texas has its own little history in London. Just down the street from the National Gallery, Karl and I found a restaurant called the Texas Embassy. Since we rarely have the opportunity to eat Tex-Mex, we had to go. So, on Sunday evening we had a Texas dinner! It actually wasn't that good...but it was the best Tex-Mex we've have in Europe! While we were there, we learned that when Texas was a Republic, they actually did have an embassy in London! And it had been located just a few blocks away. So, after dinner, we walked up the street and found the original location of the Texas Embassy! Cool!
Our trip to London was a lot of fun! London had so much more to offer that we just couldn't get to in a weekend...maybe next time!
See all of our photos here!
