London Day 5

    We had a later start, so I asked Lizzy if she would fancy a walk. I had postcards that I wanted to mail off. I asked the concierge for directions, and then we headed out. I saw this art shop and wanted to get a picture with my artist. She was nice enough to comply. The post office was closed until 9 am, so we walked around a park and talked about art and architecture.

    There was a little old lady who had been sitting outside the post office for some time when we walked by it. On our way back, there was a small crowd gathered. When it opened up, we were 4th in line. I was anxious that we were tight on time, but I needn't have worried.  The poor old lady was terribly hard of hearing, and she wanted to send money, but they don't offer that service anymore. I bought my stamps, but you don't mail them there. They had a red letter box right outside where you actually post them.  

We got back in plenty of time to have the Ratrick and Romeo reunited!

    Next, it was time for the tube so we could go take a tour of Theatre Royal Drury Lane. Claudia wanted everyone to feel comfortable with navigating London, so she picked someone to lead where we went next. This time, it was Scarlett who got us to our station. We passed the Ritz, which I wanted to snap a pic of since it's prominent in the series Good Omens. The angels dine at the Ritz. 

    Here we met our guide David, who was left on his own to his own due to his team getting sick with the flu. He was wonderful, though, even with feeling a bit under the weather himself. This theater, as many theaters do, has many legions and stories. It was first opened in the 1660s, and the present building, opened in 1812, is the most recent of four theatres that have stood at the location, making it the oldest theatre site in London still in use. In 2019, Andrew Lloyd Webber bought the crumbling theater, and after extensive renovations, it was reopened in its renewed glory. It's currently showing Hercules, so some of our group had been inside it, but this tour was so much more.

David was amazing as our guide and so accommodating. 

    This is the dining room where they serve tea and other delights from Wednesdays to Sundays. They adhere to the theatrical theme by serving your meal in Acts: A Savoury Prelude, a Sweet Dilemma, and the finale. site

    Here we are in the royal retiring room. Where Royalty stays before a show and during intermission. We got to sit on the same couches and chairs that royalty and other glamorous patrons of the arts have sat. There are actually two royal boxes, one is the Prince's box. The Lane was witness to an assassination attempt on King George III in 1800, and, after a long-standing feud with his son, the Prince Regent, in 1809, the Royal boxes were built to avoid any royal fisticuffs. The Royal Boxes and theatres on its site have been visited by every reigning monarch since the Restoration in 1663 and now us.

    I also needed the facilities and was able to use the private toilet in the royal room. Of course, I took a pic. Now I can say I peed where the Kings and Queens peed, that's better than Buckingham Palace!

    

    The Lane has had many amazing performances over the years, including a real live horse race on stage, a locomotive, and even a sinking ship. They had a hydraulic stage cut into three parts so they could move in different directions! There is a walkway below the stage, which originally was the only way actors could get from one side of the stage to the other. Now they have a way onstage, but the tunnel is still valuable. 

    Inexplicably, they have one of Hitler's chairs, yes, Adolf Hitler. It's down in the tunnel, so only cast crew or the lucky few who get a tour will ever see it. It's so random, but so British.

This is the original dressing room. 

    For more information, check out their history site. After our tour, we split into 3 groups for the afternoon. Lizzy went with a group to shop, and I went with a group to the art museum. 

We found this hole-in-the-wall sandwich shop, which had barely enough room to stand in to order.

    The ladies were so sweet, and I ordered the special. They kept calling everyone "My Love". "What can I get for you, my love?" It was fun. Zoey didn't want to eat there, so she went to a Burger King down the street. We got our orders and headed to the BK. Zoey was still waiting to order when we got there, so we sat at a bar that looked out to the street to eat our lunch.

    It was an interesting sandwich; I should have asked for more sauce, because it was a little bland. Timothy said that his was the best thing he had eaten in England so far. On our way to the museum, we passed a fun shop and picked up some trinkets. 

    I mean, come on, is there anything more British than the Weasleys' car, Buckingham Palace, and a tube station sign in one place?

    There was an Iranian protest in the plaza in front of the museum. You can just see Big Ben off in the distance.

    Lady Jane Grey. This painting is stunning in person. The next photo was inlaid in the floor. There were several of them, and I had to wait a bit for the crowd to move to get a shot.  The museum was quite crowded. That's why we were there, actually. It was Saturday and quite warm, and we had tried to go to the British Museum, but it was all sold out.

    I did get my Doctor Who moment. The episode about Vincent Van Gogh is so moving. It ends in this museum in this room with this painting. Yes, I was geeking out a bit.

Here's a peek into the Monet room.

    I was with Junette, and we lost the others in our group. We tried to go back to the front after messaging the others, but each exit let us out at a different place. We tried three times and then just exited and walked back to the front, since I could get my bearings that way. I found a place to rest while Junette visited the gift shop. Time was slipping away, though, and we were worried that we might be late for dinner. 

    Finally, the others found us. They had been lost as well. We legged it up to the nearest tube station and went to rejoin our group. One group had caught "Evita" as she sang from her balcony! If you were unaware, at the start of Act Two, the music is piped outside the theater into London's narrow Argyll Street. Rachel Zegler, playing Perón, emerges on a balcony. From there, she belts out "Don't Cry For Me Argentina," the musical's signature song. The performance is livestreamed back into the theater for the audience. As you can imagine, it caused quite the stir! If you want to hear it, here's a video:

    We passed the theater where Hamilton is being performed, and we will return later to see it. But first, we were heading to the Albert.

    Named after the Prince Regent, The Albert is a four-story pub chock full of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert memorabilia. Built in 1862, the Albert is a traditional English pub fittingly placed in Victoria.  The pub sits just a nine-minute walk from Buckingham Palace and seven minutes away from Westminster Abbey. It reminded me of the Old Spaghetti Factory in decor. 

    We were served piping hot beef and ale pies with chips and mushy peas. Seriously, we needed quite a bit of time with them cut open to cool down enough to try them. I loved the peas. There was a measuring cup of extra gravy to pour on your chips or pie; it did help to cool it down a bit. 

    There was another EF tour group up there with us on the top floor. I ran into a few of them waiting for the loo. The restroom was tiny; you seriously had to do acrobatics to get to the toilet! It was fun talking to the other group; they had seen a few of the things we had, but ours was different as well. When I returned to our table, one of the chaperones had a rather large glass of wine, which she had shared with Claudia and a student, who was not her relation. I found that very odd, especially since all minors had signed a waiver saying they would not consume alcohol on the trip. Adults had to sign that they would consume only one glass at dinner. 

    The girl said she drank all the time a home, but I was still shocked. I mean, if it were her child, fine, it would still be against the rules, but I'd understand a bit better. But to give alcohol to a minor you don't know on a school trip without parental consent? Yeah, I was judging pretty hard.

After a very filling dinner, we walked to The Apollo Victoria Theater to see Wicked!

The theater had little binoculars you could rent for a pound. They weren't very good, though.

    Lizzy had never seen the second half; she had watched the movie, so she didn't know how it ended. She slept during the first half! I was originally seated next to her, but a kid really wanted to sit with his friends, so I changed seats. The show was great, but hard to see, and we were not in the top tier either. I wonder how it looked from up in the nose bleeds.  Mrs O polled us to see which show we thought was better, Wicked or Hadestown. Overwhelmingly, Hadestown won, and she was shocked and more than a little defensive. 

    When you enter the tube, you hear "Mind the Gap" over the loudspeaker. There is a gap between the platform and the tube car. I heard this lovely story about that announcement years ago, so it was sweet to hear it for myself.

London Day 4

    Our fourth day was off to a rocky start when I couldn't seem to get a hold of Lizzy. Unbeknownst to me, Shelia and Ren had woken up very early to take the 4 am train to Paris. Their departure disturbed Lizzy and Rowan, and then they turned off their alarms. Even my knocking and texting didn't rouse them. 
    They eventually arrived, disheveled, just as we were due to board the bus for Oxford. We had a little over 2 hours' ride to our destination. Claudia quizzed us on our knowledge about the famous college town. I think I did pretty well; I missed 2 out of 10.

     Oxford is a beautiful little place. Ancient and graceful, yet hiding a cheeky side as well. After all, this is the town that had Tolkien, when he was a fellow at Oxford, “dress[ing] up as an Anglo-Saxon warrior with an ax and chas[ing] an astonished neighbour”; this was apparently a stunt he pulled multiple times. And once he and C.S. Lewis went to a party dressed as polar bears, in sheepskin and whiteface. Site. Wrote Tolkien, “I have a very simple sense of humour, which even my appreciative critics find tiresome.”

    Our first stop was the covered market for lunch. The market has giant lanterns from Alice in Wonderland. 

This store was hilarious.

    I tried a lovely smoothie and a bit of Oxford Sauce. It was a bit like Worcestershire sauce with a kick. After using the facilities, where I tried my first all-in-one sink (it has the soap, water, and dryer all together), we headed to the most photographed place in Oxford, Radcliff's Camera.

    Known for its prestigious university, established in the 12th century. Oxford is actually the residence of 38 colleges. The poet Matthew Arnold nicknamed it the 'City of Dreaming Spires'. It is rather special to be meandering down the same walkways that scholars have traversed in search of knowledge for over 800 years.

    Here on the steps of the Bodleian Library, we met our tour guides and separated into 2 groups. Our tour guide was from Hungary, and I could not pronounce her name for the life of me! She was nice, but rather severe. She knew many of the kids were excited about the Harry Potter connections, and she made sure to point them out.

    There were many scenes filmed in Oxford, namely: in Christ Church College, their Dining Hall was the inspiration for the Hogwarts Great Hall. The staircase: Where Professor McGonagall greets Harry, Ron, and Hermione in the first film. The Cloisters: Used in various scenes, including the scene where young Tom Riddle speaks with Dumbledore. 

     In the Bodleian Library Divinity School: The Hogwarts Infirmary and the site of a dance scene in the Triwizard Tournament. At Duke Humfrey's Library: The Hogwarts Library, especially the restricted section where Harry seeks information. 

     And in New College, the Cloisters and Courtyard, featured in scenes, including where Draco is turned into a ferret by Hermione. 

    Our first stop is the Divinity School, which has been a library of legal deposit for 400 years, which means that every book published in England has a copy in "the Bod," rather like the Library of Congress.

    The Bodleian Library is one of the oldest libraries in Europe, and in Britain is second in size only to the British Library. Together, the Bodleian Libraries hold over 13 million printed items. The first library was built by the University in the 15th century to house books donated by Humfrey, Duke of Gloucester. That library lasted only 60 years; in 1550, the Dean of Christ Church, hoping to purge the English church of all traces of Catholicism, including ‘superstitious books and images’, removed all the library’s books, most of which were of that genre. 

    The library was rescued by Sir Thomas Bodley (1545–1613), a Fellow of Merton College and a diplomat in Queen Elizabeth I’s court. He decided to "set up my staff at the library door in Oxon; being thoroughly persuaded, that in my solitude, and surcease from the Commonwealth affairs, I could not busy myself to better purpose, than by reducing that place (which then in every part lay ruined and waste) to the public use of students".

    It reopened in 1602 with the stipulation that no books were to be lent to readers; even King Charles I was refused permission to borrow a book in 1645. site 

Lizzy and I at Hogwarts!

    Beyond the Radcliff Camera is the University Church of St Mary the Virgin. You can go up in the tower and get a lovely view. A church has been on this site since 1086, and in the early days of Oxford University, the church was adopted as the first building of the university in 1252.

    A short walk past the church leads to a very peculiar doorway. Thought to be the inspiration of Aslan and Mr. Tumnus in The Chronicles of Narnia, by C.S. Lewis.

    This view from the door back towards Radcliff's Camera holds the possible inspiration for the fabled lamp post where little Lucy first encounters the faun.

    All Souls College is where the Fellows reside. They get a salary and a living. The current annual salary of Senior Research Fellows ranges from £105,693 to £115,487 per annum and is linked to a point on the Oxford University professorial salary scale. To be inducted as a fellow is a tremendous honor.

    From here, we hobbled down a tight alleyway and ducked into an even tighter walkway to the most secret tavern in Oxford: The Turf Tavern. Known for some notable patrons including: Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, Tony Blair, CS Lewis, Stephen Hawking, and Margaret Thatcher. It also served as a hangout for the cast and crew of the Harry Potter movies. The Turf Tavern also claims to be the location where future American president Bill Clinton, while a student at University College, Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, famously smoked "but did not inhale" marijuana.

    From here we took in the view of the Bridge of Sighs, it's actually named the Hertford Bridge, but no one calls it that. It was used for some time as a go-between, but now it is mostly a storage container. 

    Then we went by the cloisters, but they were closed due to some reconstruction. Instead, we entered the chapel as the organist was practicing. It was lovely to hear. Here's a really grainy video:

    We ended the tour in this courtyard with a garden only for students and faculty. It was here that our guide left us. We sat around a bit, I ate an apple, and we waited some more. After a bit, Claudia found us and had us rejoin the other group which was getting a tour of the room used for the great hall.

    After this, we were given free time. I went into the Weston Library to use the toilet and refresh a bit. They had a free exhibit called Treasures that had many manuscripts and scrolls. It was nice to stroll through and see some amazing pieces of art and literature.

    The one in the middle is from Jane Austen herself! Entitled Volume the First, dated 1786–1793, it is written out in Jane Austen's own hand as a compilation of sixteen of her early short works in a variety of genres (stories, playlets, verses, moral fragments). site 

I was so happy to be standing mere inches from her work. There was a copy of the MagnaCarta as well.

    The top of this building had statues of the Greek muses, and these faces on the pillars. I stopped and raised my glass to toast the Professor. It's a tradition done by raising a glass at 9pm on his birthday. I've done it on January 3rd for several years now. It was fun to do it in a place he spent most of his life.

     On the long bus ride back to London, I listened to my audiobook, Patriot by Alexi Navaldy. This book is his memoir and is well worth the read. It was a stark contrast to see the splendor of the English countryside while listening to the way Navaldy was being treated.

    We dined at The White Horse, we had fish and chips, and it was easily my favorite meal. We were in the upper room, which we had to ourselves. We got there a bit early for our reservation, but they were very accommodating. Our server was excellent. Also, they made sure that they put ice in the water for us soft Americans. I ordered a lemonade for Lizzy and myself, forgetting that in England, that means Sprite. Which was lucky since one of the kids wanted a Sprite and didn't know how to ask. I let his dad know to ask for a lemonade. 

    Dessert was a brownie and ice cream. This was a proper brownie, though. Claudia polled us on which brownie was better, and this one came out on top much to her surprise. 

It was the perfect end to a lovely day.