Around Greenwich

Panoramic View of London on a snowy day, from the Royal Observatory in Greenwich Park

It has been a snowy and cold week in London, but we have still found ways to have a great time. 

We had our friends Robin and Ruth over on Saturday.  The four of us visited the Cutty Sark – one of the fastest tea clippers ever built – which is permanently dry-docked in Greenwich.  It was pretty late when we got to the ship as Robin and Ruth were busy (unfortunately for us  they are not on sabbatical) and they also had difficulty getting here because the tube was experiencing weather delays.  We had a great time at the ship and ended back at our flat for dinner.    Robin and Ruth have spent time in New Mexico so I thought they might enjoy a Tex Mex dinner.  And although London is one of the most diverse cities I have ever visited, that diversity does not extend to Tex-Mex.  Lucy (Robin and Ruth’s college-age daughter) sadly told me a couple weeks ago about ordering nachos at a London restaurant.  Let’s just say that what she got did not really resemble the southwestern treat she was craving!  So I decided to try enchiladas and Spanish rice.  I was able to get pretty close to the enchiladas I can make at home so dinner was great.  We also feasted on some great wine, cheese and biscuits from our local wine shop and artisan cheese shop. 

I am enjoying figuring out British foods.  We are in a great location.  I get most of our fruit and veggies at a local “greengrocer” called the Creaky Shed.  I get our meat at the local butcher, Drings.  And I get fresh fish at a local shop called “The Fishmonger.”  All of these shops along with the cheese shop are just a couple blocks from our flat – I have included pictures in the slide show linked at the end of this post.  Our wine shop is also great – a London chain.  When I went to but the wine for diner on Saturday, the young clerk told me he is going to the US in a month and would be in the Finger Lakes region touring wineries.  I tried unsuccessfully to convince him to change plans and travel to Washington state!  I was able to tell him to visit a favorite wine venue of Tom’s and mine – Bully Hill Vinyards (we were introduced to Bully Hill by my brother-in-law and law school classmate, Mark Costello, who is an IP lawyer and used to live in Rochester.  (Not relevant here, but some of you – especially anyone interested in intellectual property law -- might want to check out the story of Bully Hill!)  In any case, I am truly enjoying “going ‘round” to my local shops every couple of days.

Today Tom and I decided to continue our exploration of Greenwich.  We visited the Discover Greenwich Museum and Greenwich Park.  Greenwich was the location of a major royal castle for 300 years from the time of Henry II until the reign of William & Mary.  Both Henry VIII and Elizabeth I were born here.  The wedding procession for Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII began here.  Unfortunately, the Castle was destroyed during the English Civil War.  Charles II started to rebuild it but ran out of money.  Later Sir Christopher Wren was commissioned to finish the re-building process.  He designed most of the buildings on the site today.  During the re-construction, however, Queen Mary (of William and Mary) decided that instead of a castle, the site should be a hospital for retired and disabled naval officers.  Later in the 19^th century, the buildings became the Royal Naval College.  Since the 1950’s when the Royal naval College moved to a new site, the buildings have house the National Maritime Museum and Greenwich University.  Immediately south of the Museum is Greenwich Park.  This is one of about five royal parks in the London area.  The park houses the Royal Observatory with one of the oldest and largest refractory telescopes in the world and the location of the Prime Meridian – literally where east meets west.  Greenwich Park was the site of all the equestrian events during the 2012 Olympics so some of you might have seen events held at the park on TV.

We had a great day walking around in the snow.  The park is beautiful and was alive with people walking and sledding.  The Brits are out in any kind of weather.  The mom walking with the buggy in our slide show was just one of the many buggy and stroller pushing parents we saw.  They are truly intrepid.  We each took our turns standing on either side of the prime meridian.  I have posted pictures of our afternoon at Cutty Sark and today at Greenwich Park.  We decided to save the inside of the Observatory for a clearer day – you can see from our pictures that today was cold and slightly foggy!

Tomorrow Tom is going to be working on his UI grad school class and I am off to the Fan Museum!  (The first Saturday in February, I am signing up for a workshop at the museum where I can make my own fan --  can’t wait!)  Tomorrow afternoon we plan to walk across the park to check out the Village of Blackheath. 

For now, Here's a link to our pictures from Around Greenwich.

Liz

The Foundling Hospital - Bloomsbury, London

Today was another cold but fun day.  Liz and I met our friend Ruth at the Foundling Museum.  This is a museum set up to feature the Foundling Hospital, the first orphanage established in London.  The “hospital” (a word used more generally at the time to indicate a place that was hospitable to the less fortunate) was established by Thomas Coram in 1741 for the "education and maintenance of exposed and deserted young children."  The hospital operated continuously until 1953 when the emphasis for helping orphans changed from institutionalization to more family-oriented practices like adoption and foster families.  The hospital continues today as the Thomas Coram Foundation for Children or Coram, one of London’s largest children’s charities.

Interestingly, two of the original benefactors were William Hogarth and George Frideric Handel.  Primarily because of these two men, the hospital, and now the museum, holds a unique position in the history of the arts in England.

Hogarth was one of the great English painters of the time and became a founding Governor.  In addition to donating many of his own paintings to the hospital, he convinced many of the other famous painters to produce works for the hospital.  As such, Hogarth established the first permanent art exhibition in England at the hospital which in turn, lead to the establishment of the Royal Academy in 1768.

Handel was also an early Governor and offered to have a fund-raiser concert of his new oratorio Messiah in 1750 to mark the presentation of a new organ that he had donated to the hospital chapel.  At this point, the work was still mainly unknown.  The concert was a great success and lead to annual Messiah concerts until 1777.  These concerts not only helped to cement Messiah as a fixture of English performance repertoire, but also raised about £500,000 ($810, 000) in today’s money for the hospital.

The first floor of the museum is dedicated to the 25,000 "foundlings" and the hospital.  This was Liz’s favorite floor.  It is filled with displays about life in the hospital and the hospital’s history.  The most heart-wrenching displays showed some of the tokens and letters left by the mothers for the babies.  All of the tokens and letters were saved but never given to the children.  It’s hard to imagine the anguish that these mothers had knowing that they would never see their children again or have any idea of what happened to them when, or if, they grew up.  Tokens were also given to the mothers in the event that they could eventually reclaim their children.  Sadly, this almost never happened.

The second floor of the museum contains all of the art that was donated to the hospital.  There are some fascinating and well-known paintings displayed here.  This is the collection that was started and collected by Hogarth.

The third floor was my favorite.  Here was the Handel display.  Because of Handel’s close association to the Foundling Hospital, the museum contains a number of his original manuscripts.  On display are, among many other things, a first edition of the Messiah and the “fair copy” of the oratorio that Handel ordered to be made for the hospital in his will.  This score is a complete copy of every part and the director’s score so that the Messiah concerts could continue on after his death in 1759.  For any musician who has ever performed Handel’s Messiah, this is a special collection indeed!

Tom

Our First Two Weeks in London

Hi from Greenwich and London. 

We arrived on January 2, 2013.  When we arrived the weather was mild (in the 40’s) but it’s quite cold this week.

Our flat in Greenwich is terrific!  It’s hard to imagine something better.  I found it through a service called sabbaticalhomes.com.  We are in a two room basement apartment.  Each room is large.  One is a bedroom/sitting room and the other is the kitchen.  Our landlords are wonderful and live upstairs.  We have included some pics of the flat here.  The kitchen is fully equipped with a fridge, freezer, and nice gas stove.  We have a washer but no dryer so we are doing the British thing and hanging all our clothes on a drying rack (you can see the end of today’s washing in the pics).  We have TV and WiFi.  The flat is in a great location -- just half a block from a train station that connects us to the London tube.  We have a butcher, fishmonger, green-grocer and cheese shop just down the street, and are close to the post office, bank and grocery store. 

Our first task on getting here was to find bikes.  The good news is that we found two used folding bikes that we can take on the underground or fit in the "boot" of a rental car.  The bad news is that my bike was vandalized last Tuesday, the first day we rode them!  Someone took the quick release clams from the handlebars and the seat.  They didn't take the seat itself.  Go figure.  We lucked out and found a really nice shop close to our flat where the bike repair person helped us.  We ordered new clamps and got them yesterday so we are back in business.  There are tons of bike paths and bikeways around London these days -- the city seems to really be encouraging cycling.  So we hope to get lots of use out of the bikes.  And we are perfecting a locking system that will make it more difficult for vandals.

So far the highlight of our trip has been Westminster Abbey.  We have been several times in previous years and decided to pay extra for a guided tour by one of the vergers at the Abbey this time.  We definitely hit the jackpot with this decision.  Our tour was led by an a verger who is a bit infamous (more on this later).  He was a great guide -- witty and informative.  We also were with a very nice group of people -- a British couple in London on business and an Australian family. 

We did the tour last Tuesday and decided to go back today (Sunday) to attend the Evensong service and a weekly organ recital held at the Abbey.  When we walked in for Evensong, who was greeting visitors but our verger/tour guide.  He recognized us, led us to the front of the quire and asked the usher to find two good seats for “his special guests”!  As a result we sat in the main quire area and not in one of the two transepts with the general admission folks!  Tom sat in the seat reserved for the Head Master of the Abbey School -- called the Archididasculus and I sat next to him (and did not note the owner of my seat J).  We were just seven stalls from the Queen’s stall which was occupied today by the Dean of the Abbey.  No photos are allowed inside Westminster Abbey but I found the picture with this post online that shows where we sat.  We were in the back stalls in the very bottom right corner of the picture.  The choir sat in the first two rows on each side of the aisle.

The service was incredible -- it was almost completely sung by the Abby's choir comprised of about 10 men and 20 choir boys.  The choir was beautiful.  They started with a haunting introit and then proceeded with wonderful traditional music with lots of solos for both the boys and the men.  The sound was ethereal in that great space.  What a treat! 

We returned a hour later for the organ concert which was also wonderful and surprising.  It featured secular music including an arrangement of Bizet's Carmen, for organ – quite unexpected.  As the organist played Carmen's seductive Aria I imagined I could see King Edward the Confessor (who founded the Abbey and is buried near the altar) rising from his grave.  The organist was terrific.  I think he used every one of the 100+ stops on the organ during the concert.

Well, I said our verger was a bit infamous.  During our tour, the British couple we were with thought they recognized the him and asked if he was the "cartwheeling verger" from Will & Kate's wedding.  I did not know what they were talking about, but googled him when we returned home.  It turns out he was the head verger at the wedding and was caught by TV cameras cartwheeling up the center aisle of the Abbey just as the last guests were leaving the church after the ceremony!  Here he is!  Believe me, the enthusiasm that you see in those cartwheels was evident in our tour. 

In addition to our visits to Westminster Abbey, we have been to the Victoria & Albert Museum twice (and I, at least, am not done there!), a fabulous exhibit of Pre-Raphaelite art at Tate Britain, Windsor Castle, and the Borough Market (a huge outdoor market near London Bridge).  We’ve been able to spend some great time with our friends Robin and Ruth, and went to the local wine bar with our landlords, David & Hilary.  We have walked miles exploring Greenwich and southwest London where we are staying.  I have located and attended a UK Weight Watchers meeting and am starting to get the inside scoop on finding low fat food options at the store.  We have begun to really figure out the bus/train/overground/tube interface (although on this front we still have a lot to learn!).

Now that we are settled in, we hope to post more often!  I know tonight, Tom and I had a little contest over who should write this post!

Liz