Well, Susan and Stephen, you’ve been to England many times over the years. What made this trip different and special?
So glad you asked! Yes, we’ve seen all the big tourist sites and all the secondary ones, too. Now we’re on to the tertiary sites, beginning with this trip.
We had a wonderful time, going later in the spring than we’ve ever gone before, and encountering much hotter weather than we ever have before. We had packed long-sleeve shirts and jackets for the predicted normal cool, rainy spring. It was over 80 degrees some days! I never unpacked my raincoat, and certainly never needed the zip-in liner. We only used the umbrella a couple of times.
We spent our first four nights in London, staying at a B&B in Pimlico, a new area for us. It was a very nice neighborhood, with restaurants, pubs, a launderette, and public transportation all in easy walking distance. The twins who run the Luna Simone are a stitch. They’ve been at it for about 40 years and still enjoy their guests, especially those who engage with them at breakfast. We became fast friends with Peter and Bernard after we brought them a special chocolate treat that we noticed they loved but didn’t know where to get. It turns out the local Sainsbury’s grocery store carries Teasers spread, but you have to know where to look. Score!
We spent our first day in London at the Kenwood House and Gardens. A lovely day at a beautiful English Heritage site. We were there to see Vermeer’s The Guitar Player and to enjoy the gardens. It was a weekday, so we were basically there with retired English people, their dogs, and their little grandkids, all basking in the sunshine (while we mainly held to the shade).
The next morning before breakfast we learned of the horrible overnight shooting at a concert in Manchester. Upsetting as it was, we were impressed that everyone was still cheerful and going about their daily affairs, not glued to the news as we would be in the U.S. Yes, security was at the very highest level and there were more police at crowded places, but no widespread sadness. Stiff upper lip and keep calm and all that.
Our next Vermeer, A Lady Standing at the Virginal, was at the National Gallery. We are happy to report that there are virtually no more pigeons in the adjacent Trafalgar Square, so you can actually enjoy the area without a million screaming kids feeding the pooping pigeons. Outside the museum we stumbled on a guitarist, Emily Lee. Without the pigeons, it was a delight to listen to her beautiful songs before we went in to see our painting, which we had seen on our very first trip to London 16 years ago. Still beautiful and a thrill.
That afternoon we enjoyed the London Science Museum, where we and several school groups saw old tools (no!), a model of belt-driven 18th century wooden tools, antique machinery, watches, clocks, everyday items progressing through the decades, steam engines, and space-age stuff. Who would have thought this would be such a great place? We stayed until closing—they practically had to throw us out.
The next day we went to see the Kindertransport statue at Liverpool Street Station. We had seen the companion piece in Berlin of the children (kinder) leaving Germany in 1939 on the train for London, so we wanted to see the arrival statue. The statues are especially meaningful to us because my friend Doris, a Holocaust survivor, was on the Kindertransport from Berlin to London as a child in 1939. The statues are beautiful and touchingly done. We took advantage, too, of being in north London to go to a sparingly visited site, the Geffrye Museum. It shows changing furniture and rooms of the English middle class through time. The best part was really the gardens, which also reflected the progressing decades and centuries. I had never thought about the changing fashions in the flower and herb world before seeing the Geffrye.