Art by the Thames - 2 February 2008

Walking by the Thames is a most pleasant way to while away a sunny day and that is exactly what we did. For £1.00 we can use the trains to get from our place in North London across the Thames to Kew.

Bypassing Kew Gardens we stopped first on Kew Green to visit the church built in the 18th C when Kew was the site of the summer palace. The Georgian buildings around the green also date from that time and were homes for the royal courtiers and officials.

Crossing back over the Thanes, we made our way along the Thames path to Chiswick House, Hogarth’s Home and finally William Morris’s workshop – quite an ‘arty’ collection.

Chiskwick House was one of the original Palladian buildings in London and was really just a big playhouse for Lord Burlington to display his art collection and entertain guests.

Hogarth was an 18th C artist and social commentator who told his moralistic tales in sequential paintings which he also turned into engravings and sold as prints.

Morris was influential in the Arts & Crafts movement and his work adorns the walls of many grand houses in the form of wallpapers and furnishings.

Today (2/2) was also our wedding anniversary so we decided an appropriate celebration would be to book a table for 2 at a 2 star Michelin restaurant so we booked a table for 2 at The Square in Bruton St, Mayfair.

The service is amazing with what appeared to be at least one person per table and attentive staff who appeared to anticipate your every move. If you left the table your napkin was folded and when you reappeared there was always someone there to move your chair in for you.

The food was fabulous with 5 extra “in-between” palette-pleasing delights as well as the three courses. Our only gripe was that the room was unpleasantly cold.
If someone had told us on our wedding day that one day we would be celebrating an anniversary by sitting in London eating a meal that cost 2 month’s of our then household income we would have suggested an urgent trip to the psychiatrist. But with a rise through the ranks, a little help from inflation and the UK/NZ exchange rate we could cover the cost of the meal with a morning’s work.

The Indie Travel Podcast might give me Lonely Planet books for writing this!

Off to Offley - 27 January 2008

Today the weather was cool, dry and sunny so it was time to leave the city and head for the country. The walk details promised views and wildlife but all we heard were the mating calls of the Boeings and Airbuses from nearby Luton.

Nevertheless, wandering through the English countryside is always pleasant and the names so often raise questions as to their history and derivation, today’s cluster being no different: Tea Green, Lilley Bottom, Offley Hoo and Mangrove Green etc. (How many of the residents of Mangrove Green have ever seen a mangrove swamp?)

Monopolising Mayfair - 26 January 2008

We have been Londoners for more than 6 years now and there is still plenty of central London that we hardly know.

Today we explored Mayfair where the May Fair was banned many years ago when the area became a fashionable place to live. There are many streets lined with gracious Georgian buidings, many of which are now offices.



Mayfair is also home to some of the most expensive shopping on the planet; Sotheby, Tiffany, Cartier etc and most stores have bouncers and/or electronic release doors. The streets, thanks to Monopoly, are household names: Bond Street, Pall Mall, Park Lane, Mayfair and so on. Just beyond is more of the Monopoly board: Oxford St, Regent St and Piccadilly Circus.

Inside the Inns of Court - 19 January 2008

After the Knights Templar vacated the area, leaving behind one of their uniquely circular churches, the lawyers took over a site on the banks of the Thames situated, conveniently, between their clients in the City and the lawmakers in Westminster.

In 1608, James I granted the lawyers, in the form of the Middle Temple and Inner Temple Societies, the freehold of the land, in return for the lawyers continuing to provide the training and regulation of barristers.

As part of their 400th anniversary celebrations, the Inner and Middle Temples, two of the four Inns of Court, held an open weekend allowing the interested public to wander through all manner of places normally off-limits to them.

The Middle Temple is home to the oldest public fountain in London; one of the finest double hammer-beam ceilings (in the Great Hall – where the first performance of Shakespeare’s 12th Night was held); the only pair of Molyneux Globes; the garden where the original white and red Tudor roses (as in the Wars of the Roses) were picked, and so on. The whole area is an amazing amalgam of history and tradition.

Not far away is The Old Curiosity Shop: built in 1567, it is the oldest shop in London and was the inspiration for Charles Dickens’ novel of the same name.

Still following the tourists - 12 January 2008

Other destinations high on the tourist list are Notting Hill and Portobello Rd, to visit the famous market. While we have dipped into the area previously and fleetingly encountered the market we had never walked the road from end to end on a Market Saturday so, since it was a beautiful winter’s day, we set off for a walk based upon those two areas.

In an area that was once a slum known as the Potteries and Piggeries we passed the remains a bottle kiln left from the early 19th C. It seems strange that some of London’s more desirable real estate was once a fetid swamp of pig waste.

Tourist Trail - 6 January 2008

High on the “must do” list for tourists visiting London is to watch the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace, and today, 6½ years after arriving in London we finally made it to the Palace gates in time to see the pomp and ceremony. Any Brit suggesting that the country should do a way with the Monarchy must be mad, such a move would kill the tourist industry.


Our circular walk had started at Piccadilly, along Jermyn St past all the expensive menswear shops and a couple of anonymous buildings; Gentlemen’s Clubs from a bygone era where many country estates have been won and lost at the gambling tables down through the centuries.

Economist Plaza in St James St was host to an outdoor art exhibition based on characters from Beatrix Potter and highlighting the plight of the homeless in London.

Next stop was the Palace for the Changing of the Guard after which we stopped halfway down Birdcage Walk at the Guards Chapel to catch the morning sung Matins. The singing from the small choir was fantastic. The church was hit by a flying bomb in the war and the rebuilt church combines a very ornate old altar surround at the end of the choir with a modern nave. The organ was augmented by the Band of the Irish Guards who played a stunning outgoing voluntary at the end of the service. An unusual feature (for us) was the singing of the National Anthem during the service and with the choir and Guards Band it was one of the best renditions of “God Save the Queen” we have ever been involved in.

Along Whitehall is the excellent memorial to the “The Women of World War II” it is a modern memorial but very simple and moving and a very clever way of saying “Gone but not forgotten.”

We called in at the Household Cavalry Museum, recently reopened after refurbishment and then we were back to Piccadilly: close enough to Fortnum & Mason for a short detour. Their windows are still looking very festive with 6 of them featuring the ‘12 days of Christmas’ song.
Returning to the Tube Station we witnessed a rather unusual sight; a helicopter parked in the middle of Piccadilly Circus. It was the air-ambulance helicopter that had landed to collect a road accident victim.

Luxor - 31 December 2007

Another early start was on offer this morning, for a sunrise balloon ride, but we decided to pass on that and catch up on a little sleep. When the balloonists returned we all set off for Luxor Temple, just up-river from where we were berthed. Following our tour of the Temple the itinerary was to visit a papyrus factory but, again, we declined, having seen that in Cairo and instead took ourselves off to the Luxor Museum. There is not a lot to see there but what is there is excellent and very well displayed in a modern and airy building, a far cry from the crowds and clutter of the Cairo Museum. The Luxor Museum has a number of items from Tutankhamun's tomb as well as some fabulous statues discovered under Luxor Temple in 1989.

Then, after lunch, the end-of-holiday reality set in as we had to pack our suitcases and get them out for the porters to take to the bus, leaving us nothing else to do but sit in 24C heat dressed in clothes more suited for a London winter evening.