Meeting American friends in London for Highlights Tours of The National Gallery and the British Museum and then...Off to Oxford

Tuesday, August 13, 2019

London

Meeting American friends in London for Highlights Tours of The National Gallery and the British Museum and then...Off to Oxford

     Hiya from London!

     Today was a red-letter day for me as I was meeting my friends Bonnie and Art from Connecticut in London.  Not only was I going to see them after a whole year but we had always talked about being in London together, and suddenly, by coincidence and without planning it, it happened! How exiting was that??

So I did wake up at about 6.00 am and did some reading of Twitter and looking at my day’s plans when I heard Roz pottering about below me. She was off to work and I would likely not see her before I left London as I would be leaving for Oxford this evening and then leaving London on Friday while she was still at work.

     I said Bye and Thanks to her before she left and then I had a leisurely breakfast in front of the telly as I watched the BBC Breakfast show. It was Sainsbury muesli with Onken Mango, Papaya and Passionfruiit Yogurt (which I love) and coffee.  A quick shower later, I spent a good deal of time finalizing my packing and carefully weighing my three bags to ensure I would not have any problems at the airport. This took me a good deal of juggling and redistribution of weight before I was ready to leave the house. I was supposed to meet my friends at 11.15 at the National Gallery and I chose the front porch above the stairs to ensure that we would not get wet in case of rain.

   So I took a bus to Victoria and the Tube to Charing Cross and found out that the National Gallery has changed its entrance—visitors were being shepherded towards the Sainsbury Wing where we went through security. That would throw off my plans with my friends who had texted me to say that they had just landed. In a little while, they would be at the Museum. I placed my bag in the Cloak Room (paid 2 pounds for a bag!) The bag policy has also changed since I lived inLondon ten years ago. At that time, you could leave your belongings in the cloak room for free (and you can still do so in the Met in New York). It seems to me that the National is trying to make money any which way they can while still keeping entry to the Museum free—the Met, on the other hand, has started charging entry fees to the museum.

     Bonnie and Art did get to the Museum about half an hour later during which time I familiarized myself with the layout of the major works that I did not want them to miss—the map to the Museum also costs money now!

     We met on Trafalgar Square on a gorgeous day—the square was bathed in golden sunshine and it was comfortably warm. The square also swarmed with tourists (it is, after all, August in England—the best time of year!) and the city is simply heaving. After an affectionate reunion (they looked none the worse for their red eye flight across the pond!), we decided to get started. We all went through security again and we started on the second floor of the Sainsbury Wing where the Medieval and Renaissance works are located. 

     We saw the ‘Battle of San Roman’ by Pablo Uccelo, ‘the Wilton Diptych’, my favorite woks by Carlo Crivelli, a couple of unfinished Michelangelo’s, Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘The Virgin of the Rocks’, Botticelli’s ‘Venus and Mars’, Piero Della Francesca’s ‘Baptism of Christ’ and Jan Van Eyck’s The Arnolfini Marriage’. We also saw the Tintoretto, the Bronzino and the El Greco that are masterpieces in the collection. We then went into the Main (Older) part of the Museum where I showed them the following paintings: Turner’s ‘The Fighting Temeraire’, Constable’s ‘The Haywain’, George Stubbs’ ‘Whistlejacket’, Gainsborough’s ‘Mr and Mrs. Thomas Andrews’, Hogart’s ‘Marriage a la Mode’, Joseph Wright of Derby’s ‘Experiment with a Bird’, Paolo Veronese’s ‘Darius and his Family with Alexander’, the two Vermeers featuring women at the virginal and my favorite painting in the National—maybe in the whole world: Pieter de Hooch’s ‘Courtyard of a House in Delft’. Finally, we moved towards the modernists: Cezanne’s ‘Bathers’, Van Gogh’s ‘Chair’ and ‘Wheat Fields with Cypress’, Monet’s ‘Bridge over Water Lily Pond at Giverny’, a few Degas dancers and a few Renoirs. We did not miss Seurat’s ‘On the Banks of the Seine at Asnieres’. Sadly, the gallery containing ‘The Ambassadors’ by Hans Holbein was closed—no one knew why. It is perhaps the most famous of the National’s collection—so I was sorry they missed it. Well, they will just have to come back.

     We spent about an hour and a half in the National when Art started to feel fatigued. They needed food and badly. It made sense to get out of the museum. I picked up my bag and met them back on Trafalgar Square which they had a chance to enjoy for a few minutes before I joined them again. Then, we set off to find lunch. I took them past the National Portrait Gallery and on to the Coliseum, home of the English National Opera and then on to the Theater District. 

Lunch at a Pub called The Chandos :

    This is probably the pub at which I have eaten most frequently in London—not because it is special but simply because its location right in the heart of the Theater District makes it perfect for a meal before or after a show. Art and Bonnie were relieved to find a place so conveniently located and when we realized that we had to go upstairs for a meal, we climbed to the Opera Bar and sat ourselves down at a table. All of us had Fish and Chips (Bonnie and I chose to split a platter) and we all had a taste of the huge slab of Sticky Toffee Pudding served with ice-cream with a small jug of custard for me that served as our dessert.

     They felt human again after eating and were ready to move on.

Exploring Charing Cross Road:

Our rambles took us into Charing Cross Road and straight to Leicester Square where I pointed out the sculptures to Shakespeare and to Charlie Chaplin and the Odeon Theater where all the film premiers take place. They strolled around it on a day that was simply crawling with humanity as these are some of the most popular tourist sites in London and are always packed to capacity.

We went past all the antiquarian and second-hand book stores including Foyle’s and then on Denmark Street past the stores selling music and music-related items. This is also the street on which the detective protagonist Cormoran Strike and his assistant Robin have their office in the new series of novels that J.K. Rowling has written under the pen name Robert Galbraith—and since I am currently enjoying the novels, I took particular note of this street.

We then crossed Tottenham Court Road (where the road works have almost been complete) and crossed towards Great Russel Street. I took them towards the road leading to the British Museum. They had the start of their lives when they saw how huge the museum is and how much real estate it occupies in the center of London. Needless to say, they were awestruck by the Neo-Classical building and its Greek Temple-like design.

Exploring the British Museum:

     Despite the fact that they were really getting exhausted by this time, Art and Bonnie were real troopers as we went through security and entered the Museum. I told them a little bit about the history of the Museum and its origins through the collecting efforts of Sir Hans Sloane who bequeathed his collection to the museum which then launched on a spirit of expansion. This was way back in the18th century; and in keeping with the spirit of the new millennium, a new architectural feature was added to it in the year 2000: the Millennium Great Court by Sir Norman Foster. They were completely floored by it as we entered it, past the ancient facade. The contrast was so great and so unexpected that they were stunned.

Then began our look at the Highlights—since they were tiring quickly, I told them that I would show them only three of the most important highlights but before we got there, we just had to make a detour to see the ichytausaur which had been discovered by the amateur paleontologist Mary Anning from Lyme Regis on the Dorset coast as this is kept in The Enlightenment Gallery on the ground floor. Both Bonnie and I had read the novel Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier through our Book Club and we had found out all about Mary Anning and her discoveries in the late Victorian Age. Hence, I led them straight to the fossil whose location I had found out myself on a previous visit to London.

That seen, we moved towards perhaps the most crowded part of the museum—the Ancient Greek and Roman galleries. There, we came face to face with the Rosetta Stone and spent a while talking about it, reading the accompanying curatorial notes and taking special note of its size and design. This case is always crawling with visitors—so we were glad to get a glimpse of it. This stone is historically significant because it has the same edict carved on it in formal Greek, in a vernacular variety of Greek called demotic and in Egyptian hieroglyphics. Until the discovery of this stone in the late 1800s, hieroglyphics had remained undeciphered. While scholars knew that it was a pictorial script, they did not know its phonetic associations. The knowledge that the same message gad ben printed in Greek and demotic helped them understand that the same message was also engraved in hieroglyphics. Since they knew what the edit said in Greek, it was then possible for them to translate the same message into hieroglyphics--and so the mystery of the ancient Egyptian script was solved. This linguistic facility opened up the entire body of ancient Egyptian texts to the world and vastly facilitated our understanding of an ancient civilization.   

     Next we moved to the rooms in the Ancient Near East section where we saw the Assyrian bas-reliefs from the Palace of Nimrud in modern-day Iraq, some of which represented the Lion Hunt. That too they found fascinating.

Finally, I took then to the piece de resistance of the Museum—the notorious Elgin Marbles. Of course, they had a close look at them all as well as discussed the manner in which they were brought from the Parthenon in Athens to London by Lord Elgin and why Britain is not interested in returning them to Greece. There too they were quite taken by the immensity of the display and the size of it.

     That was it! They simply did not have the energy for anything more—so we decided to stop at this. They needed a soft drink and we found something at the cafe in the courtyard. 

     Then because I too had my eye on the clock as I was headed to my friends in Oxford, I started to take my leave of them. I led them to The Museum Tavern, another good watering hole right opposite the Museum where Art and Bonnie had beers while I declined a drink.  I did not want to miss my 6.00 pm coach from Victoria.  So I said Bye to them and hoped to see them again in Oxford. Then I hurried off.  It had been a fabulous experience to have time with them in London, although brief, and I am glad that they have already decided that they ought to return and give the city more time.

On the Coach to Oxford:

     I took the Tube from Tottenham Court Road to Victoria and then made my way to the coach stop. I saw one waiting at the stop and although it was the 5.30pm coach, the driver allowed me to board it. I thought I was lucky to be saving half an hour and I well believed I would reach Oxford half an hour earlier.

     But to my bad luck, the coach met with much traffic on the M40 as there was a bad accident.  Our driver had the good sense to get off the highway and take an exit that led us through country roads for a good 45 minutes before we were able to return to the highway again.  We lost an enormous amount of time but somehow managed to make it into Oxford at about 7.45 pm. I texted Sue to let her know that I was running late.

     From St. Aldates where I alighted, I then found my way on foot to Sue and Tony’s place at Grandpont. The bustle of Oxford had calmed down considerably by this point and in the setting rays of the sun, Tom Tower was gilded splendidly as I passed by. I could not resist stopping to take pictures outside the Perennial Gardens attached to the Meadows at Christ Church College. I also chose to walk along the banks of the Thames where I found that the wild blackberry bushes were yielding jewel-like fruit and I stopped to pick some and stain my fingers and mouth with their ripe sweetness.

Dinner at Sue and Tony’s Place:

I was just in time for dinner for Tony had just taken his lasagne out of the oven and was ready to serve it when I rang the bell at their door. It felt great to be back in the familiar location on Marlborough Road which I know well from previous stays in this cozy and very charming little English cottage. The food was delicious and served with beans, it made a great dinner. For dessert, there was an apricot tart from Marks and Spencer. Everything was wonderful and, best of all, I got to catch up with my friends for a couple of hours as they will be driving early tomorrow morning for Bristol, leaving their home to me, which is incredibly generous of them. 

  They then put me through the paces, showing me where electric switches were, how the shower worked, giving me keys to the back and front door and telling me to finish up all the food in the fridge!

     By then, I too was rather tired and was ready to call it a day.  Saying goodnight to my friends, I went into the spare room which I always use when I stay with them in Oxford. 

     What an incredible day I’d had! I looked forward very much to the next two days in Oxford and all the fun I would have in one of my favorite places in the world.  Returning to Oxford (because nothing changes very much in this medieval city) is always like wearing an old and comfortable pair of slippers--slipping into them immediately makes you feel at home!

     Until tomorrow...