Platform nine and three quarters and up, up, up

Helen started the day with a run down North St towards the Angel, Isligton. On the way she stumbled on the site of the cattle market which replaced Spittalfields in the Victorian era. It's now a park, but the huge clock tower is still there.  

We're starting to do some thinking about how we'll sort out getting home. Accordingly, we stopped off at Kings Cross station to work out our options for left luggage on the last day. While we were there we obviously had to check out the gap between platforms 9 and 10 where Harry Potter entered platform nine and three quarters. In reality, there is no wall between the two platforms: 

 ... although we were pleased to see that there is a platform 9b. However, Kings Cross Station apparently had so many Harry Potter fans turning up that they bowed to the inevitable. Turn 90 degrees fro the real platofrms and you see a huge crowd standing in front of a small sign saying platform nine and three quarters and a surprisingly large merchandise shop.  

The crowd was a queue of people waiting to take hold of a trolly disappearing into a wall and have their photo taken for a ruiniously large sum.

The station itself is a lovely canopy over an echoing space.

 Next door is St Pancras station, which was used for the exterior shots in the movie because it looks a whole lot cooler.

Back on the tube, we headed to Bank to take a look at the monument to the great fire of London, then walked on through quiet Saturday streets in the City to St Pauls Cathedral.
 

St Paul's was a really interesting mix of puritan grace as far as the nave and baroque exuberance from there to the high altar. We climbed the stairs to the whispering gallery and can confirm that it works. We then headed on upwards to the first balcony for excellent views of a slightly smoggy London afternoon.

The height started to get to Thomas...

but he soldiered on up to the top level.

We ate our sandwiches sitting at the top, to the amusement of some of the other tourists. The top level gave the best views of the river and key buldings such as the Old Bailey.

We came back down, pausing only for a quick reprise in the whispering gallery and occasionally to admire antique graffitti carved into the stones in beautiful copperplate. Helen and Robert had read a story by Connie Willis about the fire watch who protected St Paul's during the blitz. They worked their jobs all day, then slept in the crypt, waking to stand on the roof to extinguish fire during air raids. We asked a volunteer whether there was any memorial to their efforts, and were rewarded with a really interesting lecture about the fate of the cathedral during the war. He told us that one bomb dropped through the roof and destroyed the altar. We prepared suitably solemn faces on hearing this, thinking that the symbolism must have been fairly devastating, but our our guide cheerfully told us that most people we very pleased, since the altar had been a dull Victorian table and the new altar was more in keeping with Wren's original vision. He then showed us the plaque commemorating the efforts of the watch. It's in the centre of the floor, directly in front of the central doors and was surprisingly moving.

From St Paul's we got back on the tube to Oxford Circus and walked down Regents St to Hamleys, the 7 storey toy shop which makes Harrod's toy floor look a bit wussy. It was PACKED.

 

Thomas eventually decided to buy a set of magic card tricks and we headed home for tomato soup with red lentils and more Lego Indianna Jones on the PS3.

Museums!

Today is mostly about museums, but first we headed by tube to Knightsbridge for a quick peek at Harrods. We saw the food hall with its elaborate mosaics, the Egyptian rooms and the art gallery / showroom, but we were really there for the toys.

We didn't take a picture of the real Harrods, because the lego one on the toy floor was so good:

Despite looking around very hard, we didn't find anything to buy, although Thomas was sorely tempted by a voice activated UFO being demonstrated by a sales person. But this isn't the only toy stop on the itinerary, so he decided to keep his power dry for the moment.

We wandered through Knightsbridge to Hyde Park.

The Serpentine seemed quite busy with bird life, but only in particular areas. it took us a few seconds to realise that this was because large parts of the lake were covered by ice.

Robert showed us how skimming small pieces of ice across the frozen surface makes a cool skittering sound, so we spent a good 5 minutes freezing our hands and enjoying the sense of being in a proper winter.

One feature of this holiday has been Thomas meeting new dogs. The English take their dogs everywhere - into cafes, on the tube, and into every park and green space possible. Thomas has perfected the art of asking dog walkers whether he can talk to their dog and then chatting with both owner and dog, which leaves the owners charmed. Thomas met several new dogs in Hyde Park, along with a number of green-wellied owners.

Form Hyde Park we crossed over into Kensington Gardens and headed towards the Albert Memorial. We had talked to Thomas about the Memorial ad told him the story of how Victoria had been a bit sad when Albert died and so had erected a discrete little memorial to him. Thomas can spot sarcasm when it's dropped from a height on to his head, but even so, he was taken aback by the elephants. And the camels. And the gold leaf. And the sheer size of the thing.

From there it's a short stroll to the Victoria and Albert museum through Brompton, which is a very expensive area packed with 'mansion flats'. Thomas has been car spotting all holiday, focusing mainly on the occasional luxury vehicle. In Brompton he was seriously spoilt. He had to abandon his count of Audis and eventually gave up on BMW's 7 series (which had previously been considered gold) in order to concentrate on the Maseratis and Lamborghinis.

The V&A is one of Helen's favourite things in London; we started (as traditional) in the cafe for morning tea, then wandered about looking at the eclectic collection, from well heads and swords to costumes, bed covers, architectural models and book binding. Thomas particularly enjoyed the architecture room.

We had lunch sitting in the sun on the front steps, before heading down the road to the Natural History Museum.
 

Sadly, the Natural History Museum's entrance hall with it's complete diplodocus skeleton was closed, as the skeleton is being dismantled before going on tour around the UK, but they had plenty of other dinosaur skeletons and the occasional animatronic version as well. The also had a bewildering variety of other animals.

The building itself is also gorgeous, with some rooms traditionally plain, but most beautifully decorated.

After leaving the museum we were pretty tired, so we stayed on the tube for an extra stop and got out at Holloway Rd to get someone else to cook our dinner. We found a pub called the coronet which was in a converted 1930s cinema. We had dinner and stumbled home.

Sent to the Tower

It looks like late starts have become part of the routine. We finally got ourselves out to Tower Hill today by 11:30. At the Tower of London we picked up our tickets and headed inside to see the crown jewels.

 

Once again we experienced the joy of travelling in winter - there were no crowds in the crown jewels display, so we could go back and forth as we liked, each of us deciding which crown was 'our' crown and being very unimpressed by Victoria's fussy little crown which perched on top of her morning veils and frankly made her look a bit like a decorated pudding. 6 weeks in the UK can make you blase about time lines; the most impressive of the jewels was actually the anointing spoon, which dates from the reign of Edward the Confessor. The rest of the jewels are all impressively gem encrusted etc but are a mere 500 years old. Cromwell melted the old set down, so Charles II had a new set made. Hardly historic at all...
By this time it was well past midday and we had missed our traditional morning tea, so off to the cafe we went.

We joined a Beef Eater tour, during which Thomas impressed our Yeoman guide by knowing the date of Jane Grey's execution. Thomas explained that she had been executed on his birthday (600 years earlier). The guard blinked a bit and said, 'but that's my birthday' and an American woman on his left chimed in 'mine too!' and suddenly we had an execution / birthday club going on. It's a small and slightly gruesome world.

It was another chilly day and we ate our sandwiches in a pool of bright but oddly cold sunshine while watching the ravens and the hardier tourists stride about the grounds. Next was a tour of the armoury in the White Tower (LOTS of armour, swords and pikes and one chopping block and axe) and then some of the rooms in the walls built by Henry III, which have been restored to their medieval appearance.

   

Hours later we sat by the Thames and watched the boats cross under Tower Bridge.

On our way back to the tube, we stumbled across this statue of the general (later Emperor) Trajan in front of a stretch of the Roman wall which was the first to circle London. See what we mean about time frames? Makes 400 years look a bit weak.

At this point Robert started to crumble. Thomas was raring to go on, so we split up. Robert went home to cook risotto, while Helen and Thomas took the tube to Liverpool St Station to go skating next door at Broadgate, a square enclosed by shiny new towers in the financial district. The lit offices made the buildings look like huge dolls houses.

 Thomas had never skated before (except for the pretend skating at Alnwyk) and Helen hadn't skated for 25 years, so we had to help each other quite a lot. Thomas got to the point where he could skate half way around the rink without hanging on to anything and Helen seemed to pick it up again quite quickly.

All went well until Helen, paying more attention to Thomas than to her own feet, went over backwards and cracked her head on the ice, just as the session ended. Sore but pleased, we headed home for hot baths.

South of the River

First thing this morning we caught the tube to Westminster. On the tube you have no geographic reference points, so its slightly surprising, after getting on a train in suburban Islington, to walk up a flight of stairs and see this: 

Guess we're in London.

Our first stop this morning as Westminster Abbey, which neither Helen or Thomas had ever seen.

Love the random head at the bottom of that picture.

Inside the Abbey we couldn't take photos but we had a great time walking from memorial to memorial with Jeremy Irons intoning the history of the building through our audio tour thingies. Thomas learned that gentlemen have to take off their hats (or flat caps) when entering a church but ladies are exempt. The Abbey is lovely, but some chapels are so crowded with memorials all you can see is a tangle of uplifted marble arms, wings and halos. We particularly liked the Tudor Lady Chapel behind the altar, where Henry VII and his wife are buried. In the chapels on either side are Elizabeth I, Mary I and Mary Queen of Scots. All the medieval Edwards are here as well, but Helen's vote for the most touching tomb was an unremarked statue of a woman in Tudor dress, lying on her side and looking at the next memorial, which was a baby in a cradle. No idea who she was.

We spent a long time at the Abbey and eventually had to crash in the crypt cafe and recuperate while being roundly ignored and forgotten by the staff.

We headed over Westminster Bridge to the South bank of the Thames and walked East, stopping for sandwiches and a view of the barges sailing up and down the river.

The views were fantastic. The skyline has changed significantly since Helen and Robert were here last, but some things stay the same.

We popped into Tate Modern to watch dedicated art lovers seeing the latest installation (a sound and light installation, the operation of which is dependant on the activities of a tank of micro organisms. You can't make this stuff up.) These are the art lovers lying on the floor.
 

 After walking all morning we felt like joining the art lovers, but we had boxes to tick and fun to squeeze out of the day, so on we went. Next stop, the Globe Theatre - Helen's pick.



The Globe was Shakespeare's theatre, which was reconstructed in the 1990s to be as accurate to the Tudaor / Stuart period as possible. Except for the sprinkler system in the thatch, which was required because thatch has been banned in London since the great fire.

Our guide was a woman with an impressive black furry hat and beautifully rounded vowels who murmered interesting facts into her lapel microphone while we listened on headphones, which allowed the students rehearsing on the stage to ignore us. This was historically very inaccurate, as we should have been shouting, drinking, joining in when they got to bits we knew and occasionally having a surreptitious wee in the corner. But I don't think our guide was aiming for that much accuracy.

The theatre is almost entirely made of wood and plaster, but is painted to look like marble. The moss on the thatch is apparently a winter feature. In summer it dries out and is picked off by magies, who pelt the groundlings (people standing in front of the stage) with the dried lumps.

By the time we exited through the gift shop it was dark and cold. However, we were excited about crossing the millenium bridge, so on we went. Helen crossed the bridge the day it was opened back in 2000. The following day it was closed again because the swaying motion was causing people to grip the sides and sob. Having been made more ridgid / boring (in Helen's opinion) we made it across without so much as a wobble.

The bridge leads straight onto the plaza surrounding St Paul's, so we walked around the Cathedral before hopping on the tube.

Once home we ate dhal and played Lego Indianna Jones on the PS3 because no one could really move anymore.