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Dec 31st:
Tonight is Hogmanay -- and we're in Edinburgh for it. And it's frickin' cold.
We wandered around today. Edinburgh is an amazing city. The combination of centuries-old architecture and a vibrant city core is enthralling to me in a way that London and Paris haven't been.
I don't have a lot of text for this entry; just three pictures I took today.
The view outside of our hotel room tonight.
I usually try to hold myself to three to five images a post, but I'm indulging myself for the sake of narrative.
Dec 28th:
Our afternoon was mostly taken up in the the British Library.
I would have loved to have shown you pictures of the "National Treasures" exhibit, which included jotted down Beatles lyrics, a Gutenberg Bible, the Magna Carta, and Jane Austen's writing desk; or the provocative "Taking Liberties" exhibit, which showed interesting British historical documents and the context in which they led to modern civil rights, but the British Library didn't allow the taking of photographs :(. Suffice it to say that it was all pretty amazing.
I did snap this shot of The King's Library, which formed the original core of the British Library, and is still apparently expected to be held separate under the terms of the original donation. I wish I'd had a fish-eye lens, because it's much much bigger than this.
This is an iconic sight in the London Underground -- mind the gap!
We went to see a burlesque Sunday night -- La Clique. It was very, very gay. A good time was had by all.
Dec 29th:
Our last full day in London. I had trouble sleeping, but we hit the ground running and spent the day seeing the sights. This was really the first non-holiday weekday of our trip, so we got to see the city in more of its natural state.
First off: Trafalgar Square. I will spare you most of my pictures of statues and fountains.
Next up: we took a "Duck Tour." World War II amphibious landing craft/troop carriers have been repurposed into tour vehicles. Half of the tour was on the streets of London, and the other half was on the River Thames. Our tour guide was replete with bad jokes, and it was a cheesily awesome good time.
Passing another "Duck" on the river:
House of Parliament and Big Ben:
After lunch, we headed over to the Tower of London. On our way, we passed this odd church archway on Seething Lane:
This is the entryway to the Tower. While it's not in this picture, I found it interesting that the gatehouse to the tower was where the security folks were doing bag checks and checking tickets.
The actual Tower was somewhat disappointing, because it was jammed full of people, and the exhibits were somewhat lackluster in providing information and context. Still, the architecture was fascinating, at least partially because it covered so many different eras within a very small amount of acreage.
I found "The Line of Kings" to be impressive:
And this elaborate arrangement of guns in the royal armoury:
We passed on waiting in line to see the Crown Jewels, though. This picture shows part of the incredibly long line, and also some of the architectural whiplash:
This picture has three interesting things in it. First, a tower raven (in the left). Second, a really old-ass wall. Third, a representative queue of people waiting to get into one of the many tiny tower exhibits.
Here's a close-up of that same raven from the last picture:
Some more architectural whiplash -- it's the London Gherkin in the background!
And here's Tower Bridge and the oddly shaped London City Hall in one shot:
Finally, Tower Bridge at night:
From the Tower of London, we headed to Newham to catch a panto. However, the guide we used steered us wrong, and this one completely failed to have any of the sly subversive humor we were promised. Instead, it was a pretty straight up kid's show. We left after the intermission and spent a quiet evening in the hotel room.
And this morning we're on a train to Edinburgh! More on that in the next post.
Dec 27th: The British Museum.
Our hotel is just around the corner from the British Museum, which is quite an impressive edifice. The interior courtyard gave me a uniquely 21st century bit of deja vu, because I'd seen it before -- in Hellgate: London (note: this is the only part of London I've actually placed from this game). I remember quite distinctly battling some evil yet nondescript creature up and down the stairs that encircle the reading room in the center of the courtyard.
Our first stop was the Egyptian exhibit. As we wandered around, we overheard a gentleman translating the hieroglyphs to his companion. He noticed our interest, and began walking us through some of the basic details of the offering formula featured on the piece we were observing:
We also particularly enjoyed this statue of Ishtar as war goddess:
The drinking horns, and the room of Viking stuff they were contained in, got The Immigrant Song irrevocably stuck in our head:
Possibly the most depressing aspect of the museum was the exhibit of Parthenon statues:
The tone was oddly defensive -- "hey, if we hadn't bought these statues off of a dissolute English lord who picked up their pieces out of the rubble of wars and explosions, I mean, heck, they'd be destroyed by now!" Which, while probably true, didn't make it feel any less like we were viewing the corpse of the Parthenon, laid out on the operating table for us to view.
I'm not entirely sure why this exhibit in particular felt worse than the others in this regard. I think it might have been the sad history of the Parthenon -- it was used as an ammo dump in a 17th century war, and a shell lit off the gunpowder stored inside, which did much of the damage to the structure. It might have been the horrible shape most of the statuary was in, compared to the other pieces on display.
For me, though, it was seeing these statues that are meant to loom over us, sitting stacked one next to the other at eye level, battered and beaten. It's not how I pictured the place. In a way, the Carnegie's display of plasters of these ancient statues had more of a sense of the grand scope I expected.
Still, that hall aside, we found the British Museum overwhelming and awe-inspiring. Our feet hurt, but our heads are full. Also, we took high tea in the museum's cafe, and that was both tasty and delicious.
Dec 24th: We arrived, got settled in. Walked around the neighborhood a bit. Took a lot of jet-lag naps.
Dec 25th: Almost adjusted to new time zone. Had a delicious Turkey dinner at a local restaurant, which was totally ruined by incredibly rude waitstaff. I did not get my Christmas Pudding :(.
Settled in for evening of BBC, including Blackadder's Christmas Carol, Wallace & Gromit: A Matter of Loaf & Death (new!!!), and an amusing Black Adder documentary. Missed the new Doctor Who Christmas special due to a tragic misreading of the BBC website, so have been watching it fits & starts on the awful BBC iPlayer service, which goes to great lengths to be hostile to my efforts to let the damn thing queue up over my slow Internet connection.
Overall, a very nice, relaxed Christmas, despite minor annoyances.
Dec 26th: We set out!
First we went to the London Eye, which is a bizarrely large millennial ferris wheel situated in downtown London:
We obtained tickets, and saw London from a bird's eye view as part of a 30 minute single rotation around the wheel. Between the lateness of the year and the northernness of London, the light was already fading, but I got some bizarrely Blade Runner-esque vistas:
Next, we took a cab over to the rebuild Globe Theatre, which is pretty freaking awesome:
The original Globe burnt down, so this one was rebuilt in the late 20th century to be as close to the original conditions as possible. We took the tour, which was awesome. Our crusty, feisty guide had all kinds of awesome stories about the place:
We now totally want to come back in the summer when they're actually doing a play.
Finally, we booked it over to the West End, where we had tickets for Avenue Q tonight. Sadly, the Noel Coward Theatre is designed for very small people with very short legs, but we still had a blast actually finally seeing the musical, as opposed to just hearing the soundtrack as much as we can stand.
