The final report

We had quite a busy day on Thursday, our last day in London.

We first went to the Tate Modern, a large museum created from a former power plant. It reminded me of the concept behind Mass MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts. It’s a fantastic display space since the ceilings are so high and the floor plates are huge. We wandered through the floors that housed the permanent collection seeing a wide range of pieces from well known late 20th century artists, such as Lichtenstein, to very bizarre pieces.

My favorite was a piece that filled a room where the artist hung silver items that had been smashed by a steamroller. Each item was suspended from a string but aligned with other pieces such that together they formed round disks, like silver plates.

After seeing the museum, we crossed the “wobbly” bridge over the Thames. This modern, pedestrian bridge is officially called the Millennium Bridge, but the day after it was opened by the Queen, it was closed for fear that it was unsafe … it wobbled. It was somehow stabilized, but quickly became known as the Wobbly Bridge. I kept thinking it still wobbled, but Lenny said it didn’t.

We made our way back to the center of the city where we had been invited to lunch by some of Marina’s friends from school. This family splits their time between India and London, and they have twin girls at Eagle Hill, Surahbi and Ramani. We had a delightful lunch with the family. It was fun for Marina to see the girls outside of the normal school scene, and they clearly enjoyed showing her around. So, now, each of us has had a rendez-vous with friends on this trip!

We saw the matinee of Billy Elliot, which definitely was one of the highlights of our week in London (see Marina’s review below). This show is Broadway-style musical theatre at its best …. a compelling story, great entertainment (particularly the dancing), touching moments, an occasional injection of humor, super costumes, and clever staging. It is opening this fall in New York, so if you don’t get a chance to see it in London, be sure to see it in New York.

We were close to Westminster when the show finished, so we went over to try to visit Parliament (we had no intention of getting anywhere near the Abbey). They have this strange habit of starting their sessions at 2:30pm and going until late, so we figured we would check it out. We arrived to find that the House of Commons was not in session, but the House of Lords was, so we got guest passes and went in. The building is quite impressive with high vaulted ceilings, ancient stone walls, loads of sculptures and brilliant stained glass. We had to each sign a statement promising that we would not disrupt the legislators in their work, then turn in our bags and cameras.

We watched for about twenty minutes from the gallery (quaintly labeled the “stranger’s gallery) at the back. There was a fairly low energy debate going on about some arcane tax matter. There were several dozen lords present, who occasionally stood up to make a remark, and a lawyer who responded. There was only one guy with a wig, which disappointed me, since I had sort of hoped they all would have them. Then they took some kind of vote, and everybody got up and started getting very social with each other – even “across the aisle”. At that point, we left.

We returned our borrowed GSM phone to the hotel, had a nice dinner with a candidate for director of the Computer History Museum, and returned home to get to bed for our early wake-up the next morning.

At about 4:00 am, our one-and-only misadventure happened. There was suddenly an extremely loud noise in the apartment. I can’t really describe it – almost like a combination whirring-squeaking blare. Both Lenny and I bolted out of bed, thinking perhaps it was an alarm. It was coming from a closet that was locked in our apartment, and didn’t seem to impact anybody else in the building.

Lenny tried every utensil in the kitchen, and eventually pried the closet door open to reveal the water heater, which apparently was going through some very grave crisis. In the meantime, I called the hotel that managed the property. The poor night duty manager was very sweet but had no clue how to help us. There was no going back to sleep with the racket this thing was making. (Note that Marina slept through it all with no problem, which totally amazed me).

Finally, the night duty manager located the property’s engineer and had him call us, and he gave Lenny some instructions as to what to do to disable the water heater for the time being. We finally got back to bed at 5:00 am, only to have to wake up at 7:00 am for our journey home.

We had a comfortable trip back and we are now happily in Hardwick. Marina returns to school on Monday and the two of us return home to California on Sunday. We hope you’ve enjoyed reading our blog … stay tuned for Chile next in August!

-- Donna

Marina's review of "Billy Elliot"

On Friday afternoon, the three of us went to go see Billy Elliot the musical. This play was based on a movie about a young boy named Billy Elliot from Northern England, who wants to take dancing lessons instead of boxing. The boy’s father and brother both work in a coal mine and both object to Billy dancing because they think dancing is too feminine. At the same time, the miners go on strike which lasts for about one year. Billy tries to escape the life of mining.

There were four boys who were cast for the role of Billy Elliot. Each boy would perform at different shows. The boy who played as Billy Elliot in the show that we saw was very talented in each of these things such as, tap dancing, dancing, singing, and acting. My personal favorite moment during the show was watching Billy dance freely alone on the stage in time with the music. There were a few touching moments in the play that made me get tears in my eyes like when Billy lets his dancing teacher read a letter out loud that is from his mother who had died when Billy was little. This show was also very energetic like “electricity”, and it put a big smile on my face. The rhythms of the music made me want to get up on stage and dance and sing with the actors. Billy Elliot was the last show we saw performed in London and it was the best way to end our trip to London.

-- Marina

The Wednesday Report

(New pictures added....)

Wednesday was the day Marina had been waiting for – shopping day – an opportunity to spend her precious 50 pounds. Lenny had a business meeting, so we gals used this time to hit a few of the shops. The first two were from our guidebook, and neither existed any more. Not a good start!

Then we stopped in Bennetton’s and H&Ms, near Harrod’s, where Marina enjoyed browsing. She wanted to go to Burberry’s (which has done an amazing job of migrating from a stodgy plaid brand to something quite a bit more chic … Marina was convinced that it was a new company) where I decided to take a photo rather than buy something since I had nothing left to bring to the pawn shop.

Finally, we went to Top Shop at Oxford Circus thanks to the recommendation of Michal and Hannah (Mandy and David’s daughters). I thought this was a great store … a department store of reasonably priced, fashionable goods, of nice quality (when I see reasonably priced, I mean like Macy’s, not Target!). Marina found a jacket there that she loved for exactly 50 pounds. Whew – shopping over.

After a quick stop at Harrod’s food court to pick up dinner for tonight, we met Lenny back at the apartment. The afternoon activity was to go to the Victoria and Albert Museum, which is walking distance from our flat.

We found one most-amazing object on display, which I will tell you about shortly. Please use this time to guess what it might be (without looking ahead!). Write your answer down now – or better yet, put it in the comments!! What amazing object did Marina find at the V&A Museum?? Or put your answer here:

“_________________ was found at the V&A Museum.”

I quickly started thinking of the V&A as the Stuff Museum. Or, perhaps you could think of it as London’s attic. It has a little bit of everything, from the largest Chihuly glass piece I’ve ever seen in the entry, to shower curtains, to a plaster cast of Trajan’s column. Marina particularly liked the fashion display which was equally eclectic, from track suits to magnificent wedding gowns to Lady Di’s seed pearl dress.

Have you guessed what the special object is yet?

Before I tell you, I’ll also mention that we stopped for tea in the ornate museum café. We figured that we needed to have “tea time” at least once on our trip. They had a wonderful selection of loose tea that they put into long cloth bags for steeping.

Okay – here is the answer as to the most-amazing object. Marina found an orange Handspring Visor on display at the V&A!! Yes folks, there wasn’t a PalmPilot, a Treo, a Blackberry, or – heaven forbid – an iPhone. There was a Handspring Visor. (I guess they didn’t know orange was the least popular color … or perhaps that’s why the London office donated it …. David???).
Did you guess right?

After dinner at the flat, we went to see the Mousetrap. I think this is a great must-see once in your lifetime. Since the theatre was half empty, I suggest you do it soon. The show has been playing for 56 years, but I don’t think it will play for 56 more if that’s the crowds it gets. Note to all our British friends reading this blog, apparently none of whom have ever seen this show: plan your visit now!

I won’t spoil the answer to the mystery, but I’ll just say that there was good suspense and a few jump-out-of-your-seat moments. And you will never hear the tune “Three Blind Mice” the same again.

-- Donna

More theatre reviews by Marina

The next show that we got to see is called Spamalot. This is a show that is based on the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I really liked this show because I had already seen the movie of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Some of my favorite lines from some of the characters are….

· “You’re our king? Well, I didn’t vote for you!”
· “Where are we going to find Jews?”
· “Ni! Ni! Ni!”
· “Come back here! I’ll bite your legs off!”’
· “I’m not dead yet. I’m feeling much better now!”
· “Always look on the bright side of life!”

Tonight we watched Mouse Trap, which wasn’t a comedy, but it was a mystery. This play has been playing for more than fifty years. I can’t really describe this play as well because it wasn’t quite as interesting to me because it was so complicated. All I know is that I’m not allowed to say who the murderer is. Shhhhh….it’s a secret!

-- Marina

Review: "The 39 Steps"

By Marina

The second show we saw in London was called 39 Steps. This show was a remake of the movie by Alfred Hitchcock, and both have very distinctive similarities and differences between the movie and the play. Both the movie and the show were the same because they had the same plot, characters, and settings, but the movie is much more serious and suspenseful but also has a bit of comedy put in. The play never had any seriousness or suspense in it, because it was a slapstick version of the movie. There were also only four people who played several different characters at once. They were always going on and off stage to set the props, put on a different costume, and making the audience laugh.

Tuesday's activities

We decided to do a day trip out of London today, so we headed to the River Thames and caught the boat to Greenwich. It was a beautiful, sunny day – our nicest day yet – and a good one for a river cruise. We missed the boat by approximately one minute, so we went over to see the Westminster Abbey while waiting for the next boat. We had stopped by to see the Abbey on Sunday but it was closed to tourists. We arrived this time to find out it didn’t open until 2pm. We decided that we were not destined to see the Westminster Abbey.

The boat had a humorous guide who rattled off the costs of various penthouse apartments and urged us not to visit the museum of modern art because it just had a bunch of weird stuff that they were trying to pass off as “art”.

Once at Greenwich, after a quick bite to eat, we headed up to the Royal Observatory. Our goal – which we achieved – was to get there in time for the 1pm dropping of the ball. Similar to New Year’s Eve at Time’s Square, a ball goes up, and then drops down at precisely 1pm every day. This was to give the proper time to anybody who could see the tower.

We greatly enjoyed the observatory. You really felt like you were at the place where time was created. It is located on the meridian (0 degrees longitude), and is the source of “Greenwich Mean Time”. Of course, this creates some great photo ops, like standing on the meridian with one foot in the eastern hemisphere and one foot in the western hemisphere …. or checking your watch against the falling ball, etc.

There also was a very nicely done museum of the history of timepieces, longitude, navigation, etc. The biggest effort was to try to tell longitude while on a boat. This required a time clock that could be accurate at sea, which took John Harrison about twenty years and four major tries to invent. But he did succeed in the end, using a totally different approach his fourth time. The H1, H2 and H3 machines are all large, impressive machines full of gears, while the H4 looks like an overgrown stopwatch.

After the Observatory, we visited the National Maritime Museum, with the large enclosed courtyard that seems to be the rage among British museums. I guess it’s a relatively inexpensive way to add space. There were very nice exhibits. We particularly liked the old globe that didn’t show North America (because it hadn’t yet been discovered), and the amazing display of old model ships. These apparently were used as sales tools for commissioning the building of the ships.

We stopped in the Queen’s House (not ever really occupied by a Queen) and saw the famous tulip staircase and cube-shaped hall with elaborate marble floor, before heading back to the boat. We missed the boat – again – by approximately one minute! A kind man on a competitive boat kindly accepted us aboard, and we headed back to London.

We decided to add one more item to our day, so we stopped at the Tower of London. This medieval castle has quite a complicated and dramatic history which we never really went through because we didn’t take the tour or rent the audio guide. Instead, we went right to the Crown Jewels. Although it seems there are a lot of tourists in London now, the lines are actually reasonable. At the CJ, they seem to be expecting casts of millions. You thread through various pre-galleries with videos as a queuing mechanism. When you arrive at the CJ themselves, you get on a moving walkway to view them. At first I thought this was a great idea – don’t need to wait as other people gawk over the gems! Then I realized that this meant that I couldn’t gawk over the gems either. In fact, you go by so fast that you’ve barely read the label, and then you are past the object already. Lenny started marching in place to try to see something for more than a nano-second. Then we went around again, since it wasn’t very crowded. Nice bunch of baubles, but we weren't allowed to take pictures.

We left the Tower to join Lenny’s friend Railton for dinner at The Ivy, which was excellent. It was great to get caught up with Railton, who had come quite a distance to see us.

After dinner we saw Spamalot. I am not going to cover it here in the hopes that I will get Marina to write about it shortly!

-- Donna

The Monday report

From Donna

On Monday we made a better effort to get up and out of the flat (probably because we had promised Guy that we would). The four of us started our day at the British Museum.

This museum is truly spectacular. First, they have enclosed the courtyard within a glass and steel bubble – apparently the largest enclosed courtyard in Europe – which creates a very awe-inspiring space. Second, they have some really famous stuff here. Third, it’s free!

I was happy to see the Rosetta Stone, which helped historians to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphics (Guy was pleased to see that the main fellow was Champollion, a Frenchman). Then we went to the “Elgin marbles”, i.e. the Parthenon carvings that the British stole (oops, I mean saved) from the Greeks. The Brits are a tad sensitive on the subject and when I asked the guide about it, he quickly produced a brochure explaining why the sculptures deserved to stay in Britain. We had the audio guide which I thought was pretty good. I almost felt transported back 2500 years as I listened to the commentary.

We wandered through the museum afterwards, with unfortunately not enough time to see much of it. One highlight was a docent who had a “touch me” station where you could handle objects from the collection – a small Greek vase, a necklace made of dolphin teeth, etc. She even let us hold a stone tool that was 350,000 years old. I was quite excited about touching something that old until Lenny pointed out that every rock I’ve ever touched is older than that. What a geek.

The other highlight was seeing the mummies, including Cleopatra. We read about the mummification process. I bought Marina a souvenir button that says “I love my …” and a picture of a mummy. Ha.

We then met up with my friend David Pritchard, his wife Julia, and his daughter Emma for our one splurge meal of the trip. (Yes, as you may have guessed, I hocked my engagement ring to pay for it). It was called Maze, one of the restaurants of the famous British chef Gordon Ramsey (I know some of you think “famous British chef” is a weird phrase, but it is true). The food was excellent: beautiful presentation, delicious flavors, extremely attentive service. Guy, David and I used to work together, so we enjoyed catching up after a hiatus of a few years. David is now running OpenTable.com in Europe, and it was fun to hear about their progress.

After lunch we passed by the American embassy, which is an ugly Saarinen building on an otherwise beautiful square, made even more ugly by layers of concrete barriers and fences. We then visited the Marble Arch, which is on a little traffic island that you reach by a tunnel

We walked through Hyde Park back towards our flat, stopping to visit the relatively new Princess Diana memorial fountain. This was a subtle but impressive piece of architecture, with swooping forms that contained running water. The water started at the top and ran in opposite directions down both sides. Each side had different construction, coming out of the ground, going back low, having bumps in it, having air holes and turns, getting wider then narrower, with the water meeting again at the bottom.

We wandered through the Mews (narrow streets with rowhouses), stopped at a gorgeous chocolate shop, and ended back in the apartment for a rest before theatre.

Our play tonight was “39 Steps”, based on the Alfred Hitchcock movie of the same name. We had rented the movie to see it before we came and we were astounded at how close the play followed the movie, with the major exception being that it was turned from a thriller into a comedy. There were four actors who played many roles, and they had a very clever way of using the props.

We went for dinner afterwards, which actually proved to be difficult since it was hard to find places still serving food after 10pm. We actually got evicted from one because Marina was underage – it seems you need to be 18 to eat a burger after 7pm in London. Anyway, we finally found a place, had a nice meal, and then said goodbye to Guy.

-- Donna

Sunday activities

From Donna

We got a late start this morning. Really late. We finally made it out of the house just before noon. Well, at least we got a good night’s sleep!

We went first to get our ride on the London Eye, a.k.a. the British Airways Eye. This is a giant Ferris wheel although something tells me Ferris would not recognize it as a descendent of his invention. When I made the reservation I realized that they don’t call it a ride, they call it a “flight”. You “board” your pod with others and take a half hour “flight”. It’s very slow and very smooth, so as long as Lenny was not pointing out where the rivets were coming undone, I wasn’t the least bit scared. My big project was to try to get the people in the next capsule to take a photo of us, and I would take a photo of them, with the idea that we would exchange photos by email later. I felt proud that I accomplished this tricky negotiation all through pantomime. We waited for them to emerge after we “landed”, but somehow they seemed surprised to see us. They had been happy to have us take their picture, but it’s not clear they really understood my proposal. So much for non-verbal communications.

Outside the Eye was even more entertaining than inside, with bunches of out-of-work actors dressed up in a variety of strange and wonderful costumes, with a tin cup in front. For a few coins, they would do something …. pop out of a box, play the guitar, ride a bicycle, etc. It reminded me of those small broncos in the supermarket when we were kids where you put in a dime and the thing moved.

We saw a sign for an exhibit of Salvatore Dali’s works, so we mortgaged the house to be able to afford the entry. They had an amazing selection of his sculptures and drawings, although none of his oils. We ate in their small, pleasant café.

We then tried to visit Westminster Cathedral, but it is closed to tourists on Sunday. We meandered down Whitehall. We wanted to see #10 Downing, but it is protected now like a fortress. You can see the Downing Street sign, but that’s about it. Lenny pointed out that the soldier even had his hand on his gun at all times.

At Trafalgar Square, Lenny ascended Nelson’s column part way to pose for my photo, which does not do the situation justice since it’s not clear the effort he put into it. There was a demonstration going on that was, as best we could tell, pro-curry. Go figure.

We met up with Guy just before our theatre was due to start (of course he couldn’t call us because I’ve given out an incorrect phone number of our GSM phone three times). We saw Brief Encounter by Noel Coward. The basic idea was not particularly deep (i.e. a brief love affair), but the staging was marvelous. The two key actors went to and from seats in the audience. Sometimes they walked through a screen and became a movie. There were multiple special effects of trains going by. There was quite a bit of music, and it seemed like at any time any one of the actors would pick up an instrument and start playing it. They served refreshments at your seats at the intermission to give the sense of a 1930’s performance. It’s hard to describe all the clever little moments, so let’s just say that an we all enjoyed the show.

We had a nice dinner at a Lebanese restaurant in Mayfair, and resolved to get to our sightseeing a bit earlier tomorrow.


from Marina

I woke up too late in the morning. I had been woken up from my moms voice saying, “C’mon sweety! Time to get up and take your shower! You slept in until 10:00 in the mornin’, and it’s about time you got up!”
That’s not the way I was hoping to wake up, but I figured its better to get up when my mom is telling me to and not when she’s yelling at me to do it.
So I took my shower, put on some clothing, ate some food that did not have any type of carbs, brushed my teeth, put on my shoes and socks, and waited for my parents to finish getting ready. by the time we were all ready to go it was only about 11:30am. the day was half gone, but I didn’t care, because I was still half asleep.

The first day

We had a very busy first day in London.

First, I want to tell you that we are now broke. It costs about $1M per day to live in London. We are exchanging money approximately every other hour. We take out a few hundred dollars and poof – one ride on the subway, and it’s gone. I find myself stifling a choke when Marina orders that hugely expensive spinach quiche for lunch …. how dare she be so extravagant?? We gave her 50 pounds for spending money for the week, thinking that was quite generous. I’ll be curious to see if she can find a t-shirt for that by the end of the week.

Our apartment (oops, I mean our “flat”) is very comfortable. As you can see from the photo in the first post, it is a few yards from Harrods. It doesn’t have much character, but it is modern and clean. It has the tiniest kitchen imaginable. In spite of being small, it has a frig/freezer/washer/dryer/microwave/stove/oven. Each appliance is a miniature version.

The washer/dryer was immediately put to use since Marina brought dirty clothes from school. Unfortunately, it went through the whole cycle with no water. Marina speculated that it did dry cleaning. If only. When the master Lenny took a look, he declared it user error (for you non-computing folks, this means it was my mistake). Once he read the manual, he got it to work just fine.

We first went to see the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace, along with every other tourist in London. On the way, we passed in Australian memorial that had very distinct reminiscence of Maya Lin’s Viet Nam memorial.

Since we arrived at the palace an hour early (silly us – we thought that it would happen on the time listed on the web site), we could fit in an extra activity before it started. Lenny noticed on the map the “Churchill Cabinet War Rooms” nearby, so we went there, and it turned out to be a real find. It’s a relatively new museum built in the basement where Churchill and his staff managed the war. It’s recreated the way it was then, and has a nice audio guide. It definitely gave you a sense of what it would have felt like in London during the war.

We then went back to the palace (looking for money exchange since the entry to the museum was at least a half a million dollars), and joined the throngs to watch the guard band and horses prance by. We couldn’t see the actual changing of the guards, but we got the point.

We then went to the open air market on Portobello Road. It started with a vegetable market, but we then wandered through the antique and “stuff” market. We saw everything from books to silver to linens to toys to jewelry, etc. We saw a Russian shop, where we took Marina’s picture, only to scamper away quickly when we saw the sign posted requiring thousands of dollars to take a picture.

We wandered through Harrod’s on the way home. It is such an amazing store. Each room is (over) decorated in a unique way, and all the goods are displayed beautifully. Of course, we particularly liked the food hall where we quickly ran through the rest of our money. The guy making pizza was singing opera as he did it. My favorite spot, of course, was the Diana-Dodi memorial, tucked away next to the stairs, where Diana’s alleged engagement ring from Dodi was on display, along with photos of the two.

After a rest we went over to our friends Mandy and David’s for Passover Seder. It was a lovely meal with wonderful company. It was nice to celebrate the holiday with friends rather than on our own. (Plus we got a free meal out of it.)
-- Donna

Blogging from our flat with Harrod's in the background,

Off to London

Donna, Marina, and I are off on another blogging adventure -- this time to London. We are happily ensconced in a nice two-bedroom apartment on Basil Street near Hyde Park, one block from Harrod's and a bewildering mass of other stores. It's a grey and chilly day but not raining. We're off to Buckingham Palace to watch the Changing of the Guard. Stay tuned...