The Sightseeing Bus

That's the Gothic ceiling of the stunning Lady Chapel in Westminster Abbey, above. It's one of the places we visited yesterday, on a day devoted to London tourism.

I met up with my brother's family in the late morning and we bought tickets for one of those open-top tour buses that roll around the city, taking in all the main sights. Dave and I have found that these buses are a great way to get the lay of the land and at least a glimpse of all the major sights, and then you've got some information to decide what you'd like to revisit. We recommend them to all our visitors.

Our tour began uneventfully. We picked up the bus in Holborn and went eastward, along Ludgate Hill and past St. Paul's. I was amused by this couple sitting in front of me, the man with his "Quality Milk Producers" fleece and the woman with her cow headscarf. I detect a theme.

Then, as we approached London Bridge, crazy weather! Everyone fled the top deck of the bus, including my brother and his family. Only I and the woman with the cow scarf stayed put, and I at least had an umbrella. She must have been soaked. I didn't do too badly -- my seat stayed dry because I was in it and my umbrella sheltered most of my body.

We rode the bus over the Tower Bridge and past the Tower of London, and thought we might get off there, but it didn't stop. Only then did we realize we have to hit the "stop" button, just like on a city bus, so we got off at Embankment instead and ate at a pub near the Temple.

Then we caught the bus again and took it to Westminster, where we checked out Big Ben and went into the Abbey.

I've been to Westminster Abbey several times before, but every time I go I'm astonished. The graves of Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots! Of Edward the Confessor and multiple medieval kings! Chaucer is there, in Poet's Corner, along with graves and monuments to many other famous writers. It really is a mind-blowing place.

The figure above is Joan, one of the 12 children of Edward III originally depicted on the side of his tomb. (Only six of them are still there.) He died in 1377. Amazing.

From there we walked across Westminster Bridge to the London Eye. The line wasn't too long and although my brother wasn't crazy about the idea (he doesn't enjoy heights), my niece really wanted to ride it. So we bought tickets and took a spin.

I noticed the LGBTQ+ Pride flag on the white building at lower left in the image above. We've seen Pride flags in lots of places, I assume because this is Pride month. I'm happy to live in a country where such things are still celebrated.

Remarkable views, as always! I think my niece was pleased.

From there, my brother's family took the tour bus back toward their hotel and I caught the tube home. There was another tube strike yesterday but it didn't affect us much, fortunately -- the line I needed to get home was still running. (This was a very strange strike, with some lines open and some shut down, apparently depending on which union represents the workers.)

Today is our visitors' last full day in London, and they're going to spend it at our place in West Hampstead. Home sweet home!

Bath

Not content with all the things there are to do in London, we struck off across the country yesterday to see Bath. I think my brother and his wife wanted to get a sense of the countryside and see what life is like in other parts of England. Bath isn't exactly your typical town, being a huge tourist destination in its own right, but it has a lot of history and a rather unique sense of place so it seemed like a good choice.

I met my brother, sister-in-law and niece at Paddington Station and we caught a 9:30 a.m. train, which rocketed smoothly across the fields and farmland and got us to Bath in less than an hour and a half. We walked into town and visited Bath Abbey, the site of religious buildings dating back to the time of the Saxons.

The structure itself has been demolished and remade several times over the centuries. What's there now is a Gothic building dating back to the 1500s. I particularly enjoyed the downstairs museum, with its examples of medieval floor tiles and other artifacts found when parts of the abbey were excavated.

Then we went to the Roman baths, which I had never done in the several times I've been to Bath. I don't know why because it was quite fascinating -- not only the pools themselves, which in the time of the Romans were fed by water from an underground warm spring -- but also the exhibits of all the Roman debris they've found in and around the springs. Coins, glass, headdresses and masks, jewelry, you name it. Some items were tossed into the springs for ceremonial or religious reasons, including "curses" inscribed on bits of lead, calling on the Gods to exact vengeance on certain thieves or miscreants.

You wouldn't want to swim in the spa now. Apparently the Roman plumbing has given up the ghost, because the pools aren't refreshing themselves the way they would have back in the day. There are modern spas nearby that perhaps use the same spring as a source for fresher, warmer water. There was a spout to taste clean water from deeper in the spring, before it got to the stagnant pool above, and it tasted warm and minerally.

After the baths we hoofed it over to the Royal Crescent, an impressive arc of 18th-Century townhouses overlooking a park where I walked Olga way back in 2013. (How time flies!)

And then it was time to catch our train back to London, so we hustled back to the train station via the promenade along the river, and got there with about ten minutes to spare. A few more random photos:

A ghost sign over a closed shop, harkening back to the days of film developing;

Some rabbit graffiti;

Some colorful hair;

And a sleepy dog on our train home. I used to often hold Olga in this exact position, but this dog, a whippet, looked to be about 10 kilos lighter than Olga!

Today, more sightseeing around London. Sorry I am largely absent from blogland at the moment but I am reading all your comments and I will catch up when I can!

Stonehenge Squall

Yesterday turned out to be one of the craziest experiences I've ever had sightseeing in England.

First, there was the tube strike. The lines around my brother's hotel were completely shut down, so I was afraid that getting from there to Victoria Station -- where we planned to catch our tour bus to Stonehenge -- might be a challenge. I took a Thameslink train and got down there at 6:30 a.m. just in case we had to walk the whole way. But city buses were running and at that early hour they weren't too crowded, so as it turned out we caught a bus from Bloomsbury Square, right around the corner from the hotel, all the way to Victoria Station. We even had enough time once there to have breakfast at Starbucks.

While riding the bus, we passed this guy (above) apparently selling that very mod abstract painting outside Green Park station. Then we saw the same guy and painting outside Victoria Station, which is where I took that photo. The likelihood of seeing the same guy with his artwork in both locations -- which are not close together -- seemed quite coincidental.

We left London on the tour bus at about 8:30 a.m., and drove about two hours to get to Stonehenge.
 

When we first got there, the sun was shining. We got off the bus, the driver praised the sunny weather, and though we'd brought umbrellas we didn't think we'd need them. So we left them in the luggage rack above our seats.

After quickly collecting our wristbands to prove we'd paid admission, we started to walk to the monument, which is quite a distance from the parking area. We saw ominous gray clouds in the western sky, and I tried to go back to the bus for our umbrellas, but the bus was locked and the driver nowhere in evidence. So we soldiered on without them.

We walked through fields of sheep and even some woods before coming to Stonehenge, all beneath more or less sunny skies.

And suddenly, everything changed.

You can see the transition in this video. Dry to begin with, a shot of the advancing clouds, and suddenly crazy mayhem with rain. (There's a lot of background noise in the video because of the wind, but I wanted you to fully experience what it was like!)

And I don't mean a small amount of rain. It was pounding, drenching rain. There was thunder. There was hail! And of course, Stonehenge is on a hill in the middle of nowhere, so there was no shelter. We just had to stand there and take it. To be honest, even having an umbrella might not have helped much, because the wind was so powerful -- but I was still cursing our driver.

It passed just as quickly as it came. We wound up sopping wet, standing like hurricane victims in a line for the shuttle bus back to the parking area, which thankfully was warmish and not air-conditioned. My brother was wringing streams of water out of his shirt -- he and my niece got new shirts at the gift shop to replace the sodden ones they were wearing. I fortunately had a sort of windbreaker on that proved to be water-resistant, so I wasn't too drenched.

We had lunch (Coronation chicken sandwich for me) at the cafe and then boarded our bus back to London. And once we got into the city, that bus moved at a crawl. I was half insane by the time we disembarked back at Victoria about 4 p.m. I walked with my brother and his family to Green Park, where I caught the Jubilee Line (one of the tube lines still running) to get home. They continued walking toward their hotel and apparently got more rain on the way.

I know I wanted rain. I know, I know. But I never envisioned standing in a downpour in an open field with no protection from flying hailstones! How did we offend the pagan spirits that haunt Stonehenge?

Skyline Views, Both Real and Tattooed

This may be a familiar sight if you've visited London in recent years, or if you've read this blog since 2003 and you have a really good memory. It's the view from the top of the elevator that takes visitors to the top of one of the chimneys at Battersea Power Station. Dave and I did this back in 2023, when it was called Lift 109. Apparently it has been renamed The Chimney Lift but it's the same experience, and I went up with my brother, his wife and my niece yesterday.

The weather cooperated and we had great views across the city in all directions. If you want to see more of what it looks like, check out that linked post above.

They sell plush toys in the gift shop, including Charlie the Chimney. I bought one just because the idea of a stuffed chimney was so peculiar. My brother got one for my niece, too. The woman working the counter at the gift shop said, "You don't need a bag, do you?" When she put it like that I felt like I had to say no, so I was carrying this chimney around for the next hour or two. My niece discovered that they stayed secure head-down in a side pocket of our cargo pants, so that's what we did.

Americans will buy anything.

Before taking the lift we had lunch on the patio of a seafood restaurant near the river. Our server had this great tattoo of London architectural icons, which seemed appropriate for a day when we were getting a good skyline view of the city.

Afterwards we walked down the river to Vauxhall, passing the U.S. Embassy and the sky pool, and then across the Vauxhall Bridge to Pimlico, where we caught the tube.

Today is going to be more of a challenge. We're supposed to go to Stonehenge via a bus leaving from Victoria station, but of course it's raining (yay, but why today?) and there's also a tube strike. I'm going to have to be creative about getting us down to Victoria. I'm catching a 6 a.m. Thameslink train to get to my brother's hotel and we'll go from there, either by bus, taxi or walking. Given the rain I'd say walking might be out. Wish us luck!

Banksy and a Sunbathing Robin

We met up with my brother and his family yesterday for a Sunday pub lunch in Bloomsbury, where they're staying. We thought they should experience a traditional Sunday roast, so that's what we got -- chicken, in my case, with a Yorkshire pudding and all the trimmings. It was good but as is typical when I eat a Sunday roast, I consumed pretty much my entire day's caloric intake in one sitting. No dinner for me last night.

Anyway, after eating we took the tube down to Piccadilly Circus and walked from there through St. James Park to Buckingham Palace, to show them some of the sights in that area. One I hadn't anticipated seeing was Banksy's newest artwork, on a plinth near Pall Mall.

As we passed it, Dave exclaimed, "Hey, that's the new Banksy!"

I think we all know who inspired that artwork.

We also passed a wino clutching a bottle of rosé who slurred "I love you" to each of us as we disembarked from an elevator in the Piccadilly tube station, and a man belting out an off-key version of the Cranberries' song "Linger" while concealed behind a statue in St. James Park. He may have been hiding his body, but his voice was on full display.

After strolling past the palace and through Green Park, I sent them back to their hotel on the tube and Dave and I came back to West Hampstead to intercept a grocery delivery.

A relatively short garden cam video this week, at just four minutes, but one that features some excellent footage and answers an important question!

-- We start with Q-Tip (I think) trotting past and pausing. Near the teasel to the right of the path you can see a dark object on the ground. That's one of the fox's dog treats, which they get from an unknown source. At 0:32 the fox makes a half-hearted attempt to pick up the treat, but ultimately leaves it behind.
--  At 0:44, the following morning, I pick up the disgusting half-eaten treat and throw it out so we don't encourage rats.
-- At 1:03, a little robin hops into the lower right of the screen and then nestles itself into the ground and spreads its wings. This is what we were seeing last week when I thought the bird might be sick. It's not sick at all. Robins and other birds sunbathe to maintain their feathers. Who knew?!
-- At 1:22 you see me with a watering can. I saved this footage to show the temperature: 116º F (or 47º C), according to the camera. The next afternoon it's even hotter, at 127º F (or 53º C)! Obviously that's not the air temperature, but the temperature of the camera sitting in the sun.
-- At 1:48, Pale Cat wanders past.
-- At 2:02 we get some of the best fox footage I've ever collected. The fox, in daylight, wanders up, gets comfortable and lies down for a moment. I love seeing the fox so relaxed in our garden! (That will change when we get a dog, sadly.)
-- At 2:43, a squirrel doing a sort of funny, bow-legged old-man walk.
-- At 3:03, a fox hops out of the nighttime shrubbery.
-- At 3:11, Tabby slinks past.
-- At 3:18, some rough-housing squirrels jostle the camera.
-- At 3:38, the fox returns, and then at 3:49 it's back in color for some scratching and grooming. Someone's feeling itchy!

Grounded for Lack of Toilet Paper

Well, yesterday turned out to be wall-to-wall activity! My morning went pretty much as usual, blogging and uploading pictures to Flickr, and cleaning the house to prepare for my brother's visit. He, his wife and my niece had an eventful day of travel. The first leg of their Delta flight was grounded by a broken tissue or napkin dispenser, believe it or not, and then the ground crew couldn't find the plane's maintenance log book -- which I suspect was the real reason for the delay. All of this meant an extra 45 minutes in Jacksonville before takeoff, which meant they missed their connecting flight in Atlanta and had to board a later plane for London. This put them here six hours later than they'd anticipated.

But they did finally arrive. I journeyed out to Heathrow to meet them, and just missed getting caught up in this snafu. When I entered the tube station, a notice board said trains weren't running to Heathrow. I was trying to figure out an alternate plan but then my train did indeed go all the way, so I suppose the system was just getting back on its feet after the earlier disruption.

The tube was running back into town with no problem, so soon after I met them we were zipping back to West Hampstead. They came to our flat and we sat out in the garden in the almost-sweltering warmth. My brother does read my blog, so I imagine it was fun for him to see first-hand all the stuff I've been writing about, from the ladybird larvae in the yard waste bag to the starlings on the bird feeder.

(Incidentally, I retrieved another ten or so ladybird larvae from the bag yesterday, so I decided to dump out all the garden trimmings in the back "wildlife area" of the garden. That way whatever's living on that alkanet can crawl to nearby living plants. I don't want to be responsible for killing all those little critters.)

After a while, my brother and his family took an Uber to their hotel in Bloomsbury, and I joined them there after a couple of hours so we could go to dinner. (Dave, who has been feeling under the weather, didn't join us -- but he was happy because the recliner repairman had come earlier in the day, and his chair is now fully functional once again!)

The gigantic mural above is one of several in the neighborhood near their hotel. We walked to a nearby pub called The Swan, where we ate, and then wandered the streets surrounding Queen's Square and the Great Ormond Street children's hospital. Here's some more of what I saw during the evening:

Door in the men's loo at the pub

Today my brother and family are going to rest up and then Dave and I are meeting them for a Sunday pub roast. Maybe before that I can get caught up in blogland!

Larvae, and a Musical Neighbor

Speckled wood butterfly on our "Bowl of Beauty" peony

I pre-wrote some of this post last night, thinking that rather than blogging, I would be on my way to Heathrow airport early this morning to pick up my brother and his family. They're visiting for a week from the USA -- the first time they've come to England! A landmark occasion for all of us.

But then my brother texted in the middle of the night and said the first leg of their flight landed late and they'd missed their connecting flight to London, so they're on a later plane, coming in around 1 p.m. (They're going to be exhausted.) And I'm blogging as usual.

With that in mind, I spent yesterday getting the house ready for visitors. I mowed the lawn, for example, and dealt with simple cleaning. There's more to be done but it's presentable, which is about as good as it ever gets around here. (They're not staying with us -- they have a hotel -- but the place still needs to look decent.)

While cleaning up the garden I threw out lots of flower stalks from the green alkanet. The flowers have more or less faded and I don't want them going to seed. We already have more alkanet than we can handle.

But while throwing them in the garden waste bag, I saw several little larval ladybirds like the one above (which was on a hellebore). They're attracted to any plant with aphids, which they eat -- and alkanet has plenty of aphids. So then I had to extract the alkanet from the yard waste bag and examine the stalks to make sure I saved what larvae I could find. I retrieved about ten of them and put them on some of the remaining alkanet in the garden.

This is why I hate weeding. It not only kills the weeds, but whatever critters are living ON the weeds!

Then, in the afternoon, I went to a pub outing with some former co-workers. It was a farewell hurrah for another guy who's retiring, and for my former boss's boss, who's also leaving. It was fun catching up with everyone from work again. Have I really only been gone six weeks? It feels like a lifetime! I have one more going-away event to attend on June 12, our end-of-the-year luncheon, and then I will be well and truly finished with that job.

Here's a weird little video for you. Through all the warm weather last week, I kept hearing a woman singing operatically. I couldn't figure out where it was coming from, and in fact I still don't exactly know. It's from one of the apartments behind us. Apparently we have a neighbor who's a singer, or fancies herself one.

I thought I'd share this little urban peculiarity. In the video I think she's just singing scales, or some rudimentary vocal exercise. The sound isn't terribly clear but if you crank the volume you should hear her right at the start, and then around the 15- and 30-second marks.

We often have perplexing music coming from those apartments. Remember our flutist from years ago? I'm not complaining, though -- it's better than listening to leaf-blowers and lawn mowers!

Incidentally, it's interesting to see -- in that linked video clip of the flutist -- how healthy our mock orange (Philadelphus) looked. It's quite straggly this year, with few leaves and flowers. I'm not sure why.