Bloggo Piccolo: ICLC walk in Greenwich

Next Stop, Greenwich Village was a film about which I remember nothing but the title. I seem to remember enjoying it, but the content, alas, eludes me. However, one of my favorite days out in London is to what I call the ORIGINAL Greenwich Village"

Greenwich - the main drag

Greenwich! Known for the Old Royal Naval College, the National Maritime Museum, and the Royal Observatory, the Queen's House, a great market, the Cutty Sark (until it burned, though I understand it is being reconstructed), and most of all its pleasantly almost rural feel whilst still in Zone 2 of the London Underground. I first encountered it in fall 2005, on a Classic Walk of London, took visitors there myself on occasion, and on Saturday very much enjoyed Bill's walk!

We started at the Canary Wharf tube station. 

The futuristic Canary Wharf tube station

This itself is something to see, along with the large mall next to it and the docks areas surrounding it. From there we took the DLR to a stop near the north bank of the River Thames, from which we had a perfect if a bit sun-washed view of the Old Royal Naval College across the river.  After a chat about Greenwich, Bill took us UNDER the Thames, through a pedestrian tunnel -- great fun if a bit eerie.


We emerged in Greenwich, very near the site on which the beautiful Cutty Sark sailing ship used to stand. Actually it's still there, but under wraps, as it was closed for preservation work in 2006 and a fire destroyed much of it in 2007.  It is being painstakingly restored and is due to re-open in Spring 2012 -- as I've discovered with much of London -- under wraps, but scheduled to re-open just before the Olympics! 

The Cutty Sark when I saw it in Fall 2005
Nannie is on the masthead

It's worth chatting a bit about the ship. The Cutty Sark is the last of the tea clipper ships that sailed to the far east to fetch tea back to the English, who developed a craving for it that lasts to this day. The such last voyage occurred in 1877, but the Cutty Sark sailed on for many years after, until in 1954 it was placed on display in Greenwich.  The name, in archaic Scottish, means short nightdress, and comes from a famous poem by Robert Burns, called Tam O'Shanter."  Poor unsuspecting Tam happens to be out on a horse ride one night, when he spies a coven of witches and warlocks dancing around a fire -- the youngest and prettiest witch, Nannie, who happens to be wearing a short nightdress, catches Tam's attention and he shouts "Weel done, cutty sark!' This proves an almost deadly blunder, as Nannie tears after him and nearly catches him before he crosses the river -- witches, as any schoolboy knows, cannot pass over water. She DID grab his horse's tail and yanked it off the poor mare -- but Tam escaped.

The Greenwich Market

Our next stop was the colorful Greenwich Market, which features delicious food from all over the world - soups and stews bubbling in front of you as you enter - and all sorts of different crafts. We spent about 20 minutes shopping around in the market, right in the center of town, then headed off towards The Old Royal Naval College. 

The Old Royal Naval College from across the Thames

The area that now goes by that name began as a palace, an important one, in which for example Henry VIII was born and where he spent much of his time while married to his first two wives. He also had two navy shipyards built in the area during his reign thus the early  and continuing association with the navy. 

Later, during the era of the first Stuart monarchs, Inigo Jones designed and built the Queen's House, some slight distance from the palace itself.

The Queen's House
designed by Inigo Jones

I was told by a tour guide in fall 2005 when I first visited (and when I took the photo on the right) that the reason for this separation was so that James I could entertain his male friends in the palace while his queen could do...well, whatever she wanted in her own house!  But I've not been able to corroborate it, in fact from what I now understand James's wife Anne died before the house was ever finished. So much for believing in tour guides. I repeat the probably erroneous remark only because of its salacious content. 


By the time of the reign of William and Mary, in the late seventeenth century, that couple preferred the palace at Kensington, and at Mary's command a hospital, the Royal Naval Hospital, was built in its place. Christopher Wren was responsible, and his assistant was Nicholas Hawksmoor -- two fine architects, and it shows in the finished product. In 1873 the former hospital became the Royal Naval College, remained that until 1998, and it remains a college today, part of the University of Greenwich, with some space used for the Trinity College of Music.

The Painted Hall

The two showcases of the Hospital/College are the Painted Hall and the Chapel. The Painted Hall is literally that. James Thornhill painted ceiling and walls, including columns that seem to have depth to them but that instead are painted in the trompe de l'oeil style. It was designed as a dining hall for for the hospital, but the patients and retired seamen who stayed there proved too numerous to be fitted in the Hall.

The Chapel of St Peter and St Paul

Opposite the Painted Hall is the Chapel of St Peter and St Paul, another beautifully designed space, executed in Greek Revival style. It is open to the public daily, but also holds regular religious services. If I remember correctly, many years ago Kiri Te Kanawa sang a Christmas concert either in the Chapel or in the Painted Hall, which I saw on television and recorded, a recording sadly long lost. There was snow on the ground and the setting matched Te Kanawa's voice for beauty.


From there we trudged up the hill to The Royal Observatory, just in time to see the daily ceremony at 1 pm, when a red ball mounted on a pole rises (you have to take my word that it's rising in the photo below -- for all you know it may be dropping)

reaches the top,

then drops. 

When it hits the bottom, it is exactly 1 pm, Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). In days gone by, when the drop began in 1833, this ritual had a practical purpose for the ships in the Thames and for anyone in the area who wanted or needed to know -- you could literally set your watch or clock by it. But not everyone at that time could afford clocks or watches. Now the drop is an event to help celebrate that we are indeed at the Prime Meridian of the World: Longitude 0 degrees.


The Royal Observatory features the exact line of this prime meridian laid out on the ground:

And one can bestride it and feel for one brief shining moment like a master of the universe! I did, and it felt great:

It's actually a fascinating place, and well worth the visit. I'd been to Greenwich at least two or three times before this, and had never made the climb -- glad I did!


Oh, and the view from the observatory isn't bad either...

A view from the top - in the foreground the Queen's House and Royal Naval College;
in the distance Canary Wharf, part of the "new" London.
I for one am very glad they separated the new from the old!

Bloggo Piccolo: A Day in Brighton

I just learned something I had not known about one of my favorite plays, The Importance of Being Earnest, by Oscar Wilde. Those theatre buffs among you will know that Ernest (in town) or Jack (in the country), Worthing has not lost his parents. Instead they seem to have lost him. When Lady Bracknell grills him, he explains that he was found in a handbag ("a handbag!?") in the cloakroom at Victoria Station, by a kind old gentleman who named him Worthing because he had a first class ticket to Worthing in his pocket at the time. The exchange, which occurs because Jack/Ernest wants to marry Lady Bracknell's daughter Gwendolyn, ends in one of the wittiest lines Wilde ever wrote, when Lady B quashes his hopes : "You can hardly imagine that I and Lord Bracknell would dream of allowing our only daughter -- a girl brought up with the utmost care -- to marry into a cloakroom, and form an alliance with a parcel. Good morning, Mr. Worthing!" During the conversation that went before, Ernest/Jack reveals that Worthing is a seaside resort, and on the Brighton Line. What I did not know is that in late nineteenth century Victoria Station consisted of two separate terminus stations, one not very nice, the other, which included the Brighton Line, much more posh and fashionable than the first. 


Beyond that bit about Brighton I knew nothing more about the town except that it is a seaside resort, and that its chief features included a great long pier 

and a wretchedly excessive Pavilion.

Imagine my surprise then as I discovered the other pleasures of the town, which lie primarily in "The Lanes," a network of tiny roads along which now lie some of the most intriguing shops and unique restaurants I have seen. 

The other great pleasure for me was that my personal tour guide through the lanes was alum Bridgett Ane (BA) Lawrence, with whom I've kept in touch and seen on several occasions since her graduation.

It wasn't all a private tour, The trip to Brighton was a one-day excursion planned by the London Center, and Bill Sheasgreen led it well. We left London from Victoria Station, still shuttling people from the huge capital to the charming seaside resort, where we were met by BA, but it was Bill who started us out with a stroll through the Lanes. 

In this fun shot, BA and DJ
clown in her yoga studio

BA took us up to the very impressive Bikram Yoga center that she owns, runs, and actively teaches in, and a few of the students indicated that they might well return for a class before the semester ends. Then Bill led us from the Lanes to the sea. It was a cloudy, somewhat blustery day, and the channel was a bit choppy, but the students took to the beach delightedly. One of them said that she had been living for months on an island, and had never until now been to its coast.


From the pebble-filled shore we walked to the pier, a wonderfully tacky place, with fairly usual arcades, amusement park rides, and places to eat. Very little of it was open for business on a pretty but brisk November day, and a weekday at that. But the students seemed to enjoy it and I certainly did. 

Group shot on the beach, pier in background

Our next stop was to the Pavilion, an extravagant pleasure palace built for the Prince of Wales in the late eighteenth century. 

Students outside the Royal Pavilion

When Dottore Gianni first cast eyes on it his  initial impression was that it must have been modeled in part on the Taj Mahal, indeed it seems that primary architect John Nash was inspired somewhat by India, somewhat by the vogue for "chinoiserie" rampant in the 18th century -- the Orient constructed by people who had never seen the Orient. This fantasia on the "oriental" world that will strike some as a lovely dream, and others as a scary nightmare, some as exquisite, others as ridiculously tacky.  No photos are allowed inside, but if you happen to be in London you too might desire such a day trip -- you can easily take in the beach and pier, The Royal Pavilion and the Brighton Lanes from mid-morning until late afternoon as we did.

BA and DJ at The Basketmakers Arms

After the Pavilion I had BA to myself for a while, and she took me through The Lanes via the Theatre Royal to a wonderful little pub called the Basketmakers Arms. The food was excellent as was the local ale -- we had the amusingly called Buttcombe Bitter -- but the neatest thing about the place was on its walls. These are literally packed with vintage signs, photos and other bric a brac, including a wide variety of little tins which, when opened, will frequently reveal a message written by a previous customer. You're welcome to leave your own message as well, and if I hadn't been so taken with BA's conversation I would have done so. But we were busy catching up and I'm not sure what I'd have written anyway - whatever takes your fancy! Next time...


After lunch we strolled through more of The Lanes, and had a very nice cuppa tea, sitting outside on a day that had turned not sunny but wonderfully mild. Some students bumped into us there and had a short chat with us as well, and then BA took me back to the train station and I caught the 4:19 back to London.


No "Worthing" on this journey, and the Brighton Line is not what you'd call an up-scale service today, but the city, the sea, the lanes, even the crazy pavilion in Brighton are not to be missed.


One last note about the theatrical aspect of the Brighton Line, that only the best and brightest of theatre buffs will know: Dottore Gianni played Jack Worthing once many years ago -- and he was very good!

Bloggo Ventiseisima: ICLC Trip to Bath and the West Country

Bright and early, well, it was early but not very bright, approximately 45 students, plus Bill Sheasgreen, Sarah Davies, visiting professor Linda Heyne and I boarded a coach – in the States we say “bus” but the proper term in the U.K. is “coach” – and headed west, to the beautiful spa city of Bath, with several stops on the way to and one stop on the way back from Bath.

I write that it was not bright. Both days of our journey hovered between foul and fair (with apologies to the Scottish play), and while the sun broke through on a few occasions, I’d describe the weather for most of the trip as overcast and threatening with a cloudy scowl. I’m familiar enough by now with weather in England that I was fairly certain this would be the case. We were drizzled on a few times, mostly in Bath itself, but for the most part the weather was not nearly as bad as it could have been.

Our first stop was to a roadside combination of places to get fast food, to gas up, and to relieve oneself. It was the mecca of this kind of stop, with all sorts of food options, including a tiny Waitrose grocery store, and of course souvenirs for tourists. It was the only such stop we would make on this trip for the express purpose of food, gas and relief, and it was welcome.

But the first real stop was at a place called Avebury. Ever heard of it? No? Ever heard of Stonehenge? Yes? Well, Avebury is not a site as immediately stunning and sculpted as Stonehenge, but it is larger by far (in fact the largest in all of Europe), of a similar age (both sites are nearly 5,000 years old) and around this ancient Neolithic site of worship a village and farms sprang up. 

Avebury

Both Avebury and Stonehenge have been named World Heritage Sites by UNESCO, but whereas Stonehenge is flooded with tourists, roped off and inaccessible, at Avebury one can walk right up to stones, sit on them, climb a few of the larger ones. The stones also seem part of the greater environment, with sheep grazing around them, a church steeple in sight, the village only a few hundred yards walk away. Avebury was not included on the similar trip I took with ICLC back in fall of 2005, but I’m glad I got to see it this time around. I was impressed by it, not in the same way that I am with Stonehenge, but as an equally historic but markedly less commercialized spot. 

Bill and students at Avebury -
Hannah appears to be holding up the sstone!

In the excellent guide packet for this trip provided by ICLC staff and written by them as well, it is pointed out that John Aubrey, the well-known seventeenth century writer, compared the two thus: “Avebury surpasses Stonehenge as a cathedral doeth a parish church.” While I’m not certain I’d agree wholeheartedly, I can understand why he wrote these words.

From Avebury we headed to another –bury, this time preceded by Glaston. This very hip town is associated with the world famous music festival that happens every year in late June, and that gets doused with rain nearly every year as well. No rain on our trip to Glastonbury, which we visit not for rock ‘n’ roll, but for two purposes: to see the ruined abbey and to climb Glastonbury Tor. There are of course ruined abbeys all over England, thanks to Henry VIII, but while many are picturesque, this one is special as it is associated with the Holy Grail, the mythical Avalon, King Arthur and his knights of the round table, Lancelot and Guinevere. In fact, if you believe the legend, Arthur and Guinevere were buried here. 

Only a partial shell of the abbey remains, but that makes the legend seem to some at least at least somewhat more real. Climbing the 531feet high Glastonbury Tor only enhances this feeling, as it is said that Guinevere was imprisoned on the Tor. Considering the climb it is a tough place from which to rescue a damsel in distress. Thank the gods it wasn’t me that had to do it, as a wheezing, out-of-breath knight errant such as I’d have been could easily have been pushed back down from the height easily. There is a tremendous view of the countryside from the top, as the Tor is an anomaly in the midst of fields and rolling hills well below it. One feels almost giddy on the top, and many of the students began to act in a giddy manner, laughing and screaming and posing for silly pics. All good things come to an end, and down the hill they trod. 

Descending from Glastonbury Tor

We moved on to our next adventure, the cathedral town of Wells. Wells Cathedral is the first in England to have been built in the full Gothic fashion. This thirteenth century beauty is imposing on the outside,

imposing on the inside,

Nave of Wells Cathedral, with scissors arch
above, the exterior of the cathedral

with a few features that make it unique as well. The scissors arch is one of these, an improvised fix to hold up the sinking foundations of the cathedral. The astronomical clock is another, with miniature knights jousting as each hour is rung, a ready audience standing by to watch. Particularly in so small a town, this mighty cathedral towers over the rest of it, but the town itself is a charming and very traditional English place, nothing like multicultural, bustling London. And so a very smart choice to show students on their first trip away from that cosmopolitan center, highlighting the differences between London and much of the rest of the U.K. In 2005 we did not see Wells, so it was another welcome addition for me on this trip.

From Wells we traveled to Bath or Aquae Sulis as the ancient Romans called it, our destination for the evening and the site of many of the next day’s activities. Everyone was pretty exhausted by the rigors of the day. Bill, Sarah, Linda and her friend Joan and I went first to a pub, then to dinner at a restaurant known for its fish, where I had a good bit of wine. Bill then took us on a brief walk of Bath at night, which is quite a beautiful sight. I then went to bed and fell into a deep sleep. Most of the students did the same, but Bill informed me at breakfast that a few who shall remain nameless stayed out until 3 am and came back rowdy and noisy – tsk, tsk. Next morning we toured the Roman Baths. 

Roman and Medieval Bath: the Abbey above, the Baths below 

I have seen them three times now, and they continue to fascinate. Certainly they are one of the main reasons that Bath is a UNESCO World Heritage site. If you go, definitely take the audio guide, as it is excellent and illuminating. Some of the students sped through the baths, others became completely engrossed in them. So it goes, to each his own. Bill also pointed out the primary medieval structure in the city, and another reason for the UNESCO citation, the stunning Abbey Church at Bath (just below), known as “the lantern of the west.” 

Next he took us on a walk of Georgian Bath, designed by John Wood the elder and the younger, and popularized by the likes of Beau Nash, gambler, dandy, icon of high fashion. 

The Royal Crescent, in the rain

Georgian buildings abound, but the two standout areas are the Royal Circus and the Royal Crescent, which clinched the third reason for UNESCO to honor the city. After that about two hours of free time. Some used it to go to the costume museum, others to the Abbey, yet others simply to stroll the elegant streets, others to shop and eat. Then back on the bus and off to the last (but not least) site: Stonehenge.

Amanda Abernathy, Gabriella Napoli &
Sam Gates form a human henge!

This was my second visit to the amazing collection of stones from the Neolithic era, I am returning in January with next semester’s group, and I already look forward to that. One of the students was not as enthralled as I, grudgingly calling it “a fairly impressive collection of large stones.” To me they are a work of art as well as a symbol of ancient religion and of the stubbornness of humans to do that which is seemingly impossible. Like Skara Brae, the Ring of Brodgar, the Standing Stones of Stenness (all of which I saw for the first time on this visit to the U.K.!), Stonehenge as well as Avebury are monuments every bit as interesting to me as more recent and sophisticated wonders. When I am in their presence I am overwhelmed, and it’s not often I get such feelings. It’s impossible for me to explain, probably because such awesome and ancient structures are inexplicable. The attempt to explain, to get whatever creative impulse was at work down on paper, is to diminish them in a manner. I prefer to be overwhelmed and awestruck in face of the mystery of such places.

That’s the end of my blog and that was the end of our journey, except for a very smooth coach ride back to South Kensington. More to come. Paris next. Ciao tutti!

Bloggo Ventiquattresimo – Mini-Travels Twixt Major-Travels 1: Bill's Two Cities Tour

I have not received a wealth of mail begging for more blogs since my Edinburgh post, but I was thinking today that much of what I’ve been doing on this side of the great pond might be considered newsworthy, so I thought I’d regale you with a few journeys within London since I returned from Edinburgh.

Saturday morning 27 August I joined Bill and between 25 and 30 students for his inaugural walk in London, which he calls the Two Cities Tour. Why TWO cities? Because London is a tale of two cities in many ways. The city of London was founded by the ancient Romans, and was known as Londinium. A good bit of Roman wall that surrounded the city remains intact, notably in the area near the Tower of London and the area around the Barbican complex. That set of buildings houses offices, restaurants and theatres, but is also home to The Museum of London. 

The Roman wall at the Barbican

At the beginning of its collection is a section devoted to Roman London, and if you look outside rather than in, you’ll see large sections of the Roman wall. I’ve always enjoyed that section, because while I am examining small artifacts, models of buildings and some sculpted figures of ancient Romans at different tasks, I can turn my head to the windows, glance outside, and realize that the artifacts, buildings and people belong right where I see them, versus the Elgin Marbles, for example, that should properly be housed in the new Acropolis Museum in Athens rather than a wee bit west of the Museum of London, in the British Museum.

The Roman city housed within these walls grew into the City of London. In the 6^th century, after the Christianization of Rome, a cathedral (a church that houses a bishop) was built, according to legend, on the site of a temple to Diana that may or may not have been the site of the present St. Paul’s Cathedral. By the tenth century a cathedral stood on the highest hill in London until it burned to the ground in 1087. On that same site was built another St Paul’s, ancestor of today’s St. Paul’s Cathedral.

St Paul's Cathderal from the South Bank

As time passed the Romans left it behind and invading Germanic tribes, including the Angles and the Saxons, first took, then settled in to this place. These were followed in the ninth and tenth centuries by Viking invasions, and for years the domination of the area shifted between Norse and Anglo-Saxon control. Finally in 1066 the Normans invaded and took firm control. Normandy is located south of England along the northwestern coast of France but was founded in the tenth century by Norsemen (Danish and Norwegian Vikings). William, Duke of Normandy (after the invasion aka William the Conqueror), was crowned king.

William’s (the conqueror’s, not Sheasgreen’s )coronation occurred at Westminster Abbey.

Westminster Abbey

 Where was this? In the SECOND city of Bill’s tour, that of Westminster, adjacent to and just west of the walled Roman city, settled by Saxons and known as Lundenwic. An abbey was probably built there in the eighth century, and in the eleventh century Edward the Confessor, the penultimate Saxon king of England, had a vision of a complex that would include a royal palace and a church, and ordered the building of each. The church was called Westminster, as it was located west of London Center and St Paul’s Cathedral. Westminster Abbey was dedicated to St. Peter, in fact its full title is The Collegiate Church of St Peter, Westminster. So from that time Saints Peter and Paul watched over what would become greater London.

Westminster was established as the political center of London, and remains so today. It includes the great abbey, site of the coronation of kings and queens, and burial place of seventeen monarchs, and the Neo-Gothic Houses of Parliament, which of course controls the United Kingdom today. The City of London, on the other hand, was and remains the center of Great Britain's monetary power. Monetary and political power: a potent mix!

Bill and students at the Westminster Pier, the beginning of the Two Cities Tour

Bill’s tour begins on Westminster pier, just outside of the Westminster underground station, beneath a statue of Boadicea (or Boudica) in her chariot. She was the bold queen

Boadicea and Big Ben

of a local tribe who vanquished the Romans and sacked the cities of Londinium and Verulamium (St. Albans), but who subsequently suffered defeat by a force of 10,000 Roman soldiers and committed suicide by poison rather than be captured by the enemy. Just behind and above that statue stands one of the great icons of London, Big Ben, and to the left of it the Houses of Parliament. He explains the history better than I did in my notes above, then takes students across to Whitehall, where he continues his tale of two cities, walking and stopping to talk at Number 10 Downing, the Horse Guards (changing of the guard ceremony while we were there), and at Whitehall Palace before heading to Trafalgar Square and finishing the first portion of his tour.

Bill & students on the South Bank

He next leads students across the Thames via the Hungerford Footbridge, and walks along the beautiful South Bank for nearly all the rest of the tour, stopping for rest and victuals at the excellent Royal National Theatre (where this trip we were caught in a strong rain storm and sheltered under it’s unusual but in this case protective architecture). Farther down the river he takes us into the Tate Modern, a great museum housed in an amazing building, and up to the seventh floor café, not for food but for the spectacular view of the city that can be seen from that vantage point. Very near to the Tate is the New Globe Theatre, where we pause to remember its founder, Sam Wanamaker, and there is also a stop at the site of the old Globe. This Saturday we were very lucky in that the Rose excavation site was open. A woman talked about the site and the plays that were and even today are put on there, even though the place is buried beneath a huge office building, just next to the entire footprint of the Rose Theatre, a rival to the Globe in Elizabethan England. It is logistically next to impossible to stage plays in this place, but clever directors rise to the challenge and produce plays by Shakespeare, Marlowe and others to audiences of no more than fifty people at a time.

Bill then takes us to Southwark Cathedral, home to a memorial to Shakespeare, and on to the Borough Market, one of the finest in London, where we stop (and where some feed) for about twenty minutes. We continue the walk until we get to the Tower Bridge 

Bill and students in front of Tower Bridge

and head back across the Thames to the Tower of London, last stop on the tour. We do not go into the Tower, as it is a very expensive place and would take an entire day in itself to do it proper justice, but stand instead next to a statue of a Roman emperor in front of the ancient Roman wall that once protected Londinium many centuries ago.

It’s a great tour and it covers a great length of the two cities. It also takes time, usually over four hours, this time because of waiting out the rain at the RNT and the lucky stop at the Rose, taking over five hours! Exhausting, but a great learning experience and also great fun.

Did I just write the word “Exhausting”? Indeed we were, but Bill and I were not finished. We walked back across the Thames for a pint at a pub near Borough Market, then crossed Borough High Street to a little known burial site, in Redcross Way, called Crossbones (also written as two words, Cross Bones) Graveyard. There is almost nothing to it these days, except for an long iron gate covered with flowers, candles, inscriptions and photos. 

Bill at the Crossbones Graveyard

You can peer through the gate and see a small empty yard, empty except for one plain but pretty cross made of green foliage lying on the ground. It seems like a place that time forgot, except that apparently not everyone forgot. More on that, but first the fascinating history:

Winchester Palace was located in the South of London, very near the new Globe. It was built in the twelfth century to house bishops of the district, who were very wealthy landowners as well as men of the Church. Among his many privileges? duties? pleasures? the bishop was allowed to license prostitutes, who became known as The Winchester Geese. No surprise that there were prostitutes plying their trade in and around the South Bank, as it was a district of entertainments, bear-baitings and as you now know, sexual pleasures. But certainly a surprise – a big one for me – that a bishop should be regulating them legally, while prostitution was completely illegal just across the river to the north. All very well, but what do the Winchester Geese have to do with Crossbones Cemetery? They were buried in that unconsecrated graveyard.

But they weren’t the only ones. Later outcasts of many kinds, including cholera victims, were also put to rest here. In fact it became completely overcrowded, numbers of bodies estimated by the Museum of London at as many as 15,000, many of them children. In the first years of the new millennium local residents opposed the development of the site on moral grounds, and won their suit, so that in the middle of an upscale neighborhood there exists a decidedly downscale memorial to prostitutes, outcasts and plague victims. At 7 pm on the 23^rd of every month vigils and services are given in honor of the unknown dead.

Inscription on the gate at Crossbones Graveyard

I was strangely touched, not only by the history, but by the community effort to remember and keep buried the dead. I doubt this site plays a part of many, if any, tours of the city, but it was fascinating and moving to me.

And that was the end of Bill’s Two Cities Tour, the very last visitation admittedly for Bill’s and Dottore Gianni’s eyes only.

Bloggo Terzo: Heading to the U.K. and a Preview of a Highland Fling

It’s been quite a summer on several fronts (medical issues, sorting out retirement, social security, medicare, etc), but I’ll focus in this post on getting Jack to the U.K. Britain has recently changed its visa requirements, causing a scramble of activity from ICLC, particularly Bill Sheasgreen and Claire Mokrauer-Madden, to get Dottore Gianni a Tier 2 Work Visa for a full year in the U.K. They started work well before the summer, and their request was denied twice before finally being accepted. Then we had to make sure that my end of the deal, the application for the visa, the appendix to the application, biometrics, proof of pay from Ithaca College for the last 12 months etc etc etc (I COULD go on) was in order. And processed in time to get me to London before the fall semester began.

I was moderately frantic through the whole process, calmed a good bit by Claire’s and Bill’s confidence (seeming confidence?). I was introduced to SKYPE during the process in a 90 minute chat with Claire. It wasn’t a complete skype success because I could see her but she could not see me, but the substance of the chat was more than worth it, as we went through, line by line, the application and the appendix (appendix FIVE but who other than I is counting? So now I do skype! No more details (certainly not my skype name!) from the process. Suffice to say that on Monday 20 August I was informed that I now had a U.K. entry permit and on Tuesday t21 August I received my passport with the all-important page containing the visa in it. That seems like some time ago, though last time I checked today is Wednesday 22 August! WHEW!

Later in the day I was finally able to purchase my round-trip flight to London. I leave the U.S. on 27 July and return on 7 May 2012. I have been partially packed ever since graduation – in other words I am keyed up about my last year in academe, my full year based in London and traveling to several other places during my residence there.  As the blog is primarily a travel journal, in the weeks leading up to my flight from the U.S. (there’s a double meaning in that!) I’ll describe some of the places I intend to visit. And if you care to comment, please make suggestions as to what I should do in these places (I have a lot of good ideas but am always open to more), what other places I should attempt to visit, and any other thoughts you have for the good professor.

As I noted in my introduction to the blog, I have already completely booked a “highland fling.” I did a day trip to the Highlands with one of my favorite alums, Jessica Martenson, a few years ago, and it was fun, but a bit of an exhausting race to see how many sights we could see in 12 hours.

But this time I'm giving it a week. Let me tell you a bit about it. I leave London (after I’ve got there of course, heh heh) on 11 August and train to Glasgow. I’ve never been to Glasgow, even though it’s only an hour from Edinburgh, a place I’ve been many times as many of you know, some from direct experience. I was convinced that in all my trips with students to Edinburgh, if I chose to spend an afternoon in nearby Glasgow, that would be just the afternoon on which a student would break a leg (and I don’t mean that in its theatrical sense) falling down Arthur’s Seat. That has happened, but not on my watch fortunately!

So I’ll spend the 11^th, 12^th and 13^th there, staying in a hotel named Rennie Mackintosh City Hotel, designed by and named for Charles Rennie Mackintosh, famed Scottish architect, engineer and designer, who specialized in Art Nouveau.

I’m also taking a day train trip from Glasgow to Oban, from what I understand one that abounds in scenic views, to lunch on excellent fish (Oban is known as the seafood capital of Scotland) and to wash it down with a tasting at the Oban Distillery, home to a fine single malt Scotch!

From Glasgow I head to Inverness in the highlands, which I will also investigate, and from which I will take two other day trips: one to the Isle of Skye, the other to the Orkney Isles where I’ll see places like Skara Brae inhabited as early as 3200 B.C.!

From Inverness I head down on 18 August to Dundee on the sea, primarily because it’s close to Edinburgh, but also to nose around another interesting Scottish town. Then on 19 August I arrive in Edinburgh in time to meet the students at Waverley Station, on my last excursion to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Of course I’ll provide a more detailed account after I’ve finished, but…that’s Hrkach’s Highland Fling!