Tag Archives: London

July 2, 2017 · 6:28 am

Trump react, Barnes Farmers Market and Sun Inn – London

With franine and una, Mortlake/east sheen

I knew it would happen but it caught me by surprise when it did. The first caustic comment about Trump from a Brit. My friend Francine and I were walking on a little path in Mortlake having one of our many heart to hearts when a man passing by suddenly finished my sentence. “One thing you might need to worry about…” I was saying to Francine when the man passed by and said “Trump.” We exchanged a smile and I said “I’ve been worried about that for a long time.” Francine said the guy is her neighbor and a police officer.

We walked further to the posh village of Barnes where we shopped at the little farmers market, ate pub grub at the Sun Inn, outside at a picnic table with a lovely view of the Barnes pond, lined with willow trees, swans gliding by. After a visit to Fulham to see Francine’s mum, we walked along the tow path from Barnes to Mortlake past the old brewery that is now the site of a controversial redevelopment that Francine is monitoring as part of a citizens action group. Lovely Dinner tonight at our friend Una’s in nearby east sheen. Must sleep.

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June 30, 2017 · 10:07 pm

Shoreditch, Brick Lane, Spitalfields, Lauristen Road: London’s happening Hackney Borough/East London

It occurred to me as I was taking an “overground” train this morning across London, from the southwest (where I am bunking in lovely Mortlake in the London Borough of Richmond) to the northeast in several neighborhoods in the borough of Hackney that I had no idea what I was riding. Was it light rail? New? How does it connect with or supplement the London Underground that I used in the 1980s and British Rail which I use from Mortlake? Turns out that this whole new system of rail (possibly light) has evolved in the last 10 or so years to connect the ever expanding and gentrifying neighborhoods of this city of 8.8 million residents.

The minute I stepped out of Shoreditch High Street  station, I could see and almost feel the energy on the streets – bustling ethnic food stands and trucks, young people in all kinds of getups and many ethnicities sharing streets sometimes adorned with graffiti or lovely renovated brick apartment complexes, Middle Eastern and African Muslims and the occasional Orthodox Jew, pop-up shops selling handmade shoes, clothing, highly -curated home goods or kids stuff,  cafes with gorgeous breads, salads, arancini (at Franze & Evans on Redchurch Street) cakes and small batch ice cream. So many entrepreneurs and independent shopkeepers trying to make a go of it. Lots of Allen and Carole Rubiners, my parents who dared to start an art gallery in a then-unfashionable suburb  of Detroit in the 1960s. Is it any wonder that I’m drawn to these neighborhoods on the brink of change, to these people pursuing their passions often against the odds? (Story of my life actually…) Anyway, I walked myself silly, exploring quiet residential back streets and colonized commercial hip pockets in and around streets including Redchurch (near shoreditch station) and Columbia Road and Lauriston road near Victoria park. Along the way there were little surprises including an urban farm in Hackney and colorful houseboats along an industrial looking canal. I ended up all the way at Mile End Station and somehow got back to Mortlake via bus, underground, bus and aching swollen feet, to have Brazilian food at The Tapestry Restaurant near the house in Mortlake. Shoreditch/Hackney sure  beats Covent Garden  (today’s version….not the less discovered 1980s version) and glad to see London continuing to grow in interesting corners and ways.

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June 30, 2017 · 7:58 am

Petersham Nurseries/Richmond, National Portrait Portrait Gallery, problems with Verizon international plan – London

 

Pam

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June 29, 2017 · 8:04 am

Busy Heathrow, Francine pick up!, gloomy weather, Iowa in Mortlake — Hello London!

img_1294I’ve never seen such a long line at Heathrow’s arrival passport control. It started even before we got to the main waiting area, with a long line in the long hall leading to the waiting area. Fortunately, the maze of a line in the waiting area moved fairly quickly so after an hour or so, I was with my dear pal Francine, whisking our way under a very gloomy sky to Mortlake where where we had a nice little catch-up and lunch, then walk to Mortake where Francine took the train to work and I wandered for another hour or so, jet-lagged but trying desperately to keep going. I stopped in at the new location of the sweet little cafe Pickle & Rye which I was pleased to see has retained its Yank decor (including such Iowa knickknacks as a UI Hawkeye cap and a mug from Marshalltown’s Maidrite outpost, an Iowa-born fastfood chain serving “loose-meat” sandwiches.) The owners, one of whom is from Iowa, are visiting Iowa right now, as it turns out but hope to catch sight of them later in the trip. NOw comfortably ensconced at Francine and Russ’s lovely flat on Shalstone Road and will attempt to stay await until late evening British time.

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January 5, 2014 · 4:49 pm

Check out the Drake University Chamber Choir – in Des Moines and England!

The Drake University Chamber Choir performs at St. Martin-in-the-Fields in 2010.

The Drake University Chamber Choir performs at St. Martin-in-the-Fields in 2010.

For my music-loving friends in London, here’s a treat from Des Moines – Drake University’s Chamber Choir will perform free concerts at St. Paul’s Cathedral at 5 p.m. Jan. 20 and at St. Martin-in-the-fields (Trafalgar Square) at 1 p.m. Jan. 21,  as well as at Oxford and Cambridge during a 12-day concert tour January 10-22. These are some of the talented vocal students that my choir, the Drake University Community Chorus, sings with during our semester concerts. Closer to home (in Des Moines) the chamber choir will perform a free concert on Thursday Jan. 9 at 7:30 at Grace United Methodist Church. Here’s the scoop on the England tour from the Register: Drake choir to kick off series

While in England, the choir will to sing in the cathedrals of Gloucester, Coventry, and Ely, at both Cambridge and Oxford (St. John’s College Chapel, Cambridge; Merton College Chapel, Oxford), St. Martin-in-the-Fields and St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, and at Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon, and St. Nicholas Church in Witham.  The Chamber Choir was selected by the American Embassy in London to inaugurate its new series at St. Martin-in-the-Fields.

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June 29, 2013 · 5:27 am

national Portrait gallery, St. James Park, Chiswick gastro pub

Somehow this did not get posted from a few days ago so here it is a bit late…

My man in the Ukraine reports it has been about 100 degrees there. Here in London it has been in the 60s, which is just fine for me, if not my English friends who would like a proper summer. It rained a bit today but didn’t get in the way.

Met my friend M. At the National Gallery where we saw a small Vermeer show and had a delicious lunch (smoked trout and cottage cheese on a bagel grilled and flattened like a panini. it worked.)Next stop, the always interesting National Portrait Gallery which had its annual portrait contest, a room full of remarkable work by artists from around the country. Really fun. I took my kids to this about nine years ago and we all got a kick out of being able to vote on a winning portrait. This time we voted on a computer touch screen outside the exhibit space, which displayed miniatures of each portrait. Cool!

I walked to my favorite London park, St. James, where the gardens are glorious thanks in part to all the rain. Sat on a park bench watching the world go by. London is incredibly busy and Cosmopolitan these days, with people not only visiting but moving here from all over the world.
Met F. At her office behind Victoria Station (where there is tons of construction) and we met up with R. And two friends at a very good and bustling gastro pub in Chiswick, the Duke of Sussex. I had fish and chips, once more. Photos below of Shalstone road, mortlake where I am staying at my friend’s lovely home.

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June 26, 2013 · 10:45 pm

Chelsea Physic Garden, Ottolengi, Islington

Another superb day in London, the weather not too hot or too cold, sun popping out and in, putting sunglasses on and off, scarves on and off throughout the day. I met another longtime friend M. At Sloane Square tube station and we sauntered along the Kings Road, stopped for a cappacchino (tea for me) at a smart cafe, Manicomo Poco, browsing through the modern art at the free saatchi gallery and then going to the lovely Chelsea Physic Garden, London’s oldest botanical garden! about 340 years old, hidden in prime real estate along Cheyene walk beside the Thames. beautiful spot with gardens organized by the flowers and herbs medicinal purposes. Cool idea. there is also a pretty cafe in an old fashioned airy dining room with tables outside in the garden. We had delicious salmon baked in some sort of puff pastry with currants, a tangy gruyere and tomato pie, salads, homemade lemonade.

Next stop Islington in northwest London where we had the best meal of all at Yotam Ottolenghi’s flagship restaurant. the restaurant is small and airy and down to earth and was full at 6 pm on a Wednesday. Good thing we booked our table weeks ago. the food was as good as it looks in the Ottolenghi cookbook I use back in Iowa. We shared four small plates that were substantial portions, each excellent. I cannot remember having such devious eggplant aka aubergine, thick slices cooked perfectly in olive oil, seasoned with some mysterious favors, moist, not bitter or dry, topped with a cool yoghurt sauce. Fabulous. I will no doubt be trying and probably failing to duplicate it for months to come in Iowa. My other favorite plate I couldn’t begin to duplicate…zucchini flowers stuffed with a creamy white ricotta, and part of the zuccini itself, lightly battered and fried tempura style. The desserts were fantastic. We picked from a wide selection on displace, a wedge of moist rum and chocolate cake, with only a faint rum taste and a creamy tangy lemon marscapone tart. Perfect. Prompt and pleasant service too.
I took the no. 4 bus from the angel tube stop to Waterloo, sitting in my favorite seat, top deck, front seat, with great views of some of my old haunts, The Barbican, where M. Used to live, Shoe Lane where M. And I once shared offices, along Fleet Street, which we knew back in its newspaper days. Across the Thames past Big Ben and another place I worked many years ago, the Houses of Parliament. magical still and always for me.

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June 26, 2013 · 12:41 am

South Bank, Covent Garden, Soho, Mortlaker…London!

Wow, London is hopping. As I walked along the South Bank of the Thames on a sunny but not too hot June week day, I was amazed at how many tourists there were, throngs of strollers, large groups,of school kids in matching uniforms, lots of people speaking German or “American,” buskers and street people, cafes and pubs packed with seemingly carefree people like me (if only).

In the four years since I was here last, there are even more cool high design bridges across the Thames, beyond the now sturdy once-wobbly bridge and more to possibly come, according to a story in the Evening Standard, I think, about a newly designed bridge inspired by The High Line in NY that would be heavily landscaped (how cool is that?) The Tate Modern is under construction and It appears, expansion so the enormous turbine hall was cordoned off. Interesting modern high rises have popped up all around it. So much so that I can hardly find once prominent
Landmarks like Southwark Cathedral. I did find the Borough Market which was near London bridge, not Blackfrairs as I remembered and I had some Indian street food.

Walking about 15 minutes to Covent Garden, I found even a denser concentration of tourists clogging the streets, watching the street performers, eating at the restaurants, crowding into the shops. My favorite scene was a group of about eight women in black full length robes, their faces almost completely veiled, eating macaroons at an outlet of Laduree, the famous Paris bakery that I fear is turning into a chain. (There is also one on Madison Avenue in NYC). in Neal’s Yard I was glad to see that the famous cheese shop of the same name is alive and well. the small place was packed with gorgeous cheeses and customers. Alas the hippie dippie bakery in the yard is long gone.

In Soho, on Greek Street, I found one of my favorite French cafes, Maison Bertaux which was larger and more elegant than when i visited last but just as as charming and with really delicious pastries and excellent cappuchino. I had a tart of fresh raspberries and clotted cream piled high.,The only glitch was paying. i asked and was told in advance that I could use a credit card but lo and behold the credit card machine wasn’t working. shades of Peru where there were allegedly broken credit card machines all over. I then had to pay with a twenty pound note I had saved from my last trip but the proprietor was not happy. Apparently the bill was “out of circulation” I.e. old. Who knew? But he finally took it, with a pained expression.

I met an old friend at her publishing office on The Strand and we tried to go to another old favoritE, Gordon’s Wine Bar but it too was packed so we ended up a nearby pizzeria apparently owned by Gordon’s that was quite good called Fratelli la Bufala, although not one but two appetizers we ordered included huge portions of, you guessed it, Buffalo mozzarella. Interestingly, the only meat served was buffalo. On the train back to Mortlake in southwest London, I bumped into my friend F. who am staying with, which was lucky. she was going to meet our other friend U. for dinner so we all ended up at a Swedish restaurant called Stockholm where they ate herring and reindeer burgers and I drank water. Ahhh London!

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June 2, 2013 · 4:29 pm

TripAdvisor’s “Top travel destinations” – a few surprises….

Lists are dubious but oh so easy to read – and so I sometimes do.  TripAdvisor’s “Winners 25 Best Destinations” (no word on how the “winners” were chosen) includes many obvious places  and I was pleased to see I’d been to the “top eight” (Paris, New York, London, Rome, Barcelona, Venice, San Francisco,  Florence yadah yadah yadah) but some places that we’re visiting soon also made the list. No – not Kiev (see scenes above) or Bucharest (see below) or Moldova (the world’s most unhappy place if you believe this report http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENK4rS7Y02U), where my husband is going. But Prague squeaked into the top 10 at  #9; Berlin was #11 and Chicago  #14.

Bucharest City Hall

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May 16, 2013 · 9:23 pm

Lessons learning while buying train tickets for Eastern Europe

Deutsche Bahn AG
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Who would have thought it would be easier to buy train tickets online for  Peru than for Germany  and  Eastern Europe? Okay, I’m not willing to say that’s true yet. But buying tickets online for train trips this summer through Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic was harder than expected. I managed to find some of the train schedules on the DB Deutsche Bahn website (a German company http://www.bahn.com) but the site didn’t always list  the fares – or indicate when or if the tickets could be purchased online. (In some cases, it looked like I’d have to buy them by making a phone call to Europe.)

Rail Europe Logo

Meanwhile, on the site that I could buy at least some tickets online – Rail Europe (www.raileurope.com) – I couldn’t always find schedules or fares. I finally had to call Rail Europe and pay a $15 fee for phone assistance – which turned out to be worth it, even if I had to leave my name on an answering machine and wait for  an hour for Rail Europe to call me back (better than lingering on hold I guess.) Here are some things I learned through this process:

– If you can find a train schedule but NOT the price or when/if the tickets can be purchased via DB Bahn, email their help line (Sales@bahn.co.uk) and you will get some if not all the information. (This is helpful especially if you’re trying to see if it costs more to take the train or fly.)

– If you can’t figure out how to buy the tix online via Rail Europe, call and pay the additional fee ($33 all toll when you add the processing fee, which includes the cost of mailing the ticket – which are paper and not available for online printout.)  I was told that it would have been very hard  to do-it-myself online because the three train trips I needed to book are unusually complicated. They’re not the typical Yank tourist routes (Berlin-Gdansk anyone? Not to mention Gdansk-Krakow and Krakow-Prague). And they involve three different countries with varying ways of selling train tickets. (The Poles, for example, won’t let you buy your ticket more than a month in advance but I could buy the tickets involving Berlin and Prague about two months in advance.) I also found help by emailing service@raileurope.com.

– Figuring out the price and booking a sleeper for an overnight train is tricky because the countries we’re visiting – unlike some others, apparently – require that you buy two separate items for each journey (a ticket, which  gets you on the train, and a reservation, which specifies a seat or compartment on the train, – as I understand it.)

– A Eurail  pass, which   we’ve used in the past, didn’t work for this trip because of our particular schedule and because we’re taking two overnight trains. Oh well. I liked the ease of the Eurail pass – but then I was traveling for months, not weeks, when I used one on several occasions.

– Read the fine print – especially to see how many stops the train makes! There’s also various classes/speeds of train. I never really figured this all out.

– The Polish Rail website wasn’t much help.

– Rick Steves’ website also has some good information on train travel http://www.ricksteves.com/rail/

– Trains vs. Planes: Sometimes flying is comparable in price to riding the train (ex: Gdansk-Krakow) but not always (example Krakow-Prague where flying was much more expensive.)  Planes of course are a lot faster – for Gdansk-Krakow flying takes 1.5 to 2.5 hours (direct vs. connecting flight) while the direct overnight train takes  11 hours. But we went with the train 1) because we so seldom get to ride a train, especially an overnight train and still find this romantic (that may change.) 2) the times of the direct planes didn’t work well with our schedule  – one was 6:30 a.m. and the other 5:30 p.m.   3) It’s often a hassle to get to the airport vs. the train station. 4) we  do save money by taking an overnight train and not paying for a hotel that night, for what that’s worth.

– I did opt to fly (EasyJet) from London to Berlin rather than take trains. (way too complicated…)

– Paper tickets. Apparently I can’t print tickets out online. And the paper tickets won’t be mailed out until a few weeks before our departure date (even though I bought them two months in advance) because the Polish ticket can’t be issued until a month before we travel. Grrr… Here’s hoping it all works out.

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