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hazelchazMonday in London. Last day and night in UK, part 2 of 2. (See Part 1 to start at the beginning of this report.)
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On our way out of the V&A and up the street towards Harrods, I saw a street sign (tacked to an old brick wall) for Thurloe Place, S.W.7, with the heading "The Royal Borough of Kensington and Christe." So now you know, we were still in Kensington. Most British streets are so short -- that is, for a given name, they're pretty short, the long ones change names usually after a mile or two -- so it's no great loss that the street signs don't give you block numbers. (You can find exactly where we were on your London map, if you have one, given that we're going from the V&A to Harrods, by the way.)
There was an old Catholic church in Kensington, called an "Oratory." I'd never heard of Oratory as a kind of church before. Missions, minsters, cathedrals, kirk... but oratory?
We moved on up the way, and saw a Silly Purple Car parked at the kerb. What caught my eye second (after its colour) was the licence plate: it had Dubai plates. It was a Lamborghini, and it was parked in front of the Armani store.
Harrods Knightsbridge. They say you should plan on scheduling a whole day to go to Harrods; we didn't realize they meant you could spend that much time just in the Food Halls on the ground floor and LG. A real live Krispy Kreme branch with a "Hot" light. More chocolates than you could shake a stick at, zillions of liqueurs and wines (but only a small number of whiskeys), cheeses and deli counters and sushi and lots of fresh food food ready to eat or stuff to take home. Italian food, Japanese food, curry, it just goes on and on. Not at affordable prices, though. If we'd had the day to shop, it wouldn't have overwhelmed us as much. The Harrods logo is a handwriting-style script; I saw that particular "H" the next day, on the way home.
I'd read in Plokta, and we kept seeing signs in the Tube, about the glass sculptures on exhibit at Kew Gardens. We decided we'd zip over there for the afternoon, so we headed back to the Underground.
Kew is the place name, Kew Gardens is an abbreviation for the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew. Easy to find, though, as there's a Tube station called "Kew Gardens." Get on and go. Well, we tried; we were on a train that was supposed to go to Richmond but it changed its mind and we had to transfer at Earl's Court.
The interesting thing about riding the Underground this far out of town (to the southwest) is that it wasn't underground any more. There were some stations with actual open sky -- seemed odd to be taking Underground pictures with natural daylight, but there you go. And then when we got to Earl's Court, there was a clear trainshed over us, and there was a staircase leading up so you could go and get a view of all of the platforms. Nice! The line we were on had the un-coloured trains -- maybe they haven't thought of a colour scheme for them yet? Seemed quite drab, compared against the red/white/blue trains gliding past at the other platforms.
We made it to the Kew Gardens station. We poked our head in the little shops near the station -- I went across to the mini market and bought a jumbo bottle of still water while![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
library_lynn looked for postcards. Then we headed over the bridge to the other side of the station, and on through Kew to the Victoria Gate.
The Gardens have a Main Gate -- but since most people come via the Tube, the Victoria Gate gets more traffic. A pity, really, when you consider there's a lovely green in front of the Main Gate, and (as we were to learn later) the offices are on that side.
And the Gardens have a s.f. connection, from the opening act of The Day of the Triffids.
But let me tell you about the Chihuly sculptures. There were strange glass baubles, and a boat full of glass, and sculptures throughout the place, especially in three of the greenhouses. It was like walking through an alien planet's garden.
Granted, at this time I was a lot more interested in the park bench that seemed to have my name on it, than I was in doing more walking around. I parked myself down, fiddled with my notes on my laptop, and showed Lynn how to use the camera. She went off exploring, and I called up UPS. They quoted us a price of about 113 pounds to ship our 11 kg of laundry home. That's $200 US. We could buy a lot of clothes for that; we're going to look around to see if there's something cheaper. (Maybe APC after all.) Or abandon the clothes and replace them. Or askfrostfox if she could just stash them in her attic until we come back to visit...
While I was sitting there, I dozed off, woke up, and worked on writing these LJ posts. As I worked, a man in a NY baseball cap came up and asked if they had Wi-Fi. I told him I had no idea, I was just writing. He asked, fiction or non-fiction; at this point, I'd figured out who he was with about 80% certainty. I told him I was writing up notes for my LiveJournal, he brightened up and said he was on LJ too assandial and I fished out my business card to give him mine. At which point, Moshe Feder said "I didn't recognize you out of context" and we got to chatting about this and that.
We talked about pronouncing his name: the O is the only long vowel, it's not Moshy Feeder. We talked about why he was in the Gardens: he was planning to meet Peter Roberts, TAFF winner from 1977, who is a mycologist for the Gardens, at the end of the day.
So Lynn and I tagged along -- at the end of the day we'd need something for dinner. Moshe had planned to meet Peter at 17:30 at the Princess of Wales Conservatory (named after Diana's predecessor, Princess Augusta), where he (Moshe) wanted to check out the succulents. He's interested in the succulents that aren't spiny cacti. The Conservatory has a number of interesting sections, including a carnivorous plants section, and semi-tropical plants.
We got there early, looked around, and then when it was 17:30 we headed out to the front of the building. Moshe had mentioned that Peter smoked, so I wasn't surprised to find him sitting outside having a smoke break. We talked for a little bit, Moshe found us in time, and we headed out towards the Main Gate.
On the way, I noticed a sign next to the Ginkgo Boloba tree, listing its phone number. They have a recording hooked up to a phone number for that tree, and various others; you just call the number on your mobile to hear interesting facts about the plant you're looking at. Dial-a-Tree.
Peter lives in Kew, within walking distance of his office in the Mycology Section. He showed us to the Herbarium, which is on the property but just outside the wall. The herbarium is a library for plants and fungus samples; it's not like a terrarium where you grow things under glass.
We mosied down to the Rose and Crown, opposite the green. The Rose and Crown has bheer. They also have some truly mediocre pub food; we'd had good pub food during the trip, whenever we'd eaten at a pub, so it was refreshing in way to finally run into the food that made England famous.
Peter had been in Italy recently. We learned that in Naples, Italy, there's a Neapolitan Pizza Police; in order to identify a pizza as Neapolitan, it has to conform to certain standards. We learned that he'd been in the States recently for a mycology conference in the Smokey Mountains, in Tennessee. A bunch of the scientists had congregated at a local pizza parlour: with a name like "The Mellow Mushroom" it was the logical place for them to all end up.
Moshe had to leave to catch a show in London; Peter had to head back to the lab as well; Lynn and I stayed for a little dessert, an "Orio Madness" [sic] for her and a lime cake thing for me. Then we went back to the Belgrove. Our last night in London, and we wanted to get everything packed up and ready for the trip home.
On our way out of the V&A and up the street towards Harrods, I saw a street sign (tacked to an old brick wall) for Thurloe Place, S.W.7, with the heading "The Royal Borough of Kensington and Christe." So now you know, we were still in Kensington. Most British streets are so short -- that is, for a given name, they're pretty short, the long ones change names usually after a mile or two -- so it's no great loss that the street signs don't give you block numbers. (You can find exactly where we were on your London map, if you have one, given that we're going from the V&A to Harrods, by the way.)There was an old Catholic church in Kensington, called an "Oratory." I'd never heard of Oratory as a kind of church before. Missions, minsters, cathedrals, kirk... but oratory?
We moved on up the way, and saw a Silly Purple Car parked at the kerb. What caught my eye second (after its colour) was the licence plate: it had Dubai plates. It was a Lamborghini, and it was parked in front of the Armani store.
Harrods Knightsbridge. They say you should plan on scheduling a whole day to go to Harrods; we didn't realize they meant you could spend that much time just in the Food Halls on the ground floor and LG. A real live Krispy Kreme branch with a "Hot" light. More chocolates than you could shake a stick at, zillions of liqueurs and wines (but only a small number of whiskeys), cheeses and deli counters and sushi and lots of fresh food food ready to eat or stuff to take home. Italian food, Japanese food, curry, it just goes on and on. Not at affordable prices, though. If we'd had the day to shop, it wouldn't have overwhelmed us as much. The Harrods logo is a handwriting-style script; I saw that particular "H" the next day, on the way home.
I'd read in Plokta, and we kept seeing signs in the Tube, about the glass sculptures on exhibit at Kew Gardens. We decided we'd zip over there for the afternoon, so we headed back to the Underground.
Kew is the place name, Kew Gardens is an abbreviation for the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew. Easy to find, though, as there's a Tube station called "Kew Gardens." Get on and go. Well, we tried; we were on a train that was supposed to go to Richmond but it changed its mind and we had to transfer at Earl's Court.
The interesting thing about riding the Underground this far out of town (to the southwest) is that it wasn't underground any more. There were some stations with actual open sky -- seemed odd to be taking Underground pictures with natural daylight, but there you go. And then when we got to Earl's Court, there was a clear trainshed over us, and there was a staircase leading up so you could go and get a view of all of the platforms. Nice! The line we were on had the un-coloured trains -- maybe they haven't thought of a colour scheme for them yet? Seemed quite drab, compared against the red/white/blue trains gliding past at the other platforms.
We made it to the Kew Gardens station. We poked our head in the little shops near the station -- I went across to the mini market and bought a jumbo bottle of still water while
library_lynn looked for postcards. Then we headed over the bridge to the other side of the station, and on through Kew to the Victoria Gate.The Gardens have a Main Gate -- but since most people come via the Tube, the Victoria Gate gets more traffic. A pity, really, when you consider there's a lovely green in front of the Main Gate, and (as we were to learn later) the offices are on that side.
And the Gardens have a s.f. connection, from the opening act of The Day of the Triffids.
But let me tell you about the Chihuly sculptures. There were strange glass baubles, and a boat full of glass, and sculptures throughout the place, especially in three of the greenhouses. It was like walking through an alien planet's garden.
Granted, at this time I was a lot more interested in the park bench that seemed to have my name on it, than I was in doing more walking around. I parked myself down, fiddled with my notes on my laptop, and showed Lynn how to use the camera. She went off exploring, and I called up UPS. They quoted us a price of about 113 pounds to ship our 11 kg of laundry home. That's $200 US. We could buy a lot of clothes for that; we're going to look around to see if there's something cheaper. (Maybe APC after all.) Or abandon the clothes and replace them. Or ask
frostfox if she could just stash them in her attic until we come back to visit...While I was sitting there, I dozed off, woke up, and worked on writing these LJ posts. As I worked, a man in a NY baseball cap came up and asked if they had Wi-Fi. I told him I had no idea, I was just writing. He asked, fiction or non-fiction; at this point, I'd figured out who he was with about 80% certainty. I told him I was writing up notes for my LiveJournal, he brightened up and said he was on LJ too as
sandial and I fished out my business card to give him mine. At which point, Moshe Feder said "I didn't recognize you out of context" and we got to chatting about this and that.We talked about pronouncing his name: the O is the only long vowel, it's not Moshy Feeder. We talked about why he was in the Gardens: he was planning to meet Peter Roberts, TAFF winner from 1977, who is a mycologist for the Gardens, at the end of the day.
So Lynn and I tagged along -- at the end of the day we'd need something for dinner. Moshe had planned to meet Peter at 17:30 at the Princess of Wales Conservatory (named after Diana's predecessor, Princess Augusta), where he (Moshe) wanted to check out the succulents. He's interested in the succulents that aren't spiny cacti. The Conservatory has a number of interesting sections, including a carnivorous plants section, and semi-tropical plants.
We got there early, looked around, and then when it was 17:30 we headed out to the front of the building. Moshe had mentioned that Peter smoked, so I wasn't surprised to find him sitting outside having a smoke break. We talked for a little bit, Moshe found us in time, and we headed out towards the Main Gate.
On the way, I noticed a sign next to the Ginkgo Boloba tree, listing its phone number. They have a recording hooked up to a phone number for that tree, and various others; you just call the number on your mobile to hear interesting facts about the plant you're looking at. Dial-a-Tree.
Peter lives in Kew, within walking distance of his office in the Mycology Section. He showed us to the Herbarium, which is on the property but just outside the wall. The herbarium is a library for plants and fungus samples; it's not like a terrarium where you grow things under glass.
We mosied down to the Rose and Crown, opposite the green. The Rose and Crown has bheer. They also have some truly mediocre pub food; we'd had good pub food during the trip, whenever we'd eaten at a pub, so it was refreshing in way to finally run into the food that made England famous.
Peter had been in Italy recently. We learned that in Naples, Italy, there's a Neapolitan Pizza Police; in order to identify a pizza as Neapolitan, it has to conform to certain standards. We learned that he'd been in the States recently for a mycology conference in the Smokey Mountains, in Tennessee. A bunch of the scientists had congregated at a local pizza parlour: with a name like "The Mellow Mushroom" it was the logical place for them to all end up.
Moshe had to leave to catch a show in London; Peter had to head back to the lab as well; Lynn and I stayed for a little dessert, an "Orio Madness" [sic] for her and a lime cake thing for me. Then we went back to the Belgrove. Our last night in London, and we wanted to get everything packed up and ready for the trip home.
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no subject
Date: 2005-08-23 11:57 am (UTC)Don't know if you got my email but your boxes are still at my work and I leave there on Friday forever so they need collecting from there - it might be hard for me to get them collected from my new job and it's impossible from home unless they collect in the evening.
FF