London Photo Dump 2: Museum Day

 I love local museums, because I love learning the stories that small towns tell about themselves. Turns out that I love big museums too! And this was our chance to visit some of the very biggest. 

Exhibits on timekeeping and navigation; rows and rows of artifacts.

Dinosaur skeletons and taxidermy in the Natural History museum.

And crowds. I'm happy that so many people wanted to learn, but yikes!

My favourite exhibit was about math and how it applies in everyday life. Lots of very creative ways to visualize in fields like medicine and accounting. 

Looks like an abstract sculpture or a play park for kids, but it's more math! 

My favourite was visualizing the fields of air flow around the wings of this airplane.

And an evening spent catching up with a former shipmate. She's now living on land here in London and a 180-degree career change from maritime to education.

Can there be anything more London than this scene from our taxi on the way to the train to our next adventure?

And our association with the Galeon, as I've always said, gives us different kinds of interactions with people than if we were just "random retired couple traveling the country in a minivan." We were chatting with the waitress at breakfast on our last morning in the hotel; she had asked where we were headed next so we showed her pictures of the ship and of us in our pirate garb. A few minutes later, completely unexpected, we got this dessert for breakfast! Pirates love gold, that's edible gold foil and white chocolate.    

London Photo Dump 1: All the Traditional Tourist Things

 We figured out how to navigate both the Underground (subway) and the double-decker buses, but this day we just walked, because there was so much cool stuff right where we were -- gardens and monuments and such, and the weather was unexpectedly lovely. Unfortunately everyone else had the same idea and the streets were packed! Overtourism is definitely a "thing." And we felt it even more as we had just come from wild and empty Iceland. Here, in no particular order, is some of what we saw this day.

Overtourism in action -- this is the famous "changing of the guard" that we stumbled on by luck. Good thing this wasn't our only chance to see it, because wow. 

The Palace gates.

Somehow in my mind I expected the Palace to have towers and crennelations like a medieval castle; it looks grand but so ... modern.

On a lovely spring afternoon, everyone was out enjoying the parks and gardens all over the city.

In the age of cellphones London still has the iconic red phone booths. 

And a pub named for one of my childhood heroes -- we just had to stop in for a pint.

Upstairs at the pub was a recreation of Holmes and Watson's living room. It very accurately matched my imagination.

Somewhere in our storage is a photo of teenaged me posing in front of Big Ben on a trip with my parents. So it was seriously fun to see Dan in the same location half a century later.

A Very Luxe Few Days in London

 It was close to midnight by the time our plane from Reykjavik landed at Heathrow and we got our luggage and cleared customs and immigration and got a taxi to our hotel "near the Palace." The taxi driver got lost (actually I think he was trying to scam us) I suspect he legit was unfamiliar with the neighbourhood because people at that address must generally use private drivers (more on that later in our trip, we had lots of wonderful experiences with being picked up by impeccably-suited gentlemen in black Mercedeses meeting our planes and trains and buses.) I thought "near the Palace" meant a general district, but our hotel was literally around the corner from Buckingham Palace smack-dab in the heart of the iconic power centre of London. And the hotel was every bit as elegant as the setting demanded. Travel-grimed in blue jeans we felt quite out of place. 

Rawther elegant (said in a posh London accent)

Here's a closeup of the embroidery on the pillowcases (and sheets, and towels, and on the extra thick bathrobes...)

Breakfast every morning in this lovely dining room

And another closeup. See the handle on the back of the upholstered chair? That's so the waiter can gracefully pull the chair out for you. Took me a minute; channeling my mom and paternal grandmother to remember the traditions.

And our delightful doorman. Doesn't it look like Dan is the formal one and our doorman is the lively one? 

We took advantage of the location to explore all the traditional tourist sights, museums and monuments, and catch up with a former shipmate who lives in the area now. Pix from those will be in the next post, photo-dump style. But we also tried something we'd never done before -- a proper afternoon tea.

We have a friend who calls herself the "Tea Diva" and hosts events. We excitedly messaged her this photo, "Joa! We're thinking of you. We're having tea. In London. At 4:00. Right around the corner from Buckingham Palace." Literally right around the corner: those are the Royal Mews across the street. 

Here's a clearer view of the table setting. This is actually "Royal Afternoon Tea" because it started with a glass of champagne.

Kate pours Dan’s tea; there were about 15 teas to choose from. There’s a little strainer placed across the cup to catch any stray leaves that made it into the pour, and a small silver dish to put the strainer in.

An assortment of sandwiches: the small round ones on top were vegetarian chicken salad, others included baba ganoush, egg salad, tomato, and the one at the back is cucumber sliced so thin you could see through it.

The middle tray contained 3 different types of scones for each of us, served with lemon curd, clotted cream, and some kind of berry marmalade. The top and bottom trays (one for each of us) contained 4 different types of desserts. Blackberry eclair, lemon meringue tart, carrot (??) cake, and the chocolate one with the crown on it (yeah, because we’re literally around the corner from Buckingham Palace; I thought it was just a name but it’s the real deal) was filled with a liquid chocolate.

Ondiyeh (sp?) explained all the desserts to us. (Yes, we had two servers for this meal.)

 

Iceland Last Batch of Photos ... until our return in September

 At the end of our week in Iceland, we immediately began planning a 3-day layover as part of our return flight back to the US after our tour of duty on El Galeon! There were just too many things we had wanted to see but just ran out of time. 

Tired old volcano

Welcome gnome at a random shop in town

Public art in Reykjavík: part Viking longboat and part sun salutation

Random street corner; there are more random street photos in the first photo dump

It’s dark-dark-dark for 5 months per year. I’ve never been anywhere that had so much sparkly artsy lighting in public spaces. (But all of it on motion sensors and LED).

Living their values, in this case living sustainably and eco consciously. Everyplace is heated with geothermal energy, and every hotel had 3 or 4 recycling/trash bins. Took us a bit to understand the system at the hotels also: there’s a slot on the wall where you insert your room key to activate room lights and other systems. No wasting power leaving lights on when you’re not there. Also, you don’t misplace your room key with this method. At the same time, heated bathroom floors and towel warmers are da bomb, jus’ sayin’

Okay, it wasn’t all perfect. Someone ran into our car’s back bumper while we were parked at one of the touristy spots and didn’t leave a note. (Thankfully we always make sure to get insurance). We got a flat tire on the last evening, and next morning the guy from the front desk had his friend come by to help us change it out for the emergency spare. (All the normal tire places were closed until Monday.) What lovely warm helpful people!!! It took a crew; those living nuts were right and the wheel didn’t want to let go of the axle. L to R: Dan, Brendan from Sri Lanka, Casshie (???) from Poland, and Lakmal also from Sri Lanka. (Does this make us high-maintenance tourists?) In the end it was just a slow leak and the rental company charged us a minimal amount. Worth it to learn how warm people can be in this chilly country.

View from our hotel window, at sunset. (Which was around 22:30! It started getting light again around 03:30, which totally whacked out my biorhythms.)