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What have you all been up to this week?

london 2011: the victoria + albert, harrods, kensington gardens,+ the white horse pub

On Saturday (February 12), we headed over to the Victoria and Albert Museum, a.k.a "the V & A". It is located in South Kensington, and is the world's largest art and design museum.

You creative chickies would LOVE it. :)

In the museum's Grand Entrance, the domed ceiling and the Dale Chihuly glass chandelier will grab your attention right off the bat. :)

Here is the index, and I took a few photos to kind of give you an idea of how large and diverse their collection is.

 

 

I thought this might interest several of you. I am sorry my photo is not better. This is the oldest dated surviving embroidery sampler in the world. It was worked by a girl named Jane Bostocke in 1598. 

I was amazed at how the color saturation of the floss has been preserved this long. Look at the red!

It was absolutely astounding to me that Bob and I were able to just remove the frame from its wooden case, prop it up on the table as you see above, examine it, photograph it, and return it to its case. There weren't even any other people in the room!

Hundreds of such textiles are cataloged and housed in cases in the Textile Study Room, and you can just slide them out and look at them as you wish.

I was sorry to hear the Textile Study Room will be closing permanently on March 1. But it's making way for a new Clothworkers' Centre for Textiles and Fashion Study and Conservation, so maybe that will be even neater.

After we looked around the V & A for a couple hours, we headed along Brompton Road.

And here is Harrod's.

Our jet lag had caught up to us on Saturday morning, so we sat down for a cup of tea and some scones at Harrod's before we started walking around it, which helped quite a bit. :)

I am not usually a big fan of department stores, but you really have to see Harrod's just to marvel at its hugeness. It encompasses 7 floors and 4.5 acres. I'm not sure how many of those acres we saw, but it was fun to peek at everything. The interactive store guide here is fun to play with if you want to know what all Harrod's has.

I think the thing that stuck out to me most about Harrod's was the Pet Kingdom, which is 11,000 square feet devoted entirely to pet accoutrements. And it all cost more than I would spend on any of the humans in my life. :) Astounding.

After Harrod's, we jumped back on the Big Bus (which I really don't recommend in Knightsbridge/Kensington on a Saturday, because you could probably walk more quickly, although it's always fun to be up high on top of the bus rather than down at street level) and went over to Kensington Palace and Gardens.

Of course, when Princess Diana was alive, this was her home. It is now owned and managed by Historic Royal Palaces, who are in the process of refurbishing it. In the meantime, it is housing a funky, Alice-in-Wonderland-ish exhibit/experience called Enchanted Palace, which I wasn't interested in seeing, but which many folks seem to love.

But I was interested in seeing Kensington Gardens, which used to be the private gardens for the Palace. The Gardens cover 275 acres, and are on the west side of Hyde Park. We entered on the Bayswater side, and walked south toward the Palace. 

Here is the clock tower in the Gardens, outside the Princess Diana Memorial Playground, which, may I tell you, is a hoppin' place on a sunny Saturday morning. (I didn't take a photo of the playground itself, but it was darling and looked fun. There is a huge pirate ship in it!)

And here is the Round Pond. It was created between 1726 and 1735, and the Victorians used to sail model boats on it. 

J.M. Barrie liked Kensington Gardens, and set one of his earlier Peter Pan stories there. There is a Peter Pan statue in the Gardens, which we did not see.

And then there was the Palace itself. We came up to its back.

And here is the adjacent Orangery, which is supposed to have one of the best afternoon teas in London. There was a big line for it.

We walked around to get a better look at the front of the Palace.

It felt ... sad to me. I miss Diana.

It was late in the afternoon, and we had reservations for 6 at the White Horse Pub on Parson's Green, which some folks reckon is the best pub in London. I didn't take any photos of the White Horse, but have grabbed three photos off their website to show you below. 

I have to tell you one funny thing that happened, which is so typical of me.

I had researched dinner places before we left the States, and then made a reservation at the White Horse through its website. There were options to make the dinner reservation in the bar area itself, or in an area called The Coach House.

Well, I'm looking at the photos of the bar area online, which are below, and I think "Oh my goodness, Bob would love this bar area. I'll make the reservation there."

But, duh, the photos on the website show the pub empty.

When we get there, it is PACKED with people, because there is a huge rugby game on t.v. You can't even see what it looks like, let alone hear yourself think. So a lovely man who was, I think, a manager, shows us our table, which already has a bunch of people at it, and sees our faces, and asks, "Would you like somewhere quieter?"

And I say sheepishly, "Yes, please, if something is available."

And it turns out that there is, in fact, a table available in the attached Coach House, where I should have made the reservation to begin with.

Here is the Coach House. And in fact it looked exactly like this when we walked in, because no one else was there yet. (Six p.m. is early for dining in Europe.)

And this was one of the best meals we had during our stay. We had the Beef Wellington. Yummers. :) And our waitress was delightful.

Also, I could just see the t.v. screen out in the bar area, and am delighted to tell you that I now completely understand the game of rugby. It is exactly like hockey, without ice, sticks, or any safety equipment. 

You get the ball and move a few inches, and then a bunch of guys dogpile you. Over and over again. It's brilliant.

london 2011: the changing of the guard at buckingham palace, the london eye, the tower of london, + the along-the-thames pub walk

A week ago Friday (February 11) we went over to Buckingham Palace in the morning to see the Changing of the Guard.

My whole entire life, I have thought it was "the Changing of the Guards" (plural), thinking a guard was one person, and that one guard was coming in to replace another guy in the sentry boxes.

But no! It is "the Changing of the Guard," singular, meaning (of course, now that I stop to think about it) that one entire contingent (a guard) of soldiers is replacing another entire contingent of soldiers.

The things I have gone through life not knowing!

(Remember when I found out a couple years ago that the expression is "one-way street" and not "one-way streak"? Also, until maybe three years ago, I thought a troop was a group of soldiers. So when they say "30,000 troops," I thought it meant 30,000 groups of soldiers. I was so shocked to find out a troop is one soldier. Which is kind of exactly the opposite problem I had with "guard."

Obviously, I need to read more military history and whatnot.

Also, and I hesitate to tell you this because you won't believe it, but I didn't notice that the back lights on cars turn white when they are backing up until about three years ago. Astonishingly, I have only been in one minor accident in my entire driving career, and that wasn't even my fault.)

And it is quite a long ceremony (the Changing of the Guard), and mostly very interesting, with some long pauses inbetween of uninterestingness.

We got there early enough to get right up against the fence, which is where you want to be. This was my view straight up. I was squashed right up to that fence, so I could stick my camera through the fence posts.

Below was my view to my slight left. That's the front gate of the palace. 

Below is the New Guard, all formed up (that took awhile) and led by the band. They march across the forecourt of the Palace, and then turn around and slowly face the Old Guard.

The Old Guard presents arms, then the New Guard presents arms, and then the Captains of the Guard march toward each other and turn over the keys to the Palace. 

Then the new sentries are posted. (This last bit, where the new sentries are posted, is what I had always imagined the entirety of the ceremony to be. I was so wrong.)

It takes a long time, but Bob explained everything to me as it happened, so I was less confused than I would have been if I were a whole lot more confused. :)

One neat thing happened. When we got to the Palace, the Sovereign's Flag was flying. That means she's in residence. Then they switched to the Union Jack as we watched. So that means the Queen left the palace while we were standing there! I think she must have snuck out the back. We did see some of her folks leave out the front gate in two big black Land Rovers, however. So that was a bit exciting. It was Friday, so I hope she was headed out to Windsor. 

I still haven't figured out which guards we saw, exactly, because they were wearing their winter grays.

But I like saying "Coldstream Guards" because it kind of gives me a shiver. It sounds neat. Coldstream Guards, Coldstream Guards, Coldstream Guards.

I gave you the Big Bus tour of London in some detail last year when we went, so there is probably no need to rehash it. But once again, we jumped on a Big Bus and made our way around to the London Eye. (The Big Bus is a jump on, jump off tourist bus, which is so handy.) I will show you a couple highlights on the way. 

Right now, there is a lovely model of Nelson's Ship, the HMS Victory, in this bottle on Trafalgar Square. This exhibit switches out periodically.

Last year, Trafalgar Square was filled up with a huge group of people for a Good Friday Passion Play, so it was nice to see it again a bit more cleared out, so I could see the buildings.

You'll have to check last year's post for a view of Nelson's Column, which is the main thing, because I managed to completely miss it in the shot below. You can see one of the lions at the base just to the right.

If you are not up on your British naval history, you should read up on the Battle of Trafalgar and Horatio Nelson before you ever set foot in London. 

No, really.

Here's something I found on Wikipedia:

I feel like this next photo should win some kind of "most British icons in one photo, ever" award. I'm sitting atop our bus, and this is looking south down Whitehall (Trafalgar Square is at my back) toward Parliament Square.

There is even a red phone box. Can you spot it?

Here is Westminster Abbey, and the statue of Winston Churchill in Parliament Square. I can't remember if I told you this last year or not, but Winston Churchill really didn't want a statue of himself erected in London, because London statues are always covered in bird mess. So his statue has a current of electricity running through it, and is, therefore, always bird-free. :)

I am very fond of Winston Churchill. We named our first Corgi, Winston (whom we called "Winnie") after him. (Winnie lives with Bob's mom now.) When I lived in Poland, the only in-English books in the apartment I rented (it was furnished and full of books) were Churchill's six-volume history of World War II, and so I read them, and my life is the better for it. 

I guess several of you have seen the movie The King's Speech. (I haven't seen it yet, but am anxious to.) When George VI died, and his grief-stricken daughter Elizabeth flew back from Kenya after receiving the news (and of course she'd just become Queen, as soon as her dad died, although they're not sure of the precise moment because he died in his sleep), Churchill (among others) met her at Heathrow. And then of course he was her first Prime Minister. (He had started his second term under George VI a couple years before George died, and Elizabeth loved him and kept him on.)

When we got to the London Eye, we were tickled to see that the base was decorated for Valentine's Day.

We'd ordered our tickets online before we left the States, and so had a very short wait before we got on.

The London Eye is not a ferris wheel, we learned, but I can't remember why it's not. :) Something about the axis. It's an observation wheel. It was created and then opened on December 31, 1999 for the start of the new millenium, and was expected to last only one year, but of course is now going on eleven.

There is lately always one pod missing (you can see where one is missing in the photo of the Eye above) from the wheel as they refurbish each one individually. Each one of the 32 pods represents one of the London boroughs.

The views are great! I am afraid of heights and so was worried that I would end up freaking out (internally)(and then not talking to Bob for ten minutes)(kidding), but something about the way the pods are constructed fooled my brain into thinking I was on solid ground.

I did, however, focus on looking straight out of the pod rather than straight down, because no use being stupid. :)

Here's a view of the Thames.

Charing Cross Railway Station is down in the lower left corner, below. The bridge in front of it (and also in the photo above) that looks like Spiderman made it is actually three bridges. The middle part, where the trains go, is called the Hungerford Bridge. Then on either side are two pedestrian bridges called the Golden Jubilee Bridges.

Can you see the tallest skyscraper on the horizon, in the back towards the left? That's the Shard, under construction. When it's done, it will be the tallest skyscraper in all of Europe. Until another country one-ups it. Nevermind. That's not the Shard at all, now that I look at it. I think it's the British Telecomm Tower.

You can see St. Paul's Cathedral to the left, below. And that partially obscured building in the middle back that looks like a bullet is the Swiss RE building, known as The Gherkin. (That means "pickle," if you aren't familiar with gherkins.)

Here's the pod (I think they are actually called "capsules") that was below our pod. If you look inside, you can see that there is a bench in the middle, in case you need to sit down.

And of course here's Westminster Bridge, the Palace of Westminster (Parliament) and the Clock Tower (the bell inside the Clock Tower is named Big Ben, not the Clock Tower itself, but everybody calls the whole Clock Tower Big Ben, so whatcha gonna do?)

The sun was on this side when I took this, so it's a bit bright.

I do recommend the London Eye. It's a lovely, slow (half hour) ride around, and it gives you plenty of time to really examine the skyline, which is fantastic.

So then we hopped back on the Big Bus and rode on over to the Tower of London. 

(I just remembered another huge hole in my knowledge. Remember how I learned last year that the Tower of London was its own separate thing, and not just part of the Tower Bridge? My whole life, I thought the Tower of London was one or the other of the two towers on the Tower Bridge. And then this year I was surprised, again, to find out that the Tower of London is actually comprised of several buildings. It's actually like a little hamlet, once you get there.)

Legend has it that should the ravens ever leave the Tower of London, the White Tower will crumble and a great disaster will befall England.

When Bob saw these ravens in cages, he said "Hey! That's cheating!" :)

But there were some free ravens, too, kind of hanging out by the caged ravens.

They were probably planning to bust out their caged brethren after dark.

First we went and saw the Crown Jewels. We weren't allowed to take photos in there. They are magnificent! Just like you'd think. And I'm telling ya, visit London off season! We practically had the Crown Jewels to ourselves. I've heard that in the summer when it is crowded, you have 28 seconds to see the jewels as you stand on the moving walkway that goes by them. But we had loads of time, and I got up close as I could to everything and just stared at it all hard, to imprint it in my brain. 

The Koh-i-Nur diamond is pretty impressive.

Then we went to the White Tower, where the Royal Armoury is, and Bob was as excited about that as I was about the jewels. 

The armor below, which dates from 1540, was made for Henry the Eighth. He had lots of different armor. He needed it when he jousted and engaged in foot combat in tournaments, and when he invaded France. (He invaded France three times.)

He kind of let himself go there at the end, and by the time this particular armor was made for him, he was no longer participating in tournaments. But he was still excited about going to war, so it was in his (big huge) size, just in case he needed it, although frankly, he would have really had trouble actually moving in it, given his state.

I really can't stand Henry the Eighth. He was a total creep.

Here's the suit of armor for a man named John of Gaunt. It's the tallest suit of armor in the world, at 6 feet 9 inches. (John was 6'7".)

I don't know who the little armor was for.

There was armor for each Royal House on display, right through the Windsors, but of course once firearms were readily available, metal body armor became obsolete.

So armor today looks a bit different. That photo (hard to see) on the back of the case is Prince Harry.

After we left the White Tower, we breezed quickly through the Medieval Palace, which looks out over the Thames. (Sadly, the Tower of London was closing.)

Out a window in one of King Edward I's rooms in the Medieval Palace, you can see City Hall (which to me looks like a giant, reticulated roly poly bug wearing a Shazam! shirt) by looking straight ahead, and the Tower Bridge by looking slightly to the left.

I recommend the Tower of London at dusk in February. It's not crowded, and everything glows in the low light, and you can imagine, so clearly, what it must have been like hundreds of years ago.

When we left, we walked along the river for a bit.

There is my Shazam! roly poly on the far left. Everything about it, from its design to its function, is slightly confusing. City Hall houses the Greater London Authority, which includes the Mayor of London and London Assembly. You have to be careful throwing the word "city" around in London, because "the City" or "the City of London" is a section of what we think of as London. (It's the financial district, and the historic core of London.) City Hall doesn't serve the City of London. It serves London (Greater London, or the London metropolis, or whatever you want to call it -- just not "the city of London").

And here's the Shard again, in progress. That whole "and now we'll have the tallest building in Europe again" thing seems kind of dumb to me. I wonder at what point you start compromising the integrity of your building and skyline just to make it taller. Although I do think the completed Shard will be a pretty building. It will look a bit like the TransAmerica Pyramid in San Francisco when it's done.

Right now it kind of looks like that tower in Mordor, where Sauron lives.

Tower Bridge is my favorite edifice (is a bridge an edifice?) in London, I think I have decided. I like everything about it, all the time.

Do you see those little sparkly dots in the sky? I am pretty sure those are Peter Pan, Wendy, Michael, and John. Tinkerbell has flown on ahead, in a huff. :)

After I finished sighing at the beautiful Thames, we walked over to the Mansion House tube station. It was a few minutes before we were to meet our London Walks guide for our Along the Thames Pub Walk, so we checked out a new, interesting outside shopping mall called One New Change close by.

Jamie Oliver and Perry Lang's Barbecoa restaurant and butcher are there. 

The butcher had beef on one side ...

And pork on t'other ...

Gordon Ramsay is opening up shop next door soon. That should get interesting.

There was also the loveliest, loveliest view of St. Paul's.

And then it was time to join our tour. Boy, I tell you, if you do nothing else the entire time you are in London, get yourself out on some of these London Walks. Bob concurs. They are superb, and this Along-the-Thames-Pub-Walk is probably the superb-est. 

Don't confuse "pub walk" with "pub crawl" ... we don't do pub crawls. :)

This pub walk was a history-and-culture-filled walk along the river and its environs, strung together by twenty-minute stops at four worthy pubs. We started at 7 and finished up around 10.

The owner of London Walks (and our guide for this tour and a few others they offer) is a Wisconsin farmer's son. He went to London forty years ago to get a doctorate in Dickens (which he did), and ended up staying forever. He is absolutely delightful -- brilliant, dramatic, informative, entertaining, and friendly -- and Bob and I were so hooked that after this pub walk, we canceled our previous Sunday morning plans to sleep in and do nothing so that we could go on another walk with him (which I'll tell you about later).

I couldn't get many photos because it was now nighttime, and also I wanted to pay attention to the tour. But here is our third pub, the Market Porter, on Stoney Street in Southwark, next to the fabulous Borough Market. 

And here is our fourth pub, The George. The George is London's only surviving galleried coaching inn. It is a medieval building, owned and leased by The National Trust, and it shows up on the first known map of Southwark, dated 1543. 

I was super excited to see The George, because I am reading Little Dorrit (I still am reading it, and was reading it on our trip) and in it, Dickens mentions The George. William Shakespeare also visited The George. 

Another inn in this part of London was The Tabard. It no longer exists, but that's where Chaucer started The Canterbury Tales. 

What a great day! Friday was our busiest day in London, because I think a good way to handle jet lag is to stay so busy that you forget you're tired. And then when you get back to the hotel you fall asleep in about two seconds because you are not only jet-lagged, you are completely exhausted from your day. It's awesome. :)

london 2011: the montague on the gardens + the fitzroy tavern

Bob and I got into London a week ago Thursday (February 10). It was, in all honesty, a practically perfect week.

I did cry once on the whole trip, and it happened right at the beginning, and when I think about it now, it is extremely embarrassing yet hilarious. So I have to tell you.

We took the London Underground (hereafter known as "the tube") from Heathrow to our hotel. (It's a straight shot on the Piccadilly line.) The stop for the hotel where we stayed is Russell Street.  The Russell Street tube station has three lifts to get you above ground, but there were a lot of people at the lifts.

To me, this meant that taking the lifts was a great idea, because a lot of people were doing it. To my husband, this meant that we should take the stairs. 

Now, before you judge me too harshly for what I am about to disclose, keep in mind that we had been on a plane for about eleven hours (and it was very squashy), and although Bob had napped a wee bit, I hadn't slept a wink, and so we had been up for about 27 hours, and were therefore prone to irrational behavior.

While Bob's irrational behavior often takes the form of impatience, mine often takes the form of crying like a baby followed by not talking. I am extremely good at not talking.

And keep in mind that we were carrying luggage. 

And keep in mind that there were 177 steps to get out of the station, which was built in 1909. It's a spiral staircase that goes up, and up, and up, and up.

Also, keep in mind that my husband goes to the gym and is very fit, and I am a couch potato.

Somewhere around step 100 or so (I'm just guessing), I just started crying. My lungs were okay, but my legs that hadn't really done anything for 27 hours were no longer wanting to move. At all. (Lactic acid buildup.) And we couldn't see the top of the stairs, and didn't know how many there were, because we had missed the (large and prominent) signs that said there were 177 steps.

(I have since learned that's nothing, and we're just lucky not to have gotten off at Hampstead, which is the deepest in the London Underground, at 192 feet below ground level, and has over 320 steps to exit if you choose to bypass the lifts.)

So I just stopped climbing and stood there and boo-hooed a little bit, while young, spry Londoners who chain-smoked and subsisted on caffeine, chocolate, and alcohol sprinted up past me, and I contemplated what my week of vacation would be like, stuck in the Russell Street tube, and then I got mad at Bob and wouldn't talk to him for about ten minutes.

Because I had to be mad at someone, and being mad at myself for never exercising so that I was in good shape for moments such as this was out of the question. And I couldn't be mad at Leslie Green, who designed the station, because he died in 1908, before the station was even built, when he was only 33, from tuberculosis, and it wasn't his fault that The Underground needed to be underground. 

I am ashamed to even remember those ten minutes. Let us never speak of them again. I am always disappointed at how little it can take, given the right circumstances, to turn me into a nauseating, first-world Princess. I mean, I am on VACATION in LONDON, and I am having a meltdown over stairs and luggage. I keep remembering a friend in college who used to remind me that who we really are is the person we are when we are under duress. Yikes.

Anyway (I said, let us never speak of it again), after we emerged intact and took a quick walk through Russell Square, we arrived at our hotel. We stayed at The Montague on the Gardens, which is in Bloomsbury, across the street from the British Museum. It is fabu. (I found out about it on Trip Advisor.)

Upon arrival, we were happy to find out that they had upgraded us to a suite. Actually, this was still within the ten minutes that I was not talking to Bob, so I was still crabby.  He had cheered up completely, however.

When we got to the room, he said, "You know, it will be funny when you look back on it." 

And I said, "It will NEVER be funny." (I actually said that.)

And then I laid down on the bed for twenty minutes and took a nap, and after I opened my eyes, I sat up and felt better, and started laughing and couldn't stop for a long time, and we both laughed, and laughed, and laughed. (Also, I apologized. The part where I started crying and couldn't walk was funny, but the part where I didn't talk to Bob was just mean.) And then I was so excited that our room had been upgraded, so that we had a little sitting area.

And then Bob took me downstairs for a cup of tea and some scones in the sunroom of the hotel, which we had all to ourselves, and it was raining and it was dusk and there were pretty shapes of trees and birds outside, and then I was the happiest girl who ever lived, and felt resolved to never be so petty again. And also, to get in shape. 

The hotel is perfection itself.  

(This one sole photo below is from their website, because my photo of the bed didn't come out. It looked almost just like this, except in my photo the bed is kind of messed up, because remember, I had been lying on it for twenty minutes.)

Here Bob is getting his shoes on after we rested, so we can go look around.

It was late afternoon when we arrived, and by the time we had tea and settled in, it was time to go get some dinner. We had wanted to check out the Fitzroy Tavern close by, so we did.

George Orwell and Dylan Thomas used to hang out at the Fitzroy. 

It was absolutely packed with people stopping by after work, and also with Dr. Who fans who meet there the first Thursday of every month.

We managed to wait and grab a cozy corner booth when some people left, and we had a pint and a really enjoyable hour relaxing. We decided to go elsewhere to eat. (Wagamama was our very favorite restaurant, even though it is a chain, when we were in Bath last year, so we were happy to find so many of them in London, including one right by the Montague on the Gardens.)

Here is Dylan Thomas hanging out at the Fitzroy. (This photo is on the wall there.)

And here is Bob hanging out at the Fitzroy.

So that was Thursday, our first evening in London. Except for ten minutes (let us never speak of it again), it was a really good time. :)

marimekko converse

Hi ladies! Bob and I are back from a terrific week in London, and I am excited to tell you about some highlights. :)

But I know some of you are probably wanting a break from all-England all-the-time here in suziebeezieland lately, so I thought that I would not mention England in this post, and instead mention these Marimekko Converse that our Danielle brought to my attention. Have you seen them?

These are original Marimekko patterns created by the Finnish textile mill Marimekko's designers, applied to Chucks.

Here is a little film about their collaboration, shot in Helsinki:

Converse x Marimekko

I don't see myself wearing these, but I think they are really fun.

I think they need to come out with some Marimekko florals. What do you think? I would be all over those. I would buy Chucks that looked like this:

Crate and Barrel has a Marimekko shop in its SoHo*, New York store. Maybe I could just buy a big ol' shower curtain and wrap it around my feet. :D

*Okay, I know I said I would not mention England, but really, I have to tell you this. You cannot live without this England-related tidbit of information.

SoHo (uppercase "H") in New York is an abbreviation for "South of Houston Street," which describes its location in New York.

But I found out this week on vacation that the name Soho (lowercase "h") in London (a somewhat notorious part of the West End) comes from an old hunting cry: you would yell "Tally-ho!" when you're hunting fox and spot the fox, and "So-ho!" when you're hunting deer and spot the deer. (It dates back to Henry VIII, who hunted in that area.)

Is that not fascinating? :)

the cotswolds: chipping campden

During our time in the Cotswolds last spring, we stayed in the town of Chipping Campden. (Locals just call it "Campden.")

I guess I could bust out the word "charming" again, but maybe I will just show you some photos. :)

We stayed at the Noel Arms Hotel. (The Noel Arms Hotel is formerly known as "The George," but by "formerly," I mean before 1821. So you probably didn't know it as "The George.") 

During Victorian times, it was a coaching inn with an assembly room, balls, fancy dinners, and all manner of whatnot. 

A guy named Mr. Noel bought the inn when it was called "The George," and changed its name to "The Noel Arms Hotel."

This is the back of the hotel, where the restaurant is. We enjoyed the full English breakfasts. Cereal seems a poor and sickly sort of sustenance after a week of full English breakfasts.

They also had a very nice coffee bar up front. The folks who worked the front desk and coffee bar were superlatively nice and helpful.

The restaurant staff were less superlatively nice and helpful, but I think they have a big annual turnover of wait staff, with folks coming from all over the EU to stay for a limited time.

We liked it and would stay there again. It's old and creaky enough to be interesting, and the furnishings and fabrics are traditional, but it's new enough to be clean and feel contemporary. That's always a nice combination.

We spent a bit of time exploring the town in the afternoon on the days we went to Hidcote Manor and Snowshill Manor, and then on our last day in the Cotswolds we spent the whole time in Chipping Campden, and went on a long hike.

I talked a bit about the medieval wool trade in the Cotswolds in an earlier post. Chipping Campden celebrates its heritage as a wool town. :)

If you are wondering what "Chipping" is all about, it's from an Old English word that means "marketplace". It doesn't have anything to do with golfing. :)

This is St. Catharine's Roman Catholic Church. It was built in 1891 by the third Lord Gainsborough some years after his grandfather became Catholic.

If you are into medieval gossip, then let me tell you that the third Lord Gainsborough was somehow related to Sir Baptist Hicks, who was somehow related to the Mr. Noel who the inn is named after.

I can't remember how. But Sir Baptist Hicks is coming up here soon.

The Cotswold Way begins in Chipping Campden and runs south for 102 miles, all the way to Bath. Before I die, I would like to walk the whole thing. Slowly. And not all at once. Maybe over a few weeks, with some stops. And lots of naps and snacks. Maybe a bit of shopping.

I don't have a bucket list, but if I did, that would be the first thing on it. Maybe I will make one.

Actually, a guy exactly my age (but apparently not exactly in my physical condition) ran the whole thing in 23 hours 48 minutes and 7 seconds just last spring. (That's not on my bucket list.)

Bob picked up a benign-looking little yellow booklet at the town's info center called "Country Walks Around Chipping Campden".

We chose this walk:

Walk No. 4. 
Distance: 3 Miles 
Allow: 1.75 Hours

I would like to suggest that you allow more than 1.75 hours. I'm just sayin'.

So this is the beginning of our three-mile walk. Join me. :)

This is Chipping Campden's Market Hall. It was built by Sir Baptist Hicks in 1627. (Remember him? The guy who is related to Mr. Noel and the third Lord Gainborough somehow.)

The National Trust bought it and restored it in 1942.

And below is Grevel House. It's the oldest house in Campden. It was built around 1380 for William Grevel. He was a wealthy businessman and wool merchant. You can tell he was wealthy, because look at all the big windows.

The merchant in The Canterbury Tales was based on William Grevel.  

The Woolstapler's Hall was built in the 14th century at the height of the wool prosperity.

I think I mentioned before that when we were there (the beginning of April 2010), England was just coming out of an unusually cold and long winter. People were so happy to see signs of spring, and little flowers were tucked in everywhere we went.

Here is the gateway and a pair of lodges which are the remains of Campden House, which Sir Baptist Hicks (he was apparently quite a busy guy) also built.

Most of it was destroyed during the English Civil War.

And here is St. James Church. I think I also mentioned wool churches in an earlier post.

Wool churches were churches built in medieval times with money given by wealthy wool merchants.

Here is a kissing gate. I am going to try to explain how it works, in case you can't tell from the pictures. 

You push the gate forward, and walk past it into the circular area, then swing the gate the other way, and walk around it and out. 

Sheep cannot figure this out. :)

The Highway Authority has an ongoing program to replace stiles with kissing gates wherever it is practical. 

I guess at this point I have to confess our terrible crime to you. But in our defense, let me explain. (I'm wearing a white wig. This is England, after all.)

Our yellow Country Walks Around Chipping Campden book contained a pretty clear explanation of The Country Code. What is The Country Code, you may well ask? Let me explain that, too.

A long time ago, parliamentary enclosure acts fenced in open fields and common land in England. This was to keep people from grazing their animals wherever they wanted. It was a hotly debated subject. I'm not going to get into it.

But then later, Right-of-Way laws were passed to allow people access through these enclosed spaces, to get across England as they wished.

Hence, stiles and, later, kissing gates.

These public pathways (officially called Footpaths for walking only and Bridleways for walking, biking, and horseback riding) often skirt working farms, or go right through the middle of them. The Country Code is, in a nutshell, the understood (and also written) rules of conduct so that when you're walking through the countryside, you don't mess up anybody's farm.

Here is The Country Code:

Guard against all risk of fire.

Fasten all gates.

Keep your dogs under close control.

Keep to public paths across farmland.

Use gates and stiles to cross fences, hedges, and walls.

Leave livestock, crops, and machinery alone.

Take your litter home.

Help to keep all water clean.

Protect wildlife, plants, and trees.

Take special care on country roads.

Make no unnecessary noise.

Enjoy the countryside and respects its life and work.

I've gone ahead and bolded the bits we might need to come back to later. I mean, honestly, who can say exactly what "path" means, anyway? And what does "leave alone" mean, exactly? And how much noise is "unnecessary"?

You know, I think I'll tell you about our crime a little bit later, because it hasn't happened quite yet, in the photos, which gives us a bit of a reprieve.

Here's a stile. Rudimentary, but they do allow access to humans but not to livestock, which is the idea.

It is completely impossible to look graceful while climbing over a stile, unless you are a cute little kid. I, for one, am thrilled that they are being replaced by kissing gates.

I should probably mention that Bob doesn't usually wear a Hello Kitty purse.

Most of the time, you could tell where the footpath was either because you could clearly see the path itself, or there were markers like this yellow arrow.

Here Bob is explaining to Claire what hot fences are and how they work. 

So I guess this is where I have to tell you. About the crime.

We had done so well, and gone so far, and then Bob and I had a long discussion, because we weren't exactly sure we were still following the path. We were right on this guy's farm. Up close. In his yard. It seemed odd to me. But we kept going.

And we looked for the path. No, really, we did. And then we looked across the field, and we could SEE Chipping Campden. See St. James, between those trees? That's where we needed to go. And there wasn't a path. Anywhere.

So we just started walking straight across the field.

And then Bob noticed that the field was planted with seeds, so he told us to walk exactly behind him, so we'd squash less seedlings. Of whichever important crop that was. So we did.

And then about halfway through the field, I looked back behind us, and saw a pickup truck coming up the driveway and pulling into the yard where Claire is posing, above.

The truck had a very clear sightline to the trespassers walking across his field (illegal) and smashing his seedlings (illegal).

"RUN!" I screamed (illegal), and Bob and Claire and I took off across that field running as fast as our tired little legs would carry us, with Claire and I occasionally screaming, and all three of us absolutely terrified because WE HAD BROKEN THE COUNTRY CODE and almost got caught, to boot.

Need I tell you how happy we were to reach civilization again, and drag ourselves into Eight Bells for what turned out to be the best meal we ate the entire time we were in England? Chicken and brie and mango chutney and currants on real, thick, feed-your-soul and calm-your-guilt-ridden-heart bread. And apple-rhubarb cobbler for dessert. Oh, my stars.

I do not exaggerate. 

the cotswolds: snowshill manor

On Wednesday, April 7, 2010, after we visited Hidcote Manor, we headed over to Snowshill Manor. They're about ten miles apart.

We'd already known that Gloucestershire is pronounced "Gloss-tuh-shur" (three quick syllables, not four) and after learning that "Hidcote" was pronounced "Hiddcutt" (quickly, and try not to say the "u"), we jokingly asked a waitress if "Snowshill" was pronounced "Snozzle."

"You do hear locals say that, yes," she said.

Alrighty, then. We've got the hang of this. :)

Snozzle is another place I found when I was researching English manor houses for my book about eighteen months ago, and I was very eager to see the grounds.

I was less eager to see the inside of the house, which highlights the eccentric collections of Charles Paget Wade. His motto was "Let nothing perish." My motto is "I can't stand clutter and dust." So we didn't go inside. 

We parked in the charming village. (The village is also called Snowshill.) The northern Cotswold towns and villages are all heart-achingly charming, so I should just quit saying "charming". From now on, before anything I say, just add "charming."

We parked in front of the church, and walked through the village down to the entrance to the Manor itself. Here are some photos of the village.

    

Once you pay your admission to the Manor (you can choose to just see the grounds, which is what we did, or also see the inside of the Manor), there is a pleasant walk through fields up to the house itself, which of course is on a hill, because that is what you do when you have a Manor, you look down on everybody in the village below. 

If I ever have a Manor house, I will have picnics and carnivals and let everybody come run around my garden, and I'll say "don't mind the hilltop location, it means nothing, we're not snooty here," and let them ride ponies and fly kites and eat all the apples in the orchard if they want to. And at Christmas we'll have a big tree-lighting party, and everybody can have all the hot chocolate or spiced cider or mulled wine they want, and there will be lots of twinkly lights.  And at Easter there will be an Easter egg hunt, and I will dress up like the Easter bunny and everybody will get a lot of chocolate.

This walk up to the Manor was one of my favorite parts of our England trip.

Do you remember awhile back when I talked about these stacked stone walls? The vertical coping stones on top keep the sheep from jumping over. (Sheep can jump.)

Remember, the formula for the Cotswolds in early spring is fields + sheep + stacked stone walls + yellow daffodills. :)

See the little white dots of sheep below? :) I wanted to move here right away.

There was a little lacquered chart for the kids to look at that displayed and identified different types of animal scat, so they could look for it on the way up the hill. As a general rule, I don't take photos of poop, so you'll just have to visualize that chart on your own.

I was continually amazed at the quantity and variety of scavenger hunts for children that we found at so many venues in England. 

After a pleasant hike, you come up to the side of the Manor.

The village is down there somewhere. :)

Here is my little entomologist, hard at work. Wherever we go, she finds bugs to fall in love with.

And then we walked around to the front, and there it was. Snowhill Manor. I was so excited! :) Snowshill is what I used inside my head for the school in my novel. 

It was even better in real life than I had imagined.

A dovecote! (Pronounced "dove-cutt," and try not to pronounce the "u".)

When we were getting ready to leave, I was tickled to see that all those strangers whom I was tolerating at my Manor house had left, and I could get a clean shot of the front facade. :)

So when I finish my novel, if it gets published, and if you read it, you can imagine these pictures when you are reading about the school. (I know that's a lot of "ifs," but a girl can dream.)

I love Snozzle! 

claire is 8

Sniff.

the cotswolds: hidcote manor garden

On the evening of April 6 (a Tuesday) we drove our rental car from Bath up to the town of Chipping Campden. The drive took just under two hours, and was very pleasant. I know it's kind of silly that we went on a tour from Bath north up to the Cotswolds that day, came back south to Bath, and then drove back up north to Chipping Campden.

For you California girls, that would be a bit like taking a day tour out of Los Angeles up to Santa Barbara, returning to Los Angeles, and then driving back to Santa Barbara.

Suffice it to say that it was necessary with our rental car. (Email me if you're planning such a trip, and I will explain.) It actually turned out to be no big deal, and the drive back up was gorgeous. :)

Here's a wee map for you if you like orienting yourself. Bath is in Somerset, and Chipping Campden is in Gloucestershire, at the northernmost edge of the Cotswolds.

I'll talk about Chipping Campden itself in a later post. The time in the Cotswolds was the heart of our trip to England, and the main reason for our visit, so we spent the most time here. 

Tuesday evening we had dinner and settled into our hotel, and Wednesday we got up and headed to Hidcote Manor to see the garden.  

"Hidcote" is pronounced "Hidd-cutt," very quickly. Try to say "cutt" without the "u". :)

It was a thrill for me to go see Hidcote, even in the off-season, because I had read all about it forever, and was really terribly curious. You know how I am about gardens. :) Insane.

No garden made in the twentieth century has had a greater influence on the evolution of the art of garden design or home gardening than Hidcote Manor Garden. None has more clearly charted the direction the style of gardening has taken in our time.

(from The Garden at Hidcote by Fred Whitsey)

Hidcote Manor Garden was created by Lawrence Waterbury Johnston. He fashioned it in the Arts and Crafts style as a series of "rooms" (in this aspect, it was influenced by Italian garden design), and its layout is as complicated as a blueprint for a home.

Johnston allowed the plants themselves to grow in a somewhat carefree fashion. (This will be hard to see in these stark, still-wintery photos I took in early April, when the bones of everything show clear and sharp, but maybe you can peek inside this book.)

This romantic style had always been the norm with cottagers' gardens (think of thatched houses with roses running wild), but now it crept into the big, fancy manor home gardens. The Edwardians liked things to be exuberant. During the Victorian era, these big gardens had always been kept clipped and tidy to within an inch of their lives. Now Johnston introduced deep perennial borders full of color and floppy, flowy movement. 

Hidcote is the quintessential English garden. 

Which is pretty funny, because Johnston was American. :) 

He became a naturalised British citizen, but his folks were from Baltimore. They were weathy stockbrokers.

Not a ton is known about him, and no written plans or works-in-progress for the garden, which took him forty years to make, have ever come to light.

He was not active in the Royal Horticultural Society (which was unusual for avid gardeners of his time) and the only pictures of him that survive show a "fair, sad-eyed little man, usually accompanied by dogs, at first springer spaniels, later dachshunds," according to my National Trust book on Hidcote.

His mom, the twice-widowed Gertrude Winthrop, bought Hidcote at auction in 1907. She actually bought the entire hamlet of Hidcote Bartrim, which included 300 acres, a good farmhouse, farm buildings, and ten cottages.  Lawrence was already 36 when he and his mother moved to Hidcote.

Gertrude was one of those formidable, wealthy grande dames you hear about. She and Lawrence were straight out of a Henry James novel.

Johnston liked to arrange his plants by color. He was also the first formal designer in England (although again, this is something the lowly cottagers would have already done) to plant using varying bloom times, so that something was always in show.

 

Before creating the garden at Hidcote, Johnston got a degree in history at Trinity College, Cambridge, and then for twenty years had a career as a military officer. He was in the Boer War and the First World War, and then he was wounded at Hooge Chateau and came back to England.

After that, the garden at Hidcote (and another at La Serre de la Madone on the French riviera) took up all of his time.

Johnston was an illusionist. Edith Wharton, who was a frequent guest, described Hidcote as "tormentingly perfect." You can see the French influence in these "stretch to infinity" vistas.

The National Trust acquired Hidcote in 1948, when Johnston left England permanently for his garden in France. He was ill, and died in 1958.

This was the first time the Trust had acquired a property specifically for its garden. Hidcote is where The National Trust learned to garden. :)  

The garden plantings have changed since Johnston owned it, but these changes have just enhanced Johnston's original plan. 

Hidcote has influenced the design of almost every British garden to follow it, and is considered by many people to be the finest English garden of the twentieth century.

Johnston mixed his passion for the plants with a keen artistic aesthetic.  

Also, he was very patient. 

This sounds like a good formula to me. :)

the cotswolds: upper + lower slaughter + tetbury

I decided I should inundate you over the next week or so with a bunch of photos from our England trip last spring, because I never finished that up. I'm sorry that I'm like that. I drive methodical people insane.

But I thought England photos would be thematically correct if not timely, since Bob and I are headed to London this upcoming week. 

When we last left off, it was Tuesday, April 6, 2010, and we were in the middle of the Mad Max Cotswold Discovery full-day tour. (We cannot recommend them highly enough.)

We had gotten as far north as Stow-on-the-Wold for lunch, and were heading south again towards Bath, where we had been staying.

After Stow-in-the-Wold, we stopped at Upper Slaughter. "Slaughter" here means mud, not blood :) ... it's from the Old English word "Shohtre," which means "muddy."  We walked down a road and through the fields from Upper Slaughter down to Lower Slaughter, where the bus driver met us all again with the bus. There were so many sweet houses, and big, majestic houses, and beautiful, natural things to see.

I cannot think of anything in life that makes me quite as content as walking outside in the country. That's as close as I get to heaven on earth.

 

It was easy to pretend I was Miss Elizabeth Bennett, who dearly loves to walk. :)

Claire made a friend named Ellie, who was also seven. :)

When we got down to Lower Slaughter, we were at an old corn mill with a working waterwheel.

Then we got back on the bus and headed south again, through Tetbury.

Tetbury is home to Highgrove, which is where Prince Charles and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall live. It's also home to The Prince's Charities Foundation shop, also called Highgrove.

If you are shopping in the Cotswolds, save your money for Highgrove, which is the loveliest shop I saw the entire time I was in England. I mean, besides Cath Kidston. :) 

And I liked the blue paint. :)

Then we hopped back on the bus, and I looked out the window and sighed and felt so happy about how beautiful the world can be.

Then we got off again in Bath, where we had started.

Now the logistically silly thing is, we were about to get in our car and head back up to the Cotswolds that night, to Chipping Campden. But I'll explain to you all about that in my next post. :)

san francisco, part 3

I realized that I never showed you photos from our last day in San Francisco back in early December. So I think I'll do that. :)

On Sunday we got up and went to The Exploratorium, San Francisco's museum of "science, art, and human perception." It is next to the Palace of Fine Arts, which we had driven by the evening before on our fun Mr. Toad's Tour of the city.

The Exploratorium's space is cavernous, cold, fairly dark, and extremely interesting. It is full of installations you can get your hands on and play with. We goofed around for almost three hours!

We ate lunch in the little cafeteria there, and then we decided to explore the Union Street shopping area, which is in a section of the city called Cow Hollow. 

For reasons still unbeknownst to me, we had to climb this hill to get there. See it? See that hill? In the back of the photo? Going up? That hill.

On the way, because I am quite attached to oxygen, I stopped to breathe and take photos of interesting houses. San Francisco is a delight for anyone interested in architecture. You could do a whole tour of the city just looking up at all the interesting details.

I have to admit that when we got to the top of the hill, the view back towards the water was pretty cool.

I liked these almost-matching houses. Do you suppose the spire fell off the one on the left?

This one was gilded. Very spiffy.

These two are also twins, but the one on the left has been maintained a bit better, it looks like. 

Look how they sit up behind the storefronts. I don't remember seeing anything like this before.

It was a very rainy Sunday morning, and all the cafes were full of people warming up.

We popped into Chronicle Books, and Claire was quite charmed by the children's reading nook.

Our whole long weekend in San Francisco was full of so many, many interesting things to look at. I really recommend a visit if you are ever in the area. :)