A Traveling Fool

“A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.” — William Shakespeare

I became a teenager at the age of nine.  This was because I had a next door neighbor named Susie, who was thirteen.  Despite our age difference, she took me under her wing and taught me about what was and wasn’t good in music.  One group in the great category was The Beatles.  I had to agree with her and continue to agree with her on that one.  This was a girl with taste.

So, at the age of … well … uh … let’s just say adulthood, I joined the leader of a Beatles walking tour at the Marylebone Train Station in London at 11:20am on a Saturday in 1997 for what I thought was supposed to be a two hour tour.  It ended up being a three hour journey through central London and St John’s Wood.

Some of the opening scenes of “A Hard Day’s Night” had been filmed at the Marylebone Train Station, including the phone boxes.  We then moved to various other locations, such as the flat where the “Two Virgins” photo was taken, the registry office where Paul & Linda and George & Patti were married, the EMI offices building (empty, but still recognizable), the former Apple clothing shop, the restaurant from “Help”, and Jane Asher’s father’s home (where Jane & Paul had lived for three years).  Then we hopped on the Tube at Baker Street and went out to St John’s Wood.  This was the location of both Abbey Road Studios and the famous crosswalk where the album cover was photographed.

Since this was a real street with real traffic on it, trying to recreate the photo was at one’s own peril.  I just took a quick photo of the crosswalk when no traffic was coming and felt good about that.  Others were really struggling trying to get a photo of themselves in the crosswalk without getting killed doing it.

Thoroughly satisfied by this guided walk, I hopped back on the Tube and took it to the Embankment.  Problem was, I was too dumb to realize that, once I had left central London, additional charges were added to the fare.  So it was a different price to go back to Embankment from St John’s Wood than to go from Baker’s Street to St John’s Wood.  When I got to Embankment, I couldn’t get out of the station.  My ticket was wrong.  So I went to the window for help.  They didn’t count my being foreign and not understanding how it worked as an excuse, and charged me £10 for not having the right fare.  That was the most expensive Underground or Subway ride I’ve ever had.

Back in 1970, an American actor named Sam Wanamaker began a quest to have a replica of the Globe Theatre built as the original had been built and as close to where the original had been as possible.  The original had been built in 1599, destroyed by fire in 1613, rebuilt in 1614, and demolished in 1644 by Cromwell’s people who believed theatre to be the work of the devil.  But then, there are always narrow-minded people around in just about any age.  It took until 1997 before the new theatre was completed and opened to the public with a production of “Henry V”.  The roof is the only thatched roof permitted in London since the Great Fire of 1666.  As with the original, the center of the theatre is open to the sky, so they only perform plays in the summer.

The first Artistic Director of Shakespeare’s Globe, as they call it, was Mark Rylance.  He’s the fella who won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role in the movie “Bridge of Spies”.  My mom and I had the privilege of meeting him when he brought the troupe from Shakespeare’s Globe to the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis with a production of “Twelfth Night”.  We were able to have a very nice conversation with him.  I’ve seen him in two more plays — “Peer Gynt” and “Nice Fish” — and have watched the rest of his career with great interest after that.  He is one very talented actor.

The theatre was not quite yet completed when we visited it and took a tour.  They were using the same building methods as back in the 1500s.  The part that wasn’t finished was where the stage was located.  I took several photos of the construction.  There was a small group of about a dozen people touring the theatre in addition to us, but there were just five in our group.  I really enjoy smaller groups when touring something because the tour becomes more of a conversation and less of a lecture.  In larger groups it can be difficult to get a question in edgewise, especially if you have one or two people determined to monopolize the guide (usually to ask questions about the same information they have already given us — sorry, my curmudgeonly side is showing).  After our tour, we had lunch at the Anchor Pub.  There has been a pub on the site for 800 years, although the version that Shakespeare himself would have frequented was gutted during the Great Fire of 1666.

The Imperial War Museum was founded in 1917 and was moved to its present location in St George’s Fields in Southwark in 1936.  The building had been the Bethlem Royal Hospital, aka Bedlam.  I thought that was pretty fitting.  Some of the greatest insanity that exists on earth is often the cause of wars.

Bethlem Royal Hospital had been founded in 1247 and shifted its location several times through the centuries.  At first, it was a regular hospital.  But once it began receiving the insane in 1377, it continued to receive more and more until it was exclusively a psychiatric hospital by 1460.  This was when it became known as Bedlam (a corruption of Bethlem, which is in turn a corruption of Bethlehem).  The building now housing the Imperial War Museum was its location in the 19^th century.

The exhibits are quite interesting, including tanks, artillery, and a great collection of planes.  They have the remains of the Messerschmitt that Rudolph Hess flew from German to Scotland during World War II.  He was the Deputy Fuhrer and supposedly wanted to negotiate a peace contract.  He was arrested instead.  He was tried at Nuremburg after the war and given a life sentence.

The museum also houses a few artifacts from the Lusitania, which was a ship that was sunk by a German U-boat during World War I, killing over a thousand civilian passengers.  There is a trench experience from World War I where you can get an idea of what it might have been like in the trenches.  They also have a Blitz experience from World War II where everyone is seated in a bomb shelter while sirens sound and you can hear the bombs going off overheard.  Then you leave the bomb shelter and see the destruction all around.  That one was quite effective.

When we left the museum and headed to Westminster Bridge, we unexpectantly passed the home of William Bligh, the commander of the Bounty at the time of its mutiny in 1789.  The next day we left for a tour of Devon and Cornwall.

Near the town of Maidstone in Kent, sits a beautiful castle on an island in a lake.  This is Leeds Castle.  There has been a castle on this site since about 1119.  But the current castle, although it looks old (it was built in the Tudor style) mainly dates to the 19^th century.

A lot can happen to a castle over the years.  Some are destroyed by fire.  Some are bombarded by cannons.  Some simply disintegrate from neglect.  None of these things happened to Leeds Castle.  But it was constantly being rebuilt and remodeled by various owners.  Fortunately they all were quite wealthy and could afford to lavish their attention on the castle.  So the results are spectacular.

King Edward I (that major castle builder in Wales) acquired the castle in the 13^th century.  It became a favorite of his and his wife, Eleanor of Castile.  Windsor, the Tower of London, and Leeds were their three main castles in the south of England.  Back in the day, kings kept moving from one castle to another around the country to keep themselves constantly in front of their subjects.  They had to do it to keep control over their kingdom.  If, like the early kings after William the Conqueror, they also had territories in France, they were back and forth between France and England like yo-yos.  As much as I love to travel, I don’t think that sounds like a lot of fun.  Always moving.  Always looking over their shoulder.  Never able to just stay put, relax, have fun.

They had retinues of hundreds of people they had to house and feed (and pay) who traveled with them, including hoards of knights, musicians, ladies in waiting, servants, and any Dukes, Earls or other people they wanted to keep their eye on.  I suppose that’s one reason why Shakespeare had Henry IV say “uneasy lies the head that wears a crown”.  Of course, Henry had taken the crown from Richard II and had him murdered, so he was well aware of how dangerous the throne could be.  That still didn’t stop him from taking it from his cousin, though.

When Henry VIII came along, he used Leeds Castle for his first wife, Catherine of Aragon.  That’s the era that the castle mainly evokes now, but with modern plumping and electricity.  There is also a swimming pool.

In the gatehouse at the time we visited in 1997, was a museum dedicated to dog collars.  The castle’s shop also had pottery figures of dogs what were very well done.  We ended up getting two of them.  The one I have is still the nicest dog figure I own.

From Leeds Castle, we went to Canterbury to have lunch and visit the Cathedral.  My watch had decided to die.  Not just the battery, but the whole thing fell apart.  So we needed to purchase a new one for me between lunch and the Cathedral visit.  As it happened, there was a shop across the street from the café where we had lunch.  I still have the watch.  It has lasted much longer than the one it replaced.

Canterbury Cathedral was originally founded in 597.  After a fire in 1067, it was rebuilt from 1070 to 1077.  The Cathedral was very important and the Archbishop of Canterbury was the most important ecclesiastical position in England.  King Henry II appointed Thomas Beckett to the position, believing that his old friend would just rubber stamp whatever the king wanted.  No such luck.  Beckett had his own mind and conscience and did what he thought was right whether the king agreed or not.  This made the king very frustrated.  At one point he said something to the effect of “who will rid me of this turbulent priest?”  Well, about four of his knights took him quite literally and murdered Beckett there in the cathedral.

Now you would think that Henry II would have learned to curb his tongue after that.  But no.  He was constantly stirring up the pot with all of this sons — Henry, Richard, Geoffrey, and John — plus his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine (who he kept imprisoned for much of their married life).  Every last one of them ended up at war with him at one time or another and constantly plotting against him (and one another).

After Beckett’s death, Canterbury became a place of pilgrimage for people who wanted to honor the slain archbishop.  He was interred in the cathedral and a shrine was built directly over the tomb.  When Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries and destroyed shrines after splitting with the Catholic Church when he wanted to divorce Catherine of Aragon in order to marry Anne Boleyn, Beckett’s shrine was removed.  This was in 1538.  Henry VIII also summoned the long dead (murdered in 1170) archbishop to court to face charges of treason.  When he didn’t show up, Henry declared him guilty by default.  I don’t know.  I think it would have been cool if the nearly four hundred years dead ghost of Beckett had shown up.  But I don’t think that was quite Beckett’s style and I’m sure he had better things to do.

Also at Canterbury Cathedral is the tomb of the Black Prince, which was what Edward III’s eldest son (also named Edward) was called.  He was next in line for the throne, but he died about a year before his father of some sort of illness.  His son, Richard, took the throne at the age of nine and became King Richard II.

The Black Prince’s tomb is pretty cool.  There is an effigy of him in full armor (in black) and his other accoutrements are hanging above the tomb.  Actually the ones above the tomb are reproductions as the originals are much too delicate and are displayed in a glass case on the wall.  He died in 1376.  As I’ve mentioned before, several of my ancestors have been knights, in service to various kings and other royalty.  One of those knights served the Black Prince and was killed at the Battle of Crecy in 1346.  Although a strong victory for the English forces, it didn’t do my ancestor much good.  Nevertheless, I gave the Black Prince’s effigy a little pat.

Our last stop of the day was Dover Castle, which was founded in the 11^th century.  During the Napoleonic Wars, a complex of barracks tunnels was created beneath the castle.  Then, during World War II, these tunnels were converted into an air-raid shelter and then a military command center plus a hospital.  There are roughly three miles of tunnels in the chalky cliffs.

Despite the song saying, “I’m looking over the White Cliffs of Dover,” I was not interested in walking over to the edge and taking a look.  Not a fan of heights.  Later, when we went into the town below, I was just fine with looking up at them.  Very impressive and quite beautiful.

We headed back to London to spend a few more days there exploring until we set off on another multi-day adventure to Devon and Cornwall.  Next up — The Beatles, the Bard & Bedlam.

On the day of the “Legal Inns of Court” walking tour, we were to meet up with our female guide at the Holborn Tube (Underground) Station.  Instead we found a large man with a booming voice.  Replacing our guide (who was ill) was a retired City of London police officer named Donald Rumbelow.  He was considered at that time to be one of the best Ripperologists (an expert on Jack the Ripper) around.  He had written a very thoroughly researched and knowledgeable book on the subject, which I had read.  I was planning on taking his Saturday night “Jack the Ripper” walking tour later that week.

We had a relatively small group for the “Legal Inns of Court” tour, so we were able to ask plenty of questions.  He was very conversant about everything he was showing us and quite personable as well.  Mom and I were glad we had him for the tour.  He also charmingly told my Mom that he would look out for me on the Jack the Ripper tour as she didn’t plan to go.

Our first stop was Gray’s Inn.  Anyone who wants to be a barrister in England or Wales must belong to an inn of court.  There are four — Gray’s Inn, Lincoln’s Inn, the Inner Temple, and the Middle Temple.  Gray’s Inn dates back at least as far as 1370 and includes Sir Francis Bacon, William Cecil, and Thomas Cromwell among some of its prominent members.  At one point, it was the largest by membership (when Queen Elizabeth I was its patron).  But, after the English Civil War, during which the entire process of being educated as a lawyer and being “called to the bar” was suspended, became the smallest.  Shakespeare’s play The Comedy of Errors was first performed there at the Inn’s hall.

To study law, one could attend Oxford or Cambridge or one of the Inns of Chancery.  The only surviving example of the latter is Staple Inn which dates from 1585.  Each Inn of Chancery was tied to a specific Inn of Court.  The students here would go on to Gray’s Inn to actually practice law.  The side of the main building that faces the street is half-timbered, while the side that faces the courtyard is brick.  Some solicitors have offices here.

The difference between a solicitor and a barrister is that the solicitor is the lawyer who handles legal matters outside of a courtroom, while the barrister is the lawyer who argues the case before the court.  Normally a person would hire a solicitor.  Then, if a barrister is needed, the solicitor will refer the case to the barrister.  There is a really good, on-the-edge-of-your-seat kind of thriller with both barristers and solicitors called “The Escape Artist”.  It has been broadcast on PBS in the States.

Next we paid a visit to Lincoln’s Inn.  This is the largest by physical size.  It is thought to date back to 1310.  John Donne, William Gladstone, Sir Thomas More, Margaret Thatcher, and Tony Blair were all members of Lincoln’s Inn.

For many, many years there was a tradition that unwanted babies could be left in the undercroft of the chapel at Lincoln’s Inn — no questions asked.  These children were all given the last name of Lincoln and placed in orphanages until they could be adopted or came of age.  Many families in the USA who think they might be descended from Abraham Lincoln might actually be descended from a baby abandoned at Lincoln’s Inn.  I have the name “Lincoln” in my family too and have found no connection to Abraham Lincoln.

The Inner and Middle Temples were next.  Until their abolishment in 1312, the Temple area belonged to the Knights Templar.  Both the Inner Temple and the Middle Temple became Inns of Court in roughly 1388.

The Inner Temple contains the Temple Church, which was built by the Knights Templar in 1185 and contains the effigies of some of the knights and the bodies of several more.  I have several knights in my family ancestry and some joined the Templars later in their lives (after having been married and fathered children).  I am aware of three that were buried at Temple Church.  The Inner Temple Gateway that leads from Fleet Street to the church has been there since the Templars built it, but was rebuilt in the 1600s and again in the 1700s.

The garden in the Inner Temple was where William Shakespeare set the start of the War of the Roses when the House of Lancaster selected a red rose and the House of York selected a white rose.  I wonder if that really happened or if he was just using poetic license.  I think it was the latter, but it is more romantic to think it might have really happened that way.  Whatever way it actually happened, they did have those roses as their symbols.

The first production of Shakespeare’s play Twelfth Night was performed in Middle Temple Hall in 1602.  Sir Francis Drake was also feted there after defeating the Spanish Armada.  The hall survived the Great Fire of 1666 as well as the London Blitz so remains unchanged from when it was built

The last stop on the tour was the Royal Courts of Justice building.  The criminal cases are tried in the Old Bailey.  The Royal Courts of Justice contains the High Court and the Courts of Appeal for England and Wales.  The public can view cases there.  So Mom and I did just that for the fun of seeing everybody in their robes and wigs.

After touring all of this legal real estate, we decided to join “The Footsteps of Sherlock Holmes” walking tour the next day.  While it covered Covent Garden, the Lyceum Theatre, Maiden Lane, the Opera House, and the Sherlock Holmes pub (on Northumberland), it disappointingly did not include the Criterion (where Holmes and Watson met), 221B Baker Street (the Sherlock Holmes Museum), the Charing Cross Hotel or Old Scotland Yard.  The guide still managed to tell many of the tales of what happened where, so it was an entertaining, though not thorough, tour.

Since Mom wasn’t up to running around Whitechapel in the dark, I went off to Tower Hill Tube Station to join the Jack the Ripper walking tour alone.  Our guide, despite having a very large number of people on the tour, remembered me from a couple days earlier, kept his promise to my mom, and took me under his wing.  I stuck to him like glue.  I wanted to make certain that I didn’t miss a thing.

A couple of the murder locations, such as Hanbury Street (Annie Chapman) and Mitre Square (Catherine Eddowes) hadn’t changed at all since 1888.  Two others, Berner Street (Elizabeth Stride) and Buck’s Row (Mary Ann Nichols), had changed their street names, but still looked quite spooky in the dark of the night.  The one location where I really had to use my imagination was the last murder (Mary Jane Kelly).  The street (Dorset Street) and the cluster of buildings (Miller’s Court) no longer existed.

In Goulston Street, which was where a piece of a bloody apron was found with some graffiti written on the wall above, some of the neighbors apparently weren’t too happy about the tour as they opened their windows and blasted loud music out of them.  Rumbelow’s booming voice could still be heard, however, and he finished with what he wanted to show us there before moving on.

In addition to the murder sites and Goulston Street (which also hadn’t changed much), we were taken to a building that had been a doss house at the time.  A doss house was a pay-as-you-go rooming house.  This doss house was near both Miller’s Court and the Ten Bells pub.  The pub has been associated with two of the victims (Annie Chapman and Mary Jane Kelly).  It has also been thought that perhaps the Ripper himself had a few drinks there.  Across the street is Christ Church Spitalfields, which is a very large, very nice church.

At the end of the tour (after visiting the Ten Bells), we all trooped down Commercial Street to where it intersected with Whitechapel Road to take the Tube back to wherever we came from initially, which in my case was the Embankment Tube Station.

Back in 1888, when those murders took place, there wasn’t much opportunity for a woman with no education or skills to be able to support herself.  Women were expected to be married or be supported by a relative.  But some women were abandoned by their husbands and/or abused by their husbands.  Or maybe their husband died.  There were also women who became addicted to alcohol or drugs.  For some of them, the only way to survive was prostitution.  For that way of life, many of them lost their lives — not just the victims of Jack the Ripper.

High on a hill, on a very large plot of land in Leicestershire sits a beautiful castle name Belvoir (pronounced “Beaver”).  It has been the home of the Manners family and the Dukes of Rutland since the early 1500s.  Prior to that, from the middle 1200s until the direct line of the family died out in 1508, it belonged to the de Ros family.  This was a group of my numerous knightly ancestors.  At that time, it was a Norman Keep.  The current castle is the fourth to be built on the site.

As part of a 1997 visit to England, we did a small group multi-day tour out of London that included a private visit to Belvoir.  It is still a private home, but they do have tours and occasionally allow filming at the castle.  It is both magnificent and homey at the same time with spacious, luxuriously decorated rooms for entertaining and cozy rooms for the family.  It is another of my favorite castles.

We were shown around the place by the butler.  The Duchess came by while we were gazing at the famous Holbein painting of Henry VIII.  She chatted for a few minutes and then went on her merry way.

One of my favorite rooms was the very large Entrance Hall filled with arms and armor.  I know some people find it odd for a woman to like antique weapons, but I do.  It’s like holding a piece of history in your hand.  So I have a few daggers, pistols and swords that I have picked up here and there on my travels.  Some are real.  Some are reproduction.  All are American Civil War or earlier and remind me of where I was when I got them (and, for the real ones, who might have owned them before).

The tradition of afternoon tea began at Belvoir in the 1840s because the time between lunch (at around noon) and dinner (after 7pm) seemed too long for a visiting Duchess.  So they came up with a meal of tea, scones, sandwiches and desserts to tide them over.  Usually when I have a high tea at about four or five in the afternoon, I’m much too full to have any dinner.  Back in those days it seems they used to really pack the food away.

We spent the night in Nottingham.  After a quick visit to the castle in the morning, we headed for Haworth in Yorkshire — home of the Bronte sisters (Charlotte, Emily and Anne).  Their father was the curate of the church and the family lived at the parsonage, which was across the graveyard from the church.  The graveyard surrounds the house on two sides and the moors on a third.  It’s a pretty atmospheric (read “gloomy”) place.  I could definitely picture Heathcliff and Cathy meeting out there on the moor — despite Wuthering Heights not being my favorite Bronte book (that would be Jane Eyre).

There were six children in all.  The two eldest girls died pretty young from tuberculosis, which they caught at boarding school.  Both Charlotte and Emily had been sent to the same school but were brought home when their sisters died.  The school was the model for the boarding school in Jane Eyre.

The only boy in the family was Branwell.  He became addicted to a combination of alcohol and laudanum (a type of opium) and spent a lot of time in the Black Bull Pub, which was not too far from the house.  It is next door to the church.  I wonder if Daddy Bronte came over from the church from time to time to check on his wastrel son.

It seems the girls had enough imagination to transport themselves elsewhere and enough talent to write it all down.  Poor Branwell, on the other hand, didn’t seem to be able to escape his drab existence other than through alcohol and drugs.  A real shame.  We were able to spend some time exploring the church, house, cemetery, and a fair amount of the village.  So I felt I soaked it in pretty well.

From Yorkshire we went over to the Lake District to Grasmere, where we spend a couple of nights at the Prince of Wales Hotel.  It had once been a manor house and was built around 1855.  The hotel was right on the lake and a short walk into the village.  It looked like a hotel I had once seen in a Sherlock Holmes movie.

Our room was up on the top floor of the newer wing, added after it became a hotel.  There were three floors in the oldest part of the hotel and four in the newest, so we looked out over part of the roof.  We were told that it rained every night in the Lake District and then cleared up every morning, which was one reason why everything was lush and green.  I have to say that the two nights we spent there, it did just exactly that.

The full day we had in the Lake District began with a very short walk over to Dove Cottage, which was in a cluster of old cottages very close to the hotel.  William Wordsworth had lived there from 1799 to 1808.  Then we went up one of the taller hills (more like a short mountain) to see the view.  From there, we drove by Beatrix Potter’s home and on to Ambleside on Lake Windermere for lunch and a boat ride on the lake.  Apparently some of the pilots in the RAF like to buzz the Lake District, especially Windermere.  So we had a loud jet pass overhead while on the lake.  Rather startling and kind of ruined the mainly Victorian vibe.

Before returning to Grasmere for the afternoon, we visited Ullswater, considered by many to be the most beautiful of the lakes.  You won’t get an argument from me.  Put me next to or on a lake with mountains all around and I’m a happy camper.  My blood pressure automatically goes down and I feel calm and restful.  I also get a smile not easily erased.

After being dropped off at the hotel for free time for the remainder of the afternoon, several of us decided to hike into the village to explore.  On the way we encountered sheep, sheep and more sheep.  Among them were several baby lambs.  That did it.  We were all waylaid by the side of the road, trying to coax the babies to come close enough to be petted.  This didn’t interest them at all.  Some of them looked over at us and then turned their backs to trot off after their moms.  Most didn’t even look.  Didn’t even care why these strange-looking beings were calling to them.  After a while we gave up and wandered on down Stock Lane into the village.

Although a small village, there are enough tourists to account for the number of shops, cafes and tea houses.  After poking into a few shops and having a cream tea (the lighter version of tea with scones — no sandwiches or desserts), Mom and I headed back to the hotel.  By this time, the lambs were near the fence and gave us a greeting as we strolled up to them.  We were alone, so they probably figured it was safe to be friendly.  A couple of them even stuck their little faces out through the fence.  As we would with a dog, we held our hands in front of their noses for them to sniff.  When they didn’t run away in terror, we gave them scratches on the tops of their heads.  That seemed okay with them.  They trotted off happily and we trotted off happily.

In late January/early February of 1996, it got really, really cold in Minneapolis.  Now some people might say, “Isn’t it always cold in Minneapolis?”  But no.  It is only cold in the dead of winter.  Some parts of winter can be relatively balmy — such as in the 40s F.  The summers can easily be in the 90s with humidity in the 70s.  So I am speaking about abnormal cold.  It was several degrees below zero Fahrenheit for several weeks.  Mom and I looked at one another and said, “Road Trip.”  Of course, for us, that meant getting on a plane and flying somewhere.  The “where” we chose was San Francisco.  We could get a package deal with airfare, hotel, a couple of day trips, and transportation to and from the hotel and airport for a 5-day trip.  Sold.

When we got on the plane, it was minus 25 F in Minneapolis.  I believe it was in the 50s in San Fran when we arrived.  But that was 50 ABOVE zero.  It felt like heaven to us.  We even opened a window in the hotel room despite the fact that it was foggy and rainy for the first couple days we were there.  Then the weather perked up to the high 60s with sun.  The sea lions basked in the sun; we basked in the sun and all was right with the world.

The hotel we stayed in was cozy, old, not terribly large, and close to Union Square.  All the day tours left from Union Square, so it was a very handy location.  There was also a restaurant with a Sherlock Holmes theme and British food nearby.  That was where we had dinner our first night (we had had lunch at a cool place on a cliff overlooking the ocean called The Cliff House).  After that first night’s dinner, we mainly ate seafood for the rest of the trip.  I love seafood and want to get as much of it as possible when traveling someplace where I can get it fresh.

We took a couple days of hop-on-hop-off tours that took us all over town — to Japanese gardens, Mission Delores, the Presidio, China Town, Nob Hill, and loads of other fun and interesting places.  We spent time out on Fisherman’s Wharf more than once and ate at a couple different places there.  We also watched the sea lions with great fascination.  After one of our lunches, we walked over to where one of the cable car lines began and took the cable car back to our hotel.

Our two biggest highlights were (and I’m just giving these to you in the order of when we did them) a day tour of the vineyards in Sonoma and Napa Valley and an audio tour of Alcatraz.  The wine tasting tour included the Sebastiani Vineyards, Villa Encinal, Sutter Home, and Charles Krug.  Of this group, Sebastiani looked the most like an old, Italian winery.  It had been founded in 1904 and was family run at the time.  Villa Encinal was a relatively new, boutique winery that had been used as one of the locations for the 1995 film “A Walk in the Clouds”, starring Keanu Reeves.  Villa Encinal was as slick and modern as Sebastiani was old world.  It was also on a much smaller scale than any of the others.  Kind of a “Mom & Pop” style of winery.  I kept looking for Keanu Reeves to come striding up towards me through the vineyards, but no such luck.

Sutter Home had been founded in 1874.  It appeared to me that the large, Victorian house seemed like it would be a great place to live.  The winery had created White Zinfandel back in the 1970s and had hit on a goldmine when they did so.  I find that White Zinfandel goes really well with the Thanksgiving turkey, among other things.

Founded in 1861, making it the oldest of the wineries we visited, Charles Krug was also the last winery we visited.  It was actually my favorite of the group, both in regards to what the winery looked like and the wines it produced.  I purchased a new, state of the art corkscrew and a thingy for slicing off the metal wrapping around the cork in the gift shop.  They are still in use in my home today.

Mom and I were both feeling pretty good by this point as we had been sampling pretty much every kind of grape these vineyards crushed.  This is why it’s better to take a wine tour on a bus with someone else driving.  We probably would have gotten arrested if one of us had been behind the wheel.  When we got back to the city, the driver dropped us off at our respective hotels instead of just dumping us out in Union Square.  He probably didn’t want a bunch of tipsy tourists wandering around town, getting hit by cable cars or falling off of piers.

To get to Alcatraz, we boarded a ferry at Pier 33.  The water was fairly choppy on the way out to the island prison and storm clouds were gathering.  So, when we got there, we quickly took a look at all of the exterior bits first before heading into the main part of the complex.

The name Alcatraz is a rough translation from archaic Spanish meaning “pelican”.  In 1846 a lighthouse was built on the island, followed by a military fort in 1850.  Alcatraz was used as a military prison from 1861 to 1868.  In 1934, it became a federal prison up until it was closed in 1963.  As a federal prison, it held such notables as Al Capone, Robert Stroud (“The Birdman of Alcatraz”), George “Machine Gun” Kelly, Mickey Cohen, James “Whitey” Bulgar, and Alvin “Creepy” Karpis.  Although I don’t think that “creepy” would be the best nickname to have, I suppose it was good for a gangster who wanted a scary reputation.  I certainly would have given him a wide berth.  Of course, I don’t think I would have tried to become pals with any of those guys.

Between 1934 and 1963, there were 14 escape attempts.  The most famous one being in June of 1962, involving papier mache heads that were left in the beds of the escapees while they climbed the ventilation shaft to the roof.  A couple of the men were never found.  So they either drowned or were successful at their escape.  You would think that papier mache heads wouldn’t fool anybody, but when they are mostly covered up and the guards had no reason to be suspicious (and therefore most likely to see what they wanted to see) it makes sense.

The tour began with a person telling us about the history of the island and of the prison, including the 1969 Native American occupation of the island.  Then we received headphones and an audio player.  That’s when the tour really became interesting.  The narrative was accompanied by the appropriate sounds.  For instance, at one point, the recording said to enter a particular cell in solitary confinement.  Then you heard the sound of the door slamming and locking behind you.  It wasn’t really, but it made you jump.  The recording also took us through the entire 1962 escape attempt (including the actual cells and ventilator shaft), plus the 1946 Battle of Alcatraz.

The Battle of Alcatraz took you through each of the actual settings, giving you the shouting, gunfire, etc. as you went.  In the corridor where several of the prisoners were finally trapped and killed, you can still see the pockmarks of the bullets.  The audio experience allowed us to feel like we were right in the middle of it all.  It was unnerving, but educational.

All the while we were in the prison, there was a storm raging outside.  Quite appropriate.  The flashes of lighting and occasional clap of thunder went well with the Battle of Alcatraz especially.  One particular boom sounded just after the corridor became quiet again once the gunfire stopped.  Fortunately the storm was over when we needed to head back to the mainland.  Mom and I were relieved to have made our escape, but also thought that the entire tour was wonderful.

The “deep freeze” in Minneapolis was over by the time we returned.  We were back to a regular Minnesota winter.  Our break in San Francisco had been memorable and a lot of fun.

 

First off, I have to say, “I love the Black Hills.”  I really do.  They are beautiful, restful, and always fun to visit.  With the exception of just one little trip back in 1995.

Mom had grown up in the Black Hills of South Dakota, so she had real ties to the area as well as a real love for it that she had instilled in me during our relatively frequent trips out there.  One of her childhood friends had a vacation home near Custer.  Usually, when we visited the Hills, we stayed with this friend.  This time, Julia would not be there, so we were renting the property from her for a week.

We normally flew into Rapid City and then rented a car.  But this time we had a puppy with us.  His name was Rembrandt and he was a not-quite-one-year-old miniature Schnauzer.  Fortunately, he loved road trips.  We had a harness for him that connected to the seatbelt, so he was securely fastened into the back seat.  He could sit up or lie down, but he couldn’t move around much on the seat or stand.  Most importantly he would not be thrown should the car make a quick stop.  We pulled over every two hours to stretch our legs, take a restroom break, give Rembrandt some water, get some food for ourselves, etc.  People in the vicinity seemed to be quite amused when I brought a dog out of the back seat instead of a baby or small child.

Another friend of Mom’s lived in a small town in South Dakota.  She was interested in having us come and visit her (puppy and all), so we stopped off for the night en route from Minneapolis to Rapid City.  She was a very gregarious woman and welcomed us all with open arms.  Rembrandt was very friendly towards people and other dogs, though he did not suffer fools gladly when it came to another dog who was not totally in control of his or herself.  Because of this I was terribly surprised when he took a dump in the middle of Hazel’s living room.  He knew better.  Hazel laughed it off.  Rembrandt pretended nothing was amiss.  Mom and I were mortified.

We were coming from a different direction than usual when we reached the Black Hills.  It was also raining quite hard.  So we chose to stay on main roads as much as possible.  We didn’t realize at the time that it had been raining heavily for days already.  When we reached the bridge in Hill City that we needed to cross to get to Custer, we found that it was already having issues.  It ended up washing out just about an hour or so after we crossed it.

We got to Custer and decided to get just a few groceries to tide us over for a couple of days.  We would get more when we ventured out to go visit Hot Springs (the town in which Mom had lived as a child).  So I hopped out of the car, bought a few things and hurled the wet bag and my soggy self into the car.  The road to Julia’s vacation home was a dirt road at that time and so not the greatest on even a lovely, sunny day.  During the thunderstorm, we found ourselves crawling at a snail’s pace through the mud.  The bolts of lightning were actually helpful to let us occasionally see approximately where we were.

One bolt of lightning illuminated the gate to the property just as we were about to pass it by.  I opened the gate and then waded through the muddy water along the fence to find the key to the house.  Naturally, I slipped at one point.  By the time I returned to the car, I strongly resembled the Swamp Thing.  We both decided that I shouldn’t get back into the car.  So I walked a little ahead of it, with my flashlight in hand, to try to prevent any accidents with anything that might be in the drive or under the deck of the house (which was where we planned to park and where the door that the key fit into was located).  There was already a truck parked under the deck, so we could only get the nose of the car’s hood under.  We also had to squeeze past the truck to get into the door.  I unlocked and opened the door, then we had a mad dash to get everything and everyone inside.  By this time, we were all looking like we had seen better days.

The next day, after all bunking together in the main bedroom for warmth (nobody had thought that heat would be needed in mid-June), I decided it was time to take Rembrandt out for his morning constitutional.  At home he had a fenced in, nicely mowed yard.  Here he was dealing with wet grass that was taller than he was.  Although the yard was fenced, there was plenty of room for a small dog to get through the fencing, which was mainly designed to keep bison, elk and bear out.  So the little guy was on a leash.  He was obviously not in the mood and was letting me know it.

Because he was determined not to do anything in the tall grass, and the only places on the property where the grass was shorter had rocks (and the possibility of snakes), we went out of the gate and across the road to an area that had been mowed not too long ago.  While he was looking for just the right spot, we both heard a very loud growl.  Whatever it was, it was large and not happy.  I was envisioning a bear.  I looked at Rembrandt and he looked at me.  “You’re the appetizer,” I said, “But I’m the main course.”  With that, we high-tailed it back across the road and into the relative safety of the fenced property.  He ended up going in the high grass between the house and the very swollen French Creek.

We had decided to take it easy on our first day anyway (it was supposed to be a vacation after all).  So a little later on in the day, Mom was crocheting, I was needlepointing and Rembrandt was playing with a toy in the large living area on the first level up from ground level when a big storm came up suddenly.  This vacation house was a geodesic dome, so loads of glass.  It was hailing.  We took refuge in the dining room, which was still one floor up from ground, but had the least amount of windows (there was a bedroom above it).

Once the storm had begun to die down a little, I went downstairs to see what shape that level was in.  The previously sluggish toilet had become clogged and water was now coming up the drain in the laundry room.  The sewer began to back up and we could no longer get any water in the bathroom on the ground floor or the kitchen above it.  So I started calling motels in Custer to see if there was one with a vacancy that would take a dog.  In the meantime, Mom packed us up.  Once I got us booked into a motel, Mom called Julia to let her know what was happening and where we would be.  There might have been mobile phones in 1995, but we didn’t own one.

Despite not being under any kind of shelter during the hail storm, the car thankfully wasn’t damaged.  We loaded it up and went into Custer.  Rembrandt took it all in stride.  He was the kind of dog who was fine as long as he had us with him.  The motel was good and had a restaurant next door, so we could take turns having a meal while the other one looked after Rembrandt.  The grass was mowed, so no trying to get the puppy to do his business in the tall grass.  They also had a TV that worked.  We had been thinking about staying one more day so we could visit Hot Springs and then head home.  But the news said that more storms were coming in the afternoon of the next day and would last for the rest of the week.  That did it.  We would get up in the morning, have breakfast, and try to outrun the storm.

By the time we arrived in Mitchell (about midway home), we checked into a place that not only allowed dogs, but had room service.  After a good supper, we went to bed, listening to the strains of children playing in the pool a couple floors below in the courtyard.  The storm soon caught up with us.  Around 4:00am, we were jolted awake by a loud bang and a flash of light that seemed to be simultaneous.  The fire alarms went off.  We quickly pulled on our jeans (already sleeping in T-shirts), grabbed Rembrandt, his leash and our purses and went out into the hall.  Once we got downstairs, I figured we would be going out of the door into the night.  I was certain it was a fire.  The other guests were certain it was a tornado.  So we all clustered just inside of the exit door until we could either smell smoke or hear the tornado.  Everyone marveled at how well behaved and calm Rembrandt was.  He just sat in my arms and watched everyone.

It turned out we were all wrong about what was happening.  A bolt of lightning had hit the satellite dish on the roof.  The dish was totally fried, but no fire.  It seemed to us that the storm had been ticked off that we had tried to get away from it and decided to zap us in Mitchell.  Kind of a “hey, you think you can escape me, do ya?” sort of thing.  A little past 4:30am we were back in our beds, visions of home dancing in our heads.

We were wishing we had some ruby slippers to click the heels together and be immediately home.  Instead, we got up at 7:00am, had a good breakfast from room service, packed up the car again and drove home — thankful for our escape and the lovely weather back in Minneapolis.

It occurred to me that staying at this particular hotel might be an adventure when I saw that the desk clerk had purple hair and an earring through the nose.  Although it was a late Victorian building, it definitely no longer had a Victorian atmosphere.

The room was so small that we had to crawl over our beds to get out of the door.  I kept my suitcase in the space between my bed and the wall, hauled it out to get take things out or put things in, and then put it back again.  There was no room to leave it out or to unpack it.  Instead of a closet, the room contained a small wardrobe (which was just one more thing upon which I could bark my shins in the night).  The ceiling was higher than the measurement of the floor space — 14 feet.

The reasons we had chosen this particular hotel were its location (just off Trafalgar Square, so we could walk nearly everywhere), the fact that the Georgian hotel at which we had stayed before had gone up in price, and the fact that it was Victorian.  I love all things Victorian, as anyone who has ever been inside my house could tell you.  Although fairly modern on the outside, I have ignored that and decorated the inside with a mixture of Victorian and Georgian furniture, with the occasional medieval piece tossed in for good measure.

On this particular trip, I was focusing on a Victorian/theatrical/Charles Dickens/Sherlock Holmes theme.  We started by heading over to St Katherine’s Docks and having lunch at the Dickens Inn.  The building had been a spice warehouse back in Dickens day and converted to a pub and restaurant when this area had been refurbished as flats, shops and an area for docking private boats.

The hotel was located on Villiers Street (named after George Villiers, the first Duke of Buckingham, whose house once stood on the site), a cobblestone street that connected the Embankment (a riverside park that had been laid out in Victorian times) to The Strand (a main thoroughfare which had been lined with theatres and restaurants back in the Victorian era and still was) — a crossroads of sorts, where the government agencies end and the theatre district begins.  If I went south, I ended up on Whitehall; north and west was theatreland.

Just up The Strand from Villiers Street is the Adelphi Theatre, where we went to see “Me & My Girl”, which was starring Karl Howman in the leading role (he had replaced Robert Lindsey when Lindsey and the show went to Broadway).  Nearly one hundred years earlier, in 1897, one of the Adelphi’s leading actors, William Terriss, was murdered by a deranged fellow actor just outside the stage door.  It is said that his ghost still haunts both the theatre and the nearby Covent Garden tube station.  I wonder why he’d be interested in haunting a tube station.  Doesn’t seem like that great of a place to hang out to me.  The wonderful Victorian restaurant, Rules, is just across the street from the Adelphi’s stage door.  Seems like a much nicer place to haunt.  But I suppose he has his reasons.

Many of the theatres in the area have interesting histories, but none so fascinating or as long as the Theatre Royal Drury Lane (where we saw “Miss Saigon”).  The oldest theatre in London, Drury Lane was founded in 1662 when Thomas Killigrew received King Charles II’s royal charter.  The King first met his most famous mistress, Nell Gwyn, at that same theatre.  Most of the present building dates from 1811-12 as it burned down a couple of times.

During one of the fires (in 1809), Richard Brinsley Sheridan (the playwright) was theatre manager.  As the fire raged on, he settled into a nearby tavern, quietly drinking a bottle of wine as he watched the conflagration.  When asked how he could be so calm while his theatre was burning down, he answered, “Can’t a man enjoy a glass of wine by his own fireside?”

One section of the theatre that survived the blaze is the grand staircase.  It is really two separate staircases, one on each side of a rotunda.  In the late 18th century, King George III and the Prince Regent had separate stairs built because they encountered one another one evening on the original single staircase, got into a fight, and the King boxed the Prince’s ears.  If the real Prince Regent was anything like the way Hugh Laurie portrayed him in the third series of “Black Adder”, I wouldn’t blame the King for boxing his ears.  The words “King’s Side” and “Prince’s Side” can still be seen over opposite doors.

The theatre is also reportedly haunted.  It is supposedly the most haunted theatre in England.  Several of the theatres in London’s West End are haunted.  Both Her Majesty’s Theatre (home since 1986 to “The Phantom of the Opera”) and the Theatre Royal Haymarket are both haunted by former managers.  I guess some theatre managers have difficulty letting go.

The Theatre Royal Haymarket is mentioned in one of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes mysteries.  Although he was a fictional character, many of the locations used in the stories were real, and some of them are still standing.  These include the Criterion (where Watson first met Holmes), the Charing Cross Hotel, Claridge’s, Covent Garden, the Albert Hall and, of course, the Victoria, Paddington, Waterloo, Euston and Charing Cross rail stations.  The Grand Hotel on Northumberland Avenue (called the “Northumberland Hotel” in the Holmes mysteries) is no longer standing.  But, across the street from where it once stood, is the Sherlock Holmes pub.  This was about two blocks south of my hotel.  The sitting room of 221B Baker Street has been duplicated behind a glass wall in the pub.  It sort of makes one feel like a voyeur.

Across the street from our hotel used to be a boot blacking factory where Charles Dickens worked as a child.  Around the corner on Buckingham Street was a house where Dickens lived briefly as a young journalist in 1834, and which he used as one of the settings for David Copperfield.  Just a few blocks away was a subway (an underground walking tunnel) where boys like those Dickens wrote about in Oliver Twist used to congregate to divide the loot after an afternoon of picking pockets.

Closer to the British Museum, on Doughty Street, is a house which used to belong to Dickens during two very productive years in which he completed The Pickwick Papers, wrote Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby, and began Barnaby Rudge.  This house is open to the public.  The day that Mom and I arrived to see it, we were greeted at the door by a young man dressed in Victorian garb and looking like he had just stepped out of one of Dickens’ books.  He gave us what ended up to be a private tour of the house.  The house was furnished as it had been back in Dickens’ day and contained some of his original handwritten manuscripts.

Smack in the middle of a very bustling are is the Old Curiosity Shop.  It was built in 1567 and hadn’t changed since 1700.  The proprietor of the shop had begun working there as a teenager and eventually took it over.  He owned an amazing collection of Dickens memorabilia.  He allowed Mom and I to go upstairs and see what he had.  We were the only customers in the shop at the time.  The main floor was still an antique shop, so Mom and I looked around to see what we might want to take home with us.  We both ended up with tapestries of Tower Bridge.  Mine still hangs in my bedroom.  I bought a small Toby mug (also known as a character mug) that sits on a shelf of an antique pier cabinet, that had belonged to my grandmother, in my living room.  Sadly, on a later trip, we found the Old Curiosity Shop to have been converted into an upscale shoe shop.  I guess that the charming fellow who had owned it reached a point where he couldn’t run it any more, had nobody else to take it on, and sold it.

To finish up our visit, we had high tea at the Charing Cross Hotel.  The room in which the tea was held was quite lavish and Victorian.  I could easily picture Holmes and Watson meeting with Sir Henry Baskerville there before setting off for Baskerville Hall.  The sandwiches were dainty, the scones delicious and the desserts amazing.  Oh yes, and the tea — Darjeeling.  This was our first high tea in the UK.  It would not be our last.

I didn’t mean to be out of the US during the 1991 Gulf War.  It just sort of happened that way.  I had my set of plans; the first President Bush had his.  He didn’t let me in on his.

The war began while we were in the air en route to Gatwick Airport just outside of London.  Because of a friend my mom had with the airline, we had been boosted up to First Class.  The plane was half empty due to the threat of war and our section had a grand total of five people in it.

With a glass of champagne before dinner, a glass of wine with dinner, a Bailey’s Irish Cream after dinner, eye shades, a neck pillow and a seat that went nearly completely horizontal, I had actually slept for the first time ever on a plane.  I smiled brightly at the customs officer and answered his questions with zest (instead of my usual bleary-eyed grumble).

The soldiers and tanks around the perimeter of the airport didn’t tip me off as I had heard that such precautions were being taken because of the possibility of war.  The train ride from Gatwick to Victoria Station was uneventful.  It was during the taxi from Victoria Station to the hotel that we found out we were at war.

“American are you?” the cabby asked.

“Yes.”

“One of the brave ones, eh?  Don’t imagine I’ll be seeing too many Americans now that the war’s on.”

“The war’s on?”

“That’s right … you were on the plane.  We’re at war.”

“Are we on the same side?”

The cabby laughed.  “So far,” he said.

We drove past Parliament and several of the government offices along Whitehall.  Not that many days earlier, the IRA had lobbed a rocket in Number 10 Downing Street’s direction from a parked van on Whitehall.  The area was now patrolled by armed soldiers and the entrance to Downing street was sealed.  It wasn’t even possible, at that time, to see down the street.  On our previous visit in 1983, we had been able to stroll down the street and take a photo of the Prime Minister’s home.  The cabby gave us a blow-by-blow of what had happened, pointing out the exact spot where the van had been.

Since it wasn’t our first trip to the UK, we knew that the large numbers of soldiers and the tight security which was evident everywhere were not standard operating procedures for the capital city.  It was a little unnerving at first.

Our hotel was just off of Trafalgar Square near Charing Cross, so we could walk pretty much everywhere.  This proved to be a good plan as the underground stations were closed half of the time because of bombings or threats of bombs.  A couple of bombs went off at Victoria Station and some outlying suburban stations.  There was also a threat one day of one at Charing Cross.  They had the entire area around the station (including our hotel on Villiers Street) cordoned off and patrolled by policemen with dogs.

Except for this aspect, being in the UK during the war was actually a pretty good deal.  There were very few tourists at all (much less other Americans), so we had all of the main tourist attractions pretty much to ourselves.  On our previous visit, both the Tower of London and Westminster Abbey were very crowded.  This time was completely different.

At Westminster Abbey, we managed to find the final resting places of several people we hadn’t been able to locate before.  Someone had been standing on Charles Dickens on our previous visit (he is buried under a stone slab in the floor of Poet’s Corner — the grave is well marked now, but not so in 1983 or 1991).  This time we were the only people in Poet’s Corner and we found him quite easily.  In fact, the only other tourists we encountered in the entire Abbey was a group of French school children.

Since the Abbey personnel weren’t terribly busy with herding tourists, we engaged some of them in conversation and were rewarded by learning things we didn’t already know and being shown things we hadn’t seen before.  It was a whole ‘nother world.  We actually ended up spending more time in the Abbey than before because we were able to see so much more of it in detail.

When we got to the Tower of London and found only a small group of German tourists, we decided to spend a lot of time chatting with the Yeoman Warders (the Tudor-uniformed guards depicted on the Beefeaters Gin label).  These people are wonderful conversationalists and extremely well trained in the history of the Tower.  We always start our visit with the Yeoman Warder led tour and then carry on from there.  With Mom and I as the only takers on our particular tour on that visit, it was much more of a conversation between the three of us than the usual booming voice of the Warder trying to carry across roughly thirty or forty people straining to hear every word.  We could talk about the history of the place, the people who had been imprisoned there (and executed there) and the ghosts that were all over the complex of buildings.

On our previous visit, one of the Warders had explained the reason why the British drive on the left-hand side of the road.  He claimed that, back in medieval times, the knights rode their horses on the left side of the road so they could carry a sword, halberd or an ax in their right hand to combat any enemy they might encounter.  This tradition carried on up through the days of the highwaymen (trading guns for swords) right on up to the first automobile.  Rather than changing the traditional side of the road, they just changed the car instead.  Sounds rather plausible, but you are never really certain whether or not they are pulling your leg.

On this visit, since we had him to ourselves, we chatted with the Warder about some of my ancestors on my father’s side that had been Constables of the Tower between the 1400s and the 1700s.  This made our visit inside the Chapel of St Peter Ad Vincula (located in close proximity to the site of the scaffold) a little more interesting than usual.  Fortunately, none of the Royal Family (whose private chapel it is) was using it at the time.  So Mom and I had a private tour of the interior.  Anne Bolyen, Catherine Howard, Lady Jane Grey, Henry Grey, and Sir Walter Raleigh are some of the people buried just in front of the altar.  The Warder said that one of my ancestors was credited with inventing the rack — try living that one down.

One day, after exploring the South Bank of the Thames and having crossed back over one of the bridges to return to our hotel, we encountered one of the most unusual public facilities we have ever come across.  It was cylindrical and extremely futuristic.  As soon as I paid my 30p, the door slid open with a decidedly “Star Trekky” sound.  Once inside, the lavatory flipped down from the wall and the door slid closed with the same “thuomp”.  Then came the music — a bright, bouncy little ditty that only served to bring on the giggles.  When the button to flush was pushed, the bowl flipped back up into the wall and the music stopped.  To wash your hands, you put your hands into a space in the wall that first gave you soap, then water and then air dried your hands.  To get out of this space capsule, another button was pushed — you didn’t want to push the wrong button at the wrong time.  Also, you had to be quick about getting in and out as the door wasn’t open for long.

When I emerged, Mom said, “What’s so funny?”

“You’ll see,” I replied enigmatically.  She did.  We laughed for several blocks.

We took a multi-day tour out of London.  There were maybe eight of us on a coach that could hold 40.  The others were from Australia and New Zealand.  The tour included some time in Warwick, where we toured the castle (which became and remains one of my favorite castles in the UK), a short exploration of Chester and a visit to the Lake District.  It also included my first time ever in Scotland (where I have ancestors on my father’s side) and Wales (where I have ancestor’s on my mother’s side) — both sides have English ancestry.

In Edinburgh, we had a local guide who gave us a grand overview of the city.   Our guide was a fascinating fella who had lived in Edinburgh his entire life.  He knew all of its history and all of its legends.  He had a delightful brogue and wore a kilt (Clan Gordon).

Public executions of people suspected of practicing witchcraft were held on the esplanade in front of Edinburgh Castle.  Sometimes they were burned at the stake and sometimes they were hanged.  There is a memorial to them all near the entrance to the esplanade.  A very short walk away is a pub called The Last Drop, where the spectators to these executions (and those accused of other crimes) would gather before and after.

By the time we were up on the extinct volcano upon which Edinburgh Castle is built, it was storming pretty well.  All that rain doesn’t make cobblestones any less slippery and the road up to the top is very steep.  Mom and I were both wearing gym shoes (which were fashionably black, but still had the great gripping soles), but out guide was not.  He slipped and revealed the secret as to what a Scotsman wears under his kilt.  Fortunately, he wasn’t hurt.

In one of the episodes of the third series of the British comedy “Black Adder”, Rowan Atkinson’s character, Edmund Black Adder, does a monologue on Wales.  He says that the men of Wales go about in gangs terrorizing the countryside with their close-harmony singing and that, should you attempt to pronounce any of the place names, you’ll end up drenched in phlegm.

I can testify to the place names.  One of the towns we spent some time in was called Llangollen, which is pronounced something akin to “klan-clock-klin” with lots of tongue clucking and spittle involved.  My mother’s maternal grandmother was from Caernarfon.  The main Welsh word that I remember from my childhood is the equivalent to “shut up”.  I don’t have a clue as to how to spell it, but it sounds like “kye-kieg.”  Even English names can be embarrassing to try to pronounce.  Southwark is pronounced “sutherk”.  Leicester is “lester”.  Then there is Belvoir — “beaver.”

Every place we went, we found ourselves engaged in conversations about the war.  We also kept tabs on what was happening through newspapers and the BBC.  It was a completely different perspective from what others experienced here in the US as it was a completely British viewpoint.  One aspect that we thought was very interesting was that the British kept thanking us for helping them.  I had been under the impression that it was the British, the Saudis, and the other countries in the Alliance that were helping the US.  A friend on the tour, over a pint of Guiness he was standing me to in a pub one evening in Durham told me that Britain had some pretty large economic interests in Kuwait.

We were in York when the war ended.  All over the city, every church and cathedral rang its bells.  We couldn’t hear anything else because of the bells.  All conversation stopped.  The entire country heaved a massive sigh of relief.  About a week later, we flew home.

Next time:  Back to Victorian London or “Elementary, My Dear Dickens”

The two main things that struck me about Rome on my first visit in 1984 were:  how old it was and how badly in need of repair it was.  The newer buildings seemed to be almost as bad off as the ancient ruins.  Sometimes it was difficult to tell them apart.  It was, however, a fascinating city.

There is so much history in Rome that you can practically overdose on it.  The Vatican, the museums, the Colosseum, the catacombs, the Circus Maximus, the Spanish Steps, the Vittoriano, the Arch of Titus, the Arch of Constantine, the Pantheon, the Palazzo Venezia (from whose balcony Mussolini gave his speeches), various temple ruins, palace ruins, the Roman Forum — to quote the King of Siam, “Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.”

Fortunately, I like history.  Actually, I hated it in school.  For some reason the teachers seemed to try to make it as boring as possible.  Most of it was about memorizing dates.  I don’t do well with memorizing dates.  I can remember who did what but not necessarily when.  I figure I’m doing well if I can get the approximate century.  I learned to love history on my own, outside of school.  Anyway, Rome is loaded with it.

To get to all of this history, one must drive.  They had a very rudimentary mass transit system back in 1984 and, because of all of the historic relics under the city, they have had difficulty crating much of an underground system.  Every time they dig for any reason, they strike ruins.  Then the place gets declared a national monument and they have to find somewhere else to put whatever they had planned to put there.

Driving in Rome is an adventure.  If it isn’t designated the accident capital of Europe, then it should be.  European cars are, for the most part, much smaller than American cars in the first place.  The streets are quite narrow.  They can also be steep and/or winding, and there are loads of traffic circuses.  A traffic circus is a circular torture device where you drive in, then drive around and around and around until you die — or until someone gives you space to drive out — whichever comes first.

We entered Rome from the south and crossed the Tiber River into the main part of the city to take a quick gander at St. Peter’s, Castel Sant’Angelo, the Coliseum, and a few other landmarks before heading to the hotel (which was on the northeastern fringe of the city).  We had just exited one of those traffic circuses (after only three rotations) onto the Via Arenula and were feeling somewhat cocky when we felt a thump and found ourselves sitting on the back bumper of a Lambourghini.  They do say, “When in Rome …”  Fortunately we had Ricardo with us.

Ricardo could speak French, German and English, but his native language was Italian.  He leapt out and proceeded to have a very spirited discussion with the driver of the Lambourghini.  He was in his element and a wonder to behold.  His eyes flashed, his nostrils flared, his arms waved — I was very impressed.  Soon he returned and climbed back in with a shrug of his shoulders.

“Everything okay?” we asked.

“Si, si,” he replied as Louis (who was Belgian and spoke no Italian) threw it into reverse.  We backed off of the rear bumper of the Lambourghini and onto the front bumper of an Alpha Romeo.  Fortunately that driver was preoccupied with the driver of the vehicle sitting on his rear bumper, so we gunned it and vacated the scene of the crime.  We must have immediately reached our quota as we didn’t have any more accidents our entire stay … at least not with cars.

We reached the hotel, checked in, argued with the management about surrendering our passports (most hotels in Italy, at that time at least, expected you to surrender your passport to them for the duration of your stay), and went to our rooms to unpack and freshen up.  The hotel was a brand new, modern, round tower, with balconies all the way around.  This was important — the balconies, I mean.  When it came time to leave the hotel (we were supposed to meet downstairs) we couldn’t get out of the room.  The door lock kept turning and turning, but the door stayed locked, so I ran out onto the balcony and hollered down to Ricardo to get help.  The calvary promptly arrived and sprang us.  The lock worked fine from the outside.  It appeared that they just hadn’t quite gotten all of the bugs worked out in their new hotel.  They had only been open a couple of days.  What is “locksmith” in Italian?

I have always liked Michelangelo’s art, so I was looking forward to seeing the Sistine Chapel.  This was before the restoration that took place in the 1990s.  What I saw back in 1984 was pretty muddy.  But it was still magnificent (unfortunately the camera I had at the time didn’t do interior shots terribly well, so I only have an even muddier photo).  I was quite tempted to lie down on the floor to save myself from getting a crick in my neck.  But I didn’t want to embarrass my country any more than I already had by this point in the tour.  I tried to imagine Michelangelo lying on his back on the scaffolding while he painted this breathtaking ceiling, but I kept picturing him as Charleton Heston (I had seen “The Agony and The Ecstacy” too many times).

After watching the Pope ride around on his “Pope-mobile”, we went into St. Peter’s Basilica.  Peter is reportedly buried beneath the altar of the Basilica in an ancient tomb.  St. Peter’s is the largest church in the world (St. Paul’s in London is second in size) and is definitely impressive.  Actually the entire Vatican compound is impressive.  On the way to see the Sistine Chapel, we had gone through the museum with its amazing collection of art.

In the Basilica itself is  “The Pieta”, Michelangelo’s sculpture of the Virgin Mary holding the body of her son.  It had been attacked and damaged not too long before we were there, so it had been placed in a glass case and was heavily guarded.  It was difficult to get too close to it and it was much smaller than I thought it might be.  But it was exquisite.

We covered a lot of territory in the couple of days we spent in Rome.  The Coliseum gave me a great deal of exercise climbing up and down over what had once been seats and exploring the area which had been under the stage (and is now exposed to the elements).  One popular myth is that the Christians were thrown to the lions in the Coliseum.  This is untrue.  The Coliseum is much older than that and was already a ruin by that time.  The lion feeding took place in the Circus Maximus — a much newer stadium that was located near Caligula’s Palace (the remains of both can still be seen today).  The Coliseum did have gladiator tournaments, pageants, plays, and even water sports.  They used to flood it and bring in boats.

On our last night in Rome, we drove out to Tivoli, which had been a resort town in ancient times.  Up on the side of a mountain is a former monastery that originally was a castle and is now a restaurant and hotel.  We sat down and found seven plates stacked before each of us.  With each course a plate was filled and a different wine was poured.  The courses included:  1) melon and proscuito; 2) a salad (antipasto); 3) a pasta dish; 4) another pasta dish; 5) soup; 6) the entree with vegetables, and 7) dessert.

As I said, a different wine was served with each course.  The trip down the mountain was rather interesting, what with fairly intoxicated (mostly American) tourists singing songs, the Belgian trying to stay on the road, and the Italian laughing uproariously.  I don’t drink usually more than one or two glasses at a time as a rule, so seven glasses …

Next time:  The UK During the Gulf War or “Give My Regards to Brompton; Remember Me to Leicester Square”.

After entering Italy through the Brenner Pass — in the rain — we didn’t see much in the way of civilization for several miles.  Of course, when one is winding around narrow roads in the mountains, a few miles can seem like several.  Perhaps you’ve been driving for an hour, but you’ve only gone ten miles (that might be a bit of an exaggeration).  Every once in a while, we would see a farmhouse through the cloudy, rainy haze, or a medieval castle, or an old fortress.  In ancient times, this had been a rather strategic area and so had been well-fortified.  What we mainly saw though were vineyards — lots and lots of vineyards — grapes as far as the eye could see.

The first town we encountered was Balzano.  However, our tour director must not have thought it was a terribly exciting place, because we skirted around it and headed for Trento.  There we stretched our legs and exchanged some money.  This trip was taken before the European Union had been formed.  So the princely sum of 480,000 lire made me feel awfully rich until I remembered it was only $300 in U. S. currency.

My mother and I were hungry, so we wandered into a deli to get something to eat.  The only problem was that everything was in Italian and neither one of us could speak it.  Nobody there spoke English.  I do know a little French (sort of), so I reasoned that, if “pain” was “bread” in French, then “panino” might have something to do with bread in Italian.  Also, “fromage” was “cheese” in French, therefore, “formaggio” would likely be “cheese” in Italian.  I semi-confidently ordered a “panino con formaggio”.

From what sounded like a question accompanied by a sweeping motion of the hand across a case containing about 50 varieties of cheese, I deduced that I had a choice of cheese (Sherlock Holmes has nothing on me).  I prayed they only had one kind of bread.  While studiously contemplating the contents of the case, I heard the question repeated with some impatience.  I held up my hand.

“Una momento”, I said.  I was trying to find something that looked remotely familiar.  Eureka!

“Provolone, per favore,” I now declared triumphantly, and was quite relieved to receive a provolone cheese sandwich on a thick cut homemade bread (the only kind they had).

My mother, who had been watching all of this with great interest, noted my success and followed my lead.  Soon we were enjoying one of the best cheese sandwiches either one of us had ever eaten, along with some Fanta.

From Trento, we continued on to Verona (of Two Gentlemen from Verona and Romeo and Juliet fame).  There you can see what is purported to have been Juliet’s balcony.  “But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?  It is the East and Juliet is the sun.”  I did play Juliet once, when I was 15, opposite a 17-year-old Romeo who I had to slap offstage.

From Verona, we went to Vicenza, Padua and Maestra (which is the suburban part of Venice).  After a light lunch in Maestra, we boarded a small launch and headed for Venice itself.

Venice is built on a series of tiny islands in a gulf in the Adriatic.  Although nobody knows for certain how old it is, there seems to be evidence that a city has existed there since at least the 5th century.  The architecture of Venice is fascinating since it is a mix of many styles and has as many Turkish influences as it does Italian.

We disembarked at St Mark’s Square — the main square in Venice.  Basilica San Marco was originally built in 829 and rebuilt in 1043 to 1071 after a fire.  A basilica is designated as such when it contains an important relic (often part of the body) of whoever it is named after.  St Mark’s contains at least most of the body of Mark (who wrote the second Gospel of the New Testament of the Bible).  The whole interior is covered with gold-leaf mosaics.  When the light hits it just right, it sparkles and glitters with a near blinding intensity.

The bronze horses on the roof of the basilica were captured in Constantinople in 1207 and placed on the roof in the mid-14th century.  Napoleon took the horses to Paris in 1797, after conquering Venice, and had them placed on the Carousel Arch at the Louvre as a monument to his defeat of the Italians.  They were returned to Venice in 1815.  Now they sit in a museum high up inside of the basilica.  The horses currently on the roof are copies.

The Bell Tower was built in 888 to 912.  It collapsed in 1902 and had to be rebuilt.  Nearly a thousand years isn’t too bad, I’d say.  I doubt that much of what we build now will stand that long before collapsing.

After a short visit to a glass blower (I couldn’t help wondering what would happen if he suddenly had a laughing fit), we had some free time, so my mom and I decided to take a tour of the Doge’s Palace.  The Doge was the ruler of Venice and his palace was built to impress.  It did.  All of the ceilings were enormously high; most of the rooms were large enough for a good game of football; and the the walls were covered with breathtaking works of art mainly by Veronese and Tintoretto.  There was, however, one room in the palace which did not impress me at all, and that was the rest room.

Throughout both France and Italy, many of the public rest rooms are co-ed.  Although somewhat disconcerting at first, it really isn’t that big of a deal as the stalls are usually quite private.  After waiting in a long line for what seemed like hours (I was getting desperate), I entered one of the two stalls and found myself staring at a hole in the floor.  “Who stole the toilet?” I wondered.  I later discovered that this was what they referred to as a Turkish toilet.  I was completely flummoxed.  But, as I said, desperate.  I later learned how to properly use a Turkish toilet from an female Afghan friend of mine, but I managed as best I could at the time.  By the way, “where is the rest room?” in Italian is, “dove si trova una toilette?”

As part of the Doge’s Palace tour, one can cross over the Bridge of Sighs.  This is an enclosed bridge in which anyone taller than me (I’m 5’3″) has to double over to squeeze through.  The structure got its name because, if a man found himself crossing it, he knew he was going to prison and would sigh over his lost freedom.

If he merely sighed on his way over to the prison (which had cells so small that a person couldn’t lay down decently), I can imagine he did much more than sigh if he crossed back over to the palace.  If that happened, he wasn’t being released.  He was instead being taken to the two columns at the entrance of the palace where he would be drawn and quartered in front of an audience.

Another legend associated with the Bridge of Sighs is:  if two lovers kiss just as their gondola glides beneath it, as the sun sets, they will never part.  I heard this in a film I saw at an impressionable age.

We left the palace and boarded a gondola for a canal-level tour of the the city.  This was when we received the warning not to touch the water.  It contains several hundreds of years worth of sewage.

Our gondola and a couple of others with members of our tour group formed a small parade.  One of them carried a singer and an accordion player, so the ride was accompanied throughout by all of those old romantic Italian songs you’ve likely heard all your life.  Toward the end of the ride, we passed under the Bridge of Sighs.  I was slightly disgruntled that I had to share all of this romance with my mother.  I’m sure she felt the same.

As the sun sank slowly in the West and Venice sank slowly in the East, we boarded another launch to return to Maestra, from which we traveled to Gambarare to spend the night.

Venice really is sinking slowly into the mud and the sewage, plus the water level around Venice is rising.  Every year it floods to the point where platforms have to be set up in St Mark’s Square for people to be able to walk around.  They have come up with a solution that should be in place by 2020 that involves flood gates.  I’m glad.  I’d hate to have Venice end up completely under water.

Next time:  Roman Holiday or “Be It Ever So Crumbled, There’s No Place Like Rome”.  Ciao.