LONDON 2: COVID scare, giant lily pads, pyramidal hedges

Waterlily House, Kew Gardens

We 25 May 

COVID scare

Doug woke up feeling a little under the weather. Nothing like a fever, but a bit of scratchy throat. Of course the first worry that comes to mind is COVID. I reminded him that I had brought 4 of the free testing kits available to anyone in the US (you can get up to 8 kits per household). 

A line at T would have been positive

Doug took the test and whew, it came up negative! We then proceeded as originally planned, but Doug wore a mask much of today, and I wore a mask on the Tube. Every time we've ridden the Tube there's been at least one other person wearing a mask, sometimes four or five, but most are maskless at this point.

Update on COVID testing for return to the US

A good friend who has lived in England, and has been back here recently, told me this about COVID testing for US re-entry: "...the US accepts lateral flow tests. It's only 35 pounds at the airport. Super fast, easy, and convenient!"

I told Doug, but he was inclined to keep our Sunday AM testing appointments, since he'd already made them. Our daughter had told us she'd made an appointment in London for her visiting boyfriend, when he went back to the US, so that's what Doug did. It's a little cheaper than 35 pounds, but we have to go there. Anyway, it's something to be aware of.

It was a Common Wood Pigeon!

Hurray, I myself didn't know the answer to yesterday's bird identification question, but given that three different people supplied the same answer—Common Wood Pigeon—I assume that is the correct answer! I looked it up, and it is a European bird, which made me happy. I *thought* it was a novel bird (to me) and it was. Kudos to the bird people!

By the way, I've been quite tickled to see so many London Plane trees here in London. No wonder they got that name. One at Kew Gardens is huge and around 250 years old. We also saw one in Bath that was over 220 years old. Go trees!

Kew Gardens, aka The Royal Botanical Gardens

Today we took the Tube out to Kew Gardens, which we knew was a famous botanical garden. We've been to a LOT of botanical gardens, though, so we kind of expected more of the same. We started off on our own, and went to the Palm House, and the Temperate House, two large, impressive Victorian-era green houses containing, you guessed it, palms and temperate zone plants. The greenhouses were great, but I have to say my strongest impression of the Palm House was how much it is rusting away with the constant moisture, and how ornate the Victorians were. There's wrought iron spiral staircases that let you walk along an upper story viewing area. Which is not to say that the plant collections aren't fabulous, but that they weren't my main impression, at that point. 

(I later found out the Palm House will be fixed up at some point, but it will be a very big deal, because among other things, all the plants need to be relocated in the meantime. They already fixed up the Temperate House, but it took five years and a lot of money.)

Fortunately we elected to try for the 1:30 free tour, and luckily we got a great tour guide and a great tour group (of just five people besides us). I'd been afraid the guide would repeat what we'd already seen, but she took us to completely different areas: the Rock Garden, the Princess of Wales Conservatory, the Alpine House. 

Rock Garden in front of Alpine House

Alpine House interior, filled with dry air

Plus the guide knew a lot about plants, as well as about the Kew Gardens history, and the group as a whole had a nice sense of interest and camaraderie. We kept going for an hour and a half; the tour is usually just an hour. We learned about flowers that change color after being pollinated (that explains the two colors of flowers on horse chestnut trees, too), and about a tree that has bluer foliage in the sun, greener foliage in the parts of it that are more shaded. Her tour helped inspire a sense of wonder at all the forms plants take, and all the clever coping mechanisms they have.

If I were advising a first-time visitor to Kew Gardens, first of all I'd say the place is enormous. For repeat visitors, it must be great because you could probably find new things to look at every time. For first-timers, I'd recommend the area the guide took us to: the Princess of Wales Conservatory, which is more recently built and contains a broad variety of plants in different rooms, the Alpine House, the Rock Garden. Try to get a good tour guide, like the one we had. Plus I would definitely recommend the Waterlily House, which we went to later, on our own. For me, seeing a giant water LILy pad was probably the highlight of our visit (see photo at top of post)! I also enjoyed artificially shaped hedges...

There's a four or five story tall "Treetop Walkway" which has a kind of wow factor, but less botanical info we felt. We thought the walkway would take more advantage of being high up in the tree canopies to talk about what happens there, but it didn't, though it did have many kid-oriented factoids about trees.

One interesting thing the Gardens is doing this summer is that they have a number of artworks scattered around, that have to do with the topic of plants as food. There's certainly the space for changing exhibits like this, and it adds interest and topicality. I would like to have visited more of the installations, if we weren't already so exhausted by looking at everything else. At least Kew Gardens helps you out by having a number of places that offer refreshments and have toilet facilities; when you get bogged down mid-afternoon, you can get a cappuccino and lemon drizzle cake at the Orangery instead of having to go back to the entrance area.

Much of Kew is indeed similar to other botanical gardens, but what made it stand out in the end was:

• a great tour guide
• the size and scope of their plant collection; they are actively involved in trying to save rarer plants from extinction, and I did see unusual plants I hadn't seen before
• the extent of their plant information; there's lots of informative panels, not just plant labels
• the evocation of another era in the older Victorian era greenhouses and things like a pagoda (!), plus the carefully manicured "Broad Walk" also reflects an era of promenading
• the info and art installations having to do with issues of the day, e.g. the dangers of monoculture (our guide reminded us that most of the food people eat is wheat, rice, and/or corn, when many other kinds of grains and edible plants exist)

Next Post

Tomorrow my wonderful Activities Planner has booked us on a tour of the Globe Theater; we also hope to peek at the Tate Art Museum, and then go to an evening theater performance. Some activities, like the Globe Theater, you need to book at least somewhat in advance, or else desired time slots will fill up.

It will be a long day tomorrow, so it will probably be a very short blog post, or I may skip it and catch up Friday night for both days, or maybe catch up post-trip. I think I've already mentioned I want to do a post-trip post about our food, one for sure on Favorite Signs, and one on favorite memories from the trip.

LONDON 1: The train, the Tube

Tu 24 May

London! It's so bustling!

When we got off our train at King's Cross station, I felt some chills going down my spine. London is just such a historic, major place to be. And especially at a place like King's Cross station, you feel like you are at a crossroads, where people are coming and going and stuff is happening all over.

A last walk around York

We checked out of our B&B at 10am (their checkout time), but left our luggage there for an hour as our train wasn't until 12:02. We used the 10-11 time for a last walk around York, going through the Museum Gardens right near us, and by the river. Can any bird aficionados tell me what the blue-headed bird is?

Taking the train

We retrieved our luggage and walked it and ourselves over to the nearby York train station, arriving with plenty of time to spare. Enough time for me to hunt up a sandwich for the ride. While I knew there'd probably be food available on board, I also knew it might be both more expensive and less convenient, so I happily found a tuna/cucumber sandwich, cookie, and drink for the ride, at a Pret A Manger.

We boarded the train and had a comfortable 2 hour 40 minute ride to London. It was supposed to be 2 hours 20 minutes, but there was a slight delay due to an overhead wire problem. I remembered from York's railroad museum, that the York-London train trip was once more like seven hours, and even now, by car it's a four-hour road trip. It's great to be able to get to London so quickly and effortlessly now, and Doug continues to marvel at how quiet and smooth the trains are here.

Although I never did check out the train cafe (which now offers online ordering and delivery to your seat!), it was funny that the conductor gave a plug for the train cafe a couple of times during his announcements. He said it had a "stupendous array of refreshments"!

Arriving, taking the Tube, tap-to-pay

After exiting the awesome King's Cross station, it was not hard to find the Tube, right by the station. It was a little harder to figure out which line to take, in what direction, but I think Doug had scoped it out earlier when he booked our hotel. We took the Picadilly line to Earl's Court (can you find it on the map?). The Tube was as I remembered it from years ago, filled with an impressively diverse set of folks of all kinds. I think only 3 or 4 in our full car wore masks, but it was the first time on the trip that I thought more seriously about putting one on (I didn't, but may on future rides).

In the photo below of the "Help Point," I thought it was cool that it can provide Visitor Info as well as emergency assistance.

Can you find the blue Picadilly line going from King's
Cross at upper right down to Earl's Court at lower left?

One thing about the Tube, and about payments in general, is that contactless paying is BY FAR the norm here. We used our tap-to-pay Visa cards at the Tube turnstiles, rather than having to get tokens or use any special Tube card. Luckily, just before the trip we had renewed those Visa cards, and they were upgraded to ones that can do contactless payments. We've also used Apple or Google Pay on our phones, which can be used with regular cards. Occasionally we've run into a small shop that takes only cash, and we've had to skip them—we haven't bothered to get any physical English currency so far in the trip, and I don't think we'll need to. (Be sure your card doesn't charge for foreign currency conversion though; ours don't.)

Earl's Court

We are staying at a nice hotel very close to the Tube station. The area seems to be a very pleasant one. According to various online descriptions, there's no main attraction right here, so it's typically not a destination in and of itself, but it's a place where there are a lot of hotels and hostels. It also has a McDonald's, Burger King, and KFC all within a couple blocks of each other!

We had an early dinner and walked around the neighborhood, then retired to our hotel where Doug worked industriously on how we are going to get the COVID test required for re-entry to the US (you can do it at the airport but it's like $150 there...). 

I'm tickled that our room door
has a knocker on it

YORK 3: a Victorian street, Fashion Floozy

 Mo 23 May

On Monday, we spent much of the day at the York Castle Museum. The museum is on the grounds of the original York Castle, but it isn't about the Castle, or about medieval or Roman times. Instead, it's about more recent times-gone-by, with its most famous exhibit being a recreated Victorian street you can wander through. 

The Victorian street is very evocative. It's even accompanied with sound and lighting which mimics the condensed passing of a day—there's a thunderstorm at night, then the rain ceases, birds start chirping, the day brightens and the street lights turn off, and you can hear random street hubbub starting up. The street is lined with shops of the time, several of which you can go into.

The museum has several other exhibits, which were all quite well done. The topics included "Shaping the Body" (fashion and body image), toys, World War I, the Sixties, and the life of past prisoners. The life of past prisoners is relevant because the two main buildings of the Museum were once used as a Female Prison and a Debtor's Prison. You go into a cell, and a video projected on the wall tells the story of someone who had actually been in the prison. In general, the museum did a good job of making things interesting and interactive, including a quiz on your fashion sense...

We also did more strolling on the city wall and by the river Ouse, on our way to and from the museum.

Next Post

We will be moving on to London, for the last segment of our trip. I'm always a little sad to leave each place we visit, but London will be exciting, and I'm also looking forward to some downtime on the train ride there. 

Coming home from dinner we
actually had some rain

YORK 2: City wall, city walk, a railroading attic

Green lines show city wall.
We are staying at a B&B outside the wall, but not far from it.

Su 22 May 

City wall

One of the things York is known for, besides York Minster, is its city wall. Built in the medieval era, in some places next to or on top of an earlier Roman city wall, the wall still surrounds most of the core city. 

Many cities were walled in medieval times, but many city walls eventually came down to make room for new development, and to open up traffic flows in and out of cities. The UK still has a number of preserved city walls though, and York has one of the best known, best preserved ones. Cities were encircled with defensive walls in other countries, too—we have visited Xian in China, and actually did a bike circuit atop its impressive, wide city wall. 

We were curious to see what York's wall is like—the first thing we did in the morning, after breakfast, was to walk along the wall. It's much narrower along the top than Xian's was, but at least it has a handy railing (though Doug later was on a section with no railing!). It's a nice way to view the city. The walk reminded me of New York's High Line park, which was not a wall originally, but an elevated train line. However it's similar in that you're also viewing the city from a height and you can walk for uninterrupted stretches without dealing with traffic.

City walk

Next, we met up in front of the York Art Gallery for a free 2-hour city walking tour, run by volunteer guides. Bath had free city walking tours, too, and we'd gone on a very good one there. Our York guide talked to us about the history of the city, including showing us yet another abbey ruin, also destroyed after Henry VIII's suppression of the monasteries in the 1530's. Henry sure was one destructive fellow! We saw other historical buildings, an outdoor area where stone masons work on repairing/replacing parts of York Minster, and finally, the Shambles. The Shambles was originally the street in York where butchers plied their trade, and the street could get quite messy as unwanted bits of meat/blood/guts got thrown into a street gutter. Hence the current usage of the word to mean a place is a mess!

Can you spot which picture shows architecture similar to that in Bath?

Lots of trains, and a railroading attic

We spent the afternoon at York's Railroad Museum. It's a good, impressive museum, but we've also seen Sacramento's Railroad museum, which we felt was even better in some ways. However one distinctive aspect of this museum is that it has an area called "Open Store," which is basically like a storehouse of all sorts of collected train paraphernalia, but open to the public. It was wild: it has train signage, signaling equipment, train and train station furniture, train silverware/dishes, and random busts and memorials. It also has lots of model trains. 

In the steam locomotive photo, look for Doug standing by it, to understand just how big the engine is.

A section of the Chunnel tunnel

You can reserve to have afternoon tea in this train

The problem with the statue

Reprised here is the photo of the York Minster statue I asked about yesterday. The tour guide pointed out to us that the statue has two right feet! Apparently the sculptor had done the right foot (the one on your left as you look at the photo), and asked an assistant to complete the other foot. The assistant just copied the first foot, so the statue ended up with two right feet. Below is a close-up photo of Doug's that shows more clearly that the statue's left foot is really a right foot!

Just checking

Vaccination rates in the UK

One of the best things about this trip has been feeling so free from COVID worry. I decided I should really check up on England's COVID stats to see how warranted this relaxed state is. England's stats do look quite good; all the pertinent numbers (# of cases, # of hospitalizations) have shown a continuing decline in the past 7 days. By contrast, our home county of San Mateo is showing a rising trend in its stats, even though the overall numbers are still relatively low right now. 

Of course, vaccination uptake is probably the single biggest reason for UK's success. The chart shows UK's stats. Comparable numbers for the US are 78%, 66%, and 31%.

At one of our breakfasts in Keswick,  one couple said that they had gotten COVID, but it wasn't too bad—comparable to a cold. They had been vaccinated though, which probably helped make their cases less severe. We mentioned going out on walks during the height of COVID, and the others said things were completely locked down here in the beginning—you couldn't even go out.

Next post

Tomorrow is our last full day in York. 

Like Bath, York has many, many cute stores, often catering to the tourist trade. One thing I've liked about the stores, though, is that most do seem to be small, independent business, vs. chains. Often they're very specialized, like this one dedicated to rubber stamps (there was a store in Keswick dedicated to selling slate). 

We loved this couple in front of us;
they have coordinated outfits on

Doug's photo, a no-railing section of wall