London – Day 3

https://www.adventuresctlb.com

Since we have successfully navigated some bus routes the past couple of days, today we decided to take on the London underground – the tube.  We decided to go to the Royal Academy of Arts (RA for short) to see an exhibit titled Painting the Modern Garden:  Monet to Matisse.  The best way to get to the RA is via the tube, so we studied the map and planned our strategy.  Then off to the St. John’s Wood tube station and down underground we went.  The stairs down are quite something – steep!  Christine was taking her time and hanging on to the railing.  I was a little quicker down the stairs.  Our train was just pulling in to the platform so I yelled to Christine to hurry.  I was on the train and the doors began to close, and Christine was still on the platform.  We looked at each other through the glass with panic in our eyes.  Fortunately, someone hit the open button and the doors opened and Christine was in the train.  Phew, that was a close call!

We rode the train to Green Park and walked down Piccadilly Street.  We wandered a bit in the area of the RA and walked through an arcade, which is sort of an enclosed lane through a block that has shops along each side.  The two arcades we strolled through were really beautiful.  The shops were all very posh with extremely expensive merchandise.  But the arcade was really glamorous.

The RA is right on Piccadilly and you enter into a grand courtyard.

The garden exhibit was really popular so there was a large crowd.  Eve very kindly loaned us her Friends of the RA card so we were able to bypass the lines and go right in.  Because there were so many people, it was somewhat difficult to get close to many of the paintings, but what a treat to see so many Monet paintings in person.  What an interesting fellow Monet was, and he designed all his gardens himself.  He was really a professional horticulturist as well as a painter.  I got introduced to a painter I didn’t know, Santiago Rusinol, a Spaniard.  I fell in love with one of his paintings, Glorieta VII, Aranjuez.  I want to read up on Rusinol’s work because I was quite struck by what I saw.

After the RA, we decided to stroll through Green Park to Victoria Circle and Buckingham Palace.  The park was lovely with beautiful trees and lots of daffodils.  We learned about the prolific trees around London that I thought were Sycamores.  The bark and little round nuts really did look like Sycamores.  But the trees are called London Plane trees.  In residential neighborhoods the city cuts all the smaller branches off to prevent the tree from producing the nuts since the residents don’t want the nuts falling on their cars, their heads, or in their gardens.  So these big beautiful trees get severely pruned and wind up looking nearly dead, like the ones along this street.

The gate from Green Park to Victoria Circle was beautiful and the monument to Queen Victoria was awesome.  Buckingham Palace is big, but I actually didn’t think it was so spectacular.

We then spied Big Ben off in the distance and decided to head to Parliament Square.  We walked along St. James Park, the Birdcage Walk.  This is another beautiful park with lots of trees and flowers and ponds.  The closer you get to the Thames and Parliament, the more crowded it gets so it is difficult to walk around.  But we gawked at Big Ben and the Parliament.  Big Ben is actually only the bell in the tower.  The tower name is the Elizabeth Tower and it was built in 1859.

We looked around for a place to have a bit to eat and Christine noticed a sign outside the Supreme Court building advertising a café.  So we went into the Supreme Court.  We even had to go through security.  But we were glad to go in because we learned a lot.  The UK Supreme Court was established only in 2005.  Prior to that, the court was a Privy Council of Parliament.  There are 12 justices (only one woman) and they get assigned to various cases that the court chooses to hear.  Five or seven justices will hear a case, all civil matters related to interpretation of law.  Anyone can sit in the courtroom, which is designed to facilitate discussion between the lawyers and the justices.  The hearings are televised, kind of like on our C-span.  The justices don’t wear robes, but they have fancy robes for ceremonial occasions.  We had our lunch in the café and toured a small exhibit afterwards.  Glad we stopped in, because I learned a lot.

In Parliament Square we saw a statue of Churchill, and I was very surprised to see a statue of Abraham Lincoln.

We wandered along the Thames for a bit.  Of course, the London Eye looms over the whole area.  It’s huge!

While making our way to the Embankment tube station, we passed by Whitehall garden and strolled around.  The building on the grounds is, I think, associated with the Ministry of Defense.

We managed to get ourselves on the tube together and even made a successful transfer.  We returned to our room for a nap and then met Eve and one of her colleagues, Terry, for dinner around the corner at Carluccio’s.  It was a pleasant place and we had a nice conversation.  We then went to Eve’s school, the American School in London (ASL), for a student writers workshop reading.  Several students read their work and all were very interesting, often deep, one rather disturbing, but all very mature and well-written.  We met several of Eve’s colleagues.  All commented on how much they like having Eve at ASL.

And that brings day 3 in London to an end.