A week in London

We're just back from our second trip to London since we moved to France. We sort of plan to make such a trip twice a year. It's just over an hour by train, with no stops between Lille and London on the Eurostar. It was a good trip in spite of the fact that I came down with a cold on the day we arrived. I skipped one afternoon event that we had planned and we did a lot less late night drinking but otherwise we powered through and did everything we (Clay) had planned, and several things that were unplanned. The week consisted of history, art, theater, and beer.

A statue in St. Pancras station in London.

We dropped our bags at the hotel and went out for lunch and first beer. This is an old pub called the Olde Mitre. In the corner is the trunk of an cherry tree where QE I allegedly did a maypole dance.

The first history walk we did was in Spitalfields, an area of many different waves of immigrants over the years, including French Huguenots, which could have included my Jacques family ancestors.

Jewish immigrants built this building as a community center and soup kitchen.

Spitalfields market.

Our guide played the piano in the two of the pubs that we visited on the walk. 

Evidence of the presence of French immigrants on the bathroom door in this pub. "Hommes" is French for "men." 

We had taken another tour by this particular guide on a prior trip to London. He is extremely knowledgeable.

Cleopatra's needle, along the Embankment.

A Dutch sailing ship.

This is the Cutty Sark, in Greenwich. We didn't actually visit Greenwich this time, we were on the other side of the river on a walk about Brunel who built the first tunnel under the Thames.

Another Greenwich shot from across the river. This is the royal naval college, built in two parts to maintain the view of the river from the Queen's house behind it.

A large tour ship came up the Thames while we were there.

Street art/sculpture, not sure what it was made of but it looked like stained glass.

I probably take this picture at Haymarket on every trip we make to London.

There's an area known as the Bermondsey Beer Mile that consists of many breweries and taprooms located in the arches under railroad bridges.

Sunday morning with sheep in London. The Worshipful Company of Woolmen hold a charter from the Crown that grants them the right to drive sheep across a bridge into London without a toll. They still exercise that right once a year as publicity and fundraising event. There were other worshipful companies present as well, including that make long bows, arrows, wheels and other ancient industrial crafts. It was interesting.

This is the reconstructed Globe theater. We didn't visit this time but walked past it along the south bank of the Thames.

A swan with cygnets, and a few gulls. 

Blackfriars bridge

Oh look, there are poor christian nationalists being persecuted in the U.K. as well, because they aren't allowed to persecute others. I have no idea what they were whining about, but I'm sure it was stupid.

I've wanted to do this tour of Tower Bridge for a long time. You can go up one tower and walk across two enclosed elevated walkways that go to the other side. The roadway level of the bridge still opens to allow ships to pass through whenever needed. It's actually a steel suspension bridge, clad in stone for appearance purposes only.

Part of the walkway has a glass floor. Not as scary as you might think.

We also visited the engine room.

A view of the Tower of London from Tower Bridge.

This is the George Inn, the only surviving coaching inn in London. We had lunch.

Sculpture of a dog and probably some saint in Southwark Cathedral.

It wasn't the prettiest church I ever saw, but they had some nice floral arrangements. 

Walking along the south bank we came across this reconstructed version of Sir Francis Drake's Golden Hinde, the first English person and ship to circumnavigate the globe. He was a privateer, engaged in the fine British tradition of sailing the globe and stealing stuff. 

The Tate Modern museum had a Frida Kahlo exhibition. It was quite good.

This was her first self portrait.

The National Theater at night. We saw probably eight plays during the week, mostly plays in small playhouses. We saw lots of different things and enjoyed nearly all of them.

Bailey after getting back from camp on Wednesday afternoon.

Patrimoine weekend

Journees Europeenne du Patrimoine (European Heritage Days) is an annual event that occurs on different weekends in various European countries. Basically, it's a history event, but what it means in practice is that certain houses, public buildings, and churches are open to the public with special historical displays and events. This includes many places that are not normally open or easily accessible. The events and tours are all free but many of them require reservations for definite timeslots. Clay worked his magic on the website and got us signed up for multiple events each day. 

The first walking tour on Saturday he did alone because I was out with Bailey on her usual morning walk. It was a walking tour around Vieux Lille focused on statues in niches on buildings around town. Lille was once home to about a dozen religious orders (all catholic, of course), so many of the building were part of those orders and had the obligatory statue of Mary or that order's relevant saint. I was sorry to miss that tour but it ran long anyway and even Clay had to bail on it early to meet me at the next event, which was a tour of the Bank of France. We've been by this building many times but didn't know much about it. Built by a count as his residence, it was eventually purchased by the Bank of France along with two adjacent properties. The Bank of France is the central bank of France, much like the Federal Reserve Bank in the U.S. It is responsible for printing the EU currency among other things, but it's role in setting monetary policy is now shared with the central banks of other EU countries. Interesting tour and an impressive structure.

Apparently there were other brass cherubs on the staircase at one time but they were looted by the Germans.

I liked all the dogs in the stained glass.

On the square in front of the opera house there were tents set up by different artisans and craftsmen, demonstrating their functional heritage. They included brass casting (making bells), metal work, lace making, stone masons, stained glass making, and building construction.

The opera house itself was having an open house but we've been there many times so we just walked through. The Theatre du Nord (Theater of the North) was giving backstage tours and talks about their operation and we took in one of those. We have tickets to see a couple of upcoming plays.

The theater is both a school and a professional company, putting on about 20 productions every year.

There is a small, black box theater in the basement.

Later Saturday afternoon we went to St. Catherine's church for a concert by a quartet composed of musicians from the Lille symphony. The three violins and one cello produced more sound than I would have expected thanks to the excellent acoustics of the building and we really enjoyed it.

There is a lot of serious artwork in St. Catherine's still, but this is a reproduction of a painting by Rubens. The original hung here until the 1990s. It is now in the Beaux Arts Museum in Lille, where I'm sure it is safer and kept under better conditions.

Saturday evening we went to another concert at the protestant temple in Lille. The Protestant Reformation never really took hold in France; catholicism has always been the dominant religion. It has faded in importance, thankfully without being replaced by another mythology. The protestant temple was built by the city to accommodate protestants who were displaced at the end of the Franco-Prussian war in the 1870s when the Alsace region became part of Germany. A Jewish temple was later constructed across the street for similar reasons. The concert featured a small organ and was preceded by a talk by the organ maker. The church itself was very plain and reminded me of colonial churches in the U.S. 

We spotted this walking home after the organ concert. The better graffiti in Lille is a painted on very thin paper that is then applied to the side of a building. It can be removed without needing to be painted over.

I don't think we need to guess which country this piece refers to. The small black figures are surfers and shark fins.

The first event on Sunday was a tour of a section of old canals in Lille. This area was originally largely marshland and the original building were constructed on the few sites that set slightly above the water line. Canals ran throughout the town but over time they became polluted and gradually silted in. Because they also became less necessary and relevant to commerce, the decision was made that they were to be filled in rather than dredged to maintain them. A few still remain and underground remnants remain of others, including this one we visited on Sunday.

The next tour was of the crypt at the cathedral. I was excited about this because church crypts are always creepy and interesting places. This one was not. This cathedral is relatively modern construction and there are only two actual burials down there. It's a large, well-lit, empty space. If they had any sense they would open it as a beer hall, or at least as a coffee shop as was done with St. Martins-in-the-Fields in London. Glad to have seen it once, no need to go back.

Beautiful space, badly under utilized except for some display cases with photographs.

Our next stop was another church, St. Andre, which is mostly notable as being the church where Charles de Gaulle was baptized, on the day he was born, just down the street from his grandmother's house where he was born. There was nothing special happening there, but the church was open (it isn't normally) and we had never seen it. They also have some impressive artwork.

Our next tour was the former Lille General Hospital. It was large and imposing, but probably never very attractive. It had been built originally in 1730 to get orphaned children off the streets. It later transitioned to elder care, up until the 1980s. A business school has taken over part of it now and they are still looking for something to come in and rehab the back half of the building. I expect it was better than life on the streets, but it has the appearance of a Dickensian workhouse. 

Our final visit on Sunday was the Residence Porte de Gand. It is now a retirement home, and it looks be quite a nice one, but it started out as the home of a religious order (Sisters of Mount Carmel). That one died out and then the French revolution happened, but another religious group (Daughters of the Baby Jesus) took it up as their home and later accepted nuns from many different orders as they all reached retirement age and their numbers dwindled. Two remarkable things: First, the chapel is still intact and is quite beautiful. Second, there are apparently a couple hundred dead nuns entombed in the basement. (That information was imparted but the basement was not part of the tour.) Preserving the remains in situ was apparently made a part of the deal when the city took over the operation of the home. 

The Porte de Gand (gate in the old city wall at the road going to Ghent).

There are only 75 current residents. They still hold masses there but the operation is by the city with no religious qualification.

Cyclamens growing under some bushes on the grounds.

This altarpiece is made entirely of wood although it looks like marble. It was installed by the Baby Jesus nuns that ran the place after 1850.

Not part of any tour, but we stopped for a beer at this beautiful pub on Rue de Gand on our way home.

We leave on Thursday for a week in London. Bailey went out to her boarding camp today.