|
StevoTrip2006 Saturday, October 07, 2006
London Round Up
Well, that gets me back to London. I spent the week between the 26th and the 2nd at Tim and Rebecca's place in Clapham Junction. It's been great catching up with them. I caught up with a lot of the headline London sites back in 2002, so during the day, when Tim and Rebecca were at work, I concentrated on a few gaps in my coverage and just generally looking around. Highlights: The RAF Museum Not quite the Air and Space Museum, but still worth doing. As you might expect, they have a great collection of the Battle of Britain era planes: several different varieties of Spitfires, some Me109s, and some Hurricanes. I can't rationally defend liking these planes so much - instruments of war and all that - but the plane nerd in me laps it up. Though I think you can make the case that the Spitfire is, divorced from its role, a classic bit of design. What with its sleek lines and elliptical curves, it looks like a Good Guy Plane:  Meanwhile, the main German fighter from the Battle of Britain is aggressive, muscular, and mean-looking. A classic Bad Guy Plane:  Churchill War Rooms / Churchill Museum These are the bunkers where Churchill and the war cabinet hung out in World War II (although Winston apparently had a habit of going AWOL and puffing his cigars on top of exposed buildings during the blitz - a perfect example of the combination of solidarity with the people and cantankerous insanity in which he seemed to specialise). The key rooms themselves are hardly changed: some had been restored from photographic records, others were apparently just left pretty much undisturbed after the war. One area houses the recently opened Churchill Museum. As a brand new museum, it was the most high tech I'd seen. Often museums do the whole "interactive" exhibit thing pretty badly. You know what I mean: press a button, box lights up, voiceover starts, person who pressed button walks away leaving "interactive" exhibit talking to nobody... and that's if the button works. However, this place did this kind of thing about as well as I've ever seen it done. Firstly the subject is suited to it, as they could build things around all those great speeches he did (so many to so few, fight them on the beaches, etc). They also had a display that was like an enormous table with interactive video screens built into the top of it, laying out all the years of Churchill's life. Touch a year and the calendar opened up to show you all the months, and then you could drill down further. For key parts of his life (eg both World Wars) you could get a virtually day by day breakdown of what Churchill was up to. Very well done. Regent's Park One of the classic bits of London planning. I did an assignment on this at uni and learnt all about it, although it didn't mean that much not having been there. So I went and saw it, but could only remember the broad outlines of what I'd studied at uni. So now I'll go back home, read the assignment, and put it all back together in my mind. British Museum I'd been here before, but I thought I'd go back again. But I came away underwhelmed. Yes, it's one of the great collection of artifacts and antiquities in the world. But they just don't present it well. It's very hard to get much sense of what the stuff is: they don't do a very good job of bringing it alive or making it clear why it's important. It's just case after case of loot, really. Although it was good to see the Rosetta Stone again, which for some reason I just find very cool, and I just love the main central courtyard around the reading room (which for years was roofed and used for storage, but was opened up again around the millennium). It's a great bit of design and just an amazing space:  Grand Final The result wasn't what I wanted (I thought if Sydney won the AFL and the Storm won the NRL, maybe the states could organise some sort of swap), but what better place to see the AFL grand final than a London pub? We got up for a hellishly early start (4:15 - the game started at 5am in London) and made our way to the Oktoberfest Hotel. We thought this might be pretty dodgy, an impression not helped by the fact that unlike many places this was free entry, and the ad promised "AFL Grand Final 5am; Jelly Wrestling 6pm." But it was actually a good place and pof course the game was very exciting. I can't necessarily vouch for "the Fest" when the jelly wrestling is on, but it was fine for the Grand Final. And a very exciting game, obviously. West End Musicals Tim, Rebecca and I also did manage to fit in a West End show. We chose one from the cheaper end of the spectrum, Avenue Q, which is basically a bit of a take on Sesame Street, with puppets singing songs that play against the expectations of Sesame Street. So, for example, instead of typically affirming Sesame Street style message song, they had a song called "Everyone's a Little Bit Racist." Apparently it won the Tony (Avenue Q, not "Everyone's a Little Bit Racist"). Streets of London One of he best things about London is just being on the streets though, as the whole place has such a big city buzz about it. And you come across unexpected things like this:  Although the actual highlight of London was the trip Tim and I took to Legoland. I'll write about that in my next post. For the moment, I'll let one image allow you to gauge my enjoyment of it.  |
Because a holiday doesn't actually happen if you don't spend it in internet cafes describing it to other people. www.flickr.com
This is a Flickr badge showing photos in a set called Paris, 2006. Make your own badge here.
Dunnotar Castle; Dissisar Castle Ness is More The Pepsi Challenge of Castles London to Edinburgh to Fort William Itinerary |