More Random Snapshots

Some random pictures that might interest you. From November and December.

The British Telecom (BT) Tower is the tower with the red light at the top. It's visible from almost everywhere and sits right above the intersection of Tottenham Ct Rd and Euston Rd. This is right by UCL; hence the name "The Beacon" - if you're ever lost, just head for the tower.


The rotunda in the middle of the main library at UCL. A tad pretentious, don't you say? At least it's beautiful.


My home, aka the anthropology library. Ah how I love thee, library, and how well I know thee after spending so many countless hours among your hallowed shelves...


Platform 9 3/4. Self-explanatory. Nami and I think that we were meant to go to Hogwarts, our owls just got lost trying to get across the Atlantic.


Pretty (cloudy) shot of the Thames, the London Eye, Big Ben, etc. Typical lovely London day.


Abbey Road is not as great as you might think it could be. It's just another road in London, and though it's still home to several recording studios, it doesn't look anything like the Abbey Road on the cover of the Beatles album.


Skyline in East London - St Pauls, cranes, the Gherkin, with the Southwark Bridge in the foreground - on a sunny November day.


Booksellers on the South Bank, under one of the bridges. Tables and tables full of used books and maps and all sorts of interesting finds.


Southbank sculpture, near the British Film Institute.


Tate Britain. My favorite art museum in London because of its excellent collection of 19th and early 20th century paintings. Their big exhibit is hundreds (literall) of Turner paintings, and they always have some interesting modern installation pieces (though nothing on par with the Tate Modern).


Portobello Road. Love the bright colors.


Banksy graffiti on Portobello Road.


Mutate Britain! Get it? I didn't go in, but above the fence I glimpsed a giant baby's head, several dinosaurs, a crushed car, plenty of graffiti, and lots of bits of colored metal and wood.


My friend Tomoko on Portobello Road. She's holding a box of Hummingbird cupcakes; this accounts for the ecstatic look on her face.

Pictures from the North

St Giles Cathedral. Love the cupola.


Arthur's Seat, from the castle. Looks big from everywhere in the city.


Edinburgh Castle




The Elephant House - delicious lunches, elephants everywhere, and the birthplace of Harry Potter. Wonderful.


Fall colors!


Calton Hill sunset


Edinburgh in the evening...note all the spires.


Next day...Arthur's Seat!


It was so windy at the top...




School Pride


Gabe and I simply can't contain our love for Edinburgh




Royal Botanical Gardens - Chinese Garden


The inside of a little house in the Queen's Garden (ER=Elizabeth Regnant, thistles=Scotland)


the Palm House

Baile Atha Cliath

Dubin surprised me. I don’t know what I expected to see – I know not all of Ireland is cliffs and emerald pastures dotted with little cotton sheep and dramatic ruined castles and such. But Dublin was so...modern, so much the opposite of everything I associate with Ireland. This is not to say it is not a fun place to visit. Quite the opposite, in fact. The six of us who traveled to Dublin together thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it.

The first thing we see after we alight from the bus is an enormous silver spire. By enormous, I mean 400 feet tall. It is known at the Spike, believe it or not; they're very creative in Dublin. We never did find out exactly what it represents or what it commemorates. The next thing we see is a huge advert for Bailey’s. Welcome to Ireland.

Our first day is spent doing the most touristy things: we cross the River Liffey on several different bridges and take pictures of the reflections in the water,
we go to Christ Church Cathedral and marvel at the beauty of the reconstructed stonework, we get pulled into a Catholic church by a small but enthusiastic old woman and see a relic of St Andrew, we tour the Guinness Storehouse Museum and learn how the famous beer is made. In the evening, after dinner (I enjoyed my ‘traditional Irish pancake with vegetables’, i.e. burrito), we went to a pub that was recommended to us as a great place to hear traditional music. And incredible traditional music it had, as well as hordes of German tourists and wildly overpriced drinks. Typical.



Our second day was organized around our desire to see more of the city besides the touristy centre. We chose to walk to the sea; little did we know that this was much farther away than it looked on the tourist maps. Finally, though, we found ourselves faced with a huge expanse of smooth sand stretching as far as the eye can see, flanked by wooded hills (one topped by an old lighthouse) on either side. Tide was out. But we smelled the sea breeze, felt the sand, and marveled at the wide expanse of space we had discovered. This also called for a near-insane amount of pictures taken to document just how glad we were to be in Ireland.

Next stop, Dublin Castle. There is a statue of Justice in the courtyard - not blindfolded, as she is usually depicted, and with her back turned to the city. Was the sculptor confused? I think not. The castle itself is fairly uninteresting, but off to one side is a hidden treasure trove...literally. It's called the Chester Beatty Library, and it houses a massive collection of old books, bookmaking supplies, Eastern artwork, and religious memorabilia from around the world: Japanese picture-scrolls, illuminated medieval books, examples of different types of Arabic calligraphy, bindings from the Middle East, recently discovered pages of Manichean prayers, fragments of copies of the Gospels from AD 200, Buddhist paintings, incredibly gorgeous illuminated copies of the Qu'ran, and much much more. So much care is put into these books, into making the written word a work of visual art! Made me think of this:

Words! Mere words! How terrible they were! How clear, and vivid, and cruel! One could not escape from them. And yet what a subtle magic there was in them! They seemed to be able to give a plastic form to formless things, and to have a music of their own as sweet as that of viol or of lute. Mere words! Was there anything so real as words? - Oscar Wilde

We went out for a Polish dinner afterwards...we had no idea what we were eating, but it was delicious anyway. Little silver fish in green oil? Yum. Cabbage and beans in a brown sauce? Perfect. Fried doughy balls with meat and vegetable mush at their centres? Just what I was looking for. Our meal was supplemented by Polish MTV and fake flowers in neon-coloured plastic vases. It was wonderful.

The following day, we saw more books. Oh how I love travelling with literary people. We walked around the campus of Trinity College in the rain, then ducked inside the exhibit that houses the Book of Kells. Once again, I was completely awed. The exhibit described how illuminated manuscripts were made (such as how certain colours of paints were made, how the pages were sewn together, how many artists worked on each book, etc), and described a lot of the imagery in the illuminations. Then we saw the book itself - and it is so brilliant! The colors almost jump off the page, the detail is exquisite. The book itself is so large, I can't imagine how much work it took to create. Behind the museum is the college's old library - two levels, long vaulted room, full of old musty books. Heaven.

Last stop on this literary tour was the Dublin Writers' Museum, which took us through the literary history of the city. An impressive list of authors called Dublin home - think James Joyce, Oscar Wilde, Bernard Shaw, W.B. Yeats, Bram Stoker, Samuel Beckett, and Jonathan Swift, to name just a few.


Then it was time for a long walk through new portions of the city, a quick dinner, and the bus to the airport. Flight back to London Luton airport - night spent eating chocolate-covered peanuts, playing cards, and trying to sleep on the airport floor beneath a money exchange - groggy check-in at the flight desk - a quick nap at the gate - and we're off to Prague!

Edinburgh

(This trip was a month ago, and the post was written three weeks ago, but somehow it never went up! Here it is...Pictures to follow.)

The third portion of my British Isles tour (after London and Cardiff) was to Scotland. And what an adventurous trip it turned out to be. After an eight-hour overnight bus ride north, Gabe, Jennifer, and I emerge into the twilight of early morning Edinburgh, lost and disoriented, sleepy and hungry. We find a small cafe that has just opened, and over our toast and tea we plan out our day.

First stop: St Giles Cathedral. This cathedral is beautiful. The cupola is hollow and looks like one of those crowns that has the arches over the top of the head, and inside the arched ceilings are tastefully lit to give visitors a sense of how large and graceful the church actually is. Moments after we entered an elderly man began playing the organ, and the whole church reverberated with his hymns. In a small room off to the side, we saw an intricately carved wood ceiling over chairs graced with miserichords in every shape possible. Sadly, no photography allowed inside the cathedral.

Next stop, going up the Royal Mile: Edinburgh Castle. This is when we were grateful for our early arrival - very little waiting in line to buy our entrance tickets! From up here, at the highest point within the city, we could see in all directions - to the Firth of Forth, to the hills in the distance, to Arthur's Seat, and all around the city - which has a lovely skyline due to all the 17th century buildings. Inside the castle the Crown Jewels were on display. Though they were interesting to see, they did not live up to the hype.

We wandered through the Museum of Scotland for an hour or so before lunch and saw all manner of curiosities, including large collections of gold coins, blown glass perfume bottles, an Egyptian mummy, bits of statuary, an ancient Celtic harp, Saxon marking stones, an old chess set, model ships, and a mummified baby elephant. We took lunch at the Elephant House - showcase of model elephants, purveyor of delicious sandwiches, and birthplace of Harry Potter.

We spent the afternoon wandering up and down the Royal Mile before meeting Jeanne and Chris for a tour of Underground Edinburgh. The city is very hilly and has always been extremely crowded, which means that tall buildings were erected essentially on top of each other, creating a system of catacomb-like structures at or slightly below ground level, which at different points have been havens for criminals, homes for the homeless, and quarantines for those sick with the plague. Not pleasant places. Our tour, however, was more about the 'paranormal activity' supposedly present in the catacombs, without any evidence showing itself, and was not worth the fee, despite the whiskey and shortbread at the end.

After much trouble finding our hostel (roads change names just as much and with just as little warning in Edinburgh as they do in London) and checking in, we went out to see the city in a different light - to the pubs, much deserved after a solid twelve hours walking.

Next morning we crossed the city to climb Arthur's Seat, a large hill overlooking the city. Absolutely incredible views from the top, towards the castle and over the Royal Mile, out to Calton Hill (covered in monuments), over the Firth, and around the countryside. However, we did not expect the powerful winds and biting rain at the summit - almost too strong to allow us to stand upright. We jumped straight up in the air and came down at least a foot from where we began. This just added to our adventure.

We came down and crossed the city again, this time to the Royal Botanical Gardens, and finally found them after getting lost once again. The gardens boast all sorts of variety, from a rock garden to a Chinese garden which takes you through the vegetation present at different elevations on a mountainside, to carefully trimmed hedges and planned flowerbeds, to the glass Palm House full of tropical flowers and trees.

Then it was off to an Indian dinner and back on the bus to London! We arrived home at six in the morning, caught a 24-hour bus because the tube was still closed, and I at least got ready to go to class five hours later.

An exhausting weekend, but we all agreed that we need to return: Edinburgh is a beautiful, friendly city, with much to see and experience. Maybe a perfect place to live sometime? No one I know has anything bad to say about it.

The Perfect London Walk

Before I left for London, my mother gave me a book called "The Perfect London Walk," that she'd purchased before moving to Europe 20 years ago. It was written by Roger Ebert and two friends, and gave directions to follow what they considered the most perfect walk in the city of London. They admit there are many possibilities for good walks, but this, they say, is the best. I decided to see if they were right.

First, I walked through the sleepy, pleasant village of Highgate in North London, and up the road to Keats House. Sadly the house was closed, but at least I got to see the outside of it.


Then I entered Hampstead Heath. Ironically, I was steps behind an elderly American man with the same book in his hand. We passed each other several times over the course of the day.


From the top of Parliament Hill, the highest spot in the heath, you can see central and east London.


But I'd rather look at the heath itself.


Some say that Boudicca is buried under this mound; others say she's buried under track 5 at Paddington Station. In any case, the mound is gated and locked.


Perhaps the place where Keats used to walk, and where he once met Coleridge?


What a perfect November day...


This is what much of the heath looks like.


(Please pause and appreciate my skills taking pictures of myself...)


Off the heath, and to Kenwood House. Its grounds merge into the heath, but I came for the house itself, which has now been transformed into an art gallery.



The library, before I knew you weren't supposed to take pictures inside. Wow.


Highgate Cemetery. The very old section is open by pre-booked tour only (just one of the changes since my book was published), but the new section is open to any visitors. It's extremely crowded, and still fairly old.


Small paths crisscross the huge cemetery everywhere, sometimes weaving around the plethora of graves.


Marx is the most famous person buried here...


...but the sociologist Herbert Spencer is also here...


...as is George Eliot. She's buried close to her lover, and while her husband is in the same cemetery, he's a row over.


Stone ivy meets the real thing everywhere.


I think I agree with the authors of my book. This might just be the most perfect walk, out of many wonderful walks, in London. And London must be the only city in the world in which November is such a pleasant, beautiful month.