Tourist Sites

London this time around has been much more successful. We have been staying in Parson’s Green, right beside the tube station. We are literally the closest house to the station but in the house it is surprisingly quiet. The general plan is do galleries, museums, markets or other free activities in the day and help out with Paul and Renee’s house and go to events, music, theatre etc at night.
We have seen a few museums and galleries and all the national ones are free to get in so are great for us. We visited Abbey Road made famous by the Beatles, Camden markets and a few other landmarks.
In the evening we went to Stomp, a West End production, and it was great. Tap, body percussion and rhythm. Very tight, well choreographed and entertaining. We saw some open-air dance and a production of Helen of Troy. We are going to the Proms at Albert Hall and The Merchant of Venice. We have to make the most of all the theatre and music there is around.
Max has had a friend visit from Norwich where we spent the last month. He and Helena did their own sightseeing including the giant ferris wheel called the London Eye with great views over London and the markets. It is more interesting to do things with people his own age apparently.
Paul and Renee had a big birthday/house warming party here, so there were lots and lots of Kiwis and Aussies. There are Australians everywhere in London but we hadn’t met many at all before this. It is funny, the English can’t tell the two accents apart but it only takes a few words to know. We could almost sit back and look at the party as outsiders, notice the different accents and cultural differences the Australians and New Zealanders have compared to the English, and appreciate the friendly, relaxed and easy-going nature. You can only see it when you have been away from it for a while.

Make sure you book train tickets more than a week in advance to get discount fairs; make sure you have a good map or guide book; make sure you have spare camera batteries; make sure it is the right day for the Changing of the Guards at Buckingham Palace; make sure you buy tickets for the theatre early before either the ticket office closes or the tickets sell out or both, make sure that free events listed for a week are really going to happen everyday; make sure that the train tickets you have are transferable to later times without additional cost.

We didn’t.

So we had a very long, tiring and quite expensive day in London without getting to see or do much. We did see some of the mounted horse guards, the outside of a few landmarks like Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square, Westminster Cathedral and Big Ben. We walked across Tower Bridge, caught a tube or two, went to a pub and came home. Covent Gardens were good though with very entertaining buskers, even a very heavily tattooed one from Australia, and the Thai restaurant had nice food but very strange decor - and it didn’t rain.
It is hard work being a tourist especially with the exchange rate so bad for us at present. The information available on the net is not always accurate and without any local knowledge it is quite hard and frustrating getting around.

There is a real sense of history as well as old world charm when you enter the city of York. The Normans invaders reached York in 11th century but the history of York goes back to the Romans, Saxons and Vikings before that.
The city centre is surrounded by great stone gates and medieval stone walls which you can walk around for a good introduction to the city and to appreciate just how long it has been there and the battles it must have faced. There still are many old and fascinating buildings in the old town. At the centre is York Minster, an enormous medieval cathedral which dates back to 1220 but has been extended rebuilt and repaired several times since. The Shambles – the original butchers markets – with its narrow street and leaning tudor style buildings is a wonderful step back in time. The Shambles leads into the market place just where it has been for hundreds of years., and still selling locally grown fruit, veg and smoked fish. You feel like you are living in history in York. There is Cliffords Tower from the 13th century which stands on the same mound as the original Norman’s tower to guard the city.
We now rate museums on their ability to keep 15 year olds interested and the Yorvic Viking Museum gets full marks. On the actual site where a Viking street was discovered and excavated they have recreated the street.
Using s system of suspended chairs you are shown around the old street to watch people at their trade – the leather worker, the blacksmith etc. Explanation in a language of your choice comes from the headrest in the chair. It gives you a very good impression of how daily life was carried out by the Vikings in about 800 AD. After that there are artifacts found at the actual site, bones and skeletons where the injuries sustained on the skeletons are explained and possible cause of death determined…. archeological forensic science.

To give you a bit of background - the Alhambra has had a colourful and eventful past which is reflected in its architecture and gardens. It started out as a Moorish fortress in 9th century and converted into a palace in 13th century. Granada was the last Moorish stronghold until the Spanish regained control in the 15th century. The large sections that remain of the Moorish buildings and gardens are what make Alhambra the magical place that it is.

A lot has been written about the Alhambra in Granada and you wonder if such beautiful descriptions could be true – they are. A few words that come to mind are: beautifully proportioned, ornately decorated, intricately moulded, beautiful tiled, delicately carved ceilings, Arabic inscriptions – you get the idea. Even the bathouses have star-studded roofs. Each room, each garden, each view, each angle is picture perfect. The cameras were non-stop from the other 1000 or more visitors today (except mine which ran out of batteries!) It is such a big complex it is hard to take it all in and we were all suffering from ´Gallery Foot´ and over dosed on arches and carved wall patterns by the end of the morning.

One of the most pleasing aspects to the Alhamabra is the use of water – water is an art form. Water is the link between patios and gardens – it can be either seen or heard everywhere creating a soothing, cooling effect although it must be 38 degrees outside. There are pools in every courtyard, aqueducts transporting water beside or below the streets, fountains, ponds, trickling and splashing, even hand rails carrying water.

The Alhambra is really an amazing place where every aspect has been considered and beautifully constructed to reflect the Islamic beliefs of God, the earth and beauty.

We have been to see La Pedrera – an amazing Gaudi house in the centre of Barcelona. It is hard to know where to start – no corner is square, no wall is straight, everything is curved, carved, tiled, circular, twisted, arched, swirled, inlaid, made from stone, wood, tile, glass, mosaics and wrought iron. Nothing is as you’d expect. Every room or space is an art work itself.

The building was made as an apartment for a wealthy family a despite nothing being straight or square, is a very liveable space. The roof however, is where Gaudi has really gone to town. The roof is an undulating, tiled and stepped surface crowned by the most fantastic, (as in weird) chimney pots. Some are like monsters out of Star Wars and other are more like soft serve icecreams – definitely not your standard, boring chimney pots. With the late afternoon sun enhancing their colours and shadows they seem to almost take on a life of their own. I can only looks at them in awe and try to imagine the type of creative mind that can design and build these things. Gaudi has done it again.