More time on the river

What a lovely city this is! I made another gem of a discovery yesterday when scouting out the best way to get to a soccer stadium. The stadium is home of the Fulham Football Club, Craven Cottage (most unusual stadium name in sports, I'd wager), where we'll be going to see a game after fall break. And the discovery was another lovely park, Bishop's Park, which happens to be in between the Cottage and the closest tube stop. I took this picture from its Thames-side path of the picturesque buildings on the opposite shore.

The tide was out and there were all kinds of water fowl along the foreshore. Londoners are justifiably proud of their cleaned up river.

My afternoon also included a visit to the National Army Museum, where my World War II class is headed after the break. It's smaller than the Imperial War Museum, and has a different focus, but is of the same high quality as the other London museums I've visited—that is, I'm going to be very spoiled about museums when I get home. And not only because of the quality but also because most, including this one, are free.

I'm going to take a minute to rant here about the value of museums and how charging $10 and up for someone to go into one rather assures that their educational value isn't going to be shared by the whole community. If they have something important to teach future generations about history, science, or anything else, you should be practically paying people to go into them, not the other way around!

Now that I've calmed down a bit, I can describe the earlier part of my Thames-side stroll, when I had a pleasant picnic lunch on the Chelsea embankment near the Albert Bridge. It's a Victorian concoction like most of the things named "Albert" around here, and is the only bridge I've seen with not only a weight limit but what I call a rhythmic limit.

My lunch spot also wasn't far from the home of a woman who's existence I discovered when doing my WWII course preparation and who's become one of my heroes—Vera Brittain. Feminist, pacifist, memoirist, and all-around clear-thinker, her Testament of Youth is a book I'd recommend to anyone wanting to know what the First World War was really about. And during the Second, when she lived in this neighborhood, she managed to get on the wrong side of both the British government (presumably for her writings urging humanitarian treatment of the Germans after the Great War— and wouldn't things have turned out better if she'd been listened to?) and the Nazis. She was on their blacklist of people to be rounded up as soon as possible after their invasion of the British Isles. You've got to be doing something right to tick off both sides, don't you think?

Anyway, I enjoyed strolling along the Embankment, just as she liked to do. And knowing this made it an honor, as well as a pleasure, to do so.