I'mmmm back!

Wow! I didn't realize how long it's been since I posted on this blog! But it's been even longer since I've personally been in the London that I love. However, good news! Our kids wanted to visit the UK this spring and kindly let us join them...I mean, twist my arm!

We spent about 10 days in London before striking out for other parts of the UK, and I plan to tell you about the London fun we had here on this blog. Before returning to my Hometown Tourist spot for the non-London pix and adventures.

After a long overnight flight, Henry, myself, and one set of kids/grandkids hit the tube for Fulham, where the other set of kids/grandkids was waiting to meet us. And lead us to the fabulous Airbnb they found. The picture above is of a very happy tourist standing at our bedroom window. She doesn't even look too jet-lagged! On the right you can see the lovely street that we found ourselves on.

We had a nice walk through Bishop's Park from the bus stop to this fine destination. Over the next several days, we became very familiar with this area, and various ways to get from Putney Bridge to our street. Here's the bridge itself:

And on our walks through the park, we occasionally thought we'd strayed onto a ski slope! But the white you see in this photo is simply an extremely generous helping of cottonwood tree fluff:

English soccer fans (or folks with very long memories of posts on this blog) will know that our Fulham neighborhood is home to a Premier League club whose mid-table finish this season was very respectable. We didn't get to go to a Fulham game, but there will be much more about football there and elsewhere in a later post. Here's a glimpse of their home field, the oddly-named Craven Cottage, as we walked to our lodging on that first day:

I have to close this introductory post with a couple more shots of that wonderful lodging...

plenty of space for our large party of 11

another view of the back yard, and, yes,
the roses smelled as wonderful as they looked

most of the doors on this very genteel street were equally gorgeous

Reminder of the Tower

I couldn't help but remember my visit to the Tower of London in November, 2008, when I saw these red vines covering medieval walls in Regensburg, Germany.

We took an unforgettable vacation this fall that included a Viking river cruise on the Danube and Regensburg is one of the stops.

If you want to read about this great trip—we went to Italy as well as along the Danube in Germany, Austria, and Hungary—check out my current blog, Hometown Tourist and look for the label Europe2017.

Walk-through

I couldn't help but think of London when we were in Houston recently (of all places!) and during a stroll around our friends' neighborhood we came upon this lovely pathway...

What I thought of was some of the tiny passages I encountered (and occasionally got lost in) around Kensington. You can see what I mean here (about half-way down the post) and here (towards the bottom of the page).

The Houston walkway led to this handsome pocket park...

(which of course is something else London has lots of)... and we assume that's why it's there, to allow residents of the neighborhood to get to it easily, since the blocks are rather long. The passageway cuts two of these long blocks in half.

a dapper tourist along the path

Remembering the V&A

Wow! It's been a year since I posted on this blog! Believe me, I haven't gone that long without thinking of London, but this is the first time in a while that I've had a London reminiscence that called the blog to mind.

PAPERWEIGHTS!

Yes, I was recently in a museum that had a whole room full of paperweights, and I couldn't help but remember the wonderful Victoria and Albert Museum. How many rooms full of curious and wonderful objects does it have?! 

The paperweight room is in the basement of the Chicago Art Institute, which I was lucky enough to visit on a recent trip to that fine city. And while it certainly wasn't as voluminous as the lace room or the silver gallery in the V&A, it was just as much fun and just as delightful a discovery.

Not only are the paperweights on display gorgeous objects worthy of being in an art museum...

...but the displays also provided some intriguing information about how they are made...

What an unexpected, but utterly cool, collection of objects! But that's not the only quirky, V&A-like set of displays that the Art Institute offers.

Also in the basement is their collection of tiny rooms...which is just what it sounds like. A bunch of dollhouse rooms that are exquisitely decorated in a variety of period styles. So neat!

The displays are fronted with glass, so it was hard to get good pictures. But, take it from me, this little gallery is well worth the time to visit.

So much detail! And how did they make it seem like sunlight was actually entering through the tiny windows and doors?! Amazing!

I'll close with a particularly haunting image from the Institute's main collection (it's famous for its Impressionist collection)...another London memory:

I'll have more about the wonderful painting we saw here in a future post over on Hometown Tourist.

An unexpected memorial

Perhaps I should re-title this blog to reflect its recent emphasis on war memorials. But these fascinating pieces of public art do always remind me of my time in London, and, in fact, in the U.K. Where they seem to be omni-present.

On a recent trip I encountered a memorial that surprised me. It commemorates a war that became overshadowed by the much larger conflicts that followed it, but which contained some hints of what was to come.

"to commemorate the heroic devotion of the Canadians
who fell in the South African War..."

In the middle of downtown Montréal is this handsome memorial to Canadians who fought with Britain in the Boer War, which happened around the turn of the 20th century. The memorial was erected in 1907.

Given all the many memorials I visited and photographed in the U.K., I don't remember a single one commemorating this conflict! I wonder what impulse led to its appearance here? Granted, I know very little about this war. Some of the battles listed on the memorial sounded vaguely familiar...

face of the memorial listing Boer War battles

What I primarily know is that Churchill made a name for himself as a war correspondent during it, and that it introduced concentration camps to the world.

But if I had to name a Dominion country who participated in the war, it would be the Aussies. Admittedly, this knowledge comes from seeing Breaker Morant at an impressionable age, not from any military history knowledge.

However, even an unpopular and somewhat obscure war has a human cost that should be remembered. And I found this unexpected memorial well executed and a moving sight in the early dusk of our stroll around a small part of this lovely city.

War Memorial Central--west

Living, as I do, in a city that has its own Cenotaph, war memorials that remind me of London aren't exactly scarce in my experience. But I recently got a mega-dose by visiting a series of these structures in connection with an evening at the Symphony.

The large center in the background of this photo is our newly renovated Tobin Center, which I've blogged about over on Hometown Tourist. But the small stone-and-statuary edifice in the foreground is our local Korean War Memorial. Here's a closer view:

Then, at the other end of this plaza that faces the Center, is our Vietnam Memorial, a very dramatic sculpture:

It's large enough, with enough busy city in the background, that it's hard to get a picture of the whole thing. This is just part of it. You can see the multitude of flowery offerings left there, though, probably because of the recent anniversary of the end of the war. I imagine that there are usually not so many wreaths there, but I suspect there's always one or two at least.

I had seen the Korean and Vietnam memorials before, but new for me on this visit was the Veterans' Plaza on the backside of the Center. This space, which leads up from the River Walk, is marked by this series of handsome plaques. They not only name, but describe the heroic actions of Congressional Medial of Honor recipients from the San Antonio area. On this visit I didn't have time to read them all, but I plan to make a stop in this plaza a normal part of my pre-Symphony routine in the future, so I hope to read them all someday.

(Look for more views of the plaza in general at Hometown Tourist soon.)

Bike reminder

Walking across the University of Texas at Austin campus the other day, I happened to see a series of signs that reminded me of the various cycle-related signs I saw in the UK:

For some reason, whenever there are a lot of bikes around, they get especially touchy about where you park them!

Note the text on the sign is in burnt orange...of course!