Europe 2019, Cont.: England

London, May 30-June 3

Disembarking from the Navigator on May 30, we flew to Gatwick and checked into a bed-sitter near Notting Hill that we had rented on-line. The area is a bit north of Kensington Gardens and offers an array of ethnic restaurants.  A major cultural attraction is Saturday’s Portobello Road street market, which features some antiques and a lot of junk, none of which we bought.

Portobello Road on a Saturday

Meals provided a way to connect with two British friends.  We dined twice at Ottolenghi restaurants, high on our London must-do list; the food was outstanding but the clientele was so young that we must have raised the average age by 10 years.  Our last night was a memorable evening at OXO, which featured not only outstanding cuisine but a fantastic view of the Thames.  In all these venues neckties were rare.

Anniversary dinner at Ottolenghi's ROVI

The Thames and St. Paul's from OXO

On the tourist route we chose locations we had not visited before.  The Tate Britain featured an exhibition of Van Gogh in London, where we learned that Vincent, who spoke and wrote fluent English, had worked in the city before returning to Holland and taking up art.  The Benjamin Franklin house, just off Trafalgar Square, is the only Franklin residence still standing; the staff does a good job of explaining how Ben occupied himself in London from 1757 to 1775.

Kensington Palace, in walking distance from our apartment, includes historic rooms from the eras of William & Mary and George II and a temporary exhibit on Victoria, who was born in the palace and spent her childhood there.  Finally, we crossed the Thames to view the new U.S. Embassy, which—unlike President Trump—we found very attractive; as the staff was preparing for the President’s visit, it didn’t seem like a propitious time to tour the interior.   No, we didn’t spot the Trump balloon.

Victoria in front of her girlhood home

U.S. Embassy amidst widespread construction
on St. George Wharf

Of course, we took advantage of London’s cultural offerings.  The choir boys were on vacation, but we enjoyed evensong at Westminster Abbey sung by an excellent ensemble of lay vicars.  Mixing in a bit of Americana, we saw a superb performance of “The Lehman Trilogy” with the three original brothers and all other major figures in the history of Lehman Brothers (including Pete Peterson) played by just three actors—a tour de force.

Wells, June 4-7

We traveled by train from London to Somerset to spend four days with Tony and Judy Lane, our good friends and frequent traveling companions who had moved to a renovated farmhouse near Wells.  The centerpiece of Wells, the smallest city in England, is its beautiful 12th century cathedral, which is surrounded by a swan-filled Bishop’s Moat and features unique scissor arches, a 14th century remedy for sinking foundations.

En route to Wells by foot

Cathedral and Bishop's Moat

Nave with scissor arches

Vicars' Close, reputed to be the only completely
medieval street left in England

In addition to guiding us through the cathedral, the Lanes took us to Stourhead, a 2650-acre Wiltshire estate with a huge 18th century landscape garden festooned with Greek and Roman temples.  Its romantic style of landscape architecture, developed in England at that time, struck Tony as an improvement on raw nature.

Stourhead Garden

Europe 2019, Cont.: Amsterdam

Amsterdam and Environs, May 29

The Navigator docked at Amsterdam's pier the morning of May 29, giving us a whole day to explore the city before disembarking on May 30.  Having visited the Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh Museum on previous trips, we opted for a boat ride through the city's canals in the morning and an escorted bicycle excursion in the afternoon.

Canal and Flower Market

As many know, bicycling in Amsterdam is not for sissies.  Adept riders go as fast as motorbikes, and woe to the visitor who doesn’t know the rules of the road.  Fortunately, we and our three fellow tour members had an expert guide who eased us through city traffic onto a ferry that carried us over the Ij and into the city’s less traveled northern districts.  Before long we were out of Amsterdam and riding through rural villages.  The only “hills” we encountered were bridges over the many canals.

On the ferry

Before a working, but non-commercial windmill,
manned by volunteers

Atop a "hill" in the countryside

Europe 2019, Cont.: Bruges

Bruges (Brugge), May 28

We had both been to Bruges before, but on different occasions—Todd in the 1960’s and Georgia in 2006.  Thus fortified with memories of the city (Todd’s far sketchier than Georgia’s), we decided to eschew tours and re-explore on our own—along with an extraordinarily large number of other tourists. The only problem was the weather, for intermittent showers obliged us to carry large, cumbersome umbrellas from the ship

On the Bruges Markt

Brugge (as the Dutch-speaking majority of its citizens call it) had its heyday in the 15th and 16th centuries, when it was a jewel in the crown of Burgundy, a Habsburg-ruled principality that stretched well beyond the borders of the present-day French wine-growing region.  The city’s wealth came from its role as a major commercial port, but the silting-up of the river leading to the English Channel led to the transfer of ocean commerce to Antwerp.  Thus, Brugge remained frozen in time with its early Renaissance buildings unthreatened by the erection of more modern structures.  Happily for the tourist industry, the city’s canals survive.

The artistic masterpiece of the city is the Michelangelo’s “Madonna with Child” in the Church of Our Lady, supposedly the artist’s only sculpture to leave Italy during his lifetime—evidence of the city’s wealth.  The scaffolding results from ongoing restoration work throughout the church.  In second place are the works of Hans Memling, a  15th century German artist adopted by Brugge.

Madonna with Child

A Memling Triptych

Brugge’s two main squares are the Markt, the city’s former commercial center, and the Burg, where the old palace and other government buildings are located. 

Panoramic View of the Markt

Panoramic View of the Burg 
(showing that you can 
be in two places at once)