London for a Day

Yesterday found us back in London for the day and night. We spent the morning at The Cabinet War Rooms Museum. If you are ever in London, it is really worth a visit.

The museum takes you on a guided audio tour through the rooms that Churchill and his various strategists, advisors, cabinet members, secretaries, typists, etc, used as their war command center throughout World War II. The rooms are located deep underground near 10 Downing Street, and are fortified with concrete and steel, to protect those within from bombs.

What I love most about this museum is that on the day the war ended, people who worked in this space literally turned out the lights, locked the door and left. And everything that was down there just stayed as it was.

Some of the rooms were later cleared out before the space became a museum in the 1980's, and so these rooms have been faithfully recreated to match photographs, but one room in particular, The Map Room (my favorite), is exactly as it was the day the war came to an end. Even down to the sugar rations of one officer that were found in a desk drawer.

I just love to think of that when I look at this room, that everything here is just as it was on that historic day. The string on the maps, the push pins, the books and phones, the strategic logbooks, the code scramblers, the desks, chairs, everything, still somehow holding all the fear, the effort, the tension and finally, the elation and relief that this room once contained.

It just really felt like stepping back in time, being in these rooms, imagining all that had gone on in them for so many years, while bombs exploded above them, and the city crumbled while still struggling to stay alive.

Pretty amazing stuff.

After visiting the War Rooms, we did what anyone would do, and we went to a fantastic wine shop. Berry Bros & Rudd. Talk about stepping back in time: this shop has been there for 312 years. In the same space. I have included a link to their website on the left-hand side of this blog in the Sites I Love, Things I Mention section. Take the virtual tour of the shop, because you can see the underground cellars, function rooms and classrooms that you cannot go to when you just pop by the shop.

Today, I am back in Paris, and will be here until Wednesday. Already, it feels like the time on this trip is flying by. I am in a very large business hotel which I booked through Priceline. The room is clean and a bit spartan, almost like a very nice dorm room, but this view from my window....what can I say?

Forest of Dean

As I mentioned earlier, yesterday we went to the Forest of Dean, one of the many beautifully green English recreation areas where you can go for walks and hikes. Apparently, these woods provided inspiration to JRR Tolkien for Lord of the Rings.

We did a 4.5 mile walk called the Sculpture Trail, and it really was extraordinary. Placed throughout the wooded trail at varying intervals were all of these different sculptures created by different artists.

They were amazing in the way that they both blended in and stood out from their surroundings. There was a mound with tree stumps artistically arranged, a giant wreath of iron leaves in the top of a tree, a swing, a set of railroad tracks carved from wood, and this giant stained glass window suspended in mid air. It was just incredible to walk from the woods into a clearing to see this.

Whoever thought up this installation and walk was one smart cookie!

England? Food?

I feel that no discussion of England is complete without a brief chat about the food.

First of all, I must ask about this fruit. What is going on here? It is chopped up apples, grapes, I think an orange or two. All very nice, but they are swimming, SWIMMING, in this nebulous liquid of questionable origin.

What is this liquid? What purpose does it serve? I tasted it, and it's not a sweet poaching liquid, it's not tart lemon water to prevent browning, it's not Pimm's, it's not Sangria, and it's certainly not fruit juice, because no amount of fruit is going to produce that amount of liquid.

What?? Why?? It baffled me. It adds nothing to the taste, if anything, it kind of ruins it, but there must be some reason they do it. What is it? Anyone?? I must know!

Second, I must mention just how bad all of the food is for you here. I don't know what people are eating at home, but in restaurants it is impossible to get anything that is not deep fried, covered in mayo, accompanied by vast amounts of potatoes, cheese, sausage, or covered in pastry or custard (or cream. They cover perfectly lovely and healthy strawberries in a bowl of cream. Do they not know how much fat is in that stuff?! My cholesterol went up 20 points just looking at it!)

And don't get me wrong, I love fish & chips and savory pies and sticky toffee pudding. And the English potato chips are divine, the flavors they come up with (Worcester Sauce, BBQ beef, Prawn cocktail, chicken and tarragon) are marvelous. And English chocolate? Yum.

It's just that I would love to be able to also get something healthy. Like an entree size salad, or steamed veggies that are still crisp, because once you've boiled a vegetable for 45 minutes, you'll probably get more nutrients from eating your napkin, because everything good in that veggie has disappeared into the water.

We went to a lovely park yesterday, The Forest of Dean, and before our walk we decided to get some lunch. We ordered veggie burgers, thinking that was our best shot at being healthy. It was deep fried, was 90% potato, and it came on a bun that was, literally, as you can see, the size of my head.

It was tasty, I must admit, though I skipped the bun and what they called a veggie burger was really a potato croquette. At least we walked for 2 hours afterward.

I don't mean to be the ugly American, it just is hard, especially when you're trying to take off a few pounds, to be confronted with no healthy options at all. Plus who could resist that wonderful English Stilton? Or scones? I'm only human, after all!

England Winery

Today we went to Three Choirs Winery in Newent, Gloucestershire England. It is the second largest winery in Britain, and as you can see from this photo, it is in a truly beautiful spot.

They grown primarily German grapes because, so they claim, Germany has a similar climate to England (though I would imagine Germany must get more sun and less rain than England does, though I could be wrong).

I admit that I had never heard of any of the varietals: Bacchus; Siegerrebe; Phoenix; Reichensteiner; Madeleine Angevine; Huxelrebe. Bless you.

I cannot emphasize enough what a monumental task it is for them to grow grapes in such a wet and cool climate. From 75 acres under vine, in 2006 (their best year) they harvested 400 tons of grapes. In 2007, a wet year, they were only able to harvest 70 tons. In 2008, another wet year, 80 tons.

They were unable to even offer us a tasting of a red wine, because they just couldn’t harvest enough of those grapes to make one.

They make a nice non-vintage sparkling wine which my friends served at their wedding and it was perfect for a warm summer day; bright and crisp and apple-citrusy.

I was so impressed by the vineyards and the overall production of the place that I was really rooting for the wines before I tasted them. But here is the problem: the wines had almost no nose and almost no taste.

They tasted a bit like white wine which had been watered down. A hint of herbal grassiness and lychee on the nose, but not much else. And I realized that what we were tasting was what this climate is able to produce: waterlogged fruit that has not been able to ripen enough to really produce any real depth or complexity.

It could be that the particular varietals they have chosen produce very light-tasting wines, I don’t know. It will be interesting to get to Germany and try those same varietals and compare.

On the tour she also mentioned that when the vines reach 30 years of age, they get rid of them and re-plant with baby vines. The tour guide stated that the vines when they hit 30 years produce incredible fruit, but that the yields go way down.

In my opinion, herein may lie another of their problems: they are worrying too much about yield and less about quality. Right now, they make one sparkling wine, nine whites, one rose and two reds.

Maybe that's just too many. It seems like if they focused on fewer varietals and kept more of the older vines which are producing superior fruit and then made just one or two whites and reds and really got the best fruit they could, they would be able to make much better wines.

I don’t know anything about winemaking so I might be talking completely out of my ass.

Thoughts????

Bath

Today we went to the lovely city of Bath. I was expecting another little quaint village, but Bath is actually quite large. But because of the old buildings and narrow streets, it still retains a measure of quaintness that no city its size in the US can match.

Bath has wonderful shopping and residential areas as well as the beautiful River Avon, but what really makes it special is the Roman bath that is there.

Normally, I don't get too excited over baths; ones I have seen in the past have tended to just be an oblong of old crumbling stone with an area that the plaque tells you was once a changing area and plunge pool, but just looks like a wall that fell over, but these baths today were really amazing.

To begin with, the complex was started in the 1st Century AD, which I have trouble wrapping my head around, and it is enormous. Even today, the excavation is not complete, and they think the bathing complex continues on even further under the street.

One of the most wonderful fun facts given to us by the audio tour was that the water that is naturally bubbling up from the earth into these baths is believed to be rainwater from 10,000 years ago. Wrap your head around that.

Like so many places, this roman bath was built over completely and had, for all intents and purposes, disappeared. In the 1800's there was actually a residence on top of the baths, and the residents of it kept having trouble with water leaking up through their basement. When they investigated the source of this troublesome water, it was discovered that the house, and in fact most of the area around it was built on top of this major bathing complex.

The initial impetus for the building of this massive complex was the discovery in the 1st Century AD of this magical spring of water bubbling up, hot from the ground. Believing this was a source directly from the goddess, they erected this amazing spa around it.

No one was allowed to bathe directly in the bubbling pool, but it fed other pools which people could bathe in. This spa contained changing areas, massage rooms, cold and tepid plunge pools, a pool with benches inside it so that people could sit up to their necks in water, a room that was essentially a sauna, a temple, and the main bath, where presumably business was conducted by naked bathers.

I know they had their issues, but those Romans, my goodness they were innovative. They tempered iron and created pipes to direct the flow of water into the different chambers; they created pulleys that made the weight of what was being pulled feel significantly less; they created some system of piping air into one of the pools so that they essentially had a whirlpool; they stacked layers of tiles in different rows and then laid a floor on top of it so that the warmth from the furnace (they created a system of furnaces within the stones) flowed through the spaces between these tile stacks and heated the floor so much that the room essentially became a sauna; they used large round stones with holes in them to vent steam; and they developed a pump room to deliver water to different chambers.

It really was astonishing, as was their belief in the power of this hot water of the goddess to heal and protect. They were unbelievably ahead of their time. This recent movement we have been having to incorporate massage and other more "alternative" therapies into our lives, the Romans already understood. They believed that things like massage, hot water, sweating, cleansing and relaxation were an important and in fact pivotal part of life, one that was spiritual as well as physical.

Of course, they also liked to sacrifice living things in their temples, so I don't want to idealize them too much.

One final thing I loved about the baths was that in one of the pools, the excavators found all of these small rolls of tin that had writing on them. It turned out that these rolls contained curses that people had scratched into the tin with a knife and then thrown into the pool for the goddess, believing that she would enact them.

What was so wonderful about these curses was not only the literal translations, but also the grievances they were asking her to avenge. My favorite curse, literally translated, said something like: "Caesar stole my gloves. All death on him and blood from his eyes melting to his face and head falling underfoot for this." Good stuff.

If you are ever in Bath, these ruins are well worth a visit. And if you are plagued with persistent flooding in your basement, don't ignore it. Who knows what's under there....

The Cotswolds!

We are in the Cotswolds in England, and I am in love. This is my new favorite place in this country. It is quaint and beautiful, with sweeping farmland and rolling hillsides, large dark green trees, and charming villages with stone and/or wood houses and buildings, some of which date back to the 1600’s.

Churchbells chime, birds chirp, and (in what I gather is a rare occurance) the sun has been shining for the past week, and continues to do so.

Our hotel, The Close, in the town of Tetbury, has a beautiful walled garden, a four-poster bed in our room, thick drapes to block out the sun, and possibly the longest bathtub I have ever seen. The photo above is of our hotel from it's back garden.

It is, to say the least, wonderful, and relaxing, and we love it so much, we have decided to stay past the wedding weekend for an extra three nights.

Today we explored a wonderful little village called Painswick, nearby there is a supposedly amazing botanical garden, Bath is about 30 miles away, and about a 45 minute drive from here is a vineyard/winery!

I must comment, however, on what I feel to be England’s excessive use of the roundabout. They LOVE the roundabout here. On a 27 mile drive today, we encountered no less than 1400 roundabouts. I kid you not. There are more roundabouts than there are straightaways. I felt like I was on that crazy spinning teacup ride at Disneyland.

Being on the wrong side of the car, on the wrong side of the road, entering and exiting the roundabout from the wrong side just really does your head in.

We cannot have so many roundabouts in the US because, let’s face it, we just couldn’t handle them. We just can’t drive that well.

Here in the UK, people entering the roundabout actually yield to the cars already on it. They really yield-like sometimes they actually even stop. And they don’t enter the roundabout until it there is space for them to do so.

That would NEVER happen in the US. I’ve barely ever seen a car that yielded merging on to the freeway. In the US everyone assumes they have the right of way, and the other cars should just watch out and make way for them.

Growing up there was one roundabout in Newton, and every time you drove on it, you felt as if you were taking your life into your own hands.

Speaking of which, the most insane roundabout I have ever seen is the one around the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. For some inexplicable reason, the drivers who are already on the roundabout must yield to the traffic coming onto it, instead of the other way around.

This leads to masses of cars suddenly slamming on their brakes inches away from the cars that are entering the roundabout. I have never seen anything like it.

Steve’s parents once wound up on that roundabout by mistake, and it was such a disordered mess, they couldn’t figure out how to get off of it and they just drove around and around it for hours. In fact, I think they’re still there.

The Week in Review

I'm back and sorry for the gap-have been in The Lake District and Scotland without computer.

Here is a brief photographic overview of the last few days:

The Lake District in England, where we went with our fantastic friends Paul and Louise. This is the view from our Ferry boat on Lake Windermere. We were blessed with wonderful weather.

This is from the Motor Museum at the south end of the Lake. If you click on the image you should be able to zoom in and read the text.

These are actual statements from insurance forms for people's car accident statements. One of my favorites is: "A truck backed through my windshield onto my wife's face."

Borderlands of Scotland, along The Pennine Way, which is a 289 mile walk through Scotland.

I know even including this photo shows great immaturity, and the spelling isn't right, but i just couldn't help loving the fact that there is a Penial Revival Centre. How much would some men in the US pay to go there?!

Steve and I took a brief walk along the Pennine Way. Behold the sheep who attacked us on the path.

Ok, so he didn't attack us, exactly. In fact, the poor guy was so weighted down with wool he could barely walk. He looked like a mobile knitting store.

He was guarding a lamb behind him, and the mommy sheep and their other baby were on the hill just to the left of us.

From what I understand, sheep are some of the stupidest animals on the planet. This male saw us on the path and stopped, looking absolutely befuddled as to what he should do. He called up to the wife to see if she had any bright ideas.

After several rounds of "baa" back and forth to each other, he decided to stay exactly where he was and stare at us. This, apparently was the best plan they could come up with.

Sheep whisperer that he is, Steve strode ahead, waved his hands a few times and shouted at sheep Einstein to get out of the way, and both dad and lamb promptly trotted up the hill to join the others, and presumably to rehash this terrifying event.

After the walk, we did what any self-respecting person would do: we went to the local pub and had a drink.

This is Smudge, the pub cat, who was very friendly and took turns snoozing on both Steve's and my laps.

I apologize for not giving any wine recommendations lately, but this part of the world is much more the land of beer.

I discovered a love for the Lager Shandy (lager mixed with English lemonade, which is really more like Sprite) and for Crabbie's Ginger Beer. This is a Scottish delight which is alcoholic ginger beer, served over ice. Super refreshing and comes in a 500ml bottle!

Today we head to The Cotswolds for three nights to celebrate the wedding of our wonderful friends Mark and Miia. Hope to have internet access.

See you soon!