After a short tube journey from Heathrow, we checked into the K&K Hotel King George a few streets over from the Earl's Court tube entrance. After checking in, we walked from Templeton Place thorough the Kensington area to a fantastic Indian restaurant called "Zaika". I've never had Indian food like this...they actually serve tasting menus (6 course) with wine pairings.
I think having a French waiter made it just that much fancier also. Truly memorable. Our waiter is trying to move to California of all places, so we may find ourselves being used as a reference on some immigration papers somewhere down the line...We got used to being jostled and squished on the tube. You have to feel sorry for the tall guys who don't find a seat. T
he edges of the underground train really do curve over, forming a tube, so we saw more than one guy stick his head out the doors at a stop when the doors open, not to get off, but just to uncramp and get a breath, only to have to hunch back over and stoop when the doors are closing. I had to get a cheesy tourist shirt that says Mind the Gap (akin to an I heart NY). At every stop, a wise recorded British voice say "This is .... station. Please mind the gap".Saturday morning, we found our way to the British Museum for our two scheduled "Bible Tours". We had to filter through all of the other Witnesses there for the same purpose to find who to check in with. An entire congregation came for a group tour, and we kept getting their guides
confused with the guides for the individual tours. At 10 am we started with "The Stones are Crying Out", where we examined Assyrian artifacts seeing how they uphold Biblical accounts of the same people, as well as the origins of things like the cross and Easter (as seen on the picture of this stela from the temple of Nabu from around 814 BC). We also saw a few wall plaques depicting the conquering of the city of Lachish by the Assyrians, and the outcome of their fall. It was interesting to think that these would hav
e been the same Assyrian army who, when they came up against the Jerusalem shortly after conquering Lachish, had no such luck. Rather, the Bible account shows the demise of their 185,000 strong army in one night, falling to the strength of a single angel. After a simple lunch at the Museum cafe, where we enjoyed meeting a few of our spiritual family, and getting directions to the London Bethel branch for Monday, we moved on to our second tour, entitled "Keep Your Eyes on the Prize". This one detailed elements of athletic and soldierly life during the era of the Greek scriptures. It's amazing to see artifacts up close and personal that I've only
seen in pictures for years. Like the statue of a Greek boxer with cauliflower ear. Things like the Rosetta Stone (which Matt and I had seen on our first trip here for a few days after Ireland on our honeymoon and it was only behind a velvet rope instead of the thick plastic encasing it now), the cylinder of Nabonidus, and a near complete suit if Grecian armor make history come alive. Especially when paired with bible chronology and metaphor. Suddenly the distant grows near, the ancient becomes everyday, the cloudy understanding comes clear. After our tour we swapped cards and and digits with our new found friends, and moved out into Lond
on. We got warmed up at a pub around the corner from the museum (a good place to write post cards, as always) before continuing to wander London. Matt had found a place (called Porter's) for "traditional" British food. I know, it sounds like an oxymoron, but they had really really good
food. They also publish a cookbook which I had to talk myself out of getting. On the way back to the tube from there, we passed a street performer with his work laid out on the sidewalk. He stood off to the side reciting a new piece to himself. We perused his titles waiting for him to finish. When he noticed us, he asked us to pick a title and he recited it from memory for us. He was quite good, and we spoke at length with him about the neighborhood he lives and practices in there, his poor relations with the local police and court (they don't take kindly to buskers), and the life of Keats (actually now I can't remember
if it was Keats or Byron, or even Shelley, such is my poor memory of English romantic poets) who seems to have never traveled farther than his small town on London. Joseph Marinus, we were glad to make your acquaintance. Matt donated towards paper and crayons, and we walked off with new poetry in hand, enriched by human interaction. Mine is called "Speech of the Boot", Leanna walked away with a "Golden Key".Next day we hopped on the "original" double decker bus tour (the yellow line) of the premier London sites, starting in Trafalgar Square. After a suitably insulting interchange with the ticket man, we had tickets to the bus, a boat ride along the Thames (which we opted to skip since we'd be even farther from the things we'd want to see) and The day had a little bit of drizzle to it, but we took to the top level
regardless. Leanna had some napkins to wipe the seats dry (drier at least) and with the sun peeking out, we whipped around from Trafalgar to Big Ben and Parliament, the London Eye and Covent Garden and Fleet Street, Buckingham Palace and Speaker's Corner. Both Sean Connery and Roger Moore apparently lived near here after acquiring fame and fortune. Rumor has it that Pierce Brosnan tried to get an address on the same street and got denied. We had wanted to tour Westminster Abbey, but it was closed for the day. While crossing London Bridge, the commenter told us about the area affected by the great fire of 1666. There is a memorial tower topped with a golden torch commemorating the even that changed the face of the city, now standing in the financial district. You can climb to the top (13 flights up if I recall correctly) for a great view, so we hopped off the bus, 
and almost immediately discovered our bus tickets gone missing. In our frantic search, and anxious wait for another yellow line tour bus, we didn't even get near the tower. Turns out that it was also closed for the day. The next bus to come along was being driven by one of the employees we'd had some banter with first thing in the morning, so he was very helpful and took us on to meet back up with the tour. The sun got even brighter as we continued on towards Tower Bridge, and we left the anxiety behind us.The Tower of London is a place that Matt and I have been looking forward to visiting for decades. I remember reading the story of the "lost princess" from an encyclopedi
a as a young kid, and it's here that their small bones were unearthed from a crude burial under the White Tower's staircase after about 200 hundred years following their imprisonment and murder in the bloody tower. It's never safe to be heir to the throne.We got in just in time to follow a Yeoman gaurd (aka: Beefeater) giving a guided tour of
the grounds and telling tales. They still live full time on the premises, get locked in at 10pm, have their own doctor dedicated to the care of under 30 guards and their families. In fact, at the private chapel on the grounds, they still hold family weddings. They had one in October. He told us of the life and times of the Tower inhabitants of old and current, scandals and traditions. I finally got to see the Tower ravens in person. 
The superstition goes that if the ravens ever abandon the tour, London will fall. To prevent that happening, the ravens have their wings clipped, and are fed a rich diet designed (think steak) to keep them content to stay on.The different towers we were able to tour are filled with centuries old medieval graffiti of the tower prisoners, including Lady Jane Grey. It houses many many sad stories mostly centering on religious feuds and political struggles. All things I'll be glad to say goodbye to. We also saw the separate hill where people of consequence were allowed to be beheaded, away from the mongrel crowds. There is now a bit of a modern sculpture of a fluffy pillow shaped chopping block where Anne Boleyn is supposed to have requested to have a swordsman and not an axeman do the deed in her behalf.
As with every tourist trap in existence, before exiting, you are funneled through a gift shop. So of course, we purchased the obligatory few items, including a cross stitch of the White Tower. We were happy to see our drill sergeant of a tour guide on one of the postcards.
We ran past the Crown Jewels, having just enough time to gape at part of the largest diamond in the world (so far) the unpolished weight of 530.20 carats, pieces of which are embedded in the Royal Scepter, known as the "Great Star of Africa", and the Kohinoor diamond ( a whopping 108 carats) gracing Queen Elizabeth's 1937 coronation crown. Jehovah made some pretty cool stuff for us to find...
We caught the tour bus out again and headed for our last destination of the day, the replica of Shakespeare's Globe theater. Yet another thing I've wanted to see for about as long as I can remember. This is actually the third "Globe theater" to stand in this location, including the original. About 10 years back, there was an Awake! article describing the current reconstruction, and I've been looking forward to seeing it especially since then. We had an early evening tour guided by a theater assistant who told us flat out that their last production of Romeo and Juliet was awful, but they do a great Twelfth Night. Unfortunately we couldn't stay for a performance, even though they manage two shows a day, and charge a meager $5 euros for standing room and for the "bad seats", and only $15-$35 (euros) for more prime realty. Next time... I've been in need of a decent size coffee mug (since our kitchen came stocked with coffee cups more suited to dolls) and found one there with a bleeding heart naming
Capulet on one side, and Montague on the other. Matt got a Poor Yorick patch.Monday, my poor hard working husband had to go in to the London office and being another work week. That left Leanna and I a free day, which we decided to use by finding our way to the London Bethel (which we wouldn't have attempted on our own, but since our lunch mates at the British Museum gave us such confident directions, we tried it) only a short tube ride away to the north of the city.
Again, we had perfect weather, so we walked about 10 minutes up a gentle hill from the Mill Hills East station past lines of Tudor style houses and green grassy fields to the IBSA house, and Watchtower house with sun warming or faces. A sweet sister (who I'd spoken
with on the phone to make sure they'd be open for us to tour) greeted us with photos from a trip to Crockett and Napa. Just the waiting room put the Amsterdam Bible Museum to shame, they had such beautiful and old Bible manuscripts and printings. Made all the more meaningful for us by highlighting things like Jehovah's name in original texts. We got mixed up in another congregation tour, and were sad to have to extricate ourselves to go where we were assigned. The tour only took about an hour and a half, but it was one of the most refreshing and enjoyable parts of the whole busy 3 weeks of Leanna's visit. In part, it was just nice to be out of the bustle of the city for a change, but meeting new spiritual family is always something that puts a smile on your face and energy into your step.
The printing facility is impressive to the nth degree. We felt a little bad for the brothers on shift because while we were all snapping photos, they had a massive paper jam. So we all documented how to unclog the machines. The brothers were crawling on top of the machine, pulling off panels, and chucking magazines all over the floor in an effort to get production back on schedule.
Our tour guide (a brother whose family hales originally from Hong Kong but who has a disconcertingly very thick British accent) has been in residence there for 12 years, and did a great job of helping us to see not only the daily life of a London Bethelite, but also the overall effect of the work they do there. We saw magazines being printed off in dozens of languages, being folded, trimmed, and packed up for
shipments seemingly all over the world. It gave us a laugh to see that they're stocked up on Kirkland coffee from Costco. I had no idea Costco has made it to the UK. I told the ladies in our group that I used to live in Kirkland. We talked about the problems of storing bulk items in typically small European houses. The brother that led our group works in the electrical department, and we all found it amusing that the item they spend the most time fixing isn't the dishwashers, or printers, it's the sister's hairdryers. Go figure. He showed us how the machine shop not only manufactures replacement parts for the presses when needed (to aide in keeping costs low) but even improves upon the designs. I like this picture where he's showing us how user friendly this huge paper cutter is. See that stack of paper on the desk? That's how thick a stack in can handle at once. So, your fingers would present no problem to
the cutter. But, to maintain safety, once you've lined up your stack, you have to maintain pressure on two separate buttons on the right and left side of you, as well as pushing a floor peddle with your foot in order to make the machine operate. Through out our tour we kept passing our old friends from the Bristol (area) congregation, and we were sad we didn't get to spend more time with them all. Next time as well...We reluctantly made our way back to London town and our evening flight back to Amsterdam. Matt worked off site at a customer (a poultry processing machines manufacturer...they have a machine to hatch eggs and raise the chicks...) so one of the guys from the office dropped him off at the airport and Leanna and I checked out of our hotel, and took the Piccadi
lly line on the tube for the last time. But we didn't really get any time to process everything we saw and experienced because once home in Amsterdam, we pretty much spent the day doing laundry, grocery shopping, and packing for the next phase: Florence Italy.
No comments:
Post a Comment