Europe 2012 - Episode II

Wednesday, August 29^th

We retrieved our luggage at the Koln train stations and boarded the high-speed train to London. The train passes under the Channel and speeds through Kent, under the Thames and comes in at the new international section of King’s Cross station on the north side of London. We bought tube/bus passes at the station and went off to find our hotel. Had we realized where we were, we would have gone to see the King’s Cross Platform 9 ¾ in Harry Potter.

Rooms for three adults are expensive in Europe, and it’s interesting to see what you get after you book a budget room online. Our room was not actually in the hotel. It was under the sidewalk entrance to the hotel. We walked down the outside steps to the basement, opened our door with an old-1800’s-style metal key, and there was our little room. I paced it out, and I think the end of the bedroom was actually extended a foot out under the street.  Normal hotels have windows, but a window would have opened into dirt or looked up through the sidewalk.  I’m not sure it met occupancy code, but it was clean, the internet worked, and it had a nice shower. Street noise was constant, but we got used to it. It was close to the Marble Arch tube stop, and buses were available on our street.

Cozy nest for three

Thursday, August 30^th

We began the tour with another cathedral – Westminster Abbey. 

Westminster Abbey

We paid the rather steep entrance fee and walked through the cathedral, taking advantage of the informative audio tour where you see a number displayed near something interesting, punch numbers into a largish cell-phone-looking thing, and listen to a British person telling you all about it. Not all audio tours are worthwhile; sometimes they belabor the obvious, but I liked this one. We visited the tombs of famous scientists. Alex put his hand on the tomb of James Prescott Joule to see what temperature it was. (A little thermodynamics humor.) We looked around for the tomb of Isaac Newton but didn’t find it right away. That’s because there was a brief service going on in the nave, and Newton’s tomb makes up the left side of the rood screen, which in the temple of Jerusalem would have been the veil.

Rood Screen

We visited Poet’s Corner; the side chapels; the various shrines; the tombs of Kings and Queens; and we saw the Coronation Chair, missing the Stone of Scone, which has been returned to Scotland. I said, “Hi! The game's afoot.” to Henry V. It was a great tour.

Then we went to the British Museum to see the treasures of the world. 

Alex demonstrating Olympic spirit

It’s hard to even scratch the surface, so we let Alex decide where to go and what to see. He wanted to see the sculptures from the Parthenon, and from there we wandered through the Babylonian treasures, the Rosetta Stone, and the Egyptian collections. 

Bidding farewell to Babylon

Rosetta Stone - Stolen from the French as they were stealing it from the Egyptians

Alexander the Great (left) - Alex the Great (right)

It would be nice to have a whole day there, but our day was about up. We decided to eat fish and chips at a restaurant near the entrance to the museum. Warning: Don’t do that. It was horrible: weird breading, over baked, non-traditional— yuck.

I’ve heard about Harrods department store in London, but I had never been there, so it was time to make up that deficiency in my life. It’s where wealthy people shop, with a great many of those wealthy people being rich Arabs. The purse section would cover a basketball court. But I’m not particularly interested in purses. The chocolate section would also cover a basketball court, and it was amazing. 

Brief preview of heaven

A second look at heaven

Alex & Lisa asked how much one bonbon cost, and the sales lady just gave them one. Being rich shoppers ourselves, we split it.

Friday, August 31^st – My birthday.

We took the train to Hampton Court, the palace that Cardinal Wolsey built and then gave as a gift to Henry VIII after it became clear that his days were numbered, primarily because Henry was the one numbering them. It’s a splendid place to visit. I recommend it to all who visit London. Trains leave from Waterloo Station every thirty minutes, and it’s a short walk from the Hampton Court train Station to the palace. There are three audio tours. The first one dealing with the youth of Henry is not great, but the one that describes the palace, the kitchens, artwork, dining, and history is wonderful. 

Alex makes friends easily.

There is a fountain in the main courtyard where wine was pumped during gala events. 

Tourists (center) - Wine Fountain (right)

The kitchen had a good fire going. 

Food fit for a king . . .

. . . or for us

It was fun. We didn’t have time to tour the William and Mary part of the palace. Next time.

The highlight of the visit was when actors in period costume appeared in the courtyard and began a reenactment. The men and boys were summoned inside to the King’s Council where Alex, I, and several others were selected to be the court ministers. Henry VIII proceeded to tell us his intent to divorce Catherine of Aragon, defy the authority of the Pope, become supreme head of the church in England, and marry Anne Boleyn. 

Painting commissioned by Henry VIII depicting
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John stoning the Pope

We had to vote as to whether or not we agreed. I’ve occasionally taken opportunities in public to be a wise-guy, but this Henry was such a good actor that all of us voted to support him. I was feeling what I suspect some of his actual counselors were, “Some of these actions might not be the wisest and will get us all excommunicated.” It looked like a choice between physical and spiritual death with the physical the sure thing and the spiritual maybe something that could be negotiated later.

Lisa and the women, who had been in Anne Boleyn’s chambers, joined us and we returned to the courtyard where Henry and Anne addressed us. It was great.

In the presence of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn

We discovered that the famous Hampton Court maze was about to close for the evening, so Alex and I sprinted out to find our way through it. Lisa joined us by coming in the back way though the center, which shortened our wanderings a little.

Inside the Maze - Mentioned in Three Men in a Boat

Lisa loved the gardens, which were vast and spectacular.

Rose Garden

English Garden

We returned to Waterloo and walked to the London Eye,that giant Ferris wheel on the bank of the Thames. We paid our fare and enjoyed the view during our one revolution. I’m not sure it’s really worth the fee, but it’s probably worth the fee to learn that.

Top of the Eye

Our Europe Trip - 2012

I will post an account of our Europe trip in several installments.
We visited Germany, England, Switzerland, Italy, and finished back in Germany.

Friday, August 24^th  

The model American tourist plans his trip abroad months in advance to a fixed schedule with all the hotels and planes, trains, and automobiles booked. We decided not to be model tourists. We enjoy flexibility and the thrill of quitting a country on a whim and booking a hotel and a flight in the evening and flying to that hotel in the morning to see what kind of place we booked. 

We left White Rock early in the morning, driving to Albuquerque and flying to Dallas. We had to change terminals in Dallas, so we rode the famously long DFW airport train, which took us to the International terminal – via Albuquerque.

We flew through the short night and landed in Frankfurt.

August 25^th

Our son Alex is working in Hamburg this fall as part of a BYU deal where he gets college credit, a paying job at a software company, and the opportunity to travel quite a bit to train other technical people around Europe. He had served his church mission in Germany, so he is fluent in German and has many friends there.
One of Alex’s friends had invited us to stay at her home in the American Embassy neighborhood of Frankfurt. So we flew in, gathered our luggage, and tried to call the girl. But the girl had suddenly realized a few days earlier that she needed to be at BYU, so as we were landing, she was taking off. This put us in the interesting spot of going to stay a couple of nights with a family who we had never met. They were wonderful, and we were jet lagged.

Boat Races on the Mein

To deal best with jet lag, experts agree you need to stay up all day and go to bed at the normal bedtime where your jet has plopped you. But these experts are insane. We took short naps. Our hosts had suggested that we wake up in time to go to the Frankfurt Festival down by the Main River. So we did. There were booths and activities along the river and then there were free organ concerts. We walked from church to church and enjoyed three organ concerts, each about 40 minutes long. It was a wonderful beginning to a European vacation to be there in the land of Bach listening to organ music.

Frankfurt Organ Concert

Sunday, August 26^th

We arose early and took the train to Hanau, which was the LDS ward Alex enjoyed the most on his mission.

Hanau Ward Building

When one sits through sacrament meeting, Sunday school, and priesthood/Relief Society meetings in German, one who is also jet lagged tends to drift off a few times. After our three meetings, we went to eat lunch with the bishop. He works for the church as head of public relations. He had served his mission in England, so he is a German with an English sense of humor, quite a rare find.  While Lisa slept after lunch, the bishop took us on a tour of his little town. I should have taken my camera. I enjoyed the tour as much as anything I did on our trip.

We walked into Windecken. The town center is a postcard village of timber and mortar shops and homes.

Windecken

We walked through the old Jewish part of town. The bishop pointed out where there had been a gate that was closed on the Jewish Sabbath. He pointed out where the synagogue had been. It was destroyed on Kristallnacht (The Night of Broken Glass) during the Nazi terror. 

Windecken 1940's

Today there is a Methodist church on the site. I thought, “That’s not right. It would be nice if they had rebuilt the synagogue instead.” Then I realized, “For whom?” Only a few Jews from Windecken survived the war. The bishop pointed out some small brass plaques in the cobblestones near some of the homes. These are Stolpersteine, small, cobblestone-sized memorials for individual victims of Nazism. I have been to Dachau with a tour guide who helped us realize the horror of the place. Touring Windecken showed me another side of the story, a small town that had once been home to a productive and happy Jewish community. 

There was also a Witch Tower where they locked up and starved young girls with weird characteristics (redheads, girls with strange habits, etc.) after they were tried and found guilty.

So it wasn’t the cheeriest tour; it was very sobering and thought provoking. There’s a small castle in town that is used as a retreat for the town’s old people during the day. That’s a nice use for the castle. 

Monday, August 27^th

We had wonderful hosts in Frankfurt, but we didn’t want to overstay our welcome. So we booked a hotel online in Bonn and took a pleasant train ride through the beautiful, castle infested Rhine valley.

Rhine Valley

We found our hotel and checked in, and later in the evening went to eat with a family Alex knew in Bonn. Alex has many friends in Germany both members of the Church he met and, like this family, not members. We ate what Germans eat: a lot of meat and cheese.

Tuesday, August 28^th

We decided to visit Beethoven’s birthplace. It’s a peaceful and interesting place. We stood in the upstairs room where he was born. We saw sheets of his compositions. He had an interesting life.

Alex talking with the staff 

Afterward we took a walk to an organ factory, which was unfortunately closed, but on the way back we saw another of Alex’s friends. We were on the light rail, and suddenly Alex said, “We’re getting off!” We got off, hailed his friend, and went to talk to her. She was amazed to see Alex.  . Later in the evening we went to a nice restaurant. We didn’t eat at a lot of nice restaurants on our trip, but occasionally it’s nice to sit down, relax, and eat some bratwurst or other unique German food. Alex chose the restaurant because they served horse meat, which he wanted to try. Did I want to try it? Neigh! But I tried a little piece, glancing around to make sure John Wayne wasn’t lurking around. He would have shot me. Horse isn’t something I will be craving the rest of my life. I had bratwurst and beans. The bratwurst was great. Of course – we were in Germany. The beans were stewed in delicious sauce. The difficulty was the beans. They were lima beans. You can only eat so many lima beans regardless of the wonderful sauce. So I had to say, "Whoa" at some point. Lisa ate normal food.

A horse is a horse, of course, of course . . .  main course

We returned to our hotel and got online to book a hotel room in London.  

Wednesday, August 29^th

The high-speed train to London leaves from Cologne (Köln). So we took a short train ride from Bonn to Köln. When you step out of the train station in Köln and walk outside into the square, you look up at the spectacular cathedral.

Koln Cathedral

We wanted to tour the cathedral, but it would be tough dragging our three suitcases all over the place. We eventually discovered that the train station has a luggage storage system where you put some money in a slot and open a little door and put your luggage into a bin and get an electronic receipt. The bin disappears into an underground mechanized storage array, and when you return, you slip the receipt into a slot and, if all things go well, up comes your luggage.

That allowed us to tour the cathedral unencumbered. Cologne’s cathedral is wonderful. In the high alter section we saw the tombs of the three wise men, which Germany stole from Milan’s cathedral back in the dark ages. Milan wants them back. We toured the treasury. Then we climbed the 525 steps to the top to see the spectacular view and watch the bells ring.

View from the top

We retrieved our luggage and boarded the high-speed train to London.