Looking forward to this!!

VirginiaC:

Fabulous start. Carry on please and do tell us the city or airport that your journey began from.

Sandy

More please!

"The wonderful world of British television"
Don't forget A Place in the Sun and What's for Dinner?

I can hardly wait!! More, please!

Oh, lovely. I knew I could open this report with confidence, given your title. Please take your time.

Looking forward to your report

When I rule the world, all showers will work exactly the same way. Until then, first guy up gets to figure out how to keep from freezing or boiling. Being first guy up also means running over to Sainsbury's to gather a selection of British newspapers. At home in New Jersey, we each have a newspaper to hide behind until we have finished our coffee. In London, we each have two.

Today we have work to do as well. Himself has an assignment for his next camera club meeting to submit photos representing Halloweeen. Londoners do not appear to celebrate the holiday with the same enthusiasm as Americans. No tombstones materialize on front lawns; no ghosts hang from trees. What to do?

Go to the Victoria and Albert, of course. If you can't find something there that suggests the holiday, you just aren't looking. And the V&A has a world class gift shop.

It is possible to walk to the V&A from the apartment, we've done so in previous years. Today, we're taking a cab. Indeed, the cab option is one we will select many times on this trip. We've brought along our old oyster cards for the London Underground and buses but never top them off. We'll use our energy for seeing things, not getting there.

On the first floor of the V&A we find evening dresses by Dior and day dressed from Victorian times. In the theatrical collection, there are costumes from a 1954 production of Eugene Ionesco's "Rhinoceros" at the Royal Court theater and Jocelyn Herbert's masks for a 1981 production of the Orestia. A three hour wander around the museum and the assignment is finished. And there's still that wonderful gift shop to explore.

On the way back, we pop into Sainsbury's to choose dinner. We pick up a Thai chicken soup with coconut and a couple of sandwiches. Our block of Cromwell Road is replete with casual restaurants but it's nice to have cooking facilities. Sometimes we don't want to get dressed up and pretend to be sophisticated just to get something to eat.

For a change, the BBC has something we want to watch: conductor Gareth Malone is whipping a group of workers at the Water Board into an accomplished chorus. In other years, we've watched him work his musical magic on residents of a Hertfordshire town and on a contingent of military wives and girlfriends. We wish we saw more of Malone on BBC America instead of their standard fare of Gordon Ramsey and Top Gear.

Tonight we will kick off our shoes and relax.

Lovely; looking forward to the rest of your report.

Wonderful report !

". . . instead of their standard fare of Gordon Ramsey and Top Gear"

Gordon and Jeremy are OK -- it is all the Star Trek we don't need

>>shelter porn<<

?? I know traditionally bus shelters were where rural teenagers got up to all sorts, but what sort of channel is that on?!

PS: With you on Gareth Malone. He has the potential to be intensely annoying if he's tempted to fall into over-exposure and believing his own publicity, but he is one inspiring motivator.

I love this.

Isn't that Sainsbury's just an excellent food oasis?

Patrick, I think of you as one international celeb who's remained down to earth.

Sometimes I do really dumb things -- like misplacing my American Express card. So it's checking phone numbers on my netbook, placing a few calls, and this morning a trip down to the Amex office on the Haymarket to pick up a replacement. While we're at it, we take a walk down Piccadilly to visit one of our favorite churchyards

There's something quite wonderful about St. James Piccadilly beyond its Christopher Wren architecture. It's a connection to the community that extends from the faded green caravan open for drop-in counseling to the fleamarket in the churchyard to the concerts in the chancel and the charity holiday cards available in the vestibule. But what has touched us for decades are two mmemorials in the garden, one to Mackerel, the parish cat, and one to Taffy, a lonely man who made the garden his home.

And they're gone! The garden has been remodeled. Some of the plantings have been replaced by built-in bench seating. The benches probably serve the public better. Maybe a new Taffy will be able to lay his weary head here. But I wish those touching little painted signs had found a home here, too.

Maybe it's the absence of the memorials, maybe it's that four friends are coming for drinks before dinner tonight and we want to be rested, but we decide against continuing down Picadilly to Fortnum and Mason and grab a cab home. We'll pick up cheese and crackers and some sausage rolls at Sainsbury's.

Londoners do not appear to celebrate the holiday with the same enthusiasm as Americans.>>

virginia - it's not a holiday. There is a modern tradition of "trick or treat", and and older one of apple-bobbing, and some energetic folk spend some time hollowing out pumkins but generally unless you are very religious, [in a christian sense] it goes past with nerry a thought.

The UK is much more interested in Nov 5th - Guy Fawkes Night - when lots of us celebrate the foiling of the the dastardly papist plot to kill James 1st, back in 1605.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Fawkes_Night

There is a recent trend to see it as anti-catholic, but I've never really felt that to be the case [but then, i'm not catholic!] - it's more of a carnival and opportunity to have a lot of fireworks and hot dogs, and most towns and villages have their own celebrations on or around this date.

sorry that your memorials have disappeared, BTW - perhaps they have been put somewhere safe to be replaced when the renovations are finished?

Annhig, the very religious (as in fundamentalist) Christians that I know are positively anti-Halloween. You know, devil-worship and all that.

All I can say is that if I buy sweets, no trick-or-treaters will knock on the door, and if I don't, they will.

And I meant to thank VirginiaC for an enjoyable read. It's refreshing to discover what strikes a visitor as good about the UK.

Annhig, the very religious (as in fundamentalist) Christians that I know are positively anti-Halloween. You know, devil-worship and all that. >>

tarquin - you're right of course. I was thinking about the all Saints day services that most CoE churches will have - for example our local cathedral in Truro celebrates All Saints on Nov 1st, and All Souls on Nov 2nd. I doubt that they will get much of a turnout, but you never know.

We have our anti-Halloween contingent in the US as well, but most accept it as an informal, secular holiday. No school closings, no church services, just kids dressing up and begging for candy.

But in the last decade or so, Halloween has begun -- at least in North Jersey -- to rival Christmas for outdoor decorations. Throughout our neighborhood, yards are festooned with ghosts, bats, spiderwebs and scarecrows. Our yard is restrained. We have only a 3=foot black cat, a (silently) howling wolf, and a two-foot diameter spider -- all lighted and moving, of course. We brought them inside this morning because of the predicted Frankenstorm which is expected to turn off all our lights and flood our homes over the next few days. I hope the forecasters are mistaken. If they're not, I'll be eating leftover candy bars until my jeans burst.

By the way, we've been in Britain for Guy Fawkes Day and love the celebrations. Non-fattening, too.

Next time I write, I'll try to get back to the trip report.

Our local Sunday paper arrived this morning with Pippa Middleton on magazine insert cover, adorably helping a little girl bite a doughnut suspended from a tree, headline "Pippa's Halloween Party!" P. flogging her book about celebrating holidays. The article has photos of pumpkin with ghostlike globs stuck outside, etc.

"Now wait a minute," sez I. "Are we going to let this British person -- who can't even claim to have been born in the U.S. as Boris J. can -- tell us how to bedaub our pumpkins in the U.S. manner? Even though undeniably very cute?"

Since our retirement 20 years ago, we've visited the UK on the average of once every 18 months, frequently tying our trip to a specific event.

Our raison d'aller this time is the London Welsh Festival of Male Choirs at Royal Albert Hall, a dozen Welsh male choirs from throughout the UK raising their voices as one in a concert that ranges from show tunes and traditional Welsh and American music to especially composed works. Our friend Glyn is one of the basses.

Before we can attend the concert Glyn's wife and I have important business to take care of: shopping at Harrod's. Linda wants some Christmas puddings. I want some Christmas decorations and a Harrod's bear. Unlike Sainsbury's, Harrod's has moved things around. The lower floor is no longer stuffed with Harrod's branded merchandise. The Harrod's Arcade has vanished. We find the Christmas shop on the third floor and start filling our baskets. We're appalled at some of the prices. At 25GBP, a plastic shopping bag is a ridiculous extravagance. But there are velvet shoes and plush bears, green rubber ducks and red buses and pink stockings embroidered with the Harrod's name and we soon have our trinkets and head off for a coffee.

Himself spends the day resting, hoping to be fit to enjoy the concert. His back has been giving him problems all summer and certain kinds of chairs exacerbate the pain. Albert Hall has just those kinds of seats, and by the interval he is in agony. Sadly, we must consider leaving. I explain our plight to an Albert Hall staffer, nothing that we have journeyed from the U.S. especially for this performance and asking if there might be a couple of seats near an exit where we could slip away if necessary..

She tells us to wait a minute or two, disappears, then returns to escort us to a private box with eight empty seats. Himself will be able to sit, stand, stretch, bend and walk about without disturbing other patrons. We relax and enjoy the second half.

The next day we hitch a ride on the bus with Glyn's choir for the three hour trip to Wales.

I couldn't agree more that the seating in the RAH is terrible (along with the acoustics and the sight lines). We gave up going there back in the nineties after one particular performance (I think it was jazz musician Diana Krall), where we were left almost crippled after a couple of hours squeezed into one of those tiny seats with no legroom in an overheated auditorium.

Virigina,

in my younger days I had the pleasure and privilege to sing in the RAH a number of times, and it was a wonderful space to perform in, though i accept less good for the audience, though I don't remember DH complaining too much about coming to listen.

i'm really enjoying your TR and looking forward to Wales.

Halloweeen is a completely modern US inspired piece of rubbish that we have to put up with in the UK due to the cultural strength of our friends across the pond. Long may we be useless at it. Unfortunatly our pitiful education system is unable to support any concept of cultural norm but must instead grasp to its bosom any rubbish from around the world to destroy our children's core beliefs.

I see that some idiot has now decided that poppies are a christian symbol for WWI (which of course it is not) so our Sikhs have now decided they need a special symbol. It is as if education has collapsed in this country.

About 40 years ago, some children came to our house in Cheshire and sang truncated version of the Soul Caking song. I have never heard it since. Canon Chasuble says that in Scotland, the tradition with "guisers" was "trick and treat". You got your sweeties when you had recited or sung a song or done a little dance. The demanding sweets with menaces is a recent phenomenon,and as you say, seems to be an American import.

I see that some idiot has now decided that poppies are a christian symbol for WWI (which of course it is not) so our Sikhs have now decided they need a special symbol. It is as if education has collapsed in this country.>>

Bilbo - last week there was a very interesting discussion about the way in which the poppy has been hijacked on the Today prog [where else?] I hadn't heard about the sikh diversion but I'm not surprised. I register my protest by donating but not wearing a poppy - though I'm one of the very few not to sport one at our local court, where it's more or less compulsory [which is bound to put me off].

Halloween in the US shot over the top several years ago, I'm afraid. Rest of the world: please resist it, and orange plastic, as long as you can.

I'd love to hear the Welsh Choirs, and am a sucker for men's choruses in general. So good of the RAH staff to help you out.

Stoke - male voice choirs are very big in cornwall and every two years we have an international Male voice choir festival here; the next one is May 2013:

http://www.cimvcf.org.uk/2013/festival13.html

"I see that some idiot has now decided that poppies are a christian symbol for WWI"

First I've heard that, who is this idiot?

VirginiaC, we are in the very early stages of planning a trip to Wales in 2014. Mr. Pickle sings with an a capella men's chorus called De Profundis which celebrates their 20th anniversary that year. We're really looking forward to returning!

Lee Ann

Nice, Ann. Some of the venues are not far from Chez Hig, it appears?

""I see that some idiot has now decided that poppies are a christian symbol for WWI""

This seems a classic example of how divisive myths get created.

It's common to see poppies combined with small wooden crosses: they're used widely at local Remembrance Day commemorations, and sometimes placed by descendants at WW1 combatants' graves. Recently similar devices have started being made, combining the poppy with Stars of David and Muslim crescents - also used in local events. They're all on sale at places like the remembrance arboretum in Staffordshire.

Strikes me as perfectly reasonable some non-Christians would rather not lay a cross at a Remembrance Day event (just as it's reasonable for other non-Christians to argue that a cross is just the way we mark death here)

A Sikh has now designed a similar poppy holder (not substitute) he's called a Khanda, which Sikh temples are selling. Since the armies raised in India during WW1 and WW2 were all volunteers, a hugely disproportionate number of their casualties seem to have been Sikh (surprise, surprise), so apparently an enormous proportion of Sikhs in Britain have a great uncle or whatever who died in one of the wars. I can't imagine anyone could possibly begrudge them a Sikhism-compatible poppy holder those relatives can plant next to the crosses and crescents their neighbours will be putting next to the local war memorial.

But here's the depressing follow-on.

Googling just now to check what this holder's called, I found the website the designer's created. Among the readers commenting was a schoolgirl. Called Kaur (and therefore Sikh) she said she was asking her headmaster to sell these Khandas instead of normal poppies There are no schools in Britain with 100% Sikh attendees - though there are a few in the West Midlands where Sikhs account for a very large proportion.

So here's a child who, possibly unthinkingly, has in effect tried to exclude white Britons at her school from the country's major annual act of solidarity. It's easy to understand her excess enthusiasm: but equally easy to see how fast resentment at a one-line web comment could build up among the school's white population.

And in turn create the myth that someone's claiming poppies are for Christians only. Ironically, in some parts of Britain Sikhs are overwhelmingly the most committed poppy sellers and wearers.

>>This seems a classic example of how divisive myths get created.<<

I'm always dubious about claims like that, for just the same reason. Thanks for working it out (is that fisking or snopesing - or DailyMailing?).

Nice, Ann. Some of the venues are not far from Chez Hig, it appears?>>

v. close, Stoke. most villages and towns in cornwall have not only a male voice choir [of varying quality it must be said] but also a band - brass or silver, and music competitions abound. if you want to make or hear music, Cornwall's a great place to be.

sandy has eaten our electricity. when we get it back and i can type on a full sized keyboard the saga will return,

At eight o'clock in the morning, two little boys and their mom arrive to brighten the cloudy day. Thomas's school is just about next door to Grandma and Grandpa's. He stops in every morning for a hug and a kiss and to drop off his little brother, who stops in every morning to distribute toys and crumbs as far as the eye can see.

Young Thomas is disappointed to discover that Himself has not yet surfaced. Himself likes to play with trains almost as much as Thomas does. He leaves for school. Himself puts in an appearance and starts building a train track with little Harry.

We spend a lazy day as acquaintances and family drop in and we catch up. Thomas's school day ends and all the boys spend a couple of hours in the parlor playing with toys and reading while the girls gather in the kitchen for gossip, tea and coffee. The boys have left their Halloween costumes at Grandma and Grandpa's. Himself has live models for his camera assignment.

Although the members of the Neath choir have just finished three busy days of traveling, rehearsing, performing and partying, Monday night is rehearsal night and we get to tag along. There's some Monday evening quarterbacking of the Albert Hall performance including working on one piece that musical director Lyn Evans has decided deserves a permanent place in the choir's repertory. She and the choir agreed it hadn't quite achieved perfection at Albert Hall.

And since there are American visitors, there is a special piece, "An American Trilogy," which consists of portions of Dixie, The Battle Hymn of the Republic, and Hush Little Baby. We are delighted and honored. In the last two decades, we have been fortunate to have attended a number of rehearsals and performances by Welsh male choirs and have always been warmly welcomed. The members may need music rehearsals but they have perfected hospitality.

The next day we spend relaxing, watching videos of other male choir concerts and eisteddfodau. In other years, dinner would have meant a visit to the Old House, the 850-year-old restaurant featured in the NBC interview with Ann Romney when she visited Wales. Our friends introduced us to the marvelous cod and chips at the Old House years ago.

But if we went out to dinner, it would only be the four of us. Harry has recently learned to throw food and makes his displeasure very evident when he's thwarted. His parents won't inflict him on other restaurant patrons. We opt for a family meal of takout from the local chip shop. The boys entertain us until they are tucked away in bed.

On every trip to Britain, we try to see something we haven't visited before. This trip, the destination is Winchester. We packed small bags and took the hour train ride from Waterloo Station. In a brochure from Winchester's tourist department, we had learned about a sound and light show at the cathedral. We had tickets for the Friday night performance.

We settled into our room at the Mercure Winchster Wessex Hotel, noted that we'd need the lights on the Kindle, and set out to find the cathedral. If our room had been on the other side of the hotel hallway, we would have been staring at the cathedral walls.

In the evening, a slow five-minute walk took us to the cathdral door. We were shown to our seats and settled in for a fascinating multi-media look at the cathedral's 1400-year history. The portions projected on a huge screen in the sanctuary and on the walls featured such actors as Judi Dench. David Suchet and Alan Titchmarsh. The live portion had choir boys, choristers, and a cardboard replica of the cathedral.

We learned about King Cnut and William the Conquerer, Izaak Walton and William Walker, Jane Austen and Mary Sumner, founder of the Mothers' Union. We enjoyed every minute of it. We walked back to the hotel for a room-service sandwich supper.

Our hotel offered a breakfast buffet at 15GBP -- 10 if you pre-booked -- but we're not big breakfast eaters. A five minute walk to the high street and there was a patisserie with coffee and almond croissants to go. Breakfast served. The high street was also filled with green striped market stalls, fodder for a later picture taking excursion, after Himself had gotten some shots of the cathedral and the farmers' market on the cathedral grounds and I got a chance to visit the cathedral gift shop. There were so many nifty ornaments, we may need a bigger tree this Christmas.

The market stalls on the high street proved just as fruitful and I acquired a lovely scarf in shades of green and Himself treated me to a beautiful necklace with a glass pendant. That evening we returned to the cathedral, this time to photograph the buskers who greeted patrons of the sound and light show with a light show of their own.

On Sunday, we return to London on a very crowded train. We have a rail pass, but no one looks at our tickets.

Enjoying this, VirginiaC.

Virginia C, continuing to enjoy your adventures. Winchester sounds beautiful. Thanks so much...

I am savoring your trip report and dreading it coming to an end.

At the post office-tourist bureau-souvenir shop on the corner of Cromwell and Gloucester roads, I'd picked up a brochure for a bus tour to see the monuments of London by night, their lights ablaze. "To see" doesn't mean "to stop and take some pictures." To sit on open top of the bus and hope to catch some on the fly does mean to freeze your camera finger off and -- in the weather we've been experiencing -- get wet.

A conversation with the manager of our apartment building connects us to a car and driver who will follow the route and stop and park as close as possible to sights Himself wishes to photograph. Pick-up is 7:30 p.m. and by 10 p.m. we have photos of Albert Hall, Harrod's, Buckingham Palace, the London Eye, the Houses of Parliament, and St. Paul's magnificent dome. Due to parking restrictions, a few had to be shot through the open car window, but our driver proceeds slowly and is happy to circle around to give us a second chance to get the shot.

We skipped Marble Arch because its lights were out and Piccadilly Circus because we just don't find it aesthetically pleasing. The photos show beautiful light reflections in the mist dampened streets.

This extravagance cost us 75GBP, about 15 more than it would have cost to take the bus. Money well spent.

Our last two full days in Britain are devoted to what can best be described as pilgrimages. On Monday, we take the train from Kings Cross to Cambridge. We are startled by Kings Cross station which has undergone a massive remodel since our visit in Spring, 2011.

The market square in Cambridge looks pretty much the same.

We headed to the T-shift stand to buy Cambridge T-shirts for the grandchildren. In 1988 and 1989, we attended summer courses in literature housed at the University and enjoy claiming alumni status whether we or not we are legitimately entitled. Cambridge was our first experience of going away to college. Our undergraduate and graduate degrees were earned as commuters.

We want our grandkids to aspire to great schools. The first T-shirts we bought them were the smallest available. This year, all shirts came from the adult size range.

We were more generous with ourselves, heading to an indoor shop to purchase woolen sweaters. We really do have enough Cambridge T-shirts. Next year, oldest grandson will begin college. Maybe we'll switch our T-shirt collecting to the college of his choice.

We wandered through familiar Cambridge streets savoring the memories then grabbed a cab to the station. Back in London, we hit Sainsbury's for a fish pie for him and chicken tikka for me and an evening of quiet dinner and television in the flat.

We spent our last day on a Thames River cruise to Greenwich. Years ago, we started this tradition because by our last day in London we were too tired to do anything that required standing or walking. We've taken this visit slowly, so exhaustion isn't a factor. We chose a City Cruise boat this time and were disappointed when at Tower Bridge we were told to relocate from our comfortable vessle with table seating to a boat with rows of hard plastic chairs. Back at Westminster Pier, we wave good-bye to Boudicca and Big Ben. We would have liked to have strolled once more through Embankment Gardens, but it is rainy and all the flowers have bbewn plucked from the beds.

In the evening, we made supper from leftovers and began the task of packing up. With a folding suitcase to hold the laundry, there is plenty of room in the big cases for our souvenirs. There is even enough room to bring home a few boxes of man-sized, triple ply Kleenex. Kimberly-Clark has stopped marketing these in the United States and Himself misses them. Five boxes will get him through any bout with winter colds.

Wednesday morning we bought our last set of British newspapers, checked every drawer twice to make sure we've left nothing crucial behind, and waited for the car service to pick us up to take us to Heathrow.

The young women who have serviced our room are anxious to get a head start readying it for the next guests. We invite them in and tell them to help themselves to anything we're leaving behind. I don't know which delights them more, the tip or the unopened bottles of beer.

The trip to Heathrow was uneventful as was the flight to New York. The car service driver had been directed to the wrong terminal, but found us just as I was digging out my cellphone to call the dispatcher.

There's comparatively little traffic on the road from JFK to North Jersey. In an hour, we're home.

virginia - sorry your trip had to come to an end. I do enjoy seeing the UK through others eyes and yours are some of the sharpest - thanks!

Excellent report. We travel your way these days. Slow and easy, but way better than staying home,

Small question: WHERE did you find man-sized Kleenex? We were in England last June, but nevr saw them, and didn't think to seek them out!

most supermarkets, Boots etc. will have them.

We got ours in Sainsbury's supermarket.

Great report! I very much enjoyed it. Thank you for taking the time to post.

I hope that your return to New Jersey didn't include any rough treatment from Sandy. Let us know.

azzure,
we lost power for a couple of days and the top of a big, old oak tree, but were actually very lucky. our son and younger daughter are still powerless, but suffered no other damage. our older daughter retained power and suffered the rest of the family showing up to shower.

Thanks for sharing the details of your delightful trip. Will you be posting the pictures you mentioned taking? Please, please, please......!

VirginiaC,

I've just got back from a week in London and was glad to see your report as it brought back some happy memories.

I've slept in a car while DH has shopped at that Sainsburys on Cromwell Road plus we also made it to the V&A this trip and saw the same ballgown exhibit.
We day tripped to Wales to see an elderly aunt but we didn't have to go quite as far west as Neath where I attended HS. Do you have family living there? I don't think I've seen Neath mentioned on Fodors before!