London and Portugal trip report
Aug 4th, 2009, 08:27 AM
#23
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If you want to know the minimum wage rates in the UK re your chat in London they are:
Statutory minimum wage rate in UK currently is:
£5.80 an hour for workers aged 22 and over
£4.77 an hour for 18- to 21-year-olds &
£3.57 an hour for those 16 and 17.
In October it will rise by 1.2%. There is also a movement to create a London minimum wage of over £7.00 an hour to reflect the higher costs of living and working in London.
Waiting to hear more of your trip
Statutory minimum wage rate in UK currently is:
£5.80 an hour for workers aged 22 and over
£4.77 an hour for 18- to 21-year-olds &
£3.57 an hour for those 16 and 17.
In October it will rise by 1.2%. There is also a movement to create a London minimum wage of over £7.00 an hour to reflect the higher costs of living and working in London.
Waiting to hear more of your trip
Aug 4th, 2009, 04:51 PM
#25
Original Poster
Saturday morning we walk the few blocks to Portobello Road and brave the crowds at the antiques market. There is a huge queue for the public toilet, and an even longer one for the ATM. It is so crowded that it is hard to get close enough to the booths to see anything and even harder to get back out again. I take only photographs, leave only footprints. At least here nobody scolds me for using my camera, as they did at the antiques market at the Bastille in Paris last year.
We leave the crowds behind and walk toward a street corner known as Westbourne Triangle. Alan has passed this corner on his walks through the neighborhood, and has told me about a piano marked “Play Me, I’m Yours”. Every time he has passed, there has been somebody playing. This is part of a project in which thirty pianos have been placed throughout London for three weeks. As we approach the piano, I see that nobody is playing it. It is calling to me.
I engage in my short career as a London busker. This is a good way to get the heart racing and the adrenaline flowing. I do not play piano in public. I play the Chopin Fantaisie-Impromptu, which I know fairly well, but I keep tripping over the notes and have to retrace my steps a couple of times. This does not seem to bother the small but amiable group of people who come out of the neighboring shops and stand around while I play. There is good-natured applause, and I walk away grinning.
Saturday afternoon we head out to Alan’s cousin’s house for tea. Tea evidently means supper, and we stay until fairly late in the evening.
We leave the crowds behind and walk toward a street corner known as Westbourne Triangle. Alan has passed this corner on his walks through the neighborhood, and has told me about a piano marked “Play Me, I’m Yours”. Every time he has passed, there has been somebody playing. This is part of a project in which thirty pianos have been placed throughout London for three weeks. As we approach the piano, I see that nobody is playing it. It is calling to me.
I engage in my short career as a London busker. This is a good way to get the heart racing and the adrenaline flowing. I do not play piano in public. I play the Chopin Fantaisie-Impromptu, which I know fairly well, but I keep tripping over the notes and have to retrace my steps a couple of times. This does not seem to bother the small but amiable group of people who come out of the neighboring shops and stand around while I play. There is good-natured applause, and I walk away grinning.
Saturday afternoon we head out to Alan’s cousin’s house for tea. Tea evidently means supper, and we stay until fairly late in the evening.
Aug 4th, 2009, 06:11 PM
#26
Original Poster
On Sunday we attend a large gathering of Alan’s uncles, aunts, and cousins, who all converge on a park in West London which nobody has ever visited before. Fortunately the weather cooperates, the toddler contingent is happy with the playground, the older folks sit inside the café to get out of the sun, and everyone is happy to see each other.
Alan and I have supper at a Chinese restaurant called Four Seasons at 84 Queensway in Bayswater. We are here for the roast duck, and it is wonderful. I would happily eat here often if it were in our neighborhood.
Monday is a down day for me. Alan goes for a walk and ends up at his uncle’s apartment, where he stays for lunch. I explore some of the books in the library at our apartment. There is one called “Aberdeen Doctors At Home and Abroad” that was published in 1893. It catches my eye because I spent a weekend in Aberdeen last year. I am charmed by its prose: “The storm-beat town of Peterhead, in the north-east corner of Aberdeenshire, which has its own charms for its own people, and which others are apt to think bleak and bare, towards the close of last century was gay with rank and fashion.” I can’t read much of it however, since the pages are still uncut. Surprisingly, no one has actually read this book.
I listen to an argument outside the window when a man delivering a package to the garage next door gets a parking ticket during the two minutes he leaves his car outside the garage. He accuses the ticket writer of hiding and waiting outside the garage to give him a ticket. He is quite loud and belligerent. When I comment to the mechanic as I am leaving the apartment later, I get the feeling that sentiment runs strongly against the parking enforcers in this neighborhood. Perhaps this is why we see so many police officers patrolling in pairs, walking through even our quiet residential neighborhood.
When Alan returns from his walk, we go to the Cock and Bottle for a drink. There is a cricket match on the television, and there is much interest in it. One family is there with two young girls who spend their time climbing on the corner mailbox and in and out of the family car through the sunroof while the parents watch the action on the TV. We hear cheers, and the match appears to have ended in a tie. This is perceived by the crowd as a victory.
This evening I attend a rehearsal of a musical group directed by Alan’s cousin. I usually spend my Monday evenings at rehearsals, so this feels very familiar. But the music is not familiar at all. It is music of the Iraqi Jewish tradition, and it uses eastern scales and keys with which I am totally unacquainted, including quarter tones. I have not come prepared to play anything, and my flute is thousands of miles away, but one of the group’s members pulls out a flute that resembles a recorder but is played to the side like a standard flute. No keys, just holes. I am persuaded to pick this up and sit in on the rehearsal. I can manage a C major scale but can not consistently figure out the fingering for sharps and flats, much less quarter tones. I figure I am within one half tone of the intended note most of the time. Nobody seems to mind, however. People in this country are exceedingly polite.
Alan and I have supper at a Chinese restaurant called Four Seasons at 84 Queensway in Bayswater. We are here for the roast duck, and it is wonderful. I would happily eat here often if it were in our neighborhood.
Monday is a down day for me. Alan goes for a walk and ends up at his uncle’s apartment, where he stays for lunch. I explore some of the books in the library at our apartment. There is one called “Aberdeen Doctors At Home and Abroad” that was published in 1893. It catches my eye because I spent a weekend in Aberdeen last year. I am charmed by its prose: “The storm-beat town of Peterhead, in the north-east corner of Aberdeenshire, which has its own charms for its own people, and which others are apt to think bleak and bare, towards the close of last century was gay with rank and fashion.” I can’t read much of it however, since the pages are still uncut. Surprisingly, no one has actually read this book.
I listen to an argument outside the window when a man delivering a package to the garage next door gets a parking ticket during the two minutes he leaves his car outside the garage. He accuses the ticket writer of hiding and waiting outside the garage to give him a ticket. He is quite loud and belligerent. When I comment to the mechanic as I am leaving the apartment later, I get the feeling that sentiment runs strongly against the parking enforcers in this neighborhood. Perhaps this is why we see so many police officers patrolling in pairs, walking through even our quiet residential neighborhood.
When Alan returns from his walk, we go to the Cock and Bottle for a drink. There is a cricket match on the television, and there is much interest in it. One family is there with two young girls who spend their time climbing on the corner mailbox and in and out of the family car through the sunroof while the parents watch the action on the TV. We hear cheers, and the match appears to have ended in a tie. This is perceived by the crowd as a victory.
This evening I attend a rehearsal of a musical group directed by Alan’s cousin. I usually spend my Monday evenings at rehearsals, so this feels very familiar. But the music is not familiar at all. It is music of the Iraqi Jewish tradition, and it uses eastern scales and keys with which I am totally unacquainted, including quarter tones. I have not come prepared to play anything, and my flute is thousands of miles away, but one of the group’s members pulls out a flute that resembles a recorder but is played to the side like a standard flute. No keys, just holes. I am persuaded to pick this up and sit in on the rehearsal. I can manage a C major scale but can not consistently figure out the fingering for sharps and flats, much less quarter tones. I figure I am within one half tone of the intended note most of the time. Nobody seems to mind, however. People in this country are exceedingly polite.
Aug 4th, 2009, 11:09 PM
#29
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I am loving your report. Your apartment looks perfect. Would you rent it again? On our first visit to London, we stayed near the Notting Hill Gate tube station (in Hillgate Village) and I loved that area.
Aug 4th, 2009, 11:12 PM
#30
Original Poster
Tuesday is our last full day in London. We have discovered that one of Alan’s cousins works around the corner from our apartment, and he comes with another cousin to pick us up to go to lunch. The second cousin lives in Israel, is visiting London, and has expressed a desire for fish and chips. I have found a listing in Time Out’s Cheap Eats book for George’s Portobello Fish Bar, 329 Portobello Road. Alan’s cousin calls this the unpretentious end of Portobello Road, in yet another interesting neighborhood with a variety of businesses, several with a North African flavor.
We reach our intended lunch spot and then Alan’s cousin notices the shop across the street, Cockney’s Pie ‘n’ Mash. He starts to sound like the taxi driver who first told us about pie and mash, waxing poetic. After a crisis of decision making, we end up sitting outside at the fish and chips restaurant, but we feel we are missing something.
The fish and chips turn out to be very good, the best I have had. And after lunch, we go across the street and Alan buys two pies and mash to go. It is Tuesday, so they don’t have eels. I feel this is just as well.
After lunch (and after dropping off the takeout pies and mash at our apartment) we take the bus to the Tate Britain. This is our first museum visit of the trip. It surprises me that we have not been to any museums or to any theater during our week in London. This has been more a social than a cultural week. I have never been to the Tate Britain before. We enjoy an exhibit of contemporary British art, especially a room filled with sculpture that appears to be an ethnographic display of tribal art but which turns out to be based on images suggesting McDonalds (yes the fast food chain).
Then I walk quickly through the Turner galleries, which are displaying works by Mark Rothko to compare and contrast with the older Turner works. Critics have noted similarities between the two artists’ work, and Rothko cited Turner as an influence. It is interesting that many of the Turner paintings in this exhibit are unfinished, and were never intended to be exhibited in their present form. It is these unfinished works that show the greatest resemblance to Rothko’s work.
They start closing the galleries and we leave. We are meeting Alan’s cousin and her husband for dinner at Kerala, a South Indian restaurant at 15 Great Castle Street, near Oxford Circus. This is a wonderful, satisfying dinner filled with interesting choices.
We return to the apartment and pack. It is hard to believe that we will be in Portugal tomorrow.
Wednesday morning we have pie and mash for breakfast. What else could we do? Then we go to Heathrow and catch our plane to Lisbon.
We reach our intended lunch spot and then Alan’s cousin notices the shop across the street, Cockney’s Pie ‘n’ Mash. He starts to sound like the taxi driver who first told us about pie and mash, waxing poetic. After a crisis of decision making, we end up sitting outside at the fish and chips restaurant, but we feel we are missing something.
The fish and chips turn out to be very good, the best I have had. And after lunch, we go across the street and Alan buys two pies and mash to go. It is Tuesday, so they don’t have eels. I feel this is just as well.
After lunch (and after dropping off the takeout pies and mash at our apartment) we take the bus to the Tate Britain. This is our first museum visit of the trip. It surprises me that we have not been to any museums or to any theater during our week in London. This has been more a social than a cultural week. I have never been to the Tate Britain before. We enjoy an exhibit of contemporary British art, especially a room filled with sculpture that appears to be an ethnographic display of tribal art but which turns out to be based on images suggesting McDonalds (yes the fast food chain).
Then I walk quickly through the Turner galleries, which are displaying works by Mark Rothko to compare and contrast with the older Turner works. Critics have noted similarities between the two artists’ work, and Rothko cited Turner as an influence. It is interesting that many of the Turner paintings in this exhibit are unfinished, and were never intended to be exhibited in their present form. It is these unfinished works that show the greatest resemblance to Rothko’s work.
They start closing the galleries and we leave. We are meeting Alan’s cousin and her husband for dinner at Kerala, a South Indian restaurant at 15 Great Castle Street, near Oxford Circus. This is a wonderful, satisfying dinner filled with interesting choices.
We return to the apartment and pack. It is hard to believe that we will be in Portugal tomorrow.
Wednesday morning we have pie and mash for breakfast. What else could we do? Then we go to Heathrow and catch our plane to Lisbon.
Aug 5th, 2009, 07:30 AM
#32
Original Poster
We are staying at the Hotel Residencial Florescente in Lisbon. http://www.residencialflorescente.co...hp?lg=eng&op=0 The taxi driver leaves us a couple of blocks away because the hotel is on a pedestrian street, the Rua das Portas de Santo Antao. We drop our bags in the room and are happy to turn on the air conditioning. Unlike the forecast for London, the weather charts for Lisbon show big smiling round suns every day this week. The hotel is not crowded, and we have been given a suite, with a separate sitting room with a sleep sofa, a desk and a chair. There is a large bathroom. Unfortunately, I can never get the advertised free wi-fi to work in our room, and the computer in the lobby is broken.
We stroll down the street, passing numerous restaurants with tables outdoors. We stop at a small café for some welcome to Portugal drinks and watch the local scene. A woman seated at our café calls out to people as they pass, and many return her greeting. Does she know everybody or are they just humoring her?
There is a bowl of snail shells on our table. I wonder whether they are decorative or whether they are an advertisement. It is true that I received a text message from my friend Lobo while I was still in London saying, “Eating beautiful snails and waiting for you.” This is the nicest text message I have ever received.
We leave the snails alone for the time being, and after a couple of drinks we walk to Rossio Square. The pavement here is cobblestones formed into a pattern of waves that is a very convincing optical illusion. I have to force myself to walk straight and not step over the waves. I am mostly successful.
We have dinner outdoors at Concha d’Ouro, a restaurant with an appealing seafood display in the window and a menu in many languages. Normally I am hesitant to eat in such places, but we are meeting our friends in an hour nearby, and we don’t have time to seek out a less touristy place. We do not regret our choice at all, however. The seafood casserole is plentiful and tasty, including a large variety of fish that we do not recognize.
After dinner we meet Lobo and Loba, who whisk us off to the Berardo Museum in Belem. In celebration of the museum’s second anniversary, it is free and open all night with entertainment and special exhibits. There is a festive atmosphere, and gaspacho is being served in the courtyard. Loba says the gaspacho is not authentic, but then again she comes from the Alentejo, where gaspacho includes diced ham and sausage, over which one spoons a chunky vegetable mixture which is then topped with a whole fried fish or two.
We are going especially to see the Grupo Coral Mineiros de Aljustrel, a chorus of miners from the Alentejo. We are afraid we will get there too late to see them, but we arrive just as they are lining up outside the museum. They are standing in close formation, all dressed in blue jumpsuits with miners’ lamps and helmets. They begin to sway rhythmically and to march as they sing. According to Lobo, they are singing about working conditions and poverty, and songs arising from the period during which the Salazar regime was overthrown. It was apparently among such groups that the idea of revolution was nurtured. The men singing appear to be of an age that would have made them young men in 1974, when the revolution took place. We are thinking these are the same men who sang about revolution at the time.
The singing is a strong, throaty style and I am fascinated by it. The chorus stops, sings a few songs, then marches on through the museum, stopping again and swaying as they sing.
We spend another hour or so at the museum. There is a graffiti artist; film crews are recording the activities; a disc jockey is playing music outside. As we leave, more people are arriving. The people coming are substantially younger than the people leaving.
Our night is not yet over, however. Lobo asks whether we are tired and want to return to the hotel, or whether we want to explore Lisbon by night with some surprises. We select door number two. After driving into an area with which I am not familiar, Lobo parks the car and tells Alan to come with him to see something of underground Lisbon. They walk down a narrow staircase to an all night bakery. This place distributes bread and pastries to stores and restaurants but it is open all night for people with late night munchies. There is a crowd lined up for sweets, and Alan and Lobo return to the car with a bag full of goodies for us all to share at their apartment. Lobo tells me later that the bakery is called Bolos do Chile, at Chile Square on the Avenida Almirante Reis, near the Anjos metro station.
We get back to our hotel at about 2:00 AM feeling very happy.
We stroll down the street, passing numerous restaurants with tables outdoors. We stop at a small café for some welcome to Portugal drinks and watch the local scene. A woman seated at our café calls out to people as they pass, and many return her greeting. Does she know everybody or are they just humoring her?
There is a bowl of snail shells on our table. I wonder whether they are decorative or whether they are an advertisement. It is true that I received a text message from my friend Lobo while I was still in London saying, “Eating beautiful snails and waiting for you.” This is the nicest text message I have ever received.
We leave the snails alone for the time being, and after a couple of drinks we walk to Rossio Square. The pavement here is cobblestones formed into a pattern of waves that is a very convincing optical illusion. I have to force myself to walk straight and not step over the waves. I am mostly successful.
We have dinner outdoors at Concha d’Ouro, a restaurant with an appealing seafood display in the window and a menu in many languages. Normally I am hesitant to eat in such places, but we are meeting our friends in an hour nearby, and we don’t have time to seek out a less touristy place. We do not regret our choice at all, however. The seafood casserole is plentiful and tasty, including a large variety of fish that we do not recognize.
After dinner we meet Lobo and Loba, who whisk us off to the Berardo Museum in Belem. In celebration of the museum’s second anniversary, it is free and open all night with entertainment and special exhibits. There is a festive atmosphere, and gaspacho is being served in the courtyard. Loba says the gaspacho is not authentic, but then again she comes from the Alentejo, where gaspacho includes diced ham and sausage, over which one spoons a chunky vegetable mixture which is then topped with a whole fried fish or two.
We are going especially to see the Grupo Coral Mineiros de Aljustrel, a chorus of miners from the Alentejo. We are afraid we will get there too late to see them, but we arrive just as they are lining up outside the museum. They are standing in close formation, all dressed in blue jumpsuits with miners’ lamps and helmets. They begin to sway rhythmically and to march as they sing. According to Lobo, they are singing about working conditions and poverty, and songs arising from the period during which the Salazar regime was overthrown. It was apparently among such groups that the idea of revolution was nurtured. The men singing appear to be of an age that would have made them young men in 1974, when the revolution took place. We are thinking these are the same men who sang about revolution at the time.
The singing is a strong, throaty style and I am fascinated by it. The chorus stops, sings a few songs, then marches on through the museum, stopping again and swaying as they sing.
We spend another hour or so at the museum. There is a graffiti artist; film crews are recording the activities; a disc jockey is playing music outside. As we leave, more people are arriving. The people coming are substantially younger than the people leaving.
Our night is not yet over, however. Lobo asks whether we are tired and want to return to the hotel, or whether we want to explore Lisbon by night with some surprises. We select door number two. After driving into an area with which I am not familiar, Lobo parks the car and tells Alan to come with him to see something of underground Lisbon. They walk down a narrow staircase to an all night bakery. This place distributes bread and pastries to stores and restaurants but it is open all night for people with late night munchies. There is a crowd lined up for sweets, and Alan and Lobo return to the car with a bag full of goodies for us all to share at their apartment. Lobo tells me later that the bakery is called Bolos do Chile, at Chile Square on the Avenida Almirante Reis, near the Anjos metro station.
We get back to our hotel at about 2:00 AM feeling very happy.
Aug 5th, 2009, 07:35 AM
#33
Original Poster
Travelgirl, the apartment in London was really nice. I would be happy to rent it again. Normally I stay away from ground floor apartments, but this one did not have any of the negatives I usually associate with such places. There was lots of light, high ceilings, and the private garden was a real plus. The only slight drawback is that there is no tube station closer than Notting Hill Gate. But there are bus lines very nearby, and we used the bus extensively.
Aug 5th, 2009, 10:29 AM
#35
Original Poster
Photos from the Portugal portion of the trip are posted at:
http://www.kodakgallery.com/ShareLan...localeid=en_US
http://www.kodakgallery.com/ShareLan...localeid=en_US
Aug 5th, 2009, 11:12 AM
#36
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Nikki...if you don't mind, can I ask you a couple of specific questions?
Did you find that it was easy to find a good inexpensive restaurant. Inexpensive meaning dinner for 2 including wine and a couple of beers for 50 euro?
Did you have any problems using/finding ATM machines?
Did you find that it was easy to find a good inexpensive restaurant. Inexpensive meaning dinner for 2 including wine and a couple of beers for 50 euro?
Did you have any problems using/finding ATM machines?
Aug 5th, 2009, 12:07 PM
#37
Original Poster
Yes, there are restaurants that will cost about that. If you are trying to keep costs down, be careful of the appetizers that are put out when you sit down. You have not ordered them, but you will be charged if you eat them. If you don't want them, send them back. (I don't have the fortitude for this, however.)
I had no problem finding ATMs. What I did find is that they did not work with my ATM only card. They did work with my debit card.
I had no problem finding ATMs. What I did find is that they did not work with my ATM only card. They did work with my debit card.
Aug 5th, 2009, 12:19 PM
#40
"dinner for 2 including wine and a couple of beers for 50 euro" - one place I really liked in Lisbon is a lot less than that - more like 10 euros a person. It's the Bonjardim, very close to the Residencial Florescente. No charm, very basic, but great chicken - tender meat, crisp skin and hot piri-piri sauce. BTW - most restaurants in Portugal do the appetizer thing. Just say no before you get a good look at them.
