London Days 6-8

On Sunday we went to the National Gallery of Art. They don't allow photos inside but we saw a lot of awesome paintings, including one by Leonardo da Vinci. I saw a Madonna and Child by Bronzino that I really liked. The Christ child is gazing at a cross while Mary has a tender sadness in her eyes that suggests she forsees the future. We saw Raphael's 1511 Portrait of Pope Julius II, Degas' 1890-1900's Ballet Dancers, and After the Bath: Woman Drying Herself, Cezanne's 1860's Stove in the Studio Van Gogh's 1888 Chair and Long Grass with Butterflies, Renoir's 1876 At the Theatre and 1881 Umbrellas, Pisarro's 1897 Boulevard Montmartre at Night, and two Monet's that I had never seen before:
The Gare Street Lazare (The Train) and my personal favorite, his 1864 La Pointe de la Heve Sainte Andresse. Plus many many more too numerous to name but all so incredibly awesome.
We spent about 5 hours in the National Gallery, and easily could have spent another 5 hours.



On our way to the Underground, we passed by St. Bride's Cathedral. The steeple on this church was the inspiration for the design of the traditional wedding cake!



The next day we went to find the CWR, Churchill's War Rooms. They were located in the basement of the Treasury Building. Churchill and his cabinet spent six years here from 1939 til 1945, conducting the campaign against Hitler, whom Churchill called "an evil man." They had the enigma machine that the Germans used to send coded messages. They would type in a message then the machine would scramble it before sending it. Breaking this code played a significant part in winning the war. They had the first secret hot line, to the White House, located in a broom closet and kept locked at all times with a lavoratory lock that indicated the room was occupied. No one except Churchill was allowed to go in this room, and his staff were convinced that it housed the only flushing toilet on that floor. This is the conference room where Churchill met with his cabinet to plan strategy. The map along the left side of the wall has a caricature of Hitler that was drawn by one of the members of the group.



After we came back up into the daylight, out of the steel and concrete reinforced bunker where the CWR and museums were we went to the National Museum to get a head start on the huge collection they have. We started on the first level and spent 2 hours there the first day. Then we went back the next day and spent another 6 hours, and still did not see it all.



We saw lots of Egyptian pottery. They were very skilled at pottery making! They etched a picture into the partially hardened clay, then applied a special paint to the rest of it that when fired turned black, leaving the picture in red.



They had pieces of a frieze from the Parthenon! Later, we stopped by the Tipperary Pub to have dinner, and the guy behind the bar said "Those Victorians, they stole from everyone!"



They had the Rosetta Stone! On this stone a message is carved in 3 languages, one of which is Greek. The Greek message says that all three of the messages are the same. Since scholars were able to read Greek, they were then able (after 25 years of puzzling over it) to read the hieroglyphics, too. Turns out the ancient Egyptians would include sounds in their writing. For example, the word "cat" would begin with letters representing a sound associated with the word, such as M I W, then at the end there would be a drawing of a cat. Without the Rosetta Stone, we may never have known how to read hieroglyphics.



We saw a bust of the Roman Emperor Hadrian, who founded the city they once called Londinium.

Loch Lomond

This morning we took off to see another lake, on the advice of a fellow tourist we met at Loch Ness. He told us that Loch Lomond was beautiful and had lots of cruises so off we went. Along the way we stopped by Scotland's highest peak, Ben Nevis, and rode a cable car half way up - about 2,200 feet. From there we could have hiked up to the summit, at 4,400 feet high, but we decided instead to continue our journey toward Loch Lomond after enjoying the view.



The ride was beautiful! Scotland is full of forests, lakes, streams, and hills.



We were actually travelling through the "highlands."


The weather was superb. The local people called it "hot," but it only got up to about 70 degrees, with clear, beautiful skies.


Along the way we also stopped by a little town called Glen Coe. It was very small, just a couple of streets of houses, but some of them were very old. Their museum was not yet open for the season. So we went on ahead to Loch Lomond, and were rewarded with this view once we arrived:

Edinburgh Day Three

Today we took a bus to the city center and went to the National Museum of Scotland. On the way there we passed by the Court of Judiciary building where this man was playing the bagpipes.



The museum was pretty nice but not organized as well as some. We wandered around for a long time just looking for exhibits we wanted to see. Some of the more interesting exhibits included a giant steam engine, a skeleton of a young Viking boy of about 12 whose bones show that he was cut into four pieces and buried along with animals....perhaps as a sacrifice, and this life-sized effigy of Mary Queen of Scots that was commissioned by her son, James I, perhaps out of guilt for distancing himself from her during her lifetime.



And there was of course a display of a wide variety of items designed to torture and kill...this seems to be a recurring theme in European museums. Here's a photo of a guillotine that was once used in Scotland, but not for Queen Mary.



After trudging through the museum for several hours along with hoards of school children on a field trip, we were ready for a quiet and peaceful retreat. Lucky for us this nearby garden was free and open to the public.



Around 5 or 6 went back to the apartment, collected our luggage and called a cab to drive us over to the other (West) side of Edinburgh, where we will stay at the Beverly B & B for a few days. On the recommendation of our hostess we walked a couple of blocks to the Hampton Pub for dinner. When we arrived, the place was full of people who were engrossed in watching a soccer game (here they call it football) on TV; once the game was over many people left. I tried the fish (haddock from the North Sea) and chips and Garold had the lasagna.
Some random observations on food in Scotland:
tomatoes, mushrooms and beans are served for breakfast
sausage is served everywhere all the time
vinegar is on almost every table
silver settings almost always include a big (serving) spoon