Much delayed post.... London!

Y'all, I have been agonizing about this blog post for far too long. I've written it several times, but each time too many parts sound like "lecturing," or like I'm just trying to cram as much info into it as I can. Truthfully, there's not much about these places that I can tell you that you're not already familiar with, and any attempt to post information just doesn't seem natural to me. I endeavor to make these blog posts entertaining first of all, with little tidbits of random information thrown in just for giggles. After weeks of kicking this post around, I'm going to have to do this one a bit differently. I've got a couple of stories to throw in, but after that I'll just post a quick bullet point or two about each place, then throw some pics up. Sorry in advance, but I just can't figure out any better way to do it!

I'm going to cut and paste my first few paragraphs (from an earlier iteration), just so you can get a taste of my normal writing, then I'll switch out to the bullets: 

The boss had a TAD ("Temporarily Assigned Duty," or "Traveling Around Drunk," whichever you prefer) to London for a week. I didn't take daily notes on everything we did, so I'm just going to regurgitate what I can remember.

For airfare, we traded in a bunch of points and we upgraded both of us to Business Class... which was nice. Unfortunately, the flight was only about an hour and 45 minutes, and on the little planes the Business Class is in the same kind of seats as coach, but the middle seat is left empty... so that was nice. We got real meals served to us on real plates... after seeing the menu where they were charging the plebes in coach $3 or $4 for a Coke, I was pretty impressed.

The big bonus with Business Class was access to the lounge on both ends. British Airways in Frankfurt doesn't have their own lounge, they partner with Air Japan. As a result, the toilets in the lounge are Japanese toilets, and they are nice. Different, but nice. I won't say any more, except that when we redo the master bathroom at the house, I'll be trying to talk the wife into getting one.

We eventually got out of the airport (Heathrow is absolutely HUGE), and headed for the taxi line. At this point (perhaps earlier, but this is when I heard about it), the wife decided that she was going to insist on a "black cab," because she'd heard so much about them. The first cab in the line was a grey Mercedes van. That wouldn't do at all, now, would it? We explained the predicament to the guy who was running the taxi line, and he didn't bat an eye, just walked us back to the second taxi, which happened to be a black one. 

We got our stuff loaded into the cab and hit the road toward our hotel. The boss explained her reasoning to the cabbie, and he shared with us that all the cabs in London are considered "black cabs." What makes "black cabs" so special? Let's talk about them for a moment...

London cabbies are pretty well known, worldwide, for knowing the most about their city. Before they get their license to transport people, they have to complete a course called the "Knowledge of London." Essentially, they have to know every single street in London, and the best ways to get to and from random destinations off the top of their head. Here's what Wikipedia has to say about "The Knowledge" - I will indent it, so if you want to skip all this, it'll be obvious:

The London taxicab driver is required to be able to decide routes immediately in response to a passenger's request or traffic conditions, rather than stopping to look at a map, relying on satellite navigation or asking a controller by radio. Consequently, the "Knowledge of London" is the in-depth study of a number of pre-set London street routes and all places of interest that taxicab drivers in that city must complete to obtain a license to operate a black cab. It was initiated in 1865, and hasn't really changed since.

It is the world's most demanding training course for taxicab drivers, and applicants will usually need to pass at least twelve "appearances" (periodical one-on-one oral examinations undertaken throughout the qualification process), with the whole process averaging 34 months to pass.

Three hundred and twenty standard routes through central London, or "runs." In all, some 25,000 streets within a six-mile radius of Charing Cross are covered, along with the major arterial routes through the rest of London.

A taxicab-driver must learn these routes, as well as the "points of interest" along and within 1⁄2 mile of each end of those routes including streets, squares, clubs, hospitals, hotels, theatres, etc.

The Knowledge includes details such as the order of theatres on Shaftesbury Avenue, and the names and order of the side streets and traffic signals passed on a route.

I don't even know all of that about Knoxville. Or Austin. I was pretty impressed by our cabbie's abilities, his (for lack of a better term) knowledge of the streets, etc. The journey from the airport to our hotel was about an hour, and once we got into the city Peter (our driver) showed us all of the sites we were driving by, and told us the best ways to get around. He gave me a business card as he dropped us off, and told us to contact him if we wanted a ride back to the airport.

The hotel. Let's talk about the hotel for a moment. This was a NICE hotel. Thanks to the boss' Marriott status, our room was upgraded two tiers. Our concierge, Mustafa, was an absolute gem, and fell all over himself taking care of us. You'll read more about him later, but our first experience with him, he walked us up to the room and showed us how the switches worked, then asked if he could bring us some complementary wine. We didn't want to be a bother, so we both told him it wasn't necessary... he talked us into it, by telling us "It's included with your room, it's not a bother at all!" Very nice gentleman, who really enjoys his job (and it shows).

One thing about the location of our hotel... if you look at a map of London, the big tourist sites are all over town. Our hotel was literally right in the middle of all of them. However, because the city is so big (much bigger than we were expecting), it's a long walk to any of them. We had decided to buy tickets for the Tube, London's subway system. The hotel was about a ten minute walk to two different stations, or we could just keep walking to get to the attraction we wanted. Our first afternoon, we explored our way to the Tower Bridge. I didn't go through it, but the wife took the tour. I wandered around until I found an ATM, as we didn't have any Pounds with us, and I'd told Mustafa that I'd give him a tip the next time I saw him. On our way back toward the hotel, we passed through an area called Borough Market, which was closed (but was on my list, so I visited later in the week), and while walking along the Thames, we encountered a pub that happened to be on the wife's list, with a sign posted advertising trivia the next night (Monday). We ended up just walking back to the hotel and eating dinner at the restaurant in the hotel (which was actually quite good!). 

The next morning was February 26th. Some of you might know that that's the boss' birthday. She had to go to work (that was the whole reason we were in town), but her comfort level wasn't as high as she'd like, so I got up and rode the tube with her and helped her navigate her way to work. Then I headed back to the hotel until I was ready to take on the day. On the way into the hotel, I stopped to talk to the clerk at the front desk. I told her that the boss' birthday was that day, and asked her where I could buy some flowers. She walked me out onto the street and pointed out the store down the road. She asked if I was going down there right now; I told her that I'd be going up to the room for a while, then would go out and pick some up.

I went up to the room and was researching what I wanted to do that day and the doorbell rang. I answered it, and Leena (the front desk clerk) and Mustafa (from earlier in the blog) were standing there with a room service tray containing: a big bouquet of roses, a bottle of red wine with 2 glasses, a box of chocolates, and a birthday cake marked as being enough for 18 people. I was quite impressed with what they were able to put together on such short notice, and the wife was as well. At the end of our visit (as is our wont), we went to the supermarket just to look around at what kinds of products were available, and the wife pointed out all of the items that had been on the tray (the cake, the flowers, the chocolates)... I've seen posts online where hotel people talk about their management gives them an "allowance" to spend on their customers, I suspect that the folks at this hotel have some sort of arrangement like that. We added it up, and for less than around £50, Leena and Mustafa made such a huge impression on us - we're huge fans of that hotel, and will highly recommend that hotel, simply based on the customer service experience. Lemme know if you're traveling to London, and I'll give you their info!

I'd asked Mustafa for recommendations for a good restaurant to take to boss to on her birthday, but she decided that she wanted to go back to the pub (that was on her list) for the trivia night. We made a respectable showing, placing (I think) 4th out of about 10 teams. Some of the questions were specifically about British things, but there were enough general knowledge questions that we didn't do too bad. You had to pay 3 Pounds each to play trivia, and then were entered into a raffle drawing to play a game to win a jackpot. One of our numbers was chosen for the drawing, so I had to go up and play a game similar to the old game show "Card Sharks." There were some oversized novelty cards lines up across the mantle of the (unlit) fireplace, and I had to guess whether the next card would be higher or lower than my card. My first card was a 6, and I guessed higher. I don't remember what my next card was, but I got it wrong. They drew one more raffle ticket, and he got his second or third round wrong as well, so the jackpot rolled over. I think the jackpot would have been around £150 that night.

The Borough Market claims to have been around since 1014, and is just a massive 3 or 4 block area under some of the bridges, lined with dozens of storefronts catering to the general public. Most of the stores sell different specialty foods - butchers, fruit and vegetable stands, fishmongers, cheese vendors... there are a couple of different sections that sell prepared foods as well, so you can sit and have a full meal (as we did late Sunday morning), or wander around with a sandwich. My first visit, I got the boss a jar of candied jalapenos, since the homemade stash we brought from the states is nothing but a fond memory at this point.

Buckingham Palace was on the wife's list (but oddly enough, not on mine). Since it was off season, it was a different tour than is offered in the summer, with smaller groups, and a special guide. They evidently charged more than she cares to admit, but she swears it was a highlight for her.

Thus ends the narrative that I'd written and rewritten so many times. Below, please see all the pics!

The Thames River is a tidal river, with the water level rising and falling every six hours or so. You'll see it in other pics, but here are 3 pics to show you the high and low water, and a pic of the "beach" for scale - those are people in the third pic:

Elizabeth Tower / Big Ben: Didn't tour, just happened to be across the street from it wandering around one day:

Tower Bridge, with the HMS Belfast (museum ship) in the foreground of the top pic:

There's evidently a glass walkway in the top level of the bridge - the wife got a sticker that said that she'd walked on it.

The wife's birthday present from the hotel:

Borough Market:

We ate at a cheese restaurant... plates of cheese came by on a conveyer belt, and you selected what you wanted as it scrolled by. The plates were priced by color. They brought out a basket of crackers and whatever you wanted to drink. First time at a place like this.

One night, we took an authentic Black Cab over to Harrod's, just to say we did it... we walked back to the hotel and the wife found some picturesque buildings and sights:

Trivia Night - you can see me up there like a doofus, with the cards on the left hand side of the pic:

Westminster Abbey... there were two tombs I specifically wanted to see (Sir Isaac Newton and Stephen Hawking), so you'll see those specific tombs, plus a bunch of other pics:

The actual Coronation Chair that's used to coronate a new ruler:

St Paul's Cathedral (where Prince Charles and Princess Diana were married):

Tower of London:

Gotta throw this in about the ravens at the tower: according to a superstition, if there are ever fewer than six ravens at the Tower of London, "the Crown will fall, and Britain with it." There is a dedicated Raven Master at the Tower, currently caring for seven ravens. Once every three weeks, the feathers on their right wings are trimmed to prevent them from flying away. Here's one of the locals, recognizable from the band on his right leg:

Random pics around town:

Dresden - a different kind of trip:

Lemme give you a heads up... I'm guessing that parts of this entry might be a little difficult to read, because I'm finding parts of it a little hard to write. Other destinations that we've visited, regardless of their history, I've found enrichment and... entertainment there. I remain a little conflicted about this past weekend - maybe I'll work some of it out as I write this, but for now, you might want to buckle up.

We had a long weekend, so the boss threw out an idea for a short-ish trip: Dresden. We've heard good things about it, and it's not too far away, so we traded in some points and booked a room at the Hilton, then took off on Friday. The boss worked a half day, and we drove about 5 hours across the country. We stopped for fast food on the road, and arrived between 8 and 9. We checked into the hotel... gotta stop and talk about the hotel.

The Hilton in Dresden is in an absolutely perfect location, steps off of the main square, across the street from the main(ish) church. We normally don't stay in the center of town, but the family accountant had some points with Hilton that we'll be losing at the end of the year, so it was quite economical. Normally we stay out toward the airport and metro in, so that was a little different (and nice).

This hotel must have been one of the flagship locations for Hilton at one time... maybe back in the 90's? They may have done some work on the elevators since that time, but I think that's about the only difference. The halls and rooms were decorated in "Miami Vice Chic." Quite nice, but quite dated as well. The shower had one of the 'pivoting half walls' that I love so much - 0/10. Would not recommend the shower there - whomever came up with that idea for showers needs a stern talking to, at the very least (as you can see from the pic below). But... great location, good hotel overall, just needs lots of new carpeting, paint, and shower enclosures. 

After we dropped our stuff off, we wandered around the Neumarkt (the New Market). I must explain a bit.

One of the well known churches in Dresden is Frauenkirche, dating back to the 11th century. The location, though, was outside the original city walls. Inside the city walls, Kreuzkirche was located on the market square (dating back to the 12th century). In 1530, the walls of the city were expanded, the original market square (where Kreuzkirche is located) was renamed Altmarkt (German for Old Market), and the square around Frauenkirche was named Neumarkt (New Market). 

Anyway, we wandered around Neumarkt, seeing the church all lit up at night, and encountering a statue of Martin Luther, commemorating his visit to Dresden in 1516. The base of the statue had been turned into a shrine, commemorating the 79th anniversary of the firebombing of the city during the second world war, which had occurred a couple of days prior to our visit. Additionally, it looked like the shrine had been coopted, as people had left signs related to Alexei Navalny, the Russian dissident who died under suspicious circumstances earlier that day.  All in all, quite picturesque square.

The memorial deserves a couple of pics on its own. The first night, the family photographer took this pic. If you look carefully at the base of the statue, there's a wreath of yellow roses. On the right side of that, there's a sign saying "Navalny ist nicht tot" ("Navalny is not dead") - you can't see the sign from this pic, but just to give you an idea of the scale of the memorial:

The memorial changed as the weekend went on - she captured this pic later during our visit - you can see two signs in English: "Criticizing Putin should not be a death sentence" and "Putin is a murderer":

While I'm sure we can all agree that killing people who disagree with us shouldn't be really high on our list of things to do, this particular incident seems to have struck more of a chord with folks over here than back in the states, from what I've seen in my somewhat limited exposure to American news.

We ate breakfast in the lounge the next morning, and headed out for our walking tour (as has become our wont). One of the cool things about most of the walking tours is that they usually stay in generally the same part of town, with the path crossing over itself different times in different directions, as the guide shows you around. He showed us the outside of the Catholic church (a different church than the two I already mentioned), gave us an overview of the history of the city, showed us the Fürstenzug (the Procession of Princes)... let's talk about that for a moment.

On the side of the courtyard of Dresden Castle, you'll find the largest porcelain artwork in the world. It's a mural 102 meters (334 Freedom Units) long and 10.5 meters (34 Freedom Units) tall, made up of around 23,000 painted porcelain tiles. The mural shows the 35 leaders of Saxony from 1127 to 1904, along with 59 scientists, artisans, craftsmen, children and farmers. Very impressive, and gave the guide an opportunity to walk us through the lineage of the important kings.

Here are some pics that the wife took:

I was able to find a much better pic online, but you'll have to check it out in another tab. You might have to enlarge that pic to be able to see it.

One of the other things that he showed us was a mural on the city cultural center, commissioned by the government of the city of Dresden in the 1960's. The mural tells the story of the communist party, from Marx and Engles in 1848, through the Russian October Revolution in 1917, the formation of the German Communist Party during the days of the Weimar Republic, the victory of the Soviet Red Army in 1945, and the establishment of socialism in the GDR. After the Iron Curtain fell, there was a debate in the city about what to do with the mural, since it was such blatant communist propaganda; in the end, they left the mural, but planted trees in front of it. Evidently, the foliage on the trees blocks the mural for much of the year... not while we were there though, as you can see in the picture below:

He showed us the Semperoper, the opera hall originally dating to 1841, then finished up the tour at an overlook of the Zwinger, intended to be the entrance hall to a palatial palace. The palace was never finished, and I don't think the entrance hall was ever completed either - but the area we were overlooking was under construction (or reconstruction - not sure which). Here's a pic of the opera, followed by a pic of the construction area we ended up at:

We wandered around the stores, then stopped in an Irish pub for a real (small) meal. We both had Irish ciders & small bowls of Irish stew. Quite good - hit the spot.

While we were on the tour, we passed by Altmarkt, where it turned out that they were having something called "Wintermarkt" which looked quite a bit like a Christmas Market (and y'all know I'm a sucker for those!). After we left the Irish pub, we walked over and walked through the market - it was mostly food and drinks, and we'd just eaten, so we didn't get anything.

Funny story about the Wintermarkt that our guide passed along - I haven't been able to verify any of the story, so take it with a grain of salt: the mascot for the market is a huge purple teddy bear, probably 20 feet high (while he was sitting anyway). A few weeks back, someone shook the bear so violently that his head fell off. The owner/organizer of the market offered a €10,000 Euro reward, but it turned out that he had video footage. He didn't have a permit for the cameras, so he ended up being fined €2,000 Euro. Again, I can't remember the exact story, and haven't been able to find anything about it online, but the way the story was told, the boss and I agreed that it was one of the most "German" things we'd ever heard.

We walked back over to the hotel, I hung around the room and relaxed, while the boss found an art museum to explore. Evidently, she encountered a famous painting by Raphael there... I'm pretty sure everyone has seen Raphael's Angels, whether you know them by that name or not. The museum that she went to had that specific painting in it:

See those two little angels at the bottom? Here's a closer pic of them:

There's a chocolate store in the lobby of the hotel, so while she was gone, I went down and stimulated the local economy a bit. Once she got back, we headed out to a nearby restaurant, called Edelweiss, to have fondue (as the wife had seen menu posters for it as we'd walked past). Quite good, but way too much food. Afterward, we returned to the hotel, and went down to the pool and hot tub for a little while.

Sunday morning, we had breakfast in the lounge again - the crowd down at the restaurant was pretty thick, and we didn't feel like dealing with it. We had tickets to another museum at 10:15, so we left the hotel around 10:00 and walked over.

In 1547, the prince-elector of Saxony commissioned a new wing for the castle, and until 1723, the different rulers of Saxony used it to store important papers and jewelry. Between 1723 and 1729, Augustus the Strong turned the wing into a public museum, allowing unprecedented public access to his jewels and treasury.

The "Old Green Vault" displays about a quarter of the jewels in the same baroque setting that the wing has had since the 1700's. The "New Green Vault" lies in the rooms above the old vault, and the pieces are more individually displayed, rather than whole rooms of similar pieces. For instance, in the old section, there are entire rooms dedicated to amber, ivory, and gold, where all of the pieces displayed are shown in rooms dedicated to those types of pieces.

Security in the old vault is very tight, no coats or bags of any kind, and you have to go through a type of 'sally port,' where only one door is opened at a time. The doors to the rest of the museum rest in the open position, with closed doors facing the old vault. Once you're in the little chamber, the outer doors close, and about 10-15 seconds later the inner doors open. Each of the 8 rooms had a security guard in it as well. 

We wandered through both the old and new vault, then the rest of the wings of the museum. The boss thinks we might have missed a wing, as she saw pictures of a gallery of some of the women's gowns, but I didn't miss it. I saw plenty, without seeing the gowns.

After our tour, we found a little shop to have a snack in; we both had cappuccinos, she had a cookie, I had a piece of cherry crumb cake. Attached to the store was another chocolate store, so of course we had to go in. I bought a little sample of one of the bonbons.

We rested back in the room for a little while, then went to the transportation museum. It's in a building that used to be the carriage house for one of the kings. Now it's got all kinds of vehicles in it, from bicycles to trains, cars, motorcycles, and planes. Pretty well done museum.

We left the museum and headed over to a tapas restaurant that we'd passed earlier in the weekend. Pretty good food, affordable as well. 

We wandered around for a while, and on our way back to the room, encountered a sculpture museum that happened to be open, and free on Sundays. Honestly, I enjoyed it a lot more than I was expecting. One of the exhibits that they had dealt with "Revolutionary Art," basically artists from socialist and communist artists who were connected to Dresden. Dresden has evidently always been associated with art, having one of the most well known art schools in Europe; back in the days of the GDR, artists from socialist and communist countries could come and study here. Quite telling, seeing some of the art that these folks cam up with. Incidentally, the art school has a dome on it that the locals refer to as "the lemon juicer." I'm sure you can tell why by looking at these pics (night & day):

Afterward, we wandered back to the hotel.

On our way out of town the next morning, we stopped at a milk store... evidently, in 1997, this store was selected as the "Most Beautiful Milk Store in the World" by the fine folks at the Guinness Book of World Records. I honestly don't know how much competition there was in that category, but it was a little milk and cheese store completely covered in hand-painted porcelain tiles. There were signs posted inside and out warning that photos weren't allowed, so you'll have to be satisfied with one I was able to find online:

Now comes the hard part. Almost everything I've told you about... the Frauenkirche, the Kreuzkirche, Altmarkt, Neumarkt, most of the palace... despite the history of the city, the vast majority of it dates to the 1990's or later, with some of the buildings even being constructed during the 2010's. 

Dresden, like Cologne and a couple of other cities, was absolutely decimated by bombings during WWII. 

What makes Dresden different than other places that we've visited though, is that after the war the city was in the hands of the communists. As recently as the 1990's, Neumarkt, next to one of the most recognizable churches in Europe, was a field, with sheep grazing in it to keep the grass cut. The only thing that I've specifically told you about which survived the bombings relatively unscathed was the Procession of Princes, because the porcelain survived the high temperatures of the fire bombs. Frauenkirche? Completely rebuilt, reopening in 2005. The Old Green Vault? Three of the eight rooms were completely destroyed in the bombing, and at the end of the war the treasures were confiscated by the Red Army and moved to the USSR. The treasures were thankfully returned in 1958, but the Old Green Vault didn't reopen until 2006.

With the other war damaged cities that we've visited, the people and government of the city were able to rebuild however they wanted - so while the majority of Cologne was flattened during the war, it was rebuilt immediately after, using the same designs, layout, and materials as before. Munich was extensively damaged, but the Nazis knew that it would be bombed, so they made extensive documentation of the buildings, which was used to rebuild the city immediately afterward.

Dresden didn't have that option. Within 4 years of being flattened, Dresden found itself in Communist East Germany, and they built exactly what the party told them to build. The Communist party had no interest in Altmarkt, Neumarkt, Frauenkirche - so instead, Dresden was filled with communist era egalitarian architecture. When you think of the massive plain apartment buildings from behind the Iron Curtain - that's what Dresden looked like, for decades after the war.

The people and government of Frankfurt made the decision to modernize the city after the war, so everywhere you look in Frankfurt, you see skyscrapers - that's become a big part of the city's current identity. There's one small section of town that was rebuilt to look like a village from the later middle ages, and it honestly feels like "Euro Disney."

Dresden honestly feels like an older city, but when I found out more about the (recent) history, everything around me suddenly felt fake, like the aforementioned "Euro Disney." 

While around half of Germany was under the thumb of the communists and the Soviet Union, this was our first visit to a previously communist city that was flattened during the war. While all of these cities had to rebuild, Dresden's much more recent rebuild seems both more honest and more deceptive at the same time. The communist government wouldn't let the city do whatever they wanted, so they had to wait until the fall of the USSR and the reunification of Germany to rebuild their city the way that they wanted to; This was the first opportunity that they'd had to rebuild in their own chosen fashion, so they honored their own history. The fall of the Iron Curtain opened up eastern Germany to venture capitalists who were willing to invest in the future of the city. While I understand their motivation, looking around the city and knowing that the "old" buildings you see around you are 30 years old just feels a little off. I still don't know how I feel about the city as a whole, but regardless of the age of the buildings, the city itself is quite beautiful and captivating, and it was a nice destination for a weekend trip.

So, there was our trip to Dresden, the good, the bad, the ugly. Lemme know what your thoughts are about their architecture and history, if you feel like it.