Hadrian exhibition at the British Museum

Last week, I learned the hard way that it's better to buy tickets online for the Hadrian exhibition at the British Museum. When I went over to the ticket desk, in the bottom right of the photo below, all the tickets for the day were sold out.



So, I didn't see the exhibition which I'd read so much about, and which is housed in this building in the great hall of the museum.



Next time I'm in London, I'll book ahead.

Cheap London City hotels at the weekend

Last weekend I stayed at the Crowne Plaza London City, near Blackfriar's Station, on a cheap rate from Expedia.com. Many business-focused hotels in the City are very cheap on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. These hotels are a cheaper (and nicer) option than tourist hotels in places like Bayswater or South Kensington. The Crowne Plaza London City has a good basement bar, which serves Hoegaarden beer and surely the smallest serving of nachos you will ever see this side of Lilliput. St Paul's Cathedral, the Tate Modern, and the new Millenium Bridge are all close by.

Don't get ripped off by taxi drivers at Heathrow

Last week I attended a conference in the Heathrow area. Two separate Americans told me of being ripped off by taxi drivers:

1) Two women were charged 35 pounds to travel the 4 miles from Heathrow Airport to the Quality Hotel. They were not pleased to find out that they could have taken the Hotel Hoppa bus for 4 pounds each.

2) A guy was charged 55 pounds to travel to the Slough/Windsor Marriot hotel, which also is on a Hotel Hoppa route.

I can kinda see the reason why this happens. Taxi drivers wait in a line at Heathrow and expect passengers to be headed into London (which would cost 35 pounds or more). But, when they are asked to drive a few miles to a local hotel, an unscrupulous taxi driver may then try to get the same amount of money, except without the drive into London.

Note I'm not talking here about the "black cab" London Taxi drivers, who use meters and are (I find) generally very honest. But the drivers at Heathrow who do this seem to be locals, not using meters, as far as I can tell by listening to these stories from people who were ripped off.

The lesson seems to be to either (a) just use the Hotel Hoppa bus if you're going to an airport hotel, or (b) negotiate a fare up-front. Paying the equivalent of 100 dollars for a 3 mile taxi ride really is just crazy.

Ditton Park, Buckinghamshire, England

Ditton Park is a manor house near Heathrow Airport. It was owned by the crown at one point, but now is owned by an IT company. I've sometimes noticed it on the approach into Heathrow. Here it is up close:





The wet English summer has been good for the lawn and pond:



If you walk through the guard-house here, you walk over a bridge over a moat.



Picturesque. You could forget you are so close to Heathrow airport (though maybe the low-flying planes are a clue).

Mark Rothko exhibition at the Tate Modern in London

For me, the "Rothko Room" at the Tate Modern is a must-see for any trip to London. Although it is a cliche to say it, the paintings do have a spiritual element, and to me are more spiritual than, for example, St Paul's Cathedral across the Thames. In the darkened Rothko Room, the paintings seem to shimmer.

Enjoying the September sunshine in London last Saturday, I walked over the Millennium Bridge across the Thames to the Tate Modern to see the Rothko Room. Here we see the Tate Modern silhouetted behind the glaring sun.



Once at the Tate Modern, I is hard to avoid noticing that the Tate is now running an exhibition around the Rothko paintings. This means that I pay 13 pounds to see the same paintings as usual (chiefly the famous 4 Seasons / Seagram Building paintings intended for New York). But, of course, there are more Rothko pieces than usual. And, this being the Tate Modern, more Rothko merchandise than usual to buy.



Tickets for the exhibition can be purchased in the cavernous Turbine Hall (is it possible to describe the Turbine Hall without using the word "Cavernous"?). The tickets are timed, as with "Fastpass" tickets at Disneyworld, so you have a set time to enter the exhibition itself.



The entrance is on the fourth floor. The quote from Rothko alludes to the "sacred experiences" which his works evoke, but also "profane experiences" too (you can also see in the paintings a womb-like evocation).



Looking down from the Fourth Floor to the Turbine Hall, we see people queuing up to get tickets for the exhibition:



I have not attempted to do the paintings justice with my mobile phone camera. Instead, here is
a video of Achim Borchardt-Hume, curator of the Rothko exhibition, describing the show.

Exiting the exhibition and looking back over the Millenium Bridge, we see the shadow of the Tate Modern stretching out halfway over the Thames towards St Paul's, connecting one modern, secular, representation of the spiritual with an older, religious, representation.

The land of the $46 breakfast

I just booked a hotel in London on Expedia. I notice that the breakfast option adds $46 (29 pounds, if you look at Expedia.co.uk).

You may think "For $46, it must be a great breakfast". But, this is a London hotel, so the breakfast most likely barely qualifies as a snack by American standards, and the coffee will taste like it was made on a frying pan.

Vonage Call forwarding to international mobiles

When I travel in Ireland, I forward my Boston number to an Irish mobile. This means that people in the US can continue to phone a US number, but it is my mobile in Ireland which rings.

In this way, I get the best of both worlds: No roaming charges in Ireland, and no international charges for family and friends calling me from the US, and no international charges for people in Ireland calling me when I am in Ireland.

I pay for the connection from the US to Ireland, through Vonage.

I use my Vonage number as my primary phone number. I do not give out my mobile number, even though I use my mobile phone a lot. When I am in the US, my Vonage number also rings my US mobile (what they call "Simulring") and I pick up whichever phone is closest to me. When I am not in the US, my Vonage number rings my mobile in that country (e.g. Ireland), and I simply do not use my US mobile (the SIM card is in my wallet now).

I recommend this approach to anyone spending any significant time in another country.

Flying to Ireland from Heathrow Terminal 1

For years, the Terminal 1 experience when flying from Heathrow to Dublin meant:

1) Security
2) A small Duty Free shop
3) A long walk through corrugated metal tubes to the Ireland gates (80 to 90), punctuated by an uninspiring cafe and a basic Duty Free shop.

Now, when you fly from Terminal 1 to Ireland, you can wander around the many shops and restaurants which previously had been off-limits to Ireland-bound travelers.

This means that now the Terminal 1 experience is:

1) Security
2) Many shops and pleasant places to eat (such as Giraffe, who do tasty breakfasts).
3) A long walk through corrugated metal tubes to the Ireland gates (80 to 90), punctuated by an uninspiring cafe and a basic Duty Free shop.

There is still no getting away from (1) and (3) unfortunately. But, it is pleasant to have much more space to roam, and shop, when flying from London to Ireland.

The map below does not show the corrugated metal tubes leading to the Ireland gates. If it did, the map would be twice as wide, with a long thin line stretching out to the left.


Image from BAA.com

Cadbury's Chocolate in the US

One lesson I've learned from frequent travel between the US and Europe is that if I take a lot of trouble to bring a hard-to-find item across the Atlantic, upon arrival I will find it in a convenience store and think "why did I go to so much trouble to bring it over with me?".

So it is with Cadbury's chocolate. I've often brought Cadbury's chocolate over with me to the US from Ireland. I have brought over bars, and in the Spring I've brought Easter Eggs (which, inexplicably, are not generally available in the US).

And, of course, I then find that Cadbury's chocolate is available in CVS. The package reports that it is made by Hershey's, not a good sign to someone like me who is used to UK and Irish chocolate (milk chocolate) and finds most Hershey products unpalatable. But, I tried the Hershey's Cadbury's chocolate and it is not bad. This means less chocolate being transported across the Atlantic by me, and less chocolate business for Tesco in Dublin, in favour of CVS in Boston. Another consequence of globalization.

Trinity College Dublin, Front Square

Back when I was a lad, I studied at Trinity College Dublin. Here are a couple of photos and a video of it. Trinity is one of the most-visited tourist attractions in Dublin.

Here is the Front Gate of Trinity. It is locked at night, but when I lived in college I could come and go as I pleased. It was nice to have a place right in the center of Dublin.

When I see the front of Trinity, I always think of the James Joyce line: "The grey block of Trinity on his left, set heavily in the city's ignorance like a great dull stone set in a cumbrous ring, pulled his mind downward" (from "A Portrail of the Artist"). Joyce went to UCD, Trinity's rival.




Front Gate is always capitalized, and never called "the Front Gate" except by tourists or townies.

Walk through Front Gate, turn around, and you can see the Front Gate from inside Front Square. When I was a student there, the upper floors were taken over in a student protest by socialist students, but they were persuaded to end the occupation when it was pointed out that if they were arrested then the US Government would not give them J1 visas for summer work in the US.



Looking into Front Square from Front Gate, after rain:



The Chapel is on the left, and the Dining Hall / Commons on the right.



The Campanile and the Graduate Memorial Building (seen of many lively debates by Trinity's two debating societies, the Hist and the Phil):



The College Chapel:


It is, of course, free to stroll around Trinity's Front Square. If you want to visit the Book of Kells, an old copy of an illustrated bible housed in Trinity's Old Library, then you pay for that.