In early January, we joined 10 current and 2 former Sea Ranchers in a group of ~100 people who went on a 2-week London Theatre Odyssey.  This was the 34th year this cultural tour, presently under the management of The Travel Shoppe in Fresno, CA (contact: rubina@shoppetravel.com) occurred.  We flew into Heathrow and after clearing Customs jumped on a train bound for Covent Garden.  From there we took a taxi to the Radisson Edwardian Mountbatten located near 7-Dials in London's West End, convenient to many theatres, the British Natural Museum and several underground Tube lines.    

While we had traveled through Heathrow on several trips and visited London for a few days many times, we had never spent 2 weeks in the city, particularly in Winter.  Despite the frequent rain and cool, damp temperatures, it proved a delight.

While our Theatre Tour included tickets to 7 plays/musicals, we purchased tickets to 5 more.  This still left a lot of time to explore.  On our first morning, several of us ventured past London's clock tower with it's bell, Big Ben, (above) on our way to catch the passenger ferry to Greenwich.

Across the Thames from our departure point stood the British Airways London Eye.  It is often called the Millennium Wheel.  It is the first-built and largest observation wheel (a type of Ferris wheel) in the world.  (While it has been the only one since its opening at the end of 1999, several cities have plans for their own.)  It stands 443 feet high on the western end of Jubilee Gardens, on the South Bank of the River Thames in Lambeth, London, England, between Westminster and Hungerford Bridges.

The Millenium Dome beneath the hazy horizon has NOT been a financial success like the Wheel.

On our Thames River trip, we passed the Tower of London, which was founded nearly a millennium ago and expanded upon over the centuries.

A photo of The Old Royal Naval College King Charles Block and Queen Anne Block
from our ferry.  There have been various important uses of the land on which the Old Royal Naval College stands.  The manor of Greenwich passed to Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester and Regent of England, in 1427. He started building a palace near the river Thames, to be named Bella Court.  He enclosed the rectangular area of land which now comprises the Old Royal Naval College, the National Maritime Museum, and Greenwich Park. When he died in 1447 the manor reverted to the Crown and Bella Court became the residence of Margaret of Anjou, the wife of Henry VI. It was renamed the Palace of Placentia and was to become the principal Royal palace for the next two centuries.  The palace was extensively rebuilt during the period, especially during the reign of Henry VII.

Henry VIII was born at the palace in 1491 and during his marriages to Katherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn he spent most of his time there.  He was a great enthusiast of the Navy and set up two naval dockyards nearby, at Deptford and Woolwich. Elizabeth I was born to Anne Boleyn at Placentia in 1533 and she spent most of her summers there. 

During the reigns of James I and Charles I The Queen's House was erected, as part of the palace but some distance away. Placentia fell into disrepair during the Commonwealth and in 1660 Charles II decided to rebuild it in the new classical style. John Webb, who also enlarged the Queens House, was engaged as architect.  However, the only section of the new palace to be finished was the east range of the present King Charles Block. The rest of the old palace was demolished, although the remains of part of the cellars can be seen under Queen Anne Block, known as 'The Undercroft'.

William III did not want to live at Greenwich, preferring Kensington, and eventually his Queen, Mary, decided to build a naval almshouse, the Royal Naval Hospital, on the site of the old palace, incorporating the King Charles Block.  Sir Christopher Wren was engaged as surveyor, assisted by Nicholas Hawksmoor. Wren, probably realising that he would not live to see the work to completion, insisted that the footings for all four blocks be laid first so that later trustees or architects could not change his design substantially. Later a number of other leading architects were also involved, such as Campbell, Ripley and James. The main work took place between 1696 and 1712, although the construction was not finished completely until 1752.

The buildings comprise four separate blocks, each with its central courtyard. Along the riverside are King Charles Block and Queen Anne Block and behind them to the south are King William Block and Queen Mary Block.  The latter two are the domed buildings which contain the two main points of interest for the visitor, the Painted Hall and the Chapel.

The interior of the Chapel, situated in the Queen Mary Block, was destroyed by fire in 1779 and was redesigned by James 'Athenian' Stuart in a completely different style, using intricate patterns of plaster mouldings on pale Wedgewood coloured backgrounds. Services recommenced in 1789 and continue to the present day.  The chapel organ is pictured below.

In 1705 the first disabled or retired seamen came to live in the hospital, the numbers rising to about three thousand by 1814, after which they declined sharply, mainly because of the end of the Napoleonic wars. Despite the magnificence of the buildings in which they were housed, there were many complaints about poor food and pettiness on the part of the trustees. For even minor offences the old pensioners were forced to wear their uniform coats inside out; the yellow lining making them very noticeable and causing unnecessary humiliation to the proud old sea-dogs. By 1869 the numbers had fallen so low that it was decided to close the hospital.

The Admiralty took over the buildings and the Royal Naval College was transferred from Portsmouth in 1873. For a while some ward spaces were used as museum rooms of the Naval College, though subsequently all the ward spaces were sub-divided in one way or another for use as lecture theatres, classrooms and offices, together with some residential accommodation. The contents of the museum rooms were moved to the National Maritime Museum on its opening in 1937.

A few years ago it was decided that the staff colleges of the Navy, Army, and Air Force should be merged into one, and this, of course, meant that the Greenwich buildings would be no longer required by the Navy. After some discussion, it was announced in 1996 that the buildings would be let, and the government set up trustees to look after the buildings and liaise with the new tenants. A charitable trust, The Greenwich Foundation for the Royal Naval College, was set up, and responsibility for the site passed to them when the Royal Navy moved out in December 1998.

At The Royal Observatory, home of Greenwich Mean Time, we posed with Alan in the Eastern Hemisphere, while the remainder of our Sea Ranch friends (on the other side of the Prime Meridian Line) are in the Western Hemisphere.  This is one of the most important historic scientific sites in the world.  Founded by Charles II in 1675, by  international decree it is the official starting point for each new day, year and millennium (at the stroke of midnight GMT as measured from the Prime Meridian).

Dissecting through the Royal Observatory is the source of the Prime Meridian of the world, Longitude 0° 0' 0''.  Every place on Earth is measured in terms of its distance east or west from this line. The line itself divides the eastern and western hemispheres of the Earth - just as the Equator divides the northern and southern hemispheres.

The Prime Meridian is defined by the position of the large 'Transit Circle' telescope in the Observatory's Meridian Building. This was built by Sir George Biddell Airy, the 7th Astronomer Royal, in 1850. The cross-hairs in the eyepiece of the Transit Circle precisely define Longitude 0º for the world.

Returning to our hotel, we paused to view one of the Royal Barracks Guards on horseback.

We also looked at the controversial statue, "Alison Lapper Pregnant, which had been  placed on Trafalgar Square's fourth plinth.  It is a statue of a naked, disabled woman with no arms, who is 8 months pregnant.  The 12ft. (3.6m) marble sculpture has produced divided opinions amongst art critics and disability campaigners.  It is scheduled to be there until April 2007.

Close-up of the marble sculpture, which appears to us as a modern Venus de Milo.

One of our walks took us to Buckingham Palace, the official London residence of The Queen, located at the 'heart of London' just beyond St. James's Park, where we did some birdwatching. 

A male Common Eider floats close to us in St. James's Park Lake; a female Tufted Duck behind.

A male Smew, a species we'd previously seen only in Japan, is also amongst the species which overwinters in England.

As we've rarely seen their feet, we enjoyed watching a Coot stride about on open ground in St. Jame's Park.

A male Tufted Duck paddled close, also.  We learned many thousands of this species overwinter in Britain.

Of course the kids love feeding the pigeons here, too.

Twice during our London stay, we spent the afternoon in the British Museum.  It is FREE every day and a wonderful collection of items from throughout the world.  This photo is in the atrium.   

Aware our travel plans for 2006 include Egypt, we located The Rosetta Stone, which dates back to the Ptolemaic Period, 196 BC.  It was a valuable key to the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs.  The inscription on the Rosetta Stone is that of a decree passed by a council of priests, one of a series that affirm the royal cult of the 13-year-old Ptolemy V on the first anniversary of his coronation.

Before the Ptolemaic era (that is before about 332 BC), decrees in hieroglyphs, such as this, were usually set up by the king. It shows how much things had changed from Pharaonic times that the priests, the only people who had kept the knowledge of writing hieroglyphs, were now issuing such decrees. The list of good deeds done by the king for the temples hints at the way in which the support of the priests was ensured.

The decree is inscribed on the stone three times, in hieroglyphic (suitable for a priestly decree), demotic (the native script used for daily purposes), and Greek (the language of the administration). The importance of this to Egyptology has been immense. After the end of the fourth century AD, when hieroglyphs had gone out of use, the knowledge of how to read and write them disappeared. In the early years of the nineteenth century, some 1400 years later, scholars were able to use the Greek inscription on this stone as the key to decipher them. Thomas Young, an English physicist, was the first to show that some of the hieroglyphs on the Rosetta Stone wrote the sounds of a royal name, that of Ptolemy. The French scholar Jean-François Champollion then realized that hieroglyphs recorded the sound of the Egyptian language and laid the foundations of our knowledge of ancient Egyptian language and culture.

Soldiers in Napoleon's army discovered the Rosetta Stone in 1799 while digging the foundations of an addition to a fort near the town of el-Rashid (Rosetta). On Napoleon's defeat, the stone became the property of the English under the terms of the Treaty of Alexandria (1801) along with other antiquities the French had found.  It was a Gift to the British Museum from George III. 

The Rosetta Stone has been exhibited in the British Museum since 1802, with only one break. Towards the end of the First World War, in 1917, when the Museum was concerned about heavy bombing in London, they moved it to safety along with other, portable, 'important' objects. The Rosetta Stone spent the next two years in a station on the Postal Tube Railway fifty feet below the ground at Holborn.

Ancient Egyptian Figurines carved from basalt and granite.

Horus, God of the Sky, is depicted as a falcon.  As Horus was the son of Osiris, he became closely associated with the Pharaoh of Upper Egypt (where Horus was worshipped), and became their patron. 

One afternoon, we journeyed to Richmond by coach (bus) in order to attend a play later in the evening.  Prior to the performance, we visited the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew.  Housing the largest living plant collection in the world, it was also hosting a major solo exhibition of new glass sculptures and installations by the world-renowned artist in glass Dale Chihuly entitled _Gardens of Glass_.  The glass sculptures by Mr. Chihuly, who resides in Washington state, were specifically designed to respond to the living collections, architecture, and Georgian vistas of Kew.  Chihuly starts with the great tradition of Venetian blown glass, taking the complex fluidity of the hot glass and transforming them into astonishing sculptures, rich in color, organic in form and exuberant in nature.  While the _Thames Skiff_ (above) which he created for the pond was interesting in daylight, it became stunning after dark (below). 

This is _The SUN_ which was installed outside the Princess of Wales Conservatory.  It measures 14 1/2' x 13 1/2' x 13 1/2' and took 3 days to build.

Close up of the center of _The Sun_...

As birders, we enjoyed Chihuly's blue _Herons_ in the water inside the Princess of Wales Conservatory.  Several of the following photos were taken there.

The _Reeds_ added to the beauty of the plants in this hot house.

Here the _Green Spires_ blend remarkably well with the giant leaves behind them.  These were originally designed as individual stems, but create a striking sculpture when grouped together.

Some of the Ikebana floral sculptures above and below-

These are based on Indian baskets, representing a translation of the woven fibre into glass.

The Palm House, which was built between 1844 and 1848 to house tropical trees, shrubs and palms, had some marvelous glass sculptures inside, too.

Walking between buildings, we observed Bar-headed Geese, also.  They are probably 'escapees' rather than wild birds as they're normally in Asia.

The koi fish blended well with this Ikebana arrangement.

"REFLECTIONS ON CHIHULY'S MACCHIA"

by Robert Hobbs  

  Derived from the Latin macula, the Italian word "macchia" connotes simply a stain or a spot, but it has a much richer range of meaning. Since the Renaissance, macchia has been associated with a sketchy way of applying the initial color to a drawing or painting. Particularly appropriate for the late style of the Venetian painter Titian, the word characterizes his emphasis on brushwork and summary treatment of form. In the seventeenth century, macchia designated the special quality of improvisational sketches that appear to be nature's miraculous creation rather than mere human work. Two centuries later, attention was transferred from the work of art to its creator; at that time, macchia signified the initial idea originating in the mind or eye of the artist that becomes the focus of a sketch. This later, highly romantic definition that emphasized the power of artists to reveal nature through their special sensibilities served as a basis for the art of the Macchiaioli, the Italian counterpart to the French Impressionists.

The Italian artist Italo Scanga suggested macchia as the title of the series of work begun in 1981 by Dale Chihuly. The ability of the word "macchia" to encapsulate the concept of the spontaneous outpouring of artistic sensibility may have been the reason why Scanga recommended it to his friend. The word choice encompasses more than the mere fact that a distinguishing feature of this series is the artist's preference for splotches of color. When Chihuly appropriates the term "macchia" for his series, he gives back to the word some of its traditional meanings, particularly the emphasis on spontaneity, on artistic collaboration with technique rather than mere control of it, and on close kinship between artist and nature. His works with their vibrant dashes of color embody both interpretations of the sketch: the artist's conception and the initial realization of it.

Multiple macchia in front of a green house door (above) and interesting works (below).

A stunning _Chancelier_ hangs in the Temperate House, which was built in the mid-1800's and remains the world's largest ornamental glasshouse.

small installations (above) and dying leaves below

"Balloons"

Before going to the theatre, we had a scrumptous dinner in a Mediteranean restaurant.

Bond Street and you can almost hear Winston and FDR chatting.

Autos on Bond Street were a pricey lot.

A view of the business skyline of London from the Thames.

We'd attended the opening day showing of Brokeback Mountain in San Francisco several months earlier but we're glad to see it showing in London, too.

The ads were gaudy at Picadilly Circus.

 One afternoon, Dean and I accompanied Chuck and Megan, our neighbors at The Sea Ranch, on a 'city' tour of central London.

Photo opportunities included this 'punked' out local who wanted drinking money.

Parliment Building was stunning in the low light.

On one of our walks, we went to visit Westminister Cathedral, which is still incomplete inside.  We took the elevator to the top for the view (below).

Our last night in London we went to see the Elton John musical _Billy Elliot_ at the Victoria Palace Theatre.  It was VERY well done and a wonderful adaption from the movie. 

We REALLY enjoyed our London Theatre Odyssey, can HIGHLY recommend it to others and hope to repeat it some time in the future ourselves.