A Pleasant Week in London – Part 1

We spent a lovely week in London after our arrival. The weather could not have been
better, no rain and blue skies. Our driver picked us up at Heathrow and dropped us off at the St. Pancras. Unfortunately, Jamil was ill that day and could not meet us, but he made arrangements for one of his partners to pick us up when we arrived. As I mentioned in the last blog, we caught earlier flights from LEX and ATL, so we got into LHR earlier than anticipated. One of the great things about using the Marriott app is the ability to check in online and change the arrival time to earlier or later. I notified the St. Pancras of our early arrival via the app from ATL before we boarded. Not only did they have our room ready at 0900, but gave us a complementary upgrade to a Premier King in the Barlow wing. It pays to be a Platinum member as we also got free access to the Chambers Club for breakfast, High tea, and evening drinks. During our stay, the hotel remodeled the Chambers Club, so they moved the entire operation to the Royal Suite sitting room for the remainder of our stay, where we had breakfast with the Queen (well, with her picture, at least) every day . The staff members of the club are very pleasant and gave us some great tips on places to go during our stay in London. Our discussions with several of the staff revealed Marriott’s commitment to staff development. Several of the staff had started in housecleaning at various Marriott properties around the world and were working in the Chambers Club, while attending classes here to earn degrees in Hotel Management. One of the staff (Domenic), who is currently in the Hotel Management program, is married to a young lady who went through the program in India and is now a manager in a hotel in Oman. He is working to get her a spousal visa to transfer to London and we wished him well in that endeavor.

On Sunday, we attended Easter mass at the St. Pancras Anglican Church, just a couple of blocks down from the hotel. This is a historical church, so we  got there early to walk around and take a few pictures before the service. The choir and the organist were very nice, and the vicar even invited the children in attendance to hunt for Easter Eggs during the service. Miss Cyd got a knitted duck (who we named Turner, after J.M.W. Turner, one of our favorite British painters) from one of the readers after the service. After mass, we headed over to the British Museum, since that is also an easy walk from the hotel. It is always good to visit the antiquities section to see the Elgin Marbles, the Rosetta Stone, and notable statuary and relics from numerous bygone kingdoms. I perused the Metopes from the South Wall of the Parthenon and thought about sketching one of them, but there was nowhere to sit down, Sadly, laziness got the better of me and I strolled on to check more of them out. Fortunately, Miss Cyd took a picture of me contemplating the battle between the Lapiths and the Centaurs as I ambled down the line of metopes, so maybe I can sketch it later. In this particular one, the Lapith was broken off due to the extreme high relief of the carving. If you look carefully at the upper right corner of the metope, you can see where the sculpture was attached. In addition, the head of the Centaur is in Copenhagen, as are many of the other heads  missing from the metopes. Sort of makes one wonder why the Danish ended up with just the heads. Perhaps some adventurer scaled the walls and lifted the heads and took them back to Denmark?

Over the ensuing days, we did quite a bit of walking through Central London. We visited several other museums, including the Michelangelo and Sebastiano exhibition at the National Gallery. We went early and stayed afterwards to go visit our favorite Impressionists paintings. The Turners, Memlings, and Vermeers that
were out on loan when we stopped by in 2015 were back in residency. We enjoyed seeing them, as well as some pieces by van Gogh and Cézanne, among other Impressionists. After all, we are making a stop in Aix-en-Provence, where I plan to do at least a couple of paintings and several sketches. These three Cézannes depict scenes in and near Aix, so we will visit them, although the Jas de Bouffon is currently closed for renovation, so we will not be able to get on the grounds of that estate. I plan to take another stroll up the hill to Le Terrain des Peintres to render another view of Mont Sainte-Victoire on this trip and do some sketching around town. In particular, I want to sketch (and maybe paint) Le Fontaine des Quatre-Dauphins in the Mazari
ne Quarter. However, I must now leave Provence for a future blog.

We stopped by Westminster Abbey and were in time to take in another Easter communion service. Pictures were not allowed inside the abbey, but it was an interesting, albeit rather somber, walk through history with all the tombs and memorial plaques. Cyd took some great pictures outside on the grounds, however, as we hit another perfect weather day for strolling around London.

During our stays in London, we ride the Tube extensively to get around town, which is very convenient due to the St. Pancras sitting right over the St. Pancras International and King’s Cross stations. This time, we got the Oyster cards, which was a great deal. Instead of paying £4.90 per trip ticket, we prepaid the card for £30. Trip fares on the Oyster
card were £2.40 with a daily cap of £6.80, which we hit on a couple of days, so we still have funds on the cards for our return trip to London in May, but can reload them, as needed. If you are planning to visit London for several days, this is the way to get around town relatively inexpensively.

After our daily jaunts around town, we found the Chambers was also a very pleasant place to relax, have a glass of wine, and get caught up with some communiques, like this postcard for Sweet Stella Jane. I like to send her postcards from our trips with locally significant drawings on them. This one from London depicts Big Ben, although in this picture, it looks a bit like the leaning tower of Big Ben. I swear I sketched it on a straight vertical line, but the watercolors warped the card a bit and then there is the whole camera parallax thing to consider. Oh well, Sara should be able to press it flat, but if not, the curvature just adds a bit of local color to a well-known landmark. I think Stella will like it either way.

Well, this London blog is getting a bit lengthy, so it is time to post and start working on Part 2.

Happy Traveling

Joe and Cyd