Taking Advantage

Random photo today:


Cake. You know you want it. And this one is almost healthy, made with lots of apples and olive oil. Though that's before you smear on the butter and cream cheese frosting, which is delicious. Luckily many other foodies have posted the recipe before me, saving me the trouble. You can find it here, just scroll about a third of the way down. My icing is a different color because I used dark sugar.

As some of you may know, Danny and I have now booked our tickets back to the states. May 18th is our departure/return date, which means we can now start counting down our days in London. This means we're trying to fit in as much as possible before we go - from local restaurants to travels across the EU. The past few days we've been doing some fun neighborhood stuff. I'm sorry if this post is a bit mundane, but hopefully it gives you a taste of what it's like to live in Dartmouth Park!

Thursday: The Star. We've mentioned this local pub many times, but on Thursday we did something especially fun, which was to bring our awesome travel backgammon set, on loan from my parents, with us to the bar. The Star has something that many good English pubs have: a real fireplace, and comfy couches around that fireplace. Why don't more American bars have fireplaces? And why aren't any of them quiet enough that you could sit and play a board game? We sat with our pints and absorbed the warmth from the dying embers, and although I quickly went up by 4 points, we ended the night even-stevens. Though I'm still up by 5 points overall.

Friday: A few months ago we happened to walk by an Italian restaurant up Highgate Hill from us (about a 10 minute walk) that featured pizza by the meter. Well then. We both had a productive week, so we decided to reward ourselves with pizza at Fabrizio's. The food was good (an appetizer plate of various fried things, and 1/2 metre of thin-crust pizza), but the most endearing thing about the place was the intimacy of it. The restaurant is small; there's just one waiter and one woman who's sole job seemed to be to grind fresh pepper and grate fresh parmesan onto your food, plus Fabrizio the chef, and everyone is Italian. Fabrizio brings out some of the food himself, and he clearly gets a kick out of chatting with the patrons. Earlier in the night he had mentioned to us that the fried rice balls we were eating were a specialty from Rome, which is where he is from. So of course later on in the evening Danny told him that he had lived in Rome for 3 months, and Fabrizio looked very pleased. 30 seconds later he came back to our table with a sly look and asked which Rome football team Danny liked. uh oh. Danny stated that he didn't have much preference, but that he had once been to a Lazio game. Right answer! Fabrizio got really excited and proceeded to congratulate Danny on having good taste in football teams and to give the waiter, who was apparently a Roma fan, and hard time. It was pretty amazing.

Saturday: This Saturday started out like every other Saturday when we are in London - a short run, a cup of tea, then a trip to the farmers market. The rest of the daylight hours were spent going to two other neighborhood pubs (The Dartmouth Arm and the Lord Palmerson) to watch sport. First was the Manchester United vs. Manchester City soccer game. As I recently learned, these matches between local rivals are referred to as "derbys", and with Man U and Man City close to the top of the league, this was going to be a big game. As the linked article states, Rooney's winning goal (Man U won 2-1) was absolutely brilliant. He may be the baldingest man in the Premiere League, but don't say he's lost his touch. After the football was England vs. Italy in the rugby 6 Nations. With a 59-13 victory for England, this game was perhaps less thrilling, but it was still fun to watch. And by the way, Chris Ashton, who scored 4 tries for England, was born in 1987. oof. On an unrelated note, know what else I like about English pubs? People bring their kids to them to watch sport. It's cute.

Not wanting to feel to cramped by NW5, we ended this day with an evening at the Tate Modern. Neither of us are huge fans of modern art, but the Tate is kind of a big deal, so we felt we should give it a chance. There were some pieces I liked, but there were also moments where I found myself thinking "Do you think someone should tell the curator that the painting they have labeled as 'Unfinished Painting' is really just a mirror?" And things like that. Added bonus of the evening was walking back across the Millennium Bridge towards an illuminated St. Paul's Cathedral. Beautiful.


Sunday was more football! We went with our friend Leanna to see the Queens Park Rangers vs. Nottingham Forest, which is a Championship game (2nd tier teams). This was an experience worthy of it's own blog post, so I think I'm going to leave it at that. And now, I'm off to have a slice of leftover pizza for breakfast...

Happy New Year!

Happy 2011, everyone!

Unfortunately for you internet addicts out there, our new years resolution was clearly not to blog more often, seeing as we're over a week into the 2011 and we haven't blogged once. So I thought I'd give you a quick update on what we've been doing. But first, RPOTD:

We had dinner with our landlords, and I made this French apple tart for dessert. Recipe is here, on Joy of Baking.com. It was nice and apple-y, not overwhelmed with sweetness or buttery-ness.

So let's see....unmentioned activities of late have included a Boxing Day rugby match at Wembley, courtesy of our friend Lianna who won the tickets in a raffle. It was the Wasps vs. Saracens, both of which are London teams. Because it was Boxing day, and because there were musical entertainers as well, the atmosphere was more family-friendly than rowdy, though it was so cold I wouldn't have been upset if someone had started a bonfire in the stands. We also discovered that although we know the general game-play of rugby, the individual rules about fouls are beyond us, plus it's pretty hard to see what going on in the middle of a scrum or ruck, so there were some parts of the game when we got a little lost. But overall it was a good time, and during halftime a member of the audience, participating in a classic half-time kick challenge, hit the crossbar from about 30 yards out, winning £250,000. amazing! For anyone who is interested, Saracens won 13-6.

Between Christmas and New Years there wasn't too much going on, but we did have the pleasure of getting together with two other expat Swatties, Ele and Jeff, who have recently moved to Oxford. We checked out the Christmas market at Hyde Park, which was bigger than the market in Scotland and had more rides, but it was somewhat lacking in charm (since when are haunted houses traditional Christmas entertainment?). But it was not lacking in warming beverages and french fries in paper cones, so it was overall a good experience. Then we went to the Tate Britain (British art from 1500), which is most famous for its collection of paintings by JMW Turner, and we managed to get about halfway through before museum-foot set in. Then Ele and I did a lot of reminiscing about playing soccer and lacrosse at Swarthmore, and we all headed home to put our feet up.

New Years Eve proceeded in typical New Years Eve party fashion, except this one included a German brother-of-a-friend-of-a-friend setting off fireworks in our host's backyard, which was exciting. We spend the next day recovering and making an enormous pot of veggie chilli.

The next day we got together with another Swattie, yay! Our friend Abigail, who is currently working for the US State Department in an undisclosed location (okay, it's Jordan, but isn't it cooler to think it's top secret???) decided last minute to come to London with her "beau", and we met up with them at the British Museum to catch up and look at old things. The British Museum is really an amazing collection of artifacts from all over the world...some possibly ill-gotten marble statues from the Parthenon, a huge supply of Egyptian mummies, and piles of ancient coins and armor and pots that were literally found in people's backyards all over England.

After the British Museum we split up - Abigail and Tony went to the Tower of London, and we'd both already been there - and we got lunch in Covent Garden then went to the London Transport Museum, which is way more awesome than it sounds (although admit it...to a lot of you this sounds really awesome). I'll spare you the details on the history of the Tube and the bus (short version...when the bus first started it was pulled by horses, and they shat a lot), but here are some cool images we came across.








The first is a sketch of Archway in 1823, which is now a busy tube station and bus interchange right near where we live, and the other is essentially an advertisement from 1907 for our neighborhood and surrounding "suburbs", which are now soundly in the middle of London.


Last week was just a usual work week. Danny went to the archives and I went to my office at the LSHTM. I thought a lot about keywords and journal databases, and Danny thought about religious broadcasting on the BBC. We cooked vegetables.

Oh! just kidding, last week was not just a usual work week...it was the week that England won The Ashes in Australia for the first time in 24 years! And they didn't just win, it was an absolute crush job. So last week was a bit of a blur, because the matches didn't start until 11pm GMT, and we stayed up late watching every night. And I killed time before they started by engrossing myself in Pride and Prejudice (yay for old classics free on Kindle!) and The Magicians, an "urban fantasy" book that John lent me when I was back in Boston. Kind of a Harry Potter meets Narnia, but set in the US, and with sex and drugs. A fun and engrossing read.

This weekend we furiously set about trying to check things off our ginormous list of things to do in London. Places we hit up:

Apsley House, former residence of the 8 Dukes of Wellington, that now has an impressive collection of things and artwork that were given to the Dukes over the years. Basically, the first Duke of Wellington defeated Napoleon on multiple occasions, which caused most nation-states of Europe to shower him with riches. Highlights of the collection included a sword that belonged to Napoleon, The Waterseller of Seville, and multiple detailed, if inaccurate, paintings of the Battle of Waterloo.

Harrods. Again. But this time we were drawn there by some gift certificates we each had. Plus there are massive sales going on in every store in London at the moment, so this is the one time of year we can actually afford anything there. I got some cute green shoes and Danny got a luxurious cashmere scarf.

The Brick Lane/Shoreditch area. This was today's expedition. Our original intention was to check out some of the markets and shops in this artsy neighborhood, as well as one or two small museums that are in the area, but we got a late start and were totally overwhelmed by the markets, so we decided to save the museums for another day. We started with Old Spitalfields Market, which hosts dozens of stalls of funky clothing, old books, and hand-crafted jewelry and accessories, all surrounded by restaurants and cafes. I got a skirt that has owl-printed fabric in the pleats (bird-patterned clothing purchase number two of this year!), and I bought it directly from the designer/maker, which was cool. Next we checked out the Christ Church Spitalfield's, which was built in the mid-18th century in an effort to provide more churches to the "godless" immigrants who were rapidly filling London's east end. Funny how Christians always thought of Jews as godless...

Our next destination was Brick Lane Beigel Bakery, which was just a few blocks up Brick Lane, but it took us about 45 minutes to get there because we were drawn in by lots of used clothing shops, artisanal tee-shirts booths, and stands selling fresh noodles and veggie buns. Danny searched for a classy jacket that would fit his shoulders properly, but alas. Also, I've also never been accosted by so many people advertising their curry houses. The beigel (yes, that's how they spell bagel) shop was a bit disappointing...it's supposed to be one of the best in London, but the bagels just tasted like a Lenders bagel. Oh well...we'll be back to Kupel's in a few months! Then we spent some time exploring the side streets and seeing the Columbia Road flower market close up for the day. Overall the neighborhood has some cool little shops (including one where we bought some Sicilian oranges and home-made jam), but I wouldn't describe it as "gentle", as this New York Times article did.

Okay, I think that just about brings us up to speed. And speaking of speed, in case you didn't know, Danny and I are running a half-marathon in June when we get back to the states, so we've also been running a lot lately. Expect some running-focused blog posts in the upcoming future! Here's a running-related photo to tide you over:


Self-inflicted by repeated kicking, or tendon re-attatchment surgery? You be the judge...

Churches, Chipotle, and Canaletto

With Becca back in the US securing gainful employment, I’m on my own for the next few weeks here in London.  I’ve mostly just been feverishly working away, but I took yesterday to do some things that Becca probably wouldn’t be all that interested in.  There is, of course, a limit to the number of churches I can drag her along to without prompting a few complaints.

But before I went on my church-hunting expedition, I checked out the exhibit at the National Gallery on Canaletto and his Rivals (come to think of it, a collection of nothing but vedute of 18th-century Venice might also qualify as something of a niche interest of mine).  If you’ve ever seen a painting of Venice (like this one, say), you’ve seen Canaletto, or one of his innumerable imitators.

Assuming you like Venice (it has its detractors, I know), it’s hard not to instinctively like Canaletto’s paintings.  “Look!  It’s Venice!  Just like I remember it!”  This reaction probably has more to do with the fact that Canaletto played a large role in creating what our mental image of Venice is, but no matter.  He seems to capture something of the essence of the city – the brilliant sun illuminating the Rialto, the gentle list of gondolas on canals, and all the rest.

And that’s fine, as far as it goes.  But after half a dozen pretty pictures of canals with St. Mark’s in the background, it starts to get a bit tiresome.  So I was rather hopeful about this exhibition – perhaps it would rekindle my appreciation for Canaletto?

Well, I have to say it didn’t, though it did its very best to convince me of his genius.  If anything, I came away with an even more diminished opinion of him.

That certainly wasn’t the curators’ intent.  Though the audio tour wrap-up insisted that the main point of the exhibition was to demonstrate the variety of ways that painters depicted Venice, the real argument, implicit throughout, was more along the lines of “Look at how Canaletto vanquished all his rivals!”  This might have just been for the sake of marketing – I don’t expect that many people would turn out to an exhibition extolling the virtues of Bernardo Bellotto or Michele Marieschi.  But as the review by Charles Darwent in the Independent notes, it simply treats Canaletto’s work as the norm.  It’s undoubtedly the case that Canaletto set the standard for 18th-century Grand Tourists – there’s a reason why so many works by other painters were sold under his name.  But that doesn’t mean that we have to accept that aesthetic judgment today.

Seeing his work juxtaposed with the alternatives, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that Canaletto was a sell-out.  A technically proficient sell-out, to be sure, but a sell-out all the same.  He grasped what English buyers wanted and he gave it to them.  And it wasn’t simply a realistic depiction of the Venice they had come to love.  Instead, compared with other works by some of his supposedly vanquished rivals, Canaletto’s present a rather whitewashed, excessively sunny view of the city.  Even his clouds seem to glow.  If you were using his paintings as documentary evidence for the condition of Venice in the 18th century, you’d think think that the decayed grandeur we so often associate with the city now was an entirely modern phenomenon – every building seems in pristine condition (at least during his mature period; The Stonemason’s Yard, an early work, is much more interesting than any of his canal views).  But if you look at alternative depictions, there’s dirt and decay.  In other words, Canaletto was painting postcards with idealized views of the city for tourists.

That’s not to say there aren’t interesting paintings in the exhibition.  But they’re overwhelmingly from early or late in his life – before he gained fame or after he drifted back to relative obscurity.

So who comes out of the exhibition well?  Francesco Guardi, for one.  As this view of the lagoon makes clear, Guardi was interested in atmosphere in a way that Canaletto simply wasn’t.  At the risk of falling into the trap of favoring artists who seem to anticipate later developments, Guardi just feels far more modern than Canaletto.

I fear that I’ve probably exhausted the patience of my readers with these ruminations on 18th-century view paintings, so I’ll move on to the rest of the day.

So, from 18th-century Venice to 18th-century London, in the guise of St Martin-in-the-Fields.  There are classical music concerts virtually every day there, so I was fortunate enough to step in during the rehearsal for last night’s performance of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony by the London Musical Arts Orchestra.  The apparent distortion in the window isn’t just an effect of the photo.  It’s a new window, from 2008, by Iranian artist Shirazeh Houshiary.  In addition to incorporating a cross, it also gives the appearance of melting before your eyes, not a bad artistic choice, given that the stained glass was bombed out during the war.  In short, I think it works.

From St Martin-in-the-Fields, it was just a short walk to St James’s, Piccadilly, where yet another rehearsal was going on, this time by the London Orpheus Choir.  The light was starting to fade by this point, but there was enough for me to capture this photo showing the rather elegant Corinthian gallery resting on the rather stolid Doric base.  The church also has a really pretty baptismal font with Adam and Even that I somehow forgot to photograph.  Fortunately, thanks to the wonders of the internet, I can just link to one.

 

 

Next up on my list was Immaculate Conception – you guessed it, a Roman Catholic church.  Let me tell you – Mayfair late on a Saturday afternoon is dead.  There were a few moments where I couldn’t see anyone else on the street I was on – this, when I was just a few hundred yards away from the crush of Oxford Street.  I did wander across a rather lively looking pub, but if you’re looking for a quiet stroll on the weekend in central London, you could do worse than just wandering around Mayfair.  As for the church, there was a wedding about to start, so I couldn’t get in.  In spite of its medieval appearance, it was only built in the 1840s.  Before the 19th century, England wasn’t exactly the most friendly place for Catholics – they didn’t receive civil emancipation until 1829 and there wasn’t anything resembling the standard Catholic hierarchy until 1850.  Catholic revival and Gothic revival went very much hand in hand.

My final church visit of the day was up in Fitzrovia, so I wandered along Oxford Street for part of the way, enjoying some roasted chestnuts.  After crossing up to Margaret Street, I was once again struck by how quiet things can get when you escape the main shopping arteries.  So quiet, in fact, that I had about ten minutes all to myself in All Saints.  You’d be excused for thinking this was medieval, too.  In fact, it’s even later than Immaculate Conception (1859).  That’s right, more Victorian Gothic.  Though not, in this case, Catholic.  At least not Roman Catholic.  The Church of England is, as they say, a broad church, incorporating aspects of both Catholicism and Protestantism, with particular individuals and churches leaning in one direction or another.  All Saints falls firmly in the Anglo-Catholic camp, though this story (from the Wikipedia article on the church) nicely captures how the ‘Anglo’ part of that description remains important:

Fr Cyril Tomkinson (Vicar 1943-51), rebuking a visiting priest who asked for the use of the Roman Missal, said "the rule here is music by Mozart, choreography by Fortescue, decor by Comper, but libretto by Cranmer".

By this point, I was beginning to feel famished, so I made my way over to the sole Chipotle in London.  It was fantastic, as always.  They were especially generous with the guacamole, which can be a problem in particular branches back in the US. 

So there you have it: an afternoon and early evening in Westminster, complete with art criticism and lessons on 19th-century religious history and Anglican churchmanship.  Don’t worry, Becca will be back before you know it.

Academia, England-style

Random Photo that Danny thought was funny:

Oxford may only be the 6th best university in the world (thanks, Stephen, for posting the link), but it's still an amazing place for a weekend trip and conference! Thanks to my cushy connections at the LSHTM, I got to attend a Health Policy conference earlier this week, held at Madgalen College in Oxford. The conference was Monday and Tuesday, but Danny and I headed out on Sunday morning to see just how Oxford compared to Cambridge (which, incidentally, just leaped over Harvard for best university in the world). Although the hands-down verdict is that Cambridge is better (I mean, who punts from inside the boat?!), we had a great time. Highlights of the visit included:

- Visiting Christ Church (which is a college, not a church, although it does have quite a large church), where some scenes from Harry Potter 1 and 2 were filmed, and where Charles Lutwidge Dodgson was inspired to write Alice in Wonderland. Alice was the young daughter of the dean of the college. Every night after dinner the dean would leave via a hidden door and back staircase - the white rabbit was based on him. Alice also had a cat named Dinah who would sit in a tree next to the library.

- Listening to bees. Just so you're assured that Oxford does have a hippy-dippy side, we visited a socio-ecological project where a guy has set up 2 bee hives, with a stethescope in each one so you can sit and listen to the bees doing their thing. It was pretty cool.

- Cream tea

- Dinner at one of Jamie Oliver's Italian restaurants. Tired of going to pubs and finding just one veggie option, we splurged for some home-made Italian goodness. And it was good.

- The Ashmolean museum: art and old things.

- The Museum of the History of Science. Lots of beautiful, hand-made astronomical tools that I don't understand, the original 1940 journal describing the use of penicillin (not that long ago!), several of Marconi's first radios, and a chilling display of the first anesthesia delivery system from the 1840's next to a bone-saw kit from the late 1700's. Ouch.


But it wasn't all fun and games and tea (although we did buy a new game, and we did drink a lot of tea). We were also there to learn. While Danny went to the Bodleian library to read the records of the conservative party, I began in earnest my foray into the social sciences. It was really great to think about the more large-scale aspects of health, rather than just how we treat diseases. Topics ranged from the fairly straightforward (do policies to include patients in safety efforts work, and what determines whether patients want to get involved) to the obscure-but-thought-provoking (focusing on social governance and the fate of all humanity rather than politial and economic gains).

The keynote address happened to be by Ted Marmor, on the recent health care reform in the US, and how we managed to get a "Republican style" plan that no republicans voted for (answer? US senate structure. and some other stuff). But he is hopeful that some of the new laws regarding private insurance may pave the way towards more universal, if not single payer, health care.

Another point that was driven home in this conference is that in the UK, health care policy changes all the time. Yes, the NHS has been in place since 1948, but they (politicians) feel the need to make some slight change every 2-3 years - changing the details GP contracts, changing public health priorities, changing the flow of money. All of which of course means that there's very little time to evaluate policies, and everyone does so under the assumption that they will just change in a few years away. And doctors have just gotten used to the idea that while the policies change constantly, once the dust settles they will go back to practicing medicine as usual. Whether that will be the case with the new White Paper, though, is anyone's guess. But more on that later. For now, it's off to Salzburg!

À Paris!

I realize that the Random Photo Of The Day is kind of a misnomer, because I'm not blogging every day (lately it's barely been every week!), but I'm going to continue calling it that anyway:

More birds! The first day Jessica arrived (yay!) we set off immediately to see some of London's great sights - Parliament and Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, the posh shopping area of Knightsbridge, finished off with a trip to Harrods. Somewhere in the middle of the day we took a break in St. James Park, which is a green, peaceful oasis in the middle of the madness of central London. And it has pelicans! Jessica felt a little guilty for falling asleep on a park bench, but it actually worked out really well because the pelican and the heron took that time to pose for this perfect picture. Jessica will hopefully be doing a guest blog post later this week (an option for all visitors!), so I'll let her share more stories of what we did while she was here. But I will talk about Paris!

I'd like to say that I was able to resist the temptation of all the cliched Paris activities - Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, Arc de Triomphe, etc, but it would be a lie. I had only been to Paris once before, for a few day in high school, and I don't really remember much of it except going up the Eiffel tower, so I felt that I had to start over. Luckily, even though Jessica had been there 5 times (!!!) and Danny had been there 3 times, they didn't object. I apologize in advance if this post just reads like a list of things we did - I'll try to provide some exciting commentary as well.

First of all, many thanks to Maike for recommending the Hotel Saphir - a nice location on the rive gauche, at a very reasonable price! The most exciting thing for me about this place was the shops it shared a street with - at least 3 boulangeries, several fruit and vegetable grocers, a gelato stand, a lively café on the corner, and the most tempting cheese shop I've ever seen (Fromagerie Vacroux et Fils, slogan: "Sauvons Le Goût," which I think translates to "Savour the taste," or something like that.) I was charmed the minute we stepped off the metro and onto our little street.

Day one went something like this: dropped off stuff at hotel; bought croissants and a baguette; walked through cemetery Montparnasse (lots of Jewish headstones mixed in with Catholic and other religions, which I thought was very interesting); relaxed in the extremely french Luxembourg gardens and ate said baguette (Frenchness is derived from the perfect organization); visited the beautiful churches St. Sulpice, which has an impressive organ, and St. German de Pres, which was incredibly dark because, as Danny put it, "They hadn't figured out how to do windows yet."; got crepes and cider at a Breton restaurant; walked to Île de la Cité to visit Notre Dame cathedral, walked to Île Saint-Louis for the famous Berthillon ice cream (I got pear and gingerbread...soo delicious) and on the way passed some WWII-era movie being filmed; headed back toward the Louvre via the Hôtel de Ville, which was hosting a music festival that at that time was featuring French hip hop...later on in the evening was going to be the "French rival to Lady Gaga", and the Centre Pompidou (crepe #1 for Jessica - with Nutella); took advantage of the Louvre's late night hours on Fridays, where even though we split up, Jessica and I both decided we like Dutch art from the 17th century (Dutch Golden Age and Flemish Baroque, apparently), and I just happened to bump into Danny in the Caravaggio section; walked back towards the hotel for a late and yummy dinner at Restaurant Polidor; finally crashed at the hotel, exhausted after our 5:25 train that morning!

I can't believe that was just one day! The second day followed a similar pattern of walking and eating, with maybe a church or museum thrown in. Basic rundown: missed breakfast at the hotel because we needed our sleep, which forced us to get more pastries on our street; walked directly to the other side of the river then sprawled out on the grass in well-planned square that is the Place des Vosges; enjoyed the small Victor Hugo museum, which is located in the apartment where he lived from 1832-1848 and houses quite a collection of letters, portraits, and examples of his gaudy taste in furniture; wandered around the Marais district of the city, which is both the traditionally Jewish neighborhood and a trendy shopping area (we got falafel for lunch and weathered a rain storm in an expansive bookstore); fought the crowds to get hot chocolate at Angelina's; wandered through the Tuileries to Place de la Concorde and down the Champs Elysee with a destination of the Arc de Triomphe, but took a detour midway through to check out L'église de la Madeleine, a church in a neo-classical building that Danny remembered learning about way back in his Humanities class in high school; made the obligatory trip back across the Seine to the Eiffel Tower, which you have to admit is a very impressive structure; got on the metro (Jessica and I split a crepe with strawberry jam on the way) to go to Montmartre to have dinner (a dinner which featured a cheese plate to die for); Jessica got her 3rd crepe of the trip - plain chocolate this time; took in the view of the city from the steps of the Sacré Coeur, where guys are walking around selling bottles of Heinekin - so weird; rode the metro back to our neighborhood, where Danny and I split a carafe of Côte du Rhône and Danny and Jessica got crepes (just sugar for Jessica this time) at the aforementioned café on the corner. What a great way to end a busy day!

The last day we just had the morning, as out train was leaving at 2:40pm. We decided we would either just wander the neighborhood and have a relaxed picnic lunch in the Parc Montsouris or see another museum, depending on the weather. We woke up and it was pouring - well then! We enjoyed baguettes with jam for breakfast, and we were joined by the tiny black cat that lived in the hotel. Jessica headed off to the Musée Cluny to look at old stuff, and Danny and I headed off to the Musée Marmottan to look at only moderately old stuff...impressionist painting, to be specific. Thanks to my mom for the tip on this museum! It was in a cute, quiet neighborhood, on the edge of a very nice park. A park that was home to a statue of Jean de la Fontaine, with his Corbeau et le Renard! This may not mean much to most of you, but in AP French we had to memorize a poem each semester, and the first semester we all had to stand at the front of the class, one by one, and dutifully recite "Le Corbeau et le Renard...par Jean de la Fontaine". I still remember most of the poem, so seeing this statue was really amazing! The Monets at the Marmottan were also quite good. It was also nice to see a collection of paintings by Berthe Morisot, since female painters don't really have much of a presence.

We successfully met up with Jessica at Gare du Nord for our Eurostar train home. What a trip! The only sad part of the weekend was that we found out that Danny's family dog Buddye's bladder cancer had spread and that he really wasn't doing very well, so he was going to be put down on Sunday, the last day of our trip. We were hoping that if we raced home from the train station Danny would be able to see him on skype one last time, but unfortunately the train left 15 minutes late.

We miss you, Buddye - we hope doggy heaven is full of tennis balls, swimming pools, and belly rubs, and that there are never any thunderstorms. We know that there are lots of nice dogs there for you to play with...

Frantic catch-up post

It's been a while, we know.  So instead of trying to get through the backlog in anything approaching thorough-ness, we'll give you the super-quick version of the last few weeks.  Then we'll do our best to keep up in the future, I promise.

Wednesday, July 28 - Five Days in the Lake District, Part 5

The day began in Keswick, a town of pubs and outdoors stores.  Seriously, there's not much else.  I've never seen so many outdoors stores in such a small area.  But given Keswick's centrality in the Lake District, it makes sense.  After a lazy morning wandering around Keswick, we hopped on the bus to Carlisle, where we raced around the cathedral and castle.  At the Carlisle train station, I practiced my forward defensive shot, much good that it did me.

Tuesday, August 3 - Our First Night of the Proms
Each summer, Royal Albert Hall hosts "the world's greatest classical music festival," a series of daily classical music concerts.  Seats aren't cheap, but there's the wonderful tradition of "promming" - show up a few hours before the concert and buy a standing-room ticket for just £5.  We went to Prom #23 and heard Fould's Dynamic Triptych, Vaughan Williams's Serenade to Music and "The Lark Ascending," and Elgar's Symphony #1.  We'll prom at least once more this summer, so we'll provide a fuller report then.

Thursday, August 5 - Went the Day Well? at the BFI Southbank
My adviser recommended this, a WWII film that imagines a German invasion of a strategically located English village.  Full of simple English folk, from all walks of life, doing their duty.  Rather charming.


Friday, August 6 - The National Gallery
We met up with a friend from college (and elementary school, in my case) at the National Gallery to see the exhibit on Fakes, Mistakes and Discoveries.  If you have any doubt about the role that science plays in the art world these days, have a look.  It also raises all sorts of questions about authenticity and the experience of seeing works of art - does a work suddenly become less powerful because it turns out that it was done by a student of Rembrandt rather than the master himself?

Sunday, August 8 - A day with the birds

Another nice day brought us out to the London Wetland Centre in Barnes.  Wholly man-made, it has a zoo-like section with micro-climates supporting birds from around the world as well as a larger, more open area where you're on your own in terms of spotting the birds.  I'll leave the list of birds we saw to Becca - she's much better at identifying them than I am.  I'm pretty sure these guys are ducklings, though.

Monday, August 9 - Harrods
Becca's cousin arrived last Monday.  She enjoys a good department store, and we hadn't been to the spectacle of Harrods yet, so off we went.  Our visit was made all the more sweet by the fact that I had a gift certificate (thanks, Mom and Dad!) just waiting to be used on chocolate truffles.  Harrods isn't really the sort of place where graduate students actually buy anything, so this was mostly a time for ogling.  If only I had £1,200 for that smoking jacket...

Tuesday, August 10 - An afternoon at the palace
Liz and Phil  spend their summers in Scotland, which means the likes of us get to scope out their place.  A good day for it, too, since the rain that had been holding off for so long finally descended on us.  What struck me is how you can trace the history of the British monarchy over the past few centuries through the changing styles and decorations of successive rooms.

Wednesday, August 11 - Othello in Waterlow Park
Somehow I've gone the first 28 years of my life without seeing Othello.  Yes, it really is that good, and yes, Iago really is that devious.  The actor playing Iago was superb, not least in dealing with the hiccups that inevitably come with outdoor theatre, like a group of loud, loutish teenagers walking by in the middle of a monologue.  Is there any better way to spend a summer evening than seeing Shakespeare in a park while drinking a beer?

Whew.  With that, I'll turn it over to Becca for a recap of our weekend in Paris.