Sunday, June 24.
Landed on time in London Sunday morning. First thing first - went on
the Internet and found out Einat was accepted to HUJI & Academit
- YESH!!
Subway to Earl's Court, where our Westbury Hotel is. Very nice
neighbourhood, part of Chelsea.
Small, clean hotel. The (small) room was ready so we collapsed for
an hour. Had lunch in one of the neighborhood pubs, and took off to
the city. First, to Leicester Square, to buy tix for the week. Then
strolled to Trafalgar square (which had some rock concert), to the
river, and back to St. Martin in the Fields Church for Evansong at
5pm (this happens in many churches - a choir sings hymns, a pastor
reads and the audience joins and says Amen when appropriate. We were
impressed with many things besides the organ and singing: in this
church they correct original hymns to make them gender-equal, they
have quotes from the Quran, the pray for the weak and poor
everywhere, and in particular that day the people of Syria,
Aphganistan and Greece!
As on Sunday there are hardly any West End plays, we found on Time
Out something in a fringe theatre in Chelsea and took the Double
Decker bus (the weather was almost perfect most of the day). We
started talking to a guy on the bus, who stayed with us the whole
evening. Turns out the guy (28 yo) is a Rabbi of a small
congregation in Chelsea, has trouble with the religious
establishment, is extremely educated and have seen many more plays
and films than us. He came with us to the play, which may have been
a mistake. Anyway, it was far from great. Called "The Sluts of
Sutton Dr." by a young American playwright, and advertized as a
story about a mother going through a breakdown, is a bit more. It is
extremely gory and graphic. For some reason people kept laughing and
giggling, and we feared the week will continue like that. The actors
were good, but the play...it was an experience. We went to a nice
restaurant to wash off the play! All is all, a great start.
Monday, June 25
Yuval went for a run in the morning. Then we looked for a cafe in
the neighborhood - we quickly learned that London is full of
Boulangeries, Patisseries, Brasseries,...It is not clear why, though
we did hear French tourists (the city is absolutely packed with
tourists!). We found a nice one, Paul, a chain like most, with
decent coffee and croissants. From there we walked to Kensington
Park, and discovered biking. For sthe rest of the day this was our
most frequent mode of transportation. The same as in every big city
now, plenty of locations everywhere, you can pick up anywhere and
leave them anywhere else, cheap, and the first 1/2 hour free as it
was several times for us. Went around Hyde Park to return to
Serpentine Gallery, on the Rabbi recommendation, to see the new
yearly constructed Pavillion, this time by Chinese artist Ai Weiwei.
Nice, all made of cork! WEnt in to the gallery itself - it had (some
weird and some very interesting) exhibition of Yoko Ono. Biked again
through Hyde Park, St. James Park to catch a London Walk at Holborn
Tube (and just had time to a nice very healthy lunch at a chain
called Pod). Edna and I took walk, "Legal and Illegal London" years
ago, and this was again as much fun. The guide was great with
imitations and quotes, and the Inns of Law just off Fleet Street
just gorgeous with their little courts and gardening. Rested at
another patisserie with even better food and coffee, Apostrophe, and
walked to St. Paul to catch another Evansong, but on Mondays they
just pray. So on to the Barbican, which is really a huge development
of apartment buildings around the art center itself.
After that we took bikes again, and went to Covent Garden (some
areas are less fun to bike than others...as was that way). We sat
there, drank a smoothie and listened to the artists, first a string
quintet and than an opera singer -lelakek et haezba'ot! But, on to
the play, at the Apollo Thatre on West End, "A long Day's Journey
into the Night" by Eugene O'Neal. This was a great success in every
aspect - great play and great acting. And...nobody laughed! Another
story of a real(!) dysfunctional family. Happy, we went in to an
Italian restaurant nearby which was quite good - so far random places had
good quality food and reasonable (eg like NY) prices. Walked half
the way home - the night air was great (again all day was perfect),
and then took the Tube. Now we wonder at what hour of the night will
Eyal join us.
Tuesday June 26
Eyal arrived at 2:30am, not bad given that his flight had an unexpected
fueling stop in Milan.
We woke up at 9, checked out the hotel breakfast and decided to opt out.
We rented bikes again and set off riding - the weather being perfect
again (hard to believe we are in England!). First to breakfast at
another branch of Apostrophe, then to the gardens - Kensington and Hyde
park, and from there to Regent Park. Riding the outer circle of Regent
park, which goes along a canal, we accidentally got on the Regent canal
path, lined up with parked narrow-boats just like the ones we lived on
for a week many years ago (and Edna did again with Lily and Judes a
couple of years ago). This canal led us to Camden Town, which looked so
cool, lined up with cafes and restaurants, that we decided to return the
bikes and look for lunch there. HUGE mistake! Camden Town is a tourist
trap of humongous proportions, with zillions of tacky shops and
tourists. You could see Eyal gets physically ill, begging us to escape.
We took the Tube to UCL (University College of London) to have lunch
nearby (again, in Pod - you can tell there are definitely things we like
and return to!). Eyal left afterwards for his first professional lecture
away from Jerusalem - we'll find out tonight how it went.
Yuval and I went to the Old Bailey. As they don't let in backpacks (they
suggested we let some shop or pub keep it for us, but I had my laptop
there) I went and sat at Cafe Nero to work on my lecture while Yuval
went to see a trial by himself. He reported hearing one witness in a
murder trial, part of something which will probably take long. So, after
enough coffee and cake we went to Covent Garden, again saw some street
performers, and went to buy tix for a Thursday matinee of 'The
Physicists". From there, to see "Noises Off" a comedy by Michael Frayn.
It is a farce about staging a farce, very clever and funny, and
extremely well acted. Certainly recommended!
Finally, dinner at Cote Bistro - again we find that good food is
everywhere, even in the touristy areas of West End. Yuval is eating very
nicely - perhaps he'll grow some more this week.
Wednesday, Jun27
Despite promises of rain, we woke up to somewhat cloudy sky, which
persisted the whole day. Hardly a few drops. England's famous traditions
are going down the drain (and perhaps they'll finally eliminate monarchy).
We went to breakfast at a neighborhood cafe (Eyal likes to experiment!)
- it was OK. As he points out, almost all servers are from Eastern
Europe. Then, for a day in the British Museum. It is huge, and we spent
about 6 hours there (well, with a lunch break at a nice Thai place
nearby). There was the usual cool stuff of stolen Greek and Assyrian and
Egyptian treasures - there was even a brochure explaining what the
Greek government demanded: it seems they only want the Parthenon
sculptures and reliefs back, and the British Museum response: Forget It
(since we are using it to educate the public). Touche! We also saw
plenty of art from all over. A very nice one was an exhibition of
Picasso etchings (not clear why the BM should acquire that...).
Exhausted we sat on the outside stairs to rest our weary legs (and in
Eyal's case also painful knee), till they kicked us and another hundred
people away - turns out (believe it or not) the stairs (which are about
50m wide) are an escape route in case of fire in the museum... so we
went to sit in a nice park - Lincoln Inn Field - instead.
Dinner was the first failure this week - an Indian place which was quite
blah. But it was a good decision to eat before rather than after the
play - we'll be asleep before midnight. The play, "Posh", was another
success. It is the new riot in London, about the "Riot Club" of rich
Oxford kids going on a wild dinner party which escalates and goes bad as
expected, though the ending was not expected by any of us. Again, acting
was superb!
Friday, June 29
It was another long day but I'll try a short report. Eyal left us at
5:30am, and we managed to fall asleep again.
The first business of the day, after packing, checking out and leaving
our luggage, was to catch a London Walks tour of "Eccentric London". It
was clear that this guide had no sense of humor, and we braced
ourselves, but she turned out to have a good sense of drama, lots of
knowledge and picked really interesting items so the tour ended up a
great success. Among the stories, one about Henry Fawcett, that in the
mid 19th century became postmaster introduced sending parcels and money
by mail, then became parliament member and argued against the ridicule
of all others for voting rights for women, and to top it all, was
blinded from a hunting accident at 25. Another was about the party to
celebrate the finishing of the Nelson column and statue in Trafalgar
square - the night before moving the statute to the top, the 13 main
architectures and builders had a first class, 3 course dinner with the
best dishes & cutlery and wine, on the top of the column! Many many such
cool stories. From there we went to spend a couple of hours at Foyles
(the book store) - could have spent 2 days...we also ate lunch there.
After years of chaos some Foyles inheritors modernized, computerized and
organized this store finally.
Then off to Bletchley Park on the train. We had a nice dinner in the
hotel with some of the speakers of the event tomorrow, .
(the full list and short biographies is here
http://www.bletchleypark.org/resources/file.rhtm/660784/speakers+list+-+low+res.pdf
)
We heard many stories of other Turing events and other related stuff,
among the most interesting is about the Zairja
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zairja
I need to read more about this one!
Saturday, June 30
This was our day at Bletchley Park. It was extremely interesting on many
levels.
We learned a lot we didn't know about Turing and many aspects of his
academic work, about code breaking during WWII and lots of other stuff.
The speakers were a very interesting bunch - the program of the day is here
http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/resources/file.rhtm/662542/ted+programme+-+low+res.pdf
and it is worth while searching the biographies of some of the speakers.
Most moving was the talk by Captain Jerry Roberts, 91 years old and the
only person alive to be part of the code breaking team, who talked about
these times.
"A particular statement he made is that during the war, Alan Turing was
the most important person on the Allies side, bar none, bar Churchill".
There is plenty of evidence for that, and common estimates about what
would have happened without his successes on breaking the German codes
go from Britain losing the war (starvation due to U-boat success in
cutting all lines from the US to Britain) to "mere" prolonging of the
war by two years.
The museum they have there on the machines built to break Enigma & Tunny
and much more is wonderful too
http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/content/visit/whattosee.rhtm
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