Day 14: London

Today was devoted to nothing but free time to explore London. This city, unlike many of its continental counterparts, is a swinging place on a Sunday. Thank you Henry VIII and the Church of England! While many of the people in our little group spent the day looking for Abbey Road and Platform 9 3/4, I spent my day enjoying two of the best free museums in London. After an hour-long stroll across the River Thames to Victoria Embankment, across Parliament Bridge, and up Whitehall, I scored a place at the front of the modest crowd waiting for the doors to open to the National Gallery on Trafalgar Square. When the doors opened I was the first one in. I spent a very satisfying three hours exploring the museum's collection. Everything from the late middle ages throughout the early 20th century can be found in this one amazing museum. I didn't stop there. After a quick lunch I spent another two hours in the National Portrait Gallery. My favorite portraits in this museum were the portraits of Sir Paul McCartney and David Bowie. Judging from the news coverage on Sky and the BBC, we should probably expect to see Amy Winehouse in there soon. :-P





After my museum trips I hiked on up to Picadilly for high tea a Fortnum & Mason. I got a little more than I bargained for at this London institution. I was invited into a conversation about the American debt crisis by two very friendly gentlemen sitting a couple of chairs away. After some great tea and conversation it was time to head back to Kensington for our last dinner in London. Tomorrow morning we head out for Heathrow to catch our flight back to the Colonies... I mean the States.


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Day 13: London

Today was a glorious day in London. The rain held off, and while we didn't have absolutely sunny skies, at least we were dry. We started the morning off with a bicycle tour of Kensington Gardens, Hyde Park, Green Park, and St. James's Park. These four royal parks form the green lungs of London, allowing Londoners to escape from the city. We popped by Buckingham Palace for a short time. The queen was not at home but we caught a glimpse of her band. At the conclusion of our tour we walked back across the park to the hotel and boarded a bus for Hampton Court, the home of the Tudor monarchs of England.





It struck me as odd that the kings and queens of England ruled from Hampton Court for as long as they did. Hampton Court was originally built by Cardinal Thomas Wolsey as his personal residence. It was "acquired" by Henry VIII when Wolsey lost favor by failing to secure a divorce for the king from Catherine of Aragon. Poor Wolsey was simply a victim of politics. Catherine's nephew was Charles V, the most powerful man in Europe. His troops had just finished sacking and looting Rome (though surely not upon his orders). There was no way the Pope was going to turn Catherine into the kings mistress. At the time it was built England was far from being a world power, and Hampton Court has a very medieval feel to it. While Louis XIV was controlling all of France in the baroque opulence of Versailles, William and Mary were content to rule from this comparatively modest palace. Oh what a difference a parliament can make.





Tomorrow, we have an entire day of free time to get into trouble in London. I'm planning on hitting up as many free museums as I can and ending the day with high tea at Fortnum & Mason's on Picadilly.


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Day 12: London

This morning saw the group leaving from the Gare du Nord in Paris and arriving at St. Pancras Station in London. Of course, the British Passport Control officers at the Gare Du Nord had to take the opportunity to have a little fun with a group of American Tourists. I got involved in a game of twenty questions with a very straight-faced officer. After a couple of minutes of interrigation he laughed and said, "You have sufficiently impressed me with your knowledge. You may pass." You have to love that British sense of humor.

Two and a half hours later we arrived in London. After dropping our luggage at the hotel and grabbing a quick bite to eat, we boarded the bus for an afternoon sightseeing tour of London. The highlight of the tour was a trip through Christopher Wren's masterpiece, St. Paul's Cathedral. St. Paul's is only the fifth church to occupy this site. It owes it's current incarnation to the Great Fire of 1666. The destruction of the old cathdral gave the monarchy the opportunity to create a new church that was less "Catholic" and more "Anglican" in it's design and appearance. Wren's massive church, with it's 356 foot tall dome (one foot for every day of the year) was completed in a mere 34 years. This was quite a feat, considering the fact that it took over 200 years to finish Notre Dame in Paris.

Tomorrow we are scheduled to take a bicycle tour of Hyde Park and St. James's Park in the morning. In the afternoon we are booked to visit Hampton Court Palace and Gardens, the home of Henry VIII and the Tudor monarchs.


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Day 11: Paris & Versailles

I don't know how everybody else feels, but I think I've had enough of Paris for a while. It is a beautiful city. However, it can quickly overwhelm the senses. I am definitely ready to head off to London tomorrow.





This morning we had a bit of a late start heading over to visit the catacombs. After standing in line for an hour I decided to salvage my morning by heading over to the Cimitiére du Montparnasse to pay a visit to the graves of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Bouvoir, and Samuel Beckett. I also wanted to do a little exploring. The rest of the group decided to try there luck with the dead in the catacombs. It's a macabre facsination that history guys have with cemeteries. Every grave and crypt has a story to tell. Monparnasse's crypts tell some of the best. For example, I noticed that the most common year on many of the graves was 1918. Many casual observers would think that this could be easily explained by the First World War. However, this isn't quite right. The years between 1915 and 1917 were the most deadly of the war, and most of these graves had birth dates in the 1850s and 1860s. These were not war dead. They were victims of the worst flu pandemic to ever hit the world. I got a really good idea how bad this epidemic was just by counting all of the 1918 graves in this one cemetery.





After grabbing a quick bite to eat the group headed off to the Palace of Versailles. Louis XIV's palace is the most copied palace in the world. He had every aspect of this monstrous building designed to symbolically remind his subjects of the greatness of France and the glory of the King. For example, the windows of the king's bedchamber face to the east. As Louis, the Sun King, rose in the morning he cast his light all over France, just like the sun rising in his windows. In his big party room, the Hurcules Drawing Room, he had a big painting of Hurcules being elevated to the level of the gods splashed across the ceiling. In the painting Hurcules is being delivered to Olympus in the chariot of Apollo, the sun god. This was supposed to be a subtle reminder that only Louis, the Sun King, had the power to elevate men to greatness in France.





Tomorrow we jump on the Eurostar and head out for London. I'm looking forward to high tea. Pub crawl?


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Day 10: Paris

Quite a busy day. I think my head is still spinning. Paris has to be one of the most beautiful and generally overwhelming cities in the world. Twenty percent of the French population lives right here in the capital city. It's always moving, and if you slow down at the wrong moment you might be run over by a mob of tourists and locals rushing from Point A to Point B. This happened to a poor pigeon who failed to move for a passing car with the rest of his buddies this afternoon. This was a pointed reminder to mind the Parisian drivers and only cross when the little man turns green.





Our first full day in Paris started with a bus tour of the major sites in the city. We stopped at the Trocadero to gaze at the Eiffel Tower on the other side of the river, backlit by a curtain of clouds. We stopped briefly at the Tomb of Napoleon Bonaparte at Les Invalides. Those were nice opportunities to take some photos without the glare of a bus window, but the best stop was a stroll across the Jardin du Luxembourg. The gardens and the nearby Palais du Luxembourg were built by the queen Marie de Medicis as a way to escape from central Paris following the assassination of her husband, King Henry IV, by a crazed monk. Today, the gardens are used by the locals as a giant outdoor living room. You can catch a puppet show with the kids at the puppet theater, play a game of petanque, or practice tai chi with other stressed out Parisians.





Our final stop on the bus tour was the cathedral of Notre Dame. A church has stood on this spot since the 4th century. Before that a Roman temple occupied the site. Ground was broken for the current cathedral in 1163, and construction continued until its completion in 1345. Notre Dame is constructed in the gothic style that was so popular during the middle ages. This style allowed churches to stretch to unimaginable heights and contain huge stained glass windows to bring a heavenly light into the building. Notre Dame only has one original window left; the rose window in the northern transept.




The windows, like much of Notre Dame, were victims of revolutionaries during the French Revolution who wished to completely secularize the French state and French society. To these revolutionaries the monarchy represented the exploitation and repression of the people, and the church was an instrument of that monarchy. They turned Notre Dame into the Temple of Reason, tearing down and decapitating the statues of the biblical kings of Judah on the western facade, whom they mistakenly identified as kings of France.



After a break for lunch the group headed off to the Louvre. This former royal palace was opened to the people as a museum in 1793, following the execution of Louis XVI. This is probably the busiest single place in Paris, and today was no exception. We were free to explore the museum for as long as we would like. I confined my explorations to the Denon wing of the museum. This is the wing that contains the classical and medieval scuptures, Italian Renaissance masters, and the neoclassical and romantic French painters. I made sure to hit the highlights, including an extended visit with Mona just to annoy the shutter-happy mob. The rest of the day was free time. I chose to get out of the madness that is the Louvre and to head over to the Orsay to see my favorites, the impressionists and post-impressionists of the 19th century. Da Vinci, Botticelli, David, Gericault, Delacroix, Van Gogh, Monet, Degas, Renior... all in one day! Not bad.

Tomorrow... Versailles!


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Day 9: Bern, Lausanne, & Paris

Another busy and exhausting travel day. We hit the road at 8:00 this morning, bound for the city of Lausanne on Lake Geneva. Our first stop was in the de facto Swiss capital of Bern. This was a very short stop to stretch our legs. I was a little disappointed by this. Bern is a very quiet, but very interesting city. This is where Einstein had his little breakthrough in relativity. It's also one of the best preserved late medieval towns in Europe. Bern suffered a devastating fire early in it's history. Because of this, Bern was rebuilt in stone and plaster with tile roofs. It was also equipped with fancifully decorated fountains at regular intervals throughout the city to ensure that a convenient source of water was always nearby. Although we did not get to see much of Bern, we did get to visit it's most famous current residents, the bears of Bern. The city used to keep its namesakes and mascots in a miserable little pit. Now they enjoy a bear park on riverfront property with a swimming pool.




After our quick break in Bern we moved on to the train station at Lausanne to board the TGV to Paris. Four hours later we arrived in Paris. After tiny Engelberg and little Luzer, Paris can be quite overwhelming. It seemed even more so than usual because we arrived in time for the Parisian rush hour. Paris is a city defined by its history and by its politics. This could be easily seen from our vantage point on top of the Arc de Triomphe this evening.




Modern Paris history lines up in a straight line from east to west. In the east is the Louvre, Paris' 17th-century royal palace. It is symbolic of growing power of the monarchy and the old order at that time. Just to the west of this palace turned museum is the Place de la Concorde. On this square in 1793 Louix XVI and Marie Antoinette were beheaded, ending the monarch and signaling the beginning of the First French Republic. Follow the straight line of the Champs Elysees west and you run into the Arc de Triomphe. This monument marks the 19th century and the Empire of Napoleon Bonaparte. It is dedicated to the victories of the Grand Army of the Empire during Napoleon's rule. The 20th century is marked by the Grande Arche, a giant modern arch on the northwestern edge of town. Surrounded by skyscrapers, this arch represents the modern global economy and international cooperation.

Tomorrow, we dive into the medieval history of Paris with a visit to Notre Dame, and visit the works of the masters in the Louvre.


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Day 8: Luzern

Today we descended from our mountain hideaway in Engelberg to the beautiful lakeside city of Luzern. Luzern, originally settled by the Romans derives its name from the Latin word for light, lux. According to legend, Roman soldiers exploring the province of Helvetica followed mysterious lights to the site of modern Luzern. During the middle ages Franciscan monks founded a monastery on the sight of the old Roman settlement. The romanesque Hofkirche marks the original location of the old monastery.

We had plenty of time to enjoy the good weather on Lake Luzern today. There was plenty of chocolate purchased and consumed. Luzern is a shopping Mecca these days. The month of July is sales season. I'm sure there was plenty of shopping going on today as well. I opted to hit up a CoOp grocery store for some bread, butter, salami, Emmentaler cheese, and a bottle of beer for a picnic. After a 45 minute stroll down the tree-covered lakeside quay, I found the perfect spot to enjoy my lunch by the lake. I shared my lunch with a friendly duck who seemed to enjoy a little butter on her bread.

I try to avoid some of the more touristy shopping areas of Luzern. However, it was amusing, and a little disturbing, to watch the hordes of Chinese tourists throwing down thousands of Swiss Francs to purchase two, three, and four Rolex watches in the Bucherer store. I think I'll stick to the souveniers I can afford; Swiss Army Knives and chocolate.


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