March 08, 2026

 

Dear Everyone,

This letter details the last few days of our long trip.  We were not able to book a flight home that didn’t require an overnight (or sleepless wandering at an airport) stay.  I suggested we travel through England - - it’s not in the Schengen, and people speak English (sort of), and spend a couple of days.

We took our last Bolt ride to the Malta airport. The small terminal was crowded, but we boarded efficiently, and actually had a pretty good meal on the plane.  Several of the flights into and out of both Malta and the UK were cancelled due to the bombings that took place that morning in Iran. Luckily, we were not impacted. Immigration in England was easy enough (we had had technical issues getting the e-visa while in Malta), and after some confusion, found our driver who took us to The Montague on the Gardens.  This is a smallish boutique hotel, with small bedrooms, in the Bloomsbury part of London, convenient to the British Museum, British Library, Wellcome Collection (which we all visited), University College London, Russell Square, a couple of tube stations, etc.  I’m glad we ate on the plane, because after our 3.5 hour flight and one hour car ride, I was ready for bed.

Sunset from the plane

You can see how small the room is.  It's a great location, but we spent no time here.  Maybe we paid more than we needed to.

Sunday, I had arranged a train trip to Bristol to visit my friend Val Russell and her husband Neal.  We took the tube to Paddington station, and saw to our surprise that a couple of earlier trains and ours were cancelled!  There had been a fire in the station at Reading.  We dithered around for an hour, since no one could tell us if or when the trains would start running, and I couldn’t figure out how to cancel our tickets.  Just as we were about to leave, there was an announcement that a train would be leaving!  We rushed to get on and luckily found seats - - there were people in first class who were standing (because several trains worth of people were packing into this one). Bristol is the fourth stop on the Great Western Railway, and is about 130 miles from London.  This is a high-speed train, around 125 mph, and takes about 90 minutes between stops.  Certainly, commutable if you needed to get to London a couple of days per week, as Neal used to.  We got in about 30 minutes later than our original train, and Val picked us up at the Bristol Parkway station.

Yale has some kind of outpost in Bloomsbury

One of the GWR rail cars

We drove to the high street in Bristol, which is still untouched by corporate franchises, and had lunch at a middle eastern restaurant (Lona Grill house and juice bar), where Neal met us.  Neal works for something like the British equivalent of the EPA, concentrating on water pollution (a big problem in England).  Val also does a lot of social conscious NGO work, but she is now retired, and one of her bigger activities in singing in a choral group that visits hospitals.

After eating too much, we went to the Clifton suspension bridge. This was designed in a competition, the winner was Isambard Kingdom Brunel, one of the great engineers of the industrial age.  The bridge took years to complete, and Brunel went broke building it. He died before it was completed. We walked across the bridge, spent some time in the little museum associated with it, and then walked back.

View of the bridge and the Avon river, which has a large tidal bore

In the original plans, there were supposed to be sphinxes on top of the bridge

If you look closely, you can see a small yellow viewing station which is reached from an elevator above.  Reminds me of Niagara Falls

View of the Avon

The other side, looking at Bristol

We drove through a large city park called Bristol Downs, where there were a lot of people living in campers (better than living in tents), and then onto the Bristol Museum, which is a collection of art, history, and natural history. They have a nice ceramics collection.  We walked through central Bristol, which seems to be a vibrant university town.  A lot of people decamped from London here during the pandemic.  We went to the Arnolfini, which is a modern art gallery associated with the University of West England (Bristol).  After this we went to a Nepalese restaurant, Nepali Chulo.  We had to rush through dinner a bit to catch our 8:00 train.  It was smooth ride back to Paddington, but we had some trouble connecting up with our Bolt driver to get back to the hotel—neither the driver nor my phone seemed to have accurate location pins.

Bristol city hall

Banksy is a native of Bristol.  This scultpture was from an exhibit he put some years ago.  Also note decorations for Chinese New Year

Icthyosaurus was first identified in this region

Gromit, from Wallace and Gromit.  Their animation studio is in Bristol

Maybe Banksy, maybe not

A real Banksy, defaced by grafitti

Scenes of Bristol

Central library. Val had offices here with some NGO

Cary Grant was a native of Bristol

Bone sculpture on house barge

Monday was a sunny, spring day and we started off by getting a coffee at Caffe Tropea in Russell Square, and then a visit to the British Museum (or as Cindy and the kids call it, the museum of stolen objects).  I was so interested in seeing the Korean and Chinese ceramics, as well as a special exhibition about the samurai, that we didn’t have time for the Elgin Marbles or other pilfered antiquities.  Sorry, Cindy (She’s seen excellent reproductions in Athens).  The Korean and Chinese collections were mind-blowing, not so much the Japanese art on display (where we had a free 45 minute tour), or the samurai exhibition.

Bacon sandwich on a 'bap'.  To me, the meat resembled Canadian bacon

Queen Elizabeth II Great Court in British Museum

Korean ceramics

This looked like it was made of cloth!

Chinese ceramics

How did they carve out this porcelain!?!?

The colors here were achieved by a an air brush method - - the minerals were put into a bamboo tube covered by a silk mesh on the outer end. The ceramicists blew the colors onto the pot.

You could almost see through these tea cups

Japanese hall

Flame pot

Samurai exhibit

We had to leave around 1:30, because we had a pub crawl tour around St. James, meeting up at the Cupid statue in Picadilly. Ben, our theatrical guide took us to four different pubs, where we sampled British Milds, porters, ales, IPAs, and a few gin and tonics as well.  We also checked out shopping venues that cater to the royals and uber wealthy. When the tour was over, we had dinner at Rock and Soul Plaice.  The fish and chips (cod) was pretty good, but I think I have had better at the Eugene Farmer’s Market. After dinner we went to the St Marten’s theatre to see The Mousetrap (caution:spoilers).  We were performance number 30447.  I was astonished to eavesdrop on some of the other audience to find out there were some who were surprised by the ending.

Chinatown

Piccadilly Cupid

Our first pub, the Red Lion.  The pub business had a lot of trouble during the Cromwell years, but came back bigly during the Restoration with Charles II. Many pubs have 'Lion' in their names because the English crown was trying to push lions as heraldic animals of England, and so they gave pub owners a tax break if they used 'Lion' in their name.

We had London Pride Ale, and Sipsmith gin and tonic

St James Church, designed by Christopher Wren

Floris perfumery.  We sampled the scents of ER2, David Bowie, Ian Fleming, and Churchill

Our second pub, Checkers, so called because the workmen used to play checkers here.

Gem Ale and Northern Rising Stout

They have a back area so you can drink in the courtyard...

Just across the back courtyard is the Scotch Club, home to many musical acts including Hendricks, Clapton, McCartney, Stevie Wonder

Also in Mason's Yard is the White Cube, a modern art gallery 

And is also the Indica gallery, where John Lennon met Yoko Ono

Our third pub, another Red Lion.  This was a former brothel of Charles 2

We had Gordon's pink gin (very fruity!) and Tribute ale

We took a minute to go into Lock and Co, Hatters

We walked by Green Park

Our last pub, Ye Grapes

Whitley Neill rhubarb and ginger gin, and Hampden pale ale

This store was across the street

One Piece figurines.  They had many others

The St Marten stage

Tuesday gave us second day of nice weather. We had breakfast at a café run by Quakers, and then looked around the small exhibitions at the Wellcome Collection.  Then we took the tube from Euston station to the Borrough Market area to have a food tour with a retired cheese monger, Ned Palmer.  He was a delightful man, who has written a well-received history of Britain through the lens of cheese making.  (Ned’s spouse, Imogen Robertson, has published multiple works of detective fiction, alas, none that feature cheese).  At the end of the history part of the tour, we pulled into a pub, and sampled six different cheeses and three different beers.  The hazy IPA seemed to get along the best with all of the different cheeses.

Accidental modern art near Euston station

Wellcome Collection

Up river from London Bridge

Down river.  The Romans transported lots of goods along the Thames, including cheese.

The Gherkin

Replica of the Golden Hinde.  The sailors had 1 pound of cheese per week as part of their rations

Ruins of the Bishop of Winchester's Palace.  Because Winchester was outside of the city limits, He was practically a crime boss, running brothels and gambling houses!

Southwark Cathedral, a favorite of thespians.  Here Ned told us a bunch of jokes Shakespeare had about cheese.  Apparently, Shakespeare did not hold cheese in high regard.

The Shard

The Clink Prison.  Many unfortunate inhabitants were Welsh black market cheese sellers!

The George Inn, the last remaining galleried inn in London. Charles Dickens was a habitue.

Our first cheese, Caerphilly.. Cheese is in three parts, from the rind, to the breakdown, to the paste in the center. These different areas will have different mouthfeels and even flavors.  There is a complex interaction between the enzymatic breakdown of the curds, dehydration, bacterial and fungal growth.  A lot more difficult to figure out then brewing or wine making!

Our cheeses from 12:00 moving clockwise

Mild, Hazy IPA, and Porter.  I found the mild to be too weak to really give much contrast to the cheese.  The porter was ok with strong flavored, aged cheese, but the IPA went well with everything. The biggest surprise for me was the cheddar,   Absolutely nothing like what you get in bricks at the supermarket.

We walked through the food market, and then tubed back to Euston Square, where we went to the British Library, and marveled at some of the works on display.  

Borough food market

Giant pan of paella

Front courtyard of the library looking at St Pancras train station

The library has a collection of around 170 million objects

First folio

Beethoven

Monty Python Spanish Inquisition skit

Very old papyrus, from around 300 AD

Magna Carta

That evening we joined Allan and Mamta Mertner and their son, Iain for dinner at Colonel Saab. Iain is a mathematician getting a masters degree.  He is planning to do some kind of graphical analysis on photomicrographs of pathology specimens to see if he can get AI to recognize prognostic features. I’m glad I’m retired!  Allan is an IT worker with a love of board games.  We met Allan and Mamta on our trip to the Galapagos two years ago, and we have kept up with Allan through our book club (our current book is Lincoln in the Bardo, which does not appear to be a favorite).

Spring was in the air

Mamta ordered some way out cocktail

Wednesday morning, we went to the airport.  Our flight was quite smooth, and the plane was 2/3 empty. I watched the entire first season of Slow Horses, which was enjoyable.  The food on the plane was not good.

Daleks in the airport.  How did they get them to clean the floor?

The weather in Chicago has been crazy lately.  Something happened to the 12-v. battery on my car, and I’m going to need to get it jumped on Monday, and then bring it to the dealer. I also seem to have caught a cold.