Holiday in Transition # 3: Aerial Views

Just a quick one to share some pictures.  My flight from London to Rome was via Zurich on Swiss International.  Why?  Well, who could say no to an airline that passes around a basket of Swiss chocolate to the entire planeload of people on every flight?

We got lucky in three parts of the flight with the sun.  One was over the South Downs in England, between London and Southampton:

The second was over the Alps -- which was really lucky because it was cloudy and drizzling in Zurich.  First up was a clear view of puffs of cotton candy with rock centres, to quote Grant McConachie's classic description:

Then it got much clearer with these spectacular results:

Just above the centre of the second picture you can clearly see the Matterhorn sticking up, and beyond it the massive bulk of Mont Blanc looming on the horizon.

And finally, a good view of Elba (in the centre) and the mountains of Corsica (beyond) on the last leg of the flight.

Holiday in Transition # 4: The Layers of History

Look out, Rome, heeee's baaa-aack!

As I was riding into Rome from the airport yesterday, rolling past the walls of the Vatican and across the Tiber, I was having trouble believing that it's actually been over forty years since I was last here.  To be quite precise, it was on a school-organized trip from York Mills Collegiate in Toronto in the spring break of 1973.

I have a few vivid memories of that trip, some of which had better not be published!  But I always chuckle at the thought that a tour company which specialized in arranging student tours would book their clients into a hotel whose ground floor consisted of a restaurant, a bar and a cheap wine shop!  I also remember the tiny elevator up the centre of the hotel's stairwell which could hold 4 people and no luggage at a pinch, and whose doors were mounted on hinges and had to be manually opened and closed.  There were also a couple of parties -- but perhaps we shouldn't go there!

Rome is one of the most remarkable cities on the planet for the unrivalled co-existence of so many different periods of history all at the same time.  If history is regarded as a layer cake (actually, more of an archaeological way of viewing things), then Rome is the side that's left exposed when a slice is taken out of the cake.  Although my first day in Rome was dedicated to viewing the ruins of the ancient Roman republic and empire, the other and more recent layers continually intruded -- a typical experience.

This is going to be a photo-rich blog post, so we'd better get right on with it.  It takes about 30-45 minutes, depending on choice of road, to walk from my hotel to the Piazza Venezia.  Along the way, here are a couple of highlights.  First out the door, the narrow but arrow-straight Via Giulia on which my hotel is located, one of the few truly straight streets in Rome.

The Palazzo Farnese, one of the most beautifully symmetrical of the many palaces built in Rome during the Renaissance period, and now the home of the French Embassy.  Lucky ambassador!

The Chiesa del Gesu, formerly the head church of the Jesuit Order.  Beautiful Baroque churches like this are a dime a dozen in Rome, with at least one on almost every street, but this one really takes the cake for its incredibly ornate and beautifully painted interior.

At the Piazza Venezia modernity intrudes -- albeit in the form of a structure designed in the height of the Classic Revival style.  This is the massive memorial to King Victor Emmanuel I, the first King of united Italy.  It was built and decorated between 1885 and 1925, and is now officially entitled Altare della Patria ("Altar of the Fatherland").  Due to its height, it's readily visible from many areas of Rome.  It's always attracted controversial argument, partly due to its massive size and pomposity, and partly due to the glaring white marble that contrasts all too successfully with the grey and brown tones of many surrounding buildings.  I can never forget that Maria von Trapp described it as resembling at first glance a gleaming set of dentures.

This memorial stands right on the edge of the ancient Roman Forum.  There are actually a number of fora, to give the Latin word its proper plural form.  There's the original ancient Forum:

There's the Forum of the Emperor Trajan, which includes his remarkable column with its spiral ascending line of bas-relief carved figures:

There's the Marketplace of Trajan, immediately adjoining the Trajan Forum.  Although I now know that this is largely a restored structure, I recall that as a teenager I found its gaping empty arches somewhat creepy.

Next you come to the Forum of Augustus, with its platform that looks for all the world ready for the next speaker to get up and begin spinning out magnificent oratory to wow the crowds.

One of the smartest decisions made by Roman authorities since the 1970s has been to close the adjacent Via dei Fori Imperiale to traffic, making it into a wide and welcoming pedestrian street linking all the ancient monuments together.  On this Sunday morning, with the blazing sunshine and tolerably comfortable temperatures, I took particular note of this musician playing on a cimbalom.

As I continued east to the Colosseum, I couldn't help noticing that overpriced bus tours, shops, and restaurants are now passe. All the sidewalk touts -- and I do mean all of them -- are busy selling selfie sticks.  That inspired me to take the first of several selfies -- without a stick!

I took that one just as I was passing the massive remaining north side of the Basilica of Maxentius, a building that in imperial times would have housed a law court and a public discussion/debate space.

It's notable that the governments of Rome, and of Italy, take very seriously their mission to preserve these ancient monuments into the future, and to continue the work of uncovering and restoring still more of them.

And so we come to the Flavian Amphitheatre, better known as the Colosseum.  The name, by the way, probably does not derive from the size of the arena but from the fact that a colossal bronze statue of Nero stood beside it in classical times, and up until about the year 1000.

The second photograph includes in the foreground the stones of an ancient Roman highway.

South of the Colosseum can be found the Circus Maximus, a much larger arena.  In your mind's eye, take the famous chariot race from Ben-Hur and superimpose Charlton Heston and all the rest on this view -- because this was the venue for chariot racing.

The huge ruins in the background are the remains of the imperial palace of Septimius Severus, a southward extension of the older palaces on the other side of the Palatine hill overlooking the Forum.

Speaking of the Forum (or Fora), bet you thought we were through with those!  Not on your life.  Just down the hill, close by the Tiber River, are these two small restored temples which mark the site of the Forum Boarium -- the cattle market!

A turn north from here brings you uphill towards the Theatre of Marcellus -- a genuine Roman theatre which has undergone certain modifications and modernizations in the centuries since it was first built.

Not far past this impressive structure, you come to the Cordonata, the stepped ramp leading up to the piazza on the summit of the Capitoline Hill.

Here, as nowhere else in Rome, the multiple layers of the city's history are all on view in one single location.  The church of Santa Maria Aracoeli at the top left was originally built somewhere before the ninth century, as it was brought under control of the papacy in that century.  The facade is of a later date, early Gothic.  The piazza at the top of the Cordonata has a replica of the ancient bronze statue of Emperor Augustus on horseback.  

Behind it to the left stands the Palazzo Senatorio, dating from the 13th century.  Next to it is the medieval Palazzo dei Conservatori.  In the 1500s, Michelangelo was commissioned to redesign the Capitoline Hill.  He built the Palazzo Nuovo on the left, remodelled the Palazzo dei Conservatori to be its twin, added the bell tower to the Palazzo Senatorio, and then built the Cordonata which reoriented the entire hilltop away from the ancient Forum and towards the (then) modern Papal city, -- above all, towards St. Peter's and the Vatican.  Michelangelo was also responsible for the intricate design of interlocked white lines in the pavement, although this was not actually built until the twentieth century.  All in all, this is one of the earliest and most remarkable examples of careful urban planning in the world.

The modern layer is also supplied, of course, by the traffic roaring past the foot of the hill!

Holiday in Transition # 2: The City

So here I am: in London again.   And I do mean in London!  It's been a good fifteen years since I spent any time inside the core areas of London.  Sad to say, but truth must be served: if you want to stay right in the middle of the action in London, you have to be prepared to shell out upwards of £200 (or over CDN$400) per night for even fairly basic and tiny accommodations.  If you want a really good quality hotel, then £400 (or CDN$800) is a more reasonable starting figure and some of the really top hotels are quite capable of charging you £800 or more per night for a view of the kitchen roof and vent stacks.

In other words: London is bloody expensive.

So how can you beat this outrageously expensive hospitality industry?  As far as I can see, there are three options:

[1]  The Fanciful:  Bunk in with a friend who has a lovely inner-city condo.

[2]  The Desirable:  Cash in frequent stay points for a hotel room in London.

[3]  The Hard Work:  Stay in an outer suburban hotel and commute into town with a train pass.

Each one has its obvious advantages and its obvious drawbacks.  On this trip, I'm going successfully with Option # 2.

Okay, so I'm right in London (for the first time since the summer of 2000).  Now, what to do?

Quick, think of a famous sight in London!  Now, what came to mind?  Big Ben?  Buckingham Palace?  Westminster Abbey?  Trafalgar Square?  Or perhaps (going more modern) The London Eye?

Now for the bad news: none of these, strictly speaking, are within the traditional borders of "The City", in other words, of London as it was for centuries before royal prerogatives and modern growth grabbed hold and changed everything.  The London Eye is on the wrong side of the Thames for historic London, and all the others are in Westminster which lies to the west of The City.

I haven't really been down into "The City", also known as "The Square Mile", since my very first visit to London in 1975, so I decided that this should be one area to visit for this brief stay.

For reasons of nostalgia as much as anything, though, I started west of the City, at Trafalgar Square itself.  This post, then, is actually more about the area from the Square to the City than about the City itself.  The towering monument to Admiral Lord Nelson, guarded by four massive bronze lions, is one of the most famous symbols of London.

Nearby stands the National Gallery, with marvellous collections of paintings, and the adjacent National Portrait Gallery which is especially fascinating to any history buffs -- all kinds of famous names from Britain's storied past hang on the walls there, as painted in their own day.

Also on the square is the famous Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, the birthplace of the famous Academy of St. Martin-etc., which is a world-renowned chamber orchestra.

Heading east along the Strand you immediately come to the imposing Charing Cross Station, a major rail terminal.  Most of the huge bulk of the station building facing the Strand is actually a hotel.  In the forecourt stands a Gothic-styled replica (really a reinterpretation) of the towering Eleanor Cross which originally dated from the 1290s and was placed a short distance to the west.  The original was destroyed in the 1600s by the Puritans.

As soon as you pass Charing Cross, you start bumping into the churches.  The first two are St. Mary-le-Strand and St. Clement Danes.  They're favourites of mine because of their locations, with the heavy traffic of the Strand roaring right past them (and in the case of St. Mary-le-Strand, right around the church!).

Just behind St. Clement Danes is the imposing Gothic structure of the Royal Criminal Courts, colloquially known as the Old Bailey.

Once you pass the Old Bailey, the Strand becomes known as Fleet Street, and the south side is lined with the "chambers" (read: offices) of numerous law firms.  This area is the location of the "Inns of Court" which are the professional legal associations.  In a courtyard tucked in among the Inns of Court is the historic Temple Church, which was originally the London headquarters of the Knights Templar.  I've visited the Temple Church before, so I took a pass on it, but for the sake of completeness here is an internet photo.

Among the lanes of the Temple I turned down to the bank of the Thames and walked for a while along the waterfront walk.  This eventually brought me to the newest bridge across the river: the Millennium footbridge. 

This bridge connects the city with the south bank next to the Tate Modern gallery, and right by the replica of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre.  I walked part way across the bridge and back, and then continued up to Ludgate Hill and St. Paul's Cathedral, Sir Christopher Wren's masterpiece.  When you look at Wren's Cathedral, built after the old Gothic St. Paul's was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666, it's hard to imagine any other building on the site.  It also seems like it must have been the great lifework of the architect, and yet it is but one of the nearly 60 churches he was commissioned to build in the City after the Great Fire.

From St. Paul's I continued east down Cannon Street into the City proper.  The interesting thing about "The City" is that it's all in two basic styles of architecture.  This was the area that got burned to the ground during the Great Fire of 1666, so one of the predominant styles is the fashionable Italian Romanesque of the 1670s -- exemplified by the dozens of churches, all of which seem to have been designed by Sir Christopher Wren.  Yes, he really did have a royal commission to do all that construction, and the miracle is that this busy architect managed to get no two churches exactly alike.

The other style is ultra-modern, post World-War-Two, which of course begins with that more recent time when large areas of The City got flattened and burned by Nazi bombing raids.  So as I walk through The City, I get this odd feeling of riding an out-of-control time machine that keeps whirling me from 1680 to 1980 and back again without stopping.

The City is the business and banking district of London, and thus is full of suits -- and their wearers -- on weekdays.  Weekends are much quieter down here, whereas the more touristy Westminster including the West End theatre district, is humming pretty much all week long.

Along the way, I detoured in a loop up to the intersection where these impressive buildings reign.  The pillared structure facing the camera is the Royal Exchange, and the much larger building on the left is the storied headquarters of the Bank of England.

In between the two runs Threadneedle Street, and that is only one of the many quaint street names to be found on a map of The City.  I suspect most of these names predate the regular use of such suffixes as "Street", "Road", or what you will.  These names are given verbatim:

Aldermanbury        Lothbury        Milk Street        Seething Lane        St Mary Axe
Cornhill        Undershaft        Bevis Marks        Eastcheap        Mincing Lane
Crutched Friars        Crosswall        Minories        Pudding Lane

It was in the last and most notorious of these streets that the Great Fire broke out, an event now commemorated by a tall monument, also designed by Wren.

Speaking of quaint names, I have one more to share -- just because the name itself always gives me a little chuckle..  The church that bore this name is long gone, but when built it was one of Wren's City churches.  It's full name, no word of a lie, was "The Church of St. Peter le Poer and St. Benet Fink".

I ended my walk at Cannon Street Station, largely because I was suffering from a massive case of "tourist feet", and headed back to my hotel on the Underground.

The next day, I joined up with my dear friend, Janine, who lives west of London, and together we went to The Shard.  This is a relatively new skyscraper of 78 stories, built right over London Bridge rail station -- and so located just across the river from The City.  It's the tallest viewpoint in London, and popular enough that you have to reserve your time slot to go up in  advance.  But it was well worth it, because it's a prime place to get a good aerial view of The City -- even if the windows are all splattered with the previous night's rain.

From here you get a grandstand view of the modern skyscrapers in The City known, whether formally or not, as "The Gherkin" and "The Razor".  Londoners have always been renowned for their quirky sense of humour, and it definitely comes out in these names.

You also get a spectacular view westwards towards the familiar sights of the London Eye, the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben, and Buckingham Palace.

(I'm still trying to figure out how and why the lettering came out different sizes on those two pix.)

After the Shard we carried on east to Greenwich where we did a pub lunch and then visited an exhibition at the Maritime Museum about the famous diarist Samuel Pepys and his life and times, which included both the last great attack of the Plague and the Great Fire of London.  The 1660s were a busy decade!

There's so much more that one could say about London, and this one post certainly doesn't do more than scratch the surface.  I wanted to give you a bit of a look at a part of London that many tourists don't get to see, and maybe whet your appetite to go there yourself.  I definitely need to go back -- and stay longer on my next visit!  Better start saving those hotel points right now!

But in the meantime, off to Rome -- the subject of my next post.

Holiday In Transition # 1: The Long Distance Game Plan

Look out, folks, he's at it again!

Tomorrow morning I will be setting off on yet another major holiday.  Ain't retirement grand?

A lot of this trip covers familiar ground:  London, England for starters.  I haven't written here about that magnificent city yet but I have certainly covered the nuts and bolts of getting there.  Rome -- well, I haven't blogged yet about Rome either, but that was actually the destination of one of my earliest overseas trips, way back when I was in high school.  That, by the way, was during the Old Stone Age (or in 1971 for those who prefer precise scientific dating of events).  I don't recall too much of that trip, but I certainly look forward to seeing some of the same sights and a few new ones.

The centrepiece of this trip is another, and longer cruise.  It's even on the same ship I sailed on in Tahiti back in January and February (you can read about Ocean Princess here: At Sea in Polynesia).
Here's a better picture of the ship than the ones I used before:

Princess Cruises photo

Since we last met, Ocean Princess has been cruising in and around Australia and New Zealand, then across the Far and Middle East and into the Mediterranean.  Now the ship needs to get back to North America for the winter sun sailing season.

Welcome to the world of the "positioning cruise".  This name describes a one-way, trans-oceanic voyage to move a cruise ship from one popular cruising area to another, usually seasonally.  This is the season when many cruise ships are doing positioning cruises from various ports in Europe to various ports in North America.  Here's the route plan for mine:

One glance at the map tells you right away that a positioning cruise is going to be a lot longer than most regular cruises, with more at-sea days than days in ports.  If that's okay with you, then these cruises can be remarkable bargains.  In this case, I've moved up from the balcony stateroom I had last cruise to a balcony mini-suite which is 50% bigger, and I'm paying over $100 a day less for it!  I'd be saving more like $300 dollars a day if I had booked the same cabin as last time.  That's a pretty typical comparison.

And there are seven en route ports -- that certainly isn't "no stops", which is the image some people have of positioning cruises.  Indeed a cruise is by far the cheapest way of incorporating all these ports into a single trip.  Consider: to fly from Gibraltar to Madeira, you would have to travel by way of London, since that is the closest airport with service to both locations.  That would involve close to 7 hours of flying.  Or, let's say, to get from Madeira to Bermuda you would again have to fly northeast to London, and then southwest again over the Atlantic.  The cost would be considerable, to put it mildly -- and that trip would have you in the air for over 12 hours.

Indeed, it was the inclusion of both Gibraltar and Madeira that first caught my eye about this cruise.  My parents travelled to both those places on different trips many years ago, and I've had both on my bucket list ever since.  Now I can kill two birds with one stone!  Bonus!

As well, there's the stop at Sete.  I'll save the importance of that one for later, but that's a piece of unfinished business dating right back to about my 9th or 10th birthday.  So I'm going to strike several items off my list all at one go!

And then there's Bermuda.  Dear, beautiful, rainbow-coloured Bermuda, which I have loved like another home ever since my first trip there in 1967 -- and which I have visited more often than any other location off the North American continent.  But this will be the first time ever that I haven't arrived in Bermuda by air.

All of this is going to be great fun, and a great learning experience as well.  But first there are my two en route stopovers:  London and Rome.  We'll get to London right away in the next post, as soon as I climb off that marvellous jet-lag-saving daylight flight from Toronto.