European Epic # 3: Vyšehrad and Vltava

Any musical readers of this blog may fairly easily guess that the my connecting Swiss airline flights brought me to this place as the next stop on my European trip: the city of Prague, capital of the Czech Republic.



The connection, and the title of this post, derive from the orchestral masterpiece by the first of the great Czech nationalist composers, Bedrich Smetana -- a cycle of six symphonic poems entitled Má Vlast ("My Country"). The first of the six tone poems is entitled Vyšehrad, while the second one is called Vltava.

More on that subject in a few moments.

First and foremost, gentle readers, please note: we are not talking about "Czechoslovakia" here. The two quite different socio-cultural units that were merged together in that forced "shotgun" marriage after World War One now occupy separate countries, with the capital of Slovakia located in Bratislava. Czechs and Slovaks alike are united in hating people who still call their homelands "Czechoslovakia."  You're welcome.

My generation are used to thinking of this region as part of "Eastern Europe" because of our memories of the divided continent under Soviet rule (until 1989-1991), yet Prague is actually farther west than such "Western" capitals as Vienna, Helsinki, and Athens.



Although Prague is one of the busiest tourist-destination cities in Europe, I'm ashamed to admit that this is the first time I've ever visited here. Like many of Europe's main centres, this is a bustling, vibrant modern city with diverse shopping, dining, and cultural opportunities galore, all accommodated in a collection of historic structures from every one of the last 7 or 8 centuries.

The historic parts of Prague spread not only through the "Old Town" on the right bank of the Vltava River, but across the river and the ancient Charles Bridge towards the even older "Lesser Town," beneath the soaring escarpment crowned by Prague Castle.

I spent my first evening in Prague reuniting and reminiscing with an old friend who lives there now, a fraternity brother whom I had not seen for far too long. In typical Prague style, our reunion encompassed a couple of litre steins of local beer and several shots of hruškovice, a clear and innocent-looking pear liqueur (hah!). Result: no hangover (amazing), but one serious case of sleeping-in the next morning.

My first full day in Prague was sunny and hot, and therefore set aside for my pilgrimage to the heights of Vyšehrad. The Czech name means "upper castle/fortress," which makes sense because this sizable hilltop parkland is still enclosed by huge brick-and-stone fortifying walls.

Smetana's musical depiction of Vyšehrad begins with harp chords evoking the singing of a bard, recalling ancient legends. Very authentic, because Vyšehrad is ancient -- the foundations of the fortress and the basilica within it go back over a thousand years. Prague Castle is a relative Johnny-come-lately. The music runs through episodes depicting the glory and strength of Vyšehrad, then its downfall, and the piece ends with a quietly reminiscent recall of the opening harps. Being the musical-historical person I am, I went through the entire day with passages from Smetana's beautiful and heartfelt tone poem running through my head.

Today, Vyšehrad rises as prominently as ever on its steep, rocky headland above the river.

                    Photo by Stanislav Jelen - Self-photographed, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4799248

It's not hard to see why this of all places was chosen as a natural site for fortification. I like to think that the end of Smetana's music can as easily depict the continuing strength and even the continuing existence of this historic strong point -- as well as its gentle modern-day slumber in the sunshine.

To get there, you just have to take the Metro "B" line to the Vyšehrad station. The Prague Metro is clean, well-signed, easy to navigate, and unbelievably cheap. A single ticket for a ride within the city lasting less than 45 minutes is 24 Czech korunas, or approximately Cdn$1.40. The same ride in London would cost £4.90 or Cdn$8.25. Yikes!

When you get to Vyšehrad station, if coming from downtown, just walk straight out the exit from the platform and up the stairs -- and you'll see directional signs to the fortress. In about 5 minutes walking, you'll come to the first great bastion in the outer wall, and the ancient Tabor Gate.





Inside the gate, just keep following the roadway past some buildings, through the Leopoldova Gate, and past the Rotunda of St. Martin.



As you round the sharp bend in the roadway, you will see ahead of you the Basilica of Sts. Peter and Paul, and beside it the walled Vyšehrad Cemetery, burial place of many of the greats of Bohemian and Czech history. Enter the cemetery, a haven of peace and quiet...



…and navigate your way to the diagonally far corner. This is the main spot I needed to see in my pilgrimage: the grave of Antonín Dvořák, the greatest of all Bohemian/Czech composers, and the first person to make the culture and art of his beloved Bohemia known to the wider world as something distinct from that of the controlling Austro-Hungarian empire.





And since both Dvořák and Smetana have been lifelong favourite composers of mine, it's not hard to understand why a day up here at Vyšehrad mattered so much to me.

The other point of interest up here for many visitors is the Basilica of Sts. Peter and Paul. It's not a large church, but the elaborate decoration of the shrines and chapels within, and the huge wall paintings in the chancel end of the church, rival for scale and spectacle almost anything found in the great Baroque churches of Europe -- yet all within a Gothic structure, an interesting combination. It's well worth the modest admission fee of 9 korunas (about 50 cents).

So here's the great façade...

…and the left side door dedicated to St. Cyril, one of two saints who helped to spread Christianity into the Slavic regions of Europe. The decoration on the doors and the archway is all in mosaic tiles. The similar partner door on the right side is dedicated to his companion, St. Methodius.

A couple of the inside chapel altars:





The chancel end and high altar, showing those huge wall paintings:



On the opposite end of scale, an exquisite small reliquary in the basilica's treasury. It's only 14cm tall, so this picture is near to actual size -- on my laptop screen, anyway.



Leaving the basilica, take a few short steps across the open pavement, duck through the small doorway in the wall, and you'll find yourself on a walkway outside the ramparts with this beautiful view of Prague Castle and some of the bridges over the river to admire.



This view is on a different walkway, just by the Vyšehrad art gallery, which is clearly signposted.



The river is the majestic Vltava, which flows north and empties into the Elbe in Germany, on its way to the North Sea. Oh, by the way, for those who don't know already, the German name of the Vltava is "Moldau," and Smetana's tone poem, Vltava, is often (incorrectly) called "The Moldau." In fact, it is by a long head start his best-known and most popular work, and really deserves to be referred to by its proper title.

If you remember it, and/or choose to listen to it now, you can hardly escape noticing the grandly majestic chord theme just before the end of the piece. That passage depicts the Vltava flowing past Prague, and the chords are (of course) the main theme from the preceding tone poem in the cycle, which just happens to be Vyšehrad.

Aside from this musical pilgrimage, what else happened during my time in Prague? Since I was staying in a Hilton hotel in the Old Town district (the points again, thanks very much!), I could hardly escape spending some time walking around in Old Town and photographing some of the buildings.

Of course, this quickly turns into more musical pilgrimage. The narrow, twisting, cobbled streets of Prague's Old Town and Lesser Town districts were the unsung stars of the 1984 film, Amadeus.

The National Theatre (also called the Estates Theatre) in Prague was used to film the grand opera sequences of the movie, appropriately so since it was the site of the original premiere of Mozart's celebrated music drama, Don Giovanni.

And son of a gun, will you look what's on stage at the National right now?



Not far away, right by the river, is the Rudolfinum, which houses Dvořák Hall. This acoustically magnificent concert hall is the home of the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra. Incidentally, Dvořák himself conducted the inaugural concert of the hall in 1885, so it's fitting that his monument appears outside, facing the concert hall that now bears his name.



A short distance downstream is the historic old Charles Bridge, a UNESCO world heritage site because of its Gothic architecture and the striking religious statuary adorning it. The bridge was begun in 1357 and took about half a century to complete. The statuary mostly dates from the 1600s (and the originals are all in museums now, replaced on the bridge by replicas). King Charles IV has the most imposing monument of all, looking proudly towards the bridge which he began and which now bears his name.



That bridge, not by chance, was the making of Prague as a major trade centre, since the dry-land crossing of the wide Vltava created one of the few through passage ways in medieval times between eastern and western Europe.

The approach to the bridge -- pedestrians only, nowadays -- is through the base of the Gothic Bridge Tower.



Not only is the bridge itself an eye-popping experience (if the hordes of visitors don't deter you), but it gives splendid views of the Lesser Town and Prague Castle. Seeing those places will have to wait for my next visit.





Just south of the Charles Bridge can be found a collection of restaurants all too plainly aimed at the tourist trade. But what the heck -- traditional Czech dishes are offered alongside hamburgers and fries, the outside tables overlook the river, and the breeze was cooling me down nicely after my walk. Two pints of pilsener, some sparkling water, and a plate of roast pork with dumplings and red cabbage went down well. I especially enjoyed the crisp coating on the pork, made by pressing caraway seeds into the thin surface layer of fat before roasting.

After lunch, I walked out to the end of the terrace, overlooking the bridge and the river, and there -- very appropriately -- was a monument to Smetana, forever gazing out over the rolling waters of Vltava to which his music gave true immortality.

Walking back through Old Town would have been a bit of a trial to anyone inclined to agoraphobia, and that's an understatement. The narrow streets and alleyways with their cobbled pavements were so jammed with bodies by this time that I was moving at about half my normal speed.

Just as well -- it gave me a chance to admire the fascinating old architecture all around me.






It's not far from the bridge to Old Town Square, the hub of the central area, and the heart of tourist Prague. The highlight here is the medieval Town Hall Clock, with its animated figures of the 12 apostles which appear in turn every hour. The actual astronomical clock is undergoing repairs (it's located behind the scaffolding and tarps on the lower side of the tower) but it's hoped to have it back in service before the end of the year. Time will tell. (Sorry, I had to do it.) The other imposing presence on the square is the twin-spired Church of Our Lady Before Tyn, on the east side.



If anyone else knows the reason for that peculiar form of dedication for the church, I'd love to know what it is -- I haven't been able to find out.

The imposing monument in the centre of Old Town Square commemorates the 15th-century religious zealot and reformer, Jan Hus, and his famous Hussite movement.



On a final and more whimsical note, although Prague is a historian's dream town, its present-day self includes all kinds of fascinating human activity. From sightseeing tours in open faux-antique cars...



...to blowing bubbles on the street -- on a grand scale...



...Prague definitely has its light-hearted and more entertaining side, too.

European Epic # 2: Living Below Sea Level

The next step of my adventures involved a lot of living below sea level.  Taking a train from London to the European continent plainly involves doing that -- but it happens more than once.  That's because the Eurostar trains leave from St. Pancras station on the northeast side of central London and have to dive through a tunnel under the tidal estuary of the Thames River on the way down to Folkestone where the main event -- the tunnel to France -- begins.  And then, of course, I wound up in Amsterdam which is all about living below sea level!

On one of my early trips to Europe in the 1970s, the journey from London to Amsterdam took about 12-13 hours, via the special "boat train" from London to Harwich Parkeston Quay, then the large Sealink ferry sailing through the night to the Hook of Holland (with seasickness a definite possibility in the boisterous waters of the North Sea), and finally another boat train from there to Amsterdam.

But now we have the Channel Tunnel, and the Eurostar high-speed trains.

This time around, the Eurostar flew from London down to Folkestone, through the Channel Tunnel, and on to Brussels Midi station in just 2 hours and 10 minutes.  At that speed, you don't see much scenery other than varying degrees of blur.  In Brussels, I transferred to a Thalys fast train which took another 1 hour 50 minutes to reach Amsterdam.

These trains have 3 classes of service, but at different names depending on the operator.  I chose a second-class Standard Premier for the Eurostar, which included a single seat in the 1+2 layout, and a "light bite" served at the seat.  This proved to be a continental breakfast of bread basket, yogurt, fruit, and choice of coffee or tea with juice.  On the Thalys, I had a first-class Premier ticket (at a much more reasonable price than the Eurostar) and a cold lunch with beer or wine, fresh rolls, and coffee or tea included.

Why not a cheaper Standard (3rd-class) ticket?  In Standard class you either lug your own food in, or else stagger through anything up to seven cars to reach the buffet car, wait in line for who-knows-how-long, find out they are out of whatever you want, and stagger all the way back.  And if you do get something, whether from the buffet or a café on the station, you'll end up paying far more than it's worth -- and not saving much by comparison with the higher-priced ticket.

Both the Eurostar and the Thalys move.  And believe me, when they say these are high-speed trains, they mean high speed -- they are not joking.

            (the posted speed limit on that highway was 100 km/h = 62 mph)

Total end-to-end time including the 50-minute stopover: 4 hours 50 minutes.  It would take far longer even to fly from London to Amsterdam (with travel to/from airports plus check-in, security, passport control and baggage claim time all included), hence the success of the Eurostar.  Even with the requirement to arrive a minimum of 30 minutes in advance for check-in and security, you still come out well ahead of the game.  The brand-new direct Eurostar train to Amsterdam gets there even faster, in just 3 hours 40 minutes from London.  The Channel Tunnel has dramatically rewritten the rules about travel in Europe for many people.

In Amsterdam, my Holiday Inn points led me to a large Holiday Inn Express right next door to the suburban Sloterdijk railway station.  The room was blessedly bigger, but the bed was Euro-typically harder than in London.  Holiday Inn Express always includes a free breakfast, and this one was typically Dutch: assorted cereals, cold boiled eggs, cold cuts and cheeses, breads and rolls, pastries, fruit, juice, coffee and tea.  There's also a bar which opens in the afternoon/evening hours where you can get light snacks, baked-to-order pizza, and drinks of all sorts.

At a glance, you might wonder why a history buff like me would choose to stay in a modern high-rise out in the middle of the modern-high-rise suburbs.  It's the location of this hotel, right by a rail station, that makes it a winner -- a quick 5-minute train ride from Amsterdam Centraal.  From Centraal, you can get anywhere in the city easily on the Metro and the famous Amsterdam trams, or just by using your feet -- downtown Amsterdam is surprisingly compact.  The transit agency GVB has a ticket office right outside the Centraal Station which sells one-day and multi-day transit passes.  Speaking of the trams, the # 19 route leaves from Sloterdijk, right behind the hotel, and takes you in 20 minutes to the outdoor entertainment and dining area of the Leidseplein and to the Museumplein where you find the Rijksmuseum, the Stedelijk, and the Van Gogh Museum all together.  There's also a Metro station right under the rail station, although that line is less convenient to get into town.

Where else but in the Low Countries with their level landscapes would you see a multi-level parking garage for bicycles?  It's right beside the Centraal Station.  Many commuters use two bikes -- one at the suburban home end of the journey, and the other downtown for the final leg to work, with the train providing the connecting link!

Or try this eye-popping cycle park by the downtown Metro station on Rokin.  How does anyone ever find the right bicycle again?

Also right outside the Centraal station are the docks of half-a-dozen canal boat cruise companies.  All of them offer broadly similar 1-hour sightseeing tours, on a circuit through the city's horseshoe-shaped canal network.  Now, there's also a daylong hop-on-hop-off canal boat "bus" tour service.  For a first-time visitor, there's no better way to introduce yourself to the city -- and I always take a boat tour every time I come here, just because I love the experience so much.

Along the way, you see classic architecture from the city's "golden age" in the 17th and 18th centuries, along with a selection of the over 2000 houseboats permanently moored in the city,...

...as well as some more modern buildings,...

...and the classic Amsterdam pattern of cars and bicycles parked along the canal side.

Once you leave the canal boat, you can proceed on foot to such famous places as the Dam, the open square in the middle of the city flanked by the Royal Palace and the New Church (that's 1700s new, by the way).  The appearance of the Dam ranges from crowded all the way up to shoehorn-packed.  It's not often that you will see much open pavement here at any one moment.

And what's that new arrival in the last picture?  Let's just zoom in a bit.

Amsterdam is famous -- notorious, even -- for such things as the "brown cafes" where marijuana can be openly smoked, with the Bulldog Palace on the busy Leidseplein one of the first and most famous -- not least because of its location in a former police station.  Oh, the irony...

Then, there's the extensive "red light district", and the numerous lively and even raucous nightclubs and gay bars.  If those aren't your thing, there are multiple shopping districts, most famously the Nieuwendijk pedestrian shopping street.

None of these particularly appeal to me.  What draws me back to Amsterdam time and again is the historic ambience of the city, the extensive walking possibilities, and above all the opportunities for buying a brew or two...

...along with a good rib-sticking meal of chicken satay...

...and then just relaxing at an outdoor café table to watch the world go by.  Okay, fine.  I admit it -- I'm an eccentric.  Not that this is "news" to anyone who knows me personally!  (PS -- those cigarette butts in the ashtray are not mine!).

One thing that's shifted in a big way in Amsterdam is this whole area of food.  When I first came here in the 1970s, Indonesian restaurants were everywhere.  One short street in particular, Binnen Bantammerstraat, had 8 or 9 of them in a single block -- and all of them have now (sadly) switched to other kinds of cuisine.  These were, of course, a cultural remnant of the days before the 1950s when the Netherlands ruled over the area now known as Indonesia, formerly called the Dutch East Indies.

The signature meal experience was the rijsttafel ("rice table").  I had it twice.  You got a bowl of steamed rice, surrounded by a series of small dishes containing different recipes of meat, poultry, fish, or vegetables, cooked in different sauces or seasonings, with alternating sweet or savoury, spicy or mild, creamy or juicy, etc., and with coconut and peanuts as two of the more common ingredients in the various preparations.  The dishes sat on a warming tray.  The idea was to transfer some rice to your plate, add a small quantity of the contents of a dish, and enjoy -- while making sure to go through the dishes in the proper numerical order to keep the different tastes alternating.  This internet photo gives a pretty good idea of what it looked like, except that I had smaller and fewer dishes because I was having a rijsttafel "sampler" for one person.

When it was time to leave Amsterdam, I just had to hop on a train going the opposite direction through Sloterdijk Station, and in 10 more minutes arrived at Amsterdam Schiphol International Airport.  Ever since I first travelled here in 1971 as a teenager, Schiphol has intrigued me -- and not just because the whole airport (like so much of the Netherlands) sits below sea level.  Honestly, what other place in the world could you find an airport in a location whose name translates into English as "ship hell."  Google it sometime; there are multiple theories and intriguing explanations for this peculiar name.

Amsterdam Schiphol is the third-busiest airport in Europe, and must be one of the biggest airports in the world contained entirely in one terminal building.  Depending on which airline you are using, and where you are travelling, you may be faced with a fairly lengthy walk.  Once again, I got the treatment, with 30 minutes of brisk walking from train to gate -- not counting stops for check-in and security.  If nothing else, Schiphol definitely gives your legs a good workout.

My flight this time was on Swiss International, and involved a connection through Zurich.  I opted for Swiss partly because it helps me to earn more Aeroplan miles, and partly because -- well, who wouldn't want one of these to tide you over until the next meal time?

That's right -- delicious, smooth, creamy, rich, gooey (because of the heat) Swiss milk chocolate.  The airline says it has given out over a quarter of a million of these in its fifteen years of operation -- and they just gave me 3 more.  The predecessor national airline, Swissair, did it too.  Yummy.

Oh, where was my flight headed, you ask?  To be continued....

European Epic # 1: Touchdown Londontown

This week I set off on a 6-week holiday in Europe, a holiday involving a number of "firsts" for me.

One of my "firsts," for this blog, is that I'm not telling my readers up front all about everywhere I am going to go.  We'll find that out together as the trip progresses!

As anyone who's been can tell you, travelling in Europe is not cheap by comparison with North America.  One of the biggest factors making this trip possible for me is the amount of money I'm saving by using airline and hotel points along the way.  The essence of the loyalty points game is to earn points on the cheap in North America and then spend them where the cash cost would hurt the most.  I earn all over Canada and in smaller cities in the United States, and cash in when travelling in some of the more expensive destinations like New York, Rome, Hawaii, or London.

As usual, I cashed in my Aeroplan points to fly from Toronto to London in business class, and as usual I took the daily Air Canada "Daytimer" flight that leaves Toronto at 0910 every morning and arrives at London Heathrow at 2100 the same evening.

I learned years ago that I could reduce my jetlag to a minimum when I didn't lose a night's sleep on the flight over to Europe (sleeping on planes is something I have never been very good at doing, even with a lie-flat bed seat).  The good news?  The Daytimer flight is now operated by a high-tech Boeing 787 jet, with numerous features that reduce jetlag even further.  And, of course, it's hard to beat the comfort of the individual Business Class "pod" on Air Canada, a mode of travel I could never afford if I had to pay actual dollars for it!

I spent the daylight hours of my first two days in London doing almost nothing I hadn't done before and enjoying it all immensely.  Among other things, this led to some sunny walks in the gardens of Regent's Park...

...and along the Victoria Embankment on the north bank of the Thames, with the spectacular view towards the skyscrapers of the City of London and the ever-majestic dome of St. Paul's Cathedral.

One of the main sights along the Embankment is "Cleopatra's Needle", a slightly-off-the-mark name for the Egyptian obelisk which was actually erected in Luxor by Thutmose III about 1400 years before the birth of the famous Greco-Egyptian queen.  It's flanked by a couple of faux sphinxes.  Oddly enough, this is not another example of European "raiding" of other countries' cultural treasures since it was given to Britain by the then-ruler of Egypt and the Sudan in 1819.

I also paid a return visit to the nearby Temple Church, an ancient Gothic building with a most unusual history and design.  Originally built by the Knights Templar, it now belongs to the Inner Temple and Middle Temple, two of the Inns of Court which are the professional law societies and colleges of the United Kingdom.  It's thus now called the Mother Church of the Common Law.

Typically, in Gothic religious architecture, the long, straight portion of a church is called the nave, and is where the hoi polloi would sit, while the often-rounded end is called the chancel and contains the seating for the choir and priests, as well as the high altar where communion would be celebrated.

The Temple Church gets it all backwards.  The round church was built first, consecrated in 1185, and the linear three-aisled chancel was added later on, in the 1250s.  The original round church thus serves today as the nave.

For a music buff like myself, there's one notable aspect of the Temple Church's history aside from its long and distinguished record of choral and organ music.  One night in (I think) 1962, the strings of the Sinfonia of London moved into the church after midnight with conductor Sir John Barbirolli.  They were, of course, trying to capture a recording without daytime traffic and other noises.  The result was, and remains, one of the great classics of recorded music -- a well-nigh definitive performance of the famous Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis by Ralph Vaughan Williams.

For my first three nights, I stayed in a modern Holiday Inn just off Kensington High Street.  Like many London hotels, this one has unbelievably tiny rooms, although they are certainly comfortable.  Unlike many (most?) central London hotels, this one actually has a "leisure club" with an indoor pool -- always an attractive feature for me (although, in the event, I didn't get around to using this one).  Add in a tube station on the corner, and several good restaurants nearby and it becomes an ideal base.

On my third day, I travelled for 70 minutes northeast of London by train, to the small city of Ely.  In British law, it's considered a city despite its size and population (20,000), because it is the home of a cathedral of the church of England.  This one, too, is architecturally distinctive -- and on a much grander scale than the Temple Church.  Ely and its cathedral are built on an island of clay soil in the midst of the Fens, a vast region comprising wetlands which were gradually drained and converted to agricultural land during the 1700s and 1800s.

I started with lunch, on a riverside patio, and enjoyed the views of all the old canal boats converted into houseboats.

Here are a couple of views of the exterior of the cathedral.  We'll start with the elaborate Lady Chapel, built in the mid-1300s at the height of the medieval cult of the Virgin Mary.

Here's the elaborate multi-arcaded front of the cathedral.  The peculiar off-centre look of the main tower with the southwest transept resulted when the matching northwest transept collapsed in the early 1300s.  The soft ground on which the cathedral was built was the culprit.

Inside, Ely features a long, tall nave built in Norman times (the 1100s) with rounded arches.

At the entrance to the chancel, the elaborate carved choir screen frames the oak choir stalls.  A few weeks ago, my brother, sister-in-law and niece sang daily services in these stalls for a week.

At the highest point in the chancel stands the high altar, with the elaborate carved screen known as a reredos behind it.

But the great architectural glory of Ely is the magnificent Octagon.  The cathedral formerly had a tall central tower over the crossing of the two arms of the building.  This tower collapsed in the 1300s, likely also due to the soft ground.  One or more men of sheer genius evolved the solution, by removing the original four corner pillars and replacing them with eight pillars placed further out from the centre, on firmer ground.  And here's the result.  On the outside, it looks elaborate, but not too extraordinary otherwise.

The extraordinary is what you see on the inside.

The elaborate vaulting on top of the eight pillars is actually just a wooden skin.  The real lifting work is done by an elaborate timber framework concealed behind the ceiling.  If anything ever causes the Octagon to fall, it will have to be replaced with metalwork of some kind because there are no longer any trees in the United Kingdom big enough to replace those timber structural frameworks.

The remarkable effect on the interior of the cathedral is the sheer amount of space in the crossing because of the octagonal layout, and also the huge amount of natural daylight shed into the interior of the church by the four corner windows and the eight windows in the octagonal lantern tower.  Ironically, all that daylight makes the interior very difficult to photograph without professional-quality equipment.

For my last night in London, I transferred to the Renaissance Hotel St. Pancras.  This deluxe hotel occupies several floors of the former Midland Hotel attached to St. Pancras railway station, the terminus for the Eurostar high-speed express trains that operate from London through the Channel Tunnel to Paris, Brussels, and Amsterdam.

This station originally housed the terminus of the Midland Railway, and the single-span arched iron roof over the platforms (now lovingly restored) was an engineering wonder when it was designed  and built by William Henry Barlow, opening in 1868.  When you recall that this was the height of the "steam age" with coal-fired locomotives belching thick black smoke into the air, you can understand why high-arched roofs were de rigeur for Victorian railway stations.  And you'll also understand why the iron structures always looked so black in the old photographs.

Here's an internet view of the modern version of the building.

The hotel building was designed by George Gilbert Scott in his signature Gothic Revival style, and opened originally in 1873 as the Midland Hotel.  The resemblance to Barry and Pugin's Palace of Westminster -- that's the correct formal name of the Houses of Parliament -- is both unmistakable and non-accidental.

Today's hotel looks very different, with the red brick exterior beautifully cleaned and restored.  The hotel today uses the lower floors of Scott's building together with a modern wing extending along the west side of the station.  The upper floors of  the old classic hotel have been converted into loft flats and condominiums.

For dinner, I visited the Booking Office restaurant, located inside the former ticket office of the station.  (It was too dim for photography, but here's a pic from the hotel's website with an arrow to show where I was sitting).

Certainly it was convenient to walk from room to train the next morning without even going outside.

This blog will resume with my first train journey through the Channel Tunnel.