Day 73: home in Boston

Scalding hot showers, water pressure, clothing made of natural fibers, no snakes, a fully appointed kitchen, no hairs other than our own in the bed, potable tap water...it's good to be home.

You are wise in suggesting we log a blog along the way and it was wonderful having you follow our adventures virtually. We have enjoyed keeping this journal more than we would have expected. I could say it was a once in a lifetime experience but the truth is, we hope to have another. And perhaps when we do, you'll come along again.

Warmest regards,

Wayward J & K


K's hair after no haircuts for months

Day 72: St. Paul's Cathedral, Temple Church

If you can stomach the $20 entrance fee, St. Paul's will impress. The church was commissioned after the Great Fire of London in 1666 but it took 35 years to complete Christopher Wren's vision.

Its grandeur becomes even more apparent when up in the galleries that circle the dome.
Climb 163 steps from the cathedral floor and you reach the Whispering Gallery.

It gets its name from the unique acoustics. A whisper spoken against one wall can be heard 100 feet away on the other side of the dome. Climb another 119 steps and you reach the Stone Gallery where you can exit the building and walk the outside of the dome for 360 panoramic views of the city.

portal view to cathedral floor
view from Stone Gallery

A final 152 steps takes you to the Golden Gallery on the tippy top of the dome...outside, where there is nothing more than a metal railing between you and London sky and London pavement. J loves the flippity flop thrill at these heights and was merrily doing laps around peering over the edge. On some parts of the gazebo there is little more than a couple feet to pass but I, no no, I was not anywhere near the railing.

It was a smidge King Kong-y up there at the apex of the building, save the giant ape. You can imagine not Kong's bi-planes but the German Blitzkrieg bombers droning by on their runs. The chancel was punctured by a German bomb during WWII where the American Memorial Chapel now rests.

photo of St. Paul's after a bombing

We tramped over to Temple Church, built in 1185 by the Knights Templar. This is the same church refamoused by Dan Brown's The DaVinci Code. The church's dance card is very full in December so we weren't able to tour the inside. Don't try to visit in August or September because it seems it's not open to the public those months either. This church was also damaged during the Blitz but survived. You can see from the outside the original round church modelled after the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.

Day 71: Londony gluttony

After seeing authentic antiquities, why not see the faux? Harrod's. The whole place is an exuberant cramped display of gluttony and the escalators are a whirring dizzy up down Egyptian pyramidical sphinxy shaft of silliness.
Though I may not have bought a Waterford chandelier for 4,300 GBP, we have been eating at dens of yumminess. J likes the World Food restaurant in Neil's Yard for global cuisine.We both recommend Vinoteca on St. John Street in Clerkenwell. Jerusalem artichoke chestnut soup and a winter salad of lentils, parsnips, and a soft egg in a light sweet curry. Original and delicious. We also can recommend The Providores on High Street in Marylebone. Creative tapas. Any given presentation have flavors that complement and strike out. Have the panna cotta with basil. Seriously.

Day 71: British Museum

the Rosetta Stone

marbles of the Parthenon run the length of the room

the pediment of the Parthenon


head of the horse of Selene, the moon goddess, from the Parthenon pediment

the Nereid Monument, an entire tomb from southwest Turkey


statue from Easter Island


The first emporer of China's terracotta statues were on display at the museum but the showings were sold out for the day. These are representations made by school children stationed outside of the gallery.


a medieval chess board circa 1150

Every time I go to the British Museum, I think how totally great it was that the British went all over the world, nicking stuff and brought it all to one building where I can see it for free. This time it's a little different, because we just came from some of those places, but still, it's pretty great. Mummies, huge Egyptian statues, big hunks of the Parthenon, dug up graves and desecrated temples from the world over.

Most of this stuff has been here since the British had an empire, but there are some recent additions. The Lindow Man is thought to have been killed in a ritual Druidic sacrifice in the iron age but he was brought to the museum after being discovered by some commercial peat bog cutters back in the 80s. He was apparently fed poisonous mistletoe, hit on the head, sliced across the throat, and garroted. But after sitting in a bog for a couple of millennia, none of this abuse is very apparent anymore-he looks a lot like the sad remains of someone's Thanksgiving turkey.

Day 70: Imperial War Museum, London

Entering on the ground floor, the imperial war museum, housed in the former home of the Bedlam Lunatic Asylum, comes across as an Imperial Boy Museum. The place is full of groups of British schoolboys in matching outfits, thronging and clamoring around an impressive assortment of the machines of war. Fighter jets, tanks, V1 and V2 rockets, pint sized personal submarines, huge bombs-all are packed into the large exhibits floor. It's a prepubescent boy's dream, except that the tanks can't be started up and driven away, and there's no live ammo.

piece of the Berlin Wall

submariner's 'escape suit'

Upstairs, the museum takes on a much more sober tone. We spent a couple of hours in the holocaust exhibit, a very well produced walk through the horrible history, punctuated with poignant video accounts from survivors of Auschwitz and Birkenau. At the very end of the exhibit, one of the women talked about what she says when asked if she will ever forget. "It's like throwing a stone in a lake. Eventually the ripples subside and it looks normal, but there is a stone at the bottom. I still carry a stone in my heart."

Day 69: oude and verloofd

Today I am a day ouder and...engaged. We left Amsterdam promised to one another and toasted the occasion thousands of miles in the sky as we flew to London. Today-Amsterdam, London, and clinky clinky over bubbly. Tomorrow-okay, also London. But the metaphoric tomorrow...

Day 68: Rijksmuseum, Verzetsmuseum

I think everyone already knows this and I am late in appreciating it--see the masterpieces in person. It makes a difference. Off to the Rijksmuseum for the Dutch masters like Rembrandt, Vermeer and Heda. I will cut myself a small break since I've at least known that I like Dutch painters for their use of light, scenes of the ordinary, the precision of the still life, the metaphor.

Vermeer suggests mood and secrets.
A goblet of water never looked so thirst-quenching.

But if you had Rembrandt paint your portrait, be warned. He painted your rotundness, the bags under your eyes, and your wrinkles without apology.

Or an arm may cut across your face for the sake of the action in the painting, even though you were a paying customer.
The Verzetsmuseum is the Dutch Resistance Museum, a memoir to life during WWII with a particular focus on the complex decisions its inhabitants were forced to make to endure and rebel against German occupation. American citizens lived the industrial machine that steamed into motion for the wartime effort but European citizens experienced an ingenuity born of a more immediate imperative-daily survival.

The baby pram concealed contraband and weapons.
This member of the resistance assumed a female identity as subterfuge.
Even after the war, recovery was slow. German helmets became colanders and chamber pots.

Day 67: Van Gogh Museum, Anne Frank's House

You don't have to love Vincent just because he's a redhead anymore. Admittedly ignorant and never particularly taken with the sunflowers, I left surprised by my own starry-eyed admiration. I was rapt with his life story, and, actually, with the loveliness of some of his pieces.This was without even getting too far into the drama of his awkward amorous relationships or his suspected epilepsy. Perhaps his hospitalizations and hallucinations make him a tragic figure, but I saw such an appreciation and joy in some of the paintings, of what he saw and wanted to leave for people to also see. Clearly there also was pain. Dear Vincent did shoot himself in the chest at the age of 37. He succumbed to his wounds two days later with his beloved brother Theo at his side.The story of Anne Frank and her diary is universally known. She began her recordings at age 13. For me it was the dreamy pictures of movie stars and animals that she pasted to the walls of her room that made it so evident how her bright mind and youth was confined and wasted on worry and fear and others' hatred. For J, it was watching Anne and her sister Margot grow each year by the hash marks on the wallpaper. The family almost made it to the end of the war by hiding in secret rooms of her father's warehouse. But someone turned them in and the entire family was deported from Amsterdam to a number of concentration camps. And then, Anne almost survived to the day the camp was liberated but she died one month earlier from typhus believing than none of her family survived. She was 15. Her father was the sole survivor, the guardian of his family's memory and Anne's diary.