freda's world adventures

‘Home’ to The Netherlands: 10 days with cousins; plus 5 days in Berlin – May 2019 July 8, 2019

Posted by freda in Uncategorized.
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I arrived in Amsterdam on Tuesday morning, May 14th, and was met at the airport by my cousin Annelien.  Before we even left the airport, because she is a glass blower, and knows I love the glass art of Dale Chihuly, she showed me the Schiphol airport display by Chihuly:

Then we were off, to her and her husband, Willem’s, home in Voorburg, a suburb of The Hague.  We sat on their patio for refreshments and then lunch. After that great pick-me-up, I showered and settled into my room.  As my method of adjusting to European time is to stay awake (after a bit of sleep on the plane the ‘night’ before), and then go to bed early that first night, we set off on an excursion to keep me awake, to the Delft University Library.  If you’ve read any of my previous blogs, you know I like to visit the beautiful and unique libraries of the world.  Delft University has a great one!  The architectural firm, Mecanoo, of Delft, designed a truly unique space for the university.  I’ve linked a website that shows off the library well, but here are a few of my own pictures:

There was an interesting art display in the library–

and this one struck me–“Two Yawners” by Maja Vucetic, the description board read: “Maja Vucetic is an artist and general practitioner. For this exhibition she wanted to emphasize how unequal access to medicines is worldwide. On the one hand, in developed countries a lot is wasted and abused for doping and other elite spending, while on the other hand – in Africa, among other places – there are major shortages of the most necessary medicines.” Simple and yet fairly evocative, no?

I also admired the stained glass window in the library, a window of books..

Of course there is much more to see in Delft, but I’ve been there before, and we didn’t really have time to wander through town. We made a quick stop along a canal to see what’s still left of what Vermeer painted in his “View of Delft” painting…

…and then it was time to head home for a lovely dinner and some … ‘good’ wine. 🙂

 

On Wednesday, Annelien and I headed to Kuekenhof Gardens, one of the world’s largest flower gardens, in which 7 million flower bulbs are planted annually!  It’s only open for the season, approximately 2 months between late March and May. We were there for the end of the season, but it was still pretty spectacular!  You’ll have to indulge me here; it’s hard to post only a few pictures, so I’m posting just a *tad* more than a few. 😉

I learned some things about tulips, too – they originally came from Turkey!

After several hours (and lunch) at the garden, we stopped in at Annelien’s workshop in Leiden. Annelien used to be a corporate lawyer, but some years ago she packed it in and has since nurtured her creative side. She’s an incredible artist of glass blowing, as well as a unique creation she calls “Sky Trotters.”

And then it was time to get home for dinner with Willem and Annelien’s daughter, Georgina, and her boyfriend, Jason. It was great to see Georgina again- I used to send her books in English, as the children’s book selection in Holland wasn’t so large in translation. Her English is flawless, and no accent, either!

On Thursday, we took the train to Utrecht. Our first stop was the Utrecht University Library, another unique design in mostly black and white, with bamboo etched into the walls and windows.

After eating lunch at the university, we headed back into the city centre and went to the Centraal Museum, which now permanently houses the studio of Dick Bruna, Dutch author, artist, illustrator and graphic designer, best known for his children’s books which he authored and illustrated, numbering over 200. His most notable creation was Miffy (called Nijntje in Dutch), a small rabbit drawn with heavy graphic lines, simple shapes and primary colours. (wikipedia) He died just 2 years ago. He also illustrated over 2000 covers for his family’s publishing company. I always loved the simplicity of his children’s books.

Most fun was across the street, in the “Miffy Museum,” where you pay extra, but worth it!  If I lived in Utrecht and had small children, I might be at this playground of a museum on a daily basis!

From here, we walked to the ‘old’ original University, to check out the library. It turned out to have a lovely reading room, but the rest was rather disappointing. The new library is just much more overall architecturally interesting.

We required a pause that refreshes…

Last, but definitely *not* least, we found this wonderful apartment building mural, which I had read about before leaving home – a reader’s delight!!  The artist, Jan, asked the residents of the building for their favourite book, and he included them all.

Back at home that evening, we had a knitting session, so I could show Annelien how to make the Izzy Dolls I knit for Health Partners International of Canada.

On Friday it was time to move to Amsterdam. Don was arriving in the early afternoon, and we had a hotel booked for two nights in the city.  Annelien and I caught the train to Amsterdam, with our first stop to drop off my luggage at the hotel, conveniently close to the train station.

We took the tram to the Rijksmuseum, to see one of the most beautiful libraries in the world, the Rijksmuseum Research Library. I’ve visited the museum before, but hadn’t seen the library, a grave omission!

From an information board inside: “At his own initiative, the 19th-century architect, Pierre Cuypers, included a library in his plans when commissioned to build the Rijksmuseum. In his view, a reading room was an integral part of a museum.”

And because it’s the Rijksmuseum’s declared “Year of Rembrandt,” 350 years since his death, we took a quick swing past The Night Watch, before we exited the museum and went looking for lunch…

…and then we made our way back to our hotel, to meet up with Don.  The three of us continued wandering through this wonderful city, including a pass through the Friday book fair..

We stopped for a pick-me-up in the beautiful courtyard of the Old Church, (in the red light district!), transformed from the sacristy, which dates from 1571, into a cafe.

We then went to Amsterdam’s Central Library, a lovely public library, with great use of space..

and a jazz trio playing at the library café..

We crossed the IJ by ferry (the body of water, formerly a bay, which is Amsterdam’s waterfront. Its name is from an obsolete Dutch word meaning ‘water,’ pronounced like ‘eye’), and ate dinner at the Restaurant Eye.

After dinner, we walked Annelien to the train station, for her to return home, and we walked to our hotel…

The next morning, Don and I set off to follow Rick Steve’s audio Amsterdam City Walk.  We’ve been to Amsterdam before, but the last time was 17 years ago (with kids), and we’ve never been ‘with’ Rick Steves, who is excellent for taking you down side streets and into courtyards you might never otherwise see.

From his introduction: “Amsterdam, during the Dutch Golden Age, (the 1600’s), was the world’s richest city, an international sea trading port, and the cradle of capitalism. Wealthy democratic burghers built the city almost from scratch. They created a wonderland of canals lined with townhouses, topped with fancy gables. Immigrants, Jews, outcasts and political rebels were drawn here by its tolerant atmosphere, while painters such as Rembrandt captured that atmosphere on canvas.” We started at the Centraal Station, and walked along Damrak (street), leading to Dam Square.

Dam Square is the historic heart of Amsterdam. The city got its start right here in about the year 1250, when fishermen in this marshy delta settled along the built-up banks of the Amstel River. They built a ‘damme,’ blocking the Amstel River, creating a small village called “Amstel-damme.”

Carrying on along Kalverstraat, a pedestrian-only street, we came to “De Papegaai Hidden Church,” a Catholic church which dates from an era when Catholics in Amsterdam were forced to worship in secret. (In the 1500’s Protestant were fighting Catholics all over Europe. While technically illegal, Catholicism was tolerated as long as Catholics practiced in unadvertised places.)  The nickname “papegaai” means parrot.

On the arch of the Museum entrance is Amsterdam’s coat of arms – a red shield with three Xs and a crown. The X-shaped crosses represent the crucifixion of St. Andrew, patron saint of fishermen. They also represent the three virtues of heroism, determination, and mercy – symbolism that was declared by the queen after the Dutch experience in WWII. The crown dates from 1489, when Maximilian I – a Habsburg emperor – also ruled the Low Countries. He paid off a big loan with help from Amsterdam’s city bankers and, as thanks for the cash, gave the city permission to use his prestigious trademark, the Habsburg crown, atop its shield.  Below the coat of arms is a relief (dated 1581) showing boys around a dove, asking for charity, a reminder this building was once an orphanage.

We walked through the museum (which we toured later), along this colourful patchwork carpet, representing all the countries from where Dutch immigrants originated…

…a short cut to a hidden little courtyard, the Behijnhof, lined with houses around a church, which has sheltered a community of Beguines – pious and simple women who have removed themselves from the world at large to dedicated their lives to God – since 1346. The last Beguine died in 1971, but this Begijnof continues to thrive, providing subsidized housing to about 100 single women.

Also in the courtyard, a black wooden house, dating from 1528, the oldest in the city.

From here, past the Munttoren (Mint Tower), which marked the limit of the medieval walled city and served as one of its original gates….

…to the Bloemenmarkt (Flower Market)…

While Rick Steves recommended stopping for raw herring along the way, we politely declined, and instead stopped at Cafe Americain, famous art nouveau brasserie which, since the 1950’s, has been a celeb meeting place. (We didn’t see any…not that we’d know…)

Continuing along, some street views..

We then toured the Amsterdam City Museum – a good overview of the history of Amsterdam…

…and then followed Rick Steves’ Jordaan neighbourhood walk… This is a beautiful area of the city, full of cafes and boutiques, and beautiful strolling streets…

We came to the Homo-Monument, a memorial to homosexuals who lost their lives in WWII, and a commemoration of all those persecuted for their sexuality. It’s a three-part monument: a pink stone triangle that juts into the canal; another triangle flat in the square; a third triangle structure in the square. The pink triangle design reclaims the symbol that the Nazis used to mark homosexuals.

We made our way back to the hotel to take advantage of the lounge food and drink, and to pack up in preparation for our early morning departure.

The next morning, Sunday, we picked up a rental car, and drove to meet Annelien and Willem a little ways out of the city. We were joining them for two nights on the island of Texel, in the north of the country, an area to which we’d never been. (Texel is the first island in an archipelago of islands in the north, that curve towards Germany.) Willem sings with a choir, which was performing Sunday afternoon in an old church on the island.  We drove north, and then took a ferry. Willem grabbed a sandwich as he had a rehearsal as soon as we would arrive.  The seagulls loved it!

Once on the island, Willem went off to rehearse while we headed into the main town of Oudeschild, for lunch and a little wander of the harbour.

The choir performs:

After a very lovely performance, we drove to our hotel, at the north end of the island, where we enjoyed the ‘lounge area’ (space at the end of the dining room), and then dinner.

Monday was cloudy, foggy, windy and cool, but we were on an island with lots of beach, and a lighthouse, and a museum, all waiting to be explored.  And so… to the lighthouse!

watch the foam wiggle in the wind in this very short video..

We next toured the Museum Kaap Skil, in Oudeschild. From the museum’s brochure: From the 15th till the 19th century, Texel was the junction for international shipping. The ships at the world-famous anchorage ‘Roads of Texel’ filled up with supplies and waited for favourable winds to set sail. Despite the protection from the island, many ships perished on the Roads of Texel during bad weather. The century-old shipwrecks have been preserved as time capsules under the sand. Due to erosion, they are being exposed. Numerous unusual finds from the wrecks are on display.

As well, in the Open Air Museum, you can experience life in the fishing village Skil in the early 20th century, including authentically designed fishermen homes and shops, grain mill and forge.

On the ceiling of the museum coffee shop was the most amazing ‘sculpture’ of wool…. a complete map of the island of Texel:

The Tessels Lant is a work by artist Erna Van Sambeek made for Kaap Skil. The work is made entirely by hand. Thirty residents of the island helped by spinning, dyeing, knitting, and felting the more than thirty-five kilos of raw wool used for the work. The wool comes from the Texelaar sheep breed and other sheep grazing on Texel. The spun wool is dyed with extracts of plants growing on Texel such as tansy, elderberry and yarrow. The seaweed for the forest is taken from the beach. It’s a very large piece, hard to tell from the picture, and so perfectly created.

After we ate lunch, Don and I got a lesson in how to create a simple labyrinth.  Willem has been studying, and creating, labyrinths for over 20 years.  As it was low tide in the afternoon, we went to a beach where Willem created a labyrinth and we all took turns walking it. It is quite a unique and reflective experience, more moving than I expected.

Back to our hotel, we rested, changed, and headed out for dinner, and our final evening together.  Don and I left the next morning for Rotterdam.

We arrived at my cousin Marianne and husband Jan’s lovely apartment in Rotterdam in time for lunch.

After lunch we set out to return our rental car and then wander around the city of Rotterdam…

Rotterdam native, Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536), was born in a house nearby. This humanist philosopher and satirist grew nervous when his like-minded friend, Thomas More, was beheaded by the English King so, to evade a similar fate, Erasmus traveled far and wide, all around Europe. He forged the notion of being a European – a citizen of the world, not tied to a single nationality. In other words, Erasmus is the intellectual forebear of the European Union, which named its highly successful foreign study program after him. On the pedestal of the statue is an Erasmus quote: “The entire world is your fatherland.” (Rick Steves)

Next to the library are the famous Kubuswoningen “Cube Houses.” In the late 1970s, architect Piet Blom turned urban housing on its ear with this bold design: 39 identical yellow cubes, all tilted up on their corners, and each filled with the residence of a single family. Taken together, the Cube Houses look like dozens of dice in mid-toss. You can tour one of them, which we did 17 years ago, though not this time.

Across from the library and cube houses is a very modern (and new to us) Market Hall. Inside the arch is a food market, and arcing above and around that are 230 apartments – some that have views into the market.

Continuing on to the Oudehaven – Old Harbour – which is mostly a re-creation of what was before the war, with the White House another rare example of a surviving prewar building. When it was built in 1898, it was Europe’s tallest building, at about 140 feet. The harbour is lined with cafes and restaurants, and we stopped at one for a drink, before walking home.

We went out for dinner, and the whole evening turned into a very special event. We first got a water taxi to the restaurant:

this little video, of Don in the back of the water taxi, shows how quickly we were traveling.  Jan and I sat inside!

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We pulled up to this building, what used to be the Holland America shipping company’s head office, and is now a restaurant.

…that overlooked the exact spot where those emigrating to North America would have boarded their ships.  And then Jan presented us with the research he had done on my father!! He had found the passenger manifest list, with my father’s name on it, and the details of the ship on which he traveled!!  This was such a SPECIAL gift!! ❤

We walked home from a lovely dinner – a long walk, much to Jan’s dismay. 😉

The next morning, after breakfast, we set out to wander Delfshaven, a preserved area from Rotterdam’s Golden Age, which originally was a port for Delft (and whose harbour is connected to Delft town centre by six miles of canals.) Jan and Marianne moor their boat here, and it’s so very picturesque, complete with working windmill and home to the Pilgrim Fathers Church, built in 1417, where the Pilgrims prayed the night before setting sail for the New World on August 1, 1620. (Their ship, the Speedwell, had to be swapped out for the Mayflower in England before continuing on to Plymouth Rock.)

We had a last lunch together at the apartment, and then my cousin Corjan arrived to drive us to his and wife Tonny’s home in Weert, a small city in the southeastern corner of Holland. We enjoyed dinner out in town, with their two sons, re-connecting over good food and wine.

The next day, we set off for the city of Maastricht, at the very southeastern end of the country. There was a bookstore there I had read about, housed in what used to be a Dominican church, and given I was on a bit of a library-and-bookstore tour, of course I had put it on my list.  The store did not disappoint!

We wandered a little through the old city centre..

had lunch in a lovely little outdoor courtyard…

…and then, we headed back to Weert, for a surprise Corjan and Tonny had organized… There’s a working mill on the outskirts of Weert, and they arranged for the miller to give us a private tour of how it all works. Of course we have seen windmills, but we’ve never seen how they work that closely, and it was really special to have the very proud miller explain it all to us.  It’s an incredible amount of work to keep it all running!

here’s a short video of the whole process…

20 more seconds of faster grinding…

Time to say goodbye to the miller, with huge thanks to Corjan and Tonny for arranging the private tour, and to the millers for being so welcoming!!  On the way home we stopped at a farm to pick up freshly picked white asparagus for our dinner.  Corjan cooked us a light dinner of fresh asparagus, plus bacon and eggs, just the way his father and our Opa used to make.

The next morning, Friday, Corjan drove us to the Dusseldorf airport so we could fly to Berlin (through Amsterdam…slightly convoluted, but no matter) for our last five days. Tot ziens to my cousins!

We arrived at our hotel, in the Prenzlauer neighbourhood, in the late afternoon, settled in, and then set out to find somewhere for wine and a light meal.

Wandering after dinner, we came to our first encounter with the Berlin Wall memorials that are throughout the city…

We saved the rest of the city for the following days, and headed to our hotel for a good sleep.

We started our day by listening to, and walking along with, Rick Steves’ city introduction walks. He begins at the Reichstag, but first we had to get there. We took the subway, and emerged at Potsdamer Platz which, before WWII, was the “Times Square of Berlin.” It was pulverized in WWII, and stood at the intersection of the American, British, and Soviet postwar sectors. When the Wall went up, the platz was cut in two and left a deserted no-man’s-land for 40 years. As throughout Berlin, two subtle lines in the pavement indicate where the Wall once stood. (See my photo just above.)

On to the Reichstag, the heart of Germany’s government. Berlin has long been a Germanic capital, from the first Dukes of Brandenburg in medieval times to the democracy of today, with all the different governments in-between. When Hitler was in power, the Reichstag was hardly used, but it remained a powerful symbol and therefore a prime target for Allied bombers. The structure survived, with some damage. After the war, when Berlin was divided into East and West, the Wall ran right behind the Reichstag, which placed the building in no-man’s land, and in disuse. The capital of West Germany was moved to Bonn. After the Wall fell, the Reichstag again became the focus of the new nation, and was renovated, with the addition of a glass dome. You can book tickets to visit and climb the dome, so while we were there, we did just that for later in the week.

In front of the Reichstag, a Memorial to Politicians Who Opposed Hitler – 96 slabs honour the 96 Reichstag members who spoke out against Adolf Hitler and the rising tide of fascism. When Hitler became chancellor, these critics were persecuted and murdered. On each slab is a name, political party, date and location of death.

Around the corner from the Reichstag, where the Berlin Wall once stood, is the Berlin Wall Victims Memorial: the row of white crosses commemorates a few of the many brave East Berliners who died trying to cross the Wall to freedom.

And in the park, two memorials – the Memorial to the Homosexuals Persecuted Under the National Socialist Regime: a start dark-gray concrete box with a small window through which you can watch a film loop of same-sex couples kissing, a reminder that life and love are precious…

…and the Monument to the Murdered Sinti and Roma of Europe…roughly 500,00 Holocaust victims identified as “Sinti” and “Roma.” These groups lost the same percentage of their population as the Jews did. The monument includes an opaque glass wall with a timeline, and a steel portal leading to a circular reflecting pool surrounded by stone slabs, some containing names of death camps. Along the rim of the pool is a poem “Auschwitz,” by Santino Spinelli, an Italian Roma.

We now came to the Brandenburg Gate, the last survivor of the 14 original gates in Berlin’s old city wall. (This one led to the neighbouring city of Brandenburg.) The four-horse chariot op top is driven by the Goddess of Peace. When Napoleon conquered Prussia in 1806, he took this statue to the Louvre in Paris. Then, after the Prussians defeated Napoleon, they got it back (in 1813), and the Goddess of Peace was renamed the “Goddess of Victory.” During the time of the Berlin Wall, the gate was also stranded in no-man’s-land and off-limits to everyone.

Through the gate, into Pariser Platz, named “Parisian Square” after the Prussians defeated France and Napoleon in 1813. It was bombed to smithereens in WWII and rebuilt. It houses the US Embassy, banks and the famous Hotel Adlon, where celebrities stay, including Michael Jackson, and from whose balcony he famously dangled his infant son.

Between the US Embassy and the hotel is a low-profile bank built by the high-profile Canadian-American architect Frank Gehry. The bank is nondescript (structures on this plaza are designed so as not to draw attention from the Brandenburg Gate) but inside the bank, is an extraordinary sculpture by Gehry, that looks like a big, slithery fish.

Our next stop was the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, which is the MOST moving memorial I may have ever seen, anywhere.

This memorial consists of 2,711 coffin-shaped pillars covering an entire city block. More than 160,000 Jewish people lived in Berlin when Hitler took power. Tens of thousands fled, and many more were arrested, sent to nearby concentration camps and eventually murdered. The memorial remembers them and the other six million Jews who were killed by the Nazis during WWII. Completed in 2005 by the Jewish-American architect Peter Eisenman, this was the first formal, German-government-sponsored Holocaust memorial. Using the word “murdered” in the title was intentional, and a big deal. The pillars, made of hollow concrete, stand in a gently sunken area that can be entered from any side. No matter where you are, the exit always seems to be up. The number of pillars isn’t symbolic – it’s simply how many fit on the provided land. The memorial’s location – where the Wall once stood – is also coincidental. The meaning of the memorial is open to interpretation. Is it a symbolic cemetery full of gravestones? An intentionally disorienting labyrinth? Perhaps it’s meant to reflect how the senseless horror of the Holocaust didn’t adhere to rational thought. It’s up to the visitor to derive meaning.

I took a short video as I walked through, which really gives you an idea of this extraordinarily moving memorial.

We then walked to the Brandenburger Tor S-Bahn subway station, and went down to take a look …

This station still has the original 1930s green tilework walls…

…and the old sign written in Gothic lettering. It was one of Berlin’s “ghost stations.” During the Cold War, the zigzag line dividing East and West Berlin meant that some existing train lines crossed the border underground. For 28 years, stations like this were unused, as Western trains slowly passed through, and passengers saw only East German guards. Then, in 1989, within days of the fall of the Wall, these stations were reopened.

We wandered down the lovely Unter den Linden boulevard, the heart of imperial Germany. During Berlin’s Golden Age in the late 1800s, this was one of Europe’s grand boulevards – the Champs-Elysees of Berlin, then a city of nearly 2 million people. It was lined with linden trees. The street got its start in the 15th century as a way to connect the royal palace, a 1/2 mile down the road, with the king’s hunting grounds. Many of the grandest landmarks along the way are thanks to Frederick the Great, who ruled from 1740 to 1786, and put his kingdom (Prussia) and his capital (Berlin) on the map.

Just off the boulevard we found a great restaurant for lunch; we loved it so much we returned two more times. It’s SO hard to get enough salads and vegetables when you’re eating out all the time. The Little Green Rabbit served a fantastic selection of salads, made fresh as you watched, plus soups and stews, and topped every salad with a sprig of the basil that they grew in pots along the salad bar.

Refreshed and restored, we continued along the boulevard, coming to Bebelsplatz: Square of the Books… Frederick the Great built this square to show off Prussian ideals: education, the arts, improvement of the individual, and a tolerance for different groups-provided they are committed to the betterment of society. This square was the centre of Frederick’s capital. Across the boulevard, edging the square, Humboldt University, one of Europe’s greatest. Marx and Engels both studied here, as did the Brothers Grimm and more than two dozen Nobel Prize winner. Albert Einstein taught here until he fled Germany to join the faculty at Princeton in 1932.

In the square, the former state library, which was funded by Frederick the Great. After the library was damaged in WWII, communist authorities decided to rebuild it in the original style, but only because Lenin studied here during much of his exile from Russia. Inside, is a 1968 vintage stained-glass window that depicts Lenin’s life’s work.

Another very moving memorial is found in this square: the book-burning memorial. When you look through the glass window in the pavement you seen what appears to be a room of empty bookshelves. This spot commemorates a notorious event that took place here during the Nazi years as it was here in 1933 that university staff and students built a bonfire, and into the flames threw 20,000 newly forbidden books – books authored by the likes of Einstein, Hemingway, Freud, etc. Overseeing it all was the Nazi propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, who also tossed books onto the fire. As the flames rose up, he declared, “The era of extreme Jewish intellectualism has come to an end, and the German revolution has again opened the way for the true essence of being German.” Hitler purposely chose this square – built by Frederick the Great to embody culture and enlightenment – to symbolically demonstrate that the era of tolerance and openness was over. The nearby plaque has a quote by the 19th-century German poet Heinrich Heine. The Nazis despised Heine because, even though he converted to Christianity, he was born a Jew. His books were among those that went up in flames on this spot. The quote, written in 1820, reads: “Where they burn books, in the end they will also burn people.”

It’s impossible to photograph the room of empty shelves in the daylight (though you can see it), so we came back at night to get a picture. I’m posting it here now…

Further along Unter den Linden boulevard is a statue of Frederick the Great.

We then came to Neue Wache, the “New Guardhouse.” It was built in 1816 to house the guards of the nearby palace. Over the years, each successive German regime has used it as a memorial to honour its soldiers. After the Wall fell, the structure was transformed into a national memorial. In 1933, the interior was fitted with the statue that is a replica of “Mother with Her Dead Son” by Käthe Kollwitz, a Berlin artist who lived through both world wars. The memorial is open to the sky, letting the elements – sunshine, rain, snow – fall on the sculpture.

The Unter den Linden walk ended at Museum Island, and the Berlin Cathedral.

As we weren’t ready to tour any museums, we continued on with a portion of Rick Steves’ Communist East Berlin walk. In the park across the bridge from the Berlin Cathedral is the Marx-Engels-Forum, a park dedicated in 1986 by the East German government. The ensemble of sculptures tells a story: behind Marx and Engels is a relief that shows the Industrial Age reality of a cold and heartless world of exploitation; then came Marx and Engels; but progress toward workers’ rights had to be earned-photos on the pillars show images of workers struggling against the forces of capitalism; the happy ending that comes with all social realism is depicted in a bronze relief of free-flowing images – a utopian workers’ paradise.  (Obviously you had to believe the philosophy!)

Around the corner from this park, the Radisson Hotel, with a wild lobby feature – a *very* large fish tank!

Also in the neighbourhood, the Ampelmann store, dedicated to the DDR’s iconic, retro, street light symbols..

We ended our walk in Alexanderplatz, built in 1805 during the Prussian Golden Age, named for a Russian czar, Alexander, because it was the gateway for trade to Eastern Europe at that time. On November 4, 1989, more than a half-million East Berliners gathered here to demand their freedom.  It’s a busy square with a great fountain in its centre.

With over 20,000 steps to our very long day, it was definitely time to head back to our neighbourhood, clean up, and go out for dinner.

On Sunday we set out walking, heading to the Berlin Wall Memorial and Visitors Centre, close to our hotel neighbourhood of Prenzlauer Berg. The Memorial is located along the former “death strip” – the no-man’s-land between East and West. For decades, it was strewn with barbed wire and patrolled by guards. Today it’s a long, narrow, and poignant park, running for nearly a mile alongside the most complete surviving stretch of the Wall in Berlin. The Visitor’s Centre is the place to start the tour, with two very good introductory films in English, covering the four-decade history of the Wall.

After watching the films, we moved outside to the park.

The Window of Remembrance show photos of people who died trying to escape East Berlin.

The Documentation Centre is a good museum of exhibits, geared to a new generation of Berliners who can hardly imagine their city split in two. Also from here, you can climb stairs to the rooftop where you can view from above the last preserved stretch of the death strip with an original guard tower.

The Chapel of Reconciliation stands on the site of the old Church of Reconciliation. The original church was built in 1894 and served the neighbourhood parish, but when the wall went up, it was stranded in the death strip, and so was abandoned. Border guards used the steeple as a watchtower, but it was eventually blown up by the East Germans in 1985. There’s a photo of the original church in the Documentation Centre.

The field of rye in front of the chapel was initiated in 2005 as an art event by the Protestant Reconciliation Parish. It is maintained under the metaphor “Where it is possible to sow, there is peace.” (a sign board nearby posts this information)

Not much remains of the old church but the bells and the twisted iron cross, on display…

This Reconciliation Sculpture was created by Josefina de Vasconcellos, a call for reconciliation following the devastation of the Second World War. Copies exist at sites that were deeply affected by the war: in the Coventry cathedral, in the Hiroshima peace museum, and in the former border strip at the Berlin Wall. (sign board)

For lunch this day, we decided we better try the recommended street food specialty, Currywurst, created in Berlin after WWII, when a fast-food cook got her hands on some curry and Worcestershire sauce from British troops stationed here. It’s basically a grilled pork sausage, chopped in pieces and smothered with curry sauce.

After lunch we followed Rick Steves’ walk for our own neighbourhood, Prenzlauer Berg.  We started at Mauer park, “Wall Park,” an area that used to be in no-man’s-land. Today it’s a lively gathering place, and on a Sunday afternoon, full of people, live music, and an outdoor market. There’s also a sports stadium here, built to host the World Youth Festival in 1951. The wall in front of the stadium is a favourite for graffiti artists, and we found a few.

Some of the streets in this neighbourhood have beautiful buildings…

And in behind, just one of Berlin’s many courtyards.. In the late 1980s, the Prenzlauer Berg was run down, and authorities proposed tearing down the neighbourhood and replacing it with more efficient and modern concrete block housing instead. The locals had a respect for this area’s history and fought to keep the original architecture. They’d take ownership of courtyards like this one, chipping away at the concrete and planting grass and gardens – a process called “hofbegrunung (“courtyard greening up” – basically urban gardening). It was a literal “grassroots movement” of opposition to the centrally planned communist aesthetic – people were reclaiming their “shared property” from a government they didn’t trust.

Our next stop was Prater Beirgarten – Berlin’s oldest beer garden – perfect timing as we were very thirsty!

While Prenzlauer Berg largely survived WWII, it fell into disrepair under the communists. In 1987, East and West Berlin both celebrated the 750th anniversary of the city’s founding, and the DDR government had the next section we came to, Husemannstrasse, spruced up, restoring it to its original, circa-1900 glory. The old-time street signs, with the Berlin bear – are part of that re-model…

The Rykestrasse Synagogue, built in 1904, is one of only a handful that still exist in Berlin. It looks small from the outside, but is Germany’s largest surviving synagogue, with an original capacity for 2,000. It’s typical for synagogues to be set back from the street, as this one is, hiding in a big courtyard and camouflaged to blend in with the other houses on the street. During Kristallnacht (November 9, 1938), anti-Semitic government agents and civilians smashed and set fire to synagogues all over Germany. In most cases, fire departments simply let them burn to the ground. But here, the burning synagogue put the surrounding non-Jewish homes in jeopardy, so the fires were extinguished, and it was saved.

Our last stop in our neighbourhood, the Wasserturm (Water Tower), sitting on the highest spot in the city.

Time to return to our hotel and clean up before dinner. We enjoyed an excellent meal at a lovely little French restaurant in the neighbourhood.

On Monday, we set out by train to the outskirts of the city, to see the Philological Library at the Freie Universität, the last of my library visits for this trip.  It was another unique design, designed by internationally known architect Norman Foster, in the shape of a human brain, and opened in 2005. (wiki)

We took the train back into the city, ate lunch, and then went to the German History Museum, where we spent four hours absorbing German history from before Medieval Times to the present… one of the most comprehensive museums we have ever toured…extraordinarily well done.

Back to our neighbourhood, we had a delicious dinner at a Vietnamese place we would definitely recommend..

The next day we started by visiting the Reichstag Dome. The structure is fantastic!

Walking through the park adjacent to the Reichstag, after our Dome visit, we came to the Soviet War Memorial, which honours the Soviet army soldiers who died in the battle for Berlin, which brought WWII to a decisive conclusion. Erected by the Soviets in the divided city just months after the war’s end, the monument is maintained under the terms of Germany’s 1990 reunification treaty.

Down the long boulevard leading to the Brandenburg Gate, is the Victory Column, topped with a golden statue that commemorates the three big military victories that established Prussia as a world power in the late 1800s – over France, Denmark, and Austria…

Facing the other way, the Brandenburg Gate, and sculpture “The Crier”…

On a signboard near the statue, this information: The Crier was designed in 1967 by Berlin born sculptor Gerhard Marcks (1889-1981). To celebrate the centenary of this artist’s birth, the statue was installed in May, 1989.  It was commissioned in 1967 by Radio Bremen, symbolizing the ongoing mission of radio and television: the broadcasting of news. The Crier, installed in 1989, sends out a different message in the capital of Germany. The silent, yet emphatic cry of the statue in the direction of the east, refers specifically to the quotation by Italian poet Francesco Petrarch (1304-1374), inscribed on its pedestal: “I walk through the world and cry: peace, peace, peace.” In fact, the call for peace and justice was heard: a mere six months after the statue’s installation, the Berlin Wall fell, on November 9, 1989.

On our way to Checkpoint Charlie, we stopped at a different branch of Little Green Rabbit for lunch, and discovered this very ‘unique’ sculpture – no name, no idea!

On to Checkpoint Charlie… For nearly 3 decades this was a border crossing between East and West Berlin.  It became known worldwide and stood as a symbol of the Cold War itself.  (I don’t think McDonald’s was there during the Cold War 😉 )

In the same area, a segment of the Berlin Wall has survived because it abuts the ruins of a Nazi building (the SS and Gestapo headquarters) that was intentionally left as a memorial. It’s an evocative stretch of Wall because, with its holes, you can see its rebar innards.

Across the street, the only major Hitler-era government building that survived the war’s bombs, once housed the headquarters of the Nazi Air Force (Luftwaffe). After the war, this building became the headquarters for the Soviet occupation.

Around the corner, on the side of the building, is a vivid example of communist art. This mural, by Max Lingner, called Aufbau der Republik, is classic Socialist Realism, showing the entire society – industrial laborers, farm workers, women, and children – all happily singing the same patriotic song. Its subtitle is: “The importance of peace for the cultural development of humanity and the necessity of struggle to achieve this goal.” 

The above mural shows the communist ideal.  The reality was quite different. A little further away from the mural is a black-and-white photo embedded in the square. It shows an angry 1953 crowd with arms linked in solidarity, marching against the government.

The next neighbourhood we walked and explored was the Old Jewish quarter. We started at the bustling Hackescher Market, where I found a beautiful jacket to buy and met the designer, who was selling her stunning clothes from a tent.

This area has several lovely courtyards. The Hackesche Höfe is a series of eight connected courtyards, full of shops and cafes, and some beautiful tile work in the first courtyard…

This area is also full of “stumbling stones” – small monuments to everyday people who were murdered in the Holocaust. Each plaque tells a story of who lived at the address where the plaque is placed, and where and when they were killed. These plaques are found throughout Germany, as we had also seen them in Wiesbaden a few years ago.

The next courtyard we came to is called Haus Schwarzenberg, owned by an artists’ collective. In it are a bar, cinema, gallery, small museums, and graffiti-covered walls…

Lots of interesting little shops and also The Sixties Diner, popular for locals who want to “eat American.” (!)

We walked up Grosse Hamburger Strasse, (amusingly the Sixties Diner is on this street), to the oldest Jewish cemetery in the city. At the entrance, an evocative memorial honouring the 55,000 Berlin Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust. The monument is piled with small stones, following the Jewish tradition of placing a stone on a grave as a sign of remembrance, and to prevent the body from being disturbed.

Also along this street, a big gap between two yellow buildings, another example of the “missing buildings” what were bombed out in WWII and never rebuilt. This one has been turned into a thought-provoking memorial – high up on the white wall facing into the courtyard are the names of the people who once lived there.

Across from this gap, the Sophien-kirche, a protestant church built on land that the Jewish community voluntarily donated for that purpose in the 1690s, giving this street the nickname, “Street of Tolerance.” Martin Luther King delivered a sermon in this church on the evening of September 13, 1964. From a placard nearby, this information: In his sermon he said, “No man-made barrier can erase the fact that God’s children live on both sides of the Wall.” It seems a good reminder…

Continuing, we came to an old building that houses the Clärchens Ballhaus, a Berlin institution since 1913, hosting ballroom dancing and dance lessons. We wished we’d known earlier to come for an evening’s entertainment.

And then, the New Synagogue… Consecrated in 1866, the original synagogue that stood here was the biggest and finest in Germany. Services were held until 1940, when the Nazis confiscated the building. It escaped significant damage on Kristallnacht, but was bombed in 1943 and partially rebuilt in 1990.

Our last day had arrived. We had two things on our list to see before we got a taxi to the airport late that afternoon. The first was the East Side Gallery… This is the biggest remaining stretch of the Wall, nearly a mile long, and is now the “world’s longest outdoor art gallery.” The murals are classified as protected monuments.  The west side of the wall is covered in graffiti – a style of “art” I don’t find attractive at all. Graffiti-covered areas look run down and dirty to me.  But, in West Berlin, when the Wall was up, that kind of tagging was tolerated. The East side of the Wall was left clean because, of course, those in the East couldn’t even get to the Wall.  The art work there now was commissioned, and creates a great gallery.  As I have not subjected this blog to photos from the History Museum, and we didn’t visit any other galleries, here follows several photos from this unique gallery…

..And the most moving, by Kani Alavi, “It Happened in November,” which shows the sea of humanity flowing through the wall the night it opened…

From the wall we took the subway to the neighbourhood called Kreuzberg, often described as Berlin’s “Turkish neighbourhood,” or its “edgy multicultural district,” and followed Rick Steves’ walk for this area, after grabbing a fantastically huge sandwich in a little middle-eastern café, where there was a small group of students from Sweden, with their (very young) teachers, one of whom was Canadian… It’s a small and wonderful world.

In the late 19th century this area expanded like crazy to house workers. During the Cold War, Kreuzberg was in the West but surrounded on three sides by the Wall. Its buildings, already damaged by WWII bombs, because further dilapidated, all of which made Kreuzberg the least desirable neighbourhood in West Berlin. Much of the area dates from the 1970s when this area’s low rents attracted two groups: draft-dodging West Germans who squatted in ramshackle tenements, and immigrants – largely Turkish guest workers, trying to scrape together a living in their adopted country.  In the last decade, the area has been in transition, and becoming gentrified, but is still a great mix.

After our walk in this area, we took the subway back to our hotel where we had stored our luggage for the day, sat in their back garden for a cold beer, and then got a cab to the airport, to fly to Amsterdam. We stayed in the Amsterdam airport hotel (a great hotel!), and flew home the next day.  Berlin was a beautiful and sobering city. We were reminded of so much history, and very impressed with how well it is all documented and memorialized.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Planes, Trains, Ferries, Subways, Trams and Taxis: Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Helsinki and Tallinn – September 2017 December 6, 2017

Posted by freda in Uncategorized.
8 comments

We flew out Friday night, August 31st, and landed in Moscow late on Saturday afternoon, September 1st. After settling into the very lovely Marriott Aurora hotel, brilliantly situated a few blocks from Theatre Square, and Red Square, we took advantage of our access to the executive suite for a light dinner and glass of wine, and then set out for a walk to shake off the long day of travel.  We walked for a full two hours, around the perimeter of the Kremlin and Red Square, because we couldn’t walk through Red Square due to a weekend festival of some sort.  Here are a few pictures from our evening’s stroll, when we didn’t know exactly what we were seeing, but with which we were already enthralled, (and a reminder that most of our pictures look best full-screen, so just click on any one you’d like to see that way. Yes, it’ll take longer.. just do it for a few…)

The next day, after a long sleep and good breakfast, we set out to explore on our own. Don has a master’s sense of direction (I definitely don’t), and an amazing ability to figure out any subway system in any language. He treated the Russian language like a code, something fun to crack. Because the Cyrillic alphabet is based on the Greek alphabet, and he studied math, making him familiar with some of the Greek alphabet, he managed to brilliantly figure out where we needed to go. It was all Greek to me! 😀

The Moscow metro stations are works of art, a true tourist attraction, and one of our goals on our first day was to see as many of them as we could. Our other destination was the Tretyakov Gallery, which houses the largest collection of Russian art.

So, a bit of an overview on the Moscow Metro: The Moscow Metro is still expanding, but currently has 194 stations and 325 km of track. Almost 10,000 trains operate every day, carrying 8-9 million passengers per day – more than the London and New York systems combined. During peak periods trains arrive at stations every 90 seconds. The stations are spotlessly clean, apparently swept every hour, and with no garbage cans anywhere, because bombs can be left in them.

When the idea of an underground railway was first proposed for Moscow in 1902 it was rejected… but by the 1930s, the need for better transportation had become urgent as the population of the city more than doubled to meet the demands of rapid industrialization. Two young communists, Nikita Khrushchev and Lazar Kaganovich, were entrusted with building a metro that would serve as a showcase for socialism and the achievements of workers and peasants. Construction began in December 1931, during the period of Stalin’s first Five Year Plan. The Communist Party decreed that “the whole country will build the metro,” so workers – both men and women – were drafted from all over the Soviet Union. They were assisted by soldiers of the Red Army and by over 13,000 members of the Communist Youth League, called Komsomol. This latter groups’ work was commemorated by named Komsomolskaya after them. Some of the Soviet Union’s finest artists were employed to decorate the metro. Working within the confines of Socialist Realism, many dealt with themes such as the Revolution, national defence, and the Soviet way of life. 

Armed with a metro map, and a list of the best metro stations, we began our underground adventure at the station closest to our hotel, Teatralnaya, which is in the theatre square. It is decorated in the theme of theatre arts, with the figures, representing music and dance, dressed in national costumes from the various nationalities of the Soviet Union.  The columns are faced with labradorite and marble; the lights are crystal in bronze frames…

Next stop: Ploshchad Revolyutsii, one of the most famous stations, named after Revolution Square. The main hall has a series of marble-lined arches; on either side of each arch is a life-sized bronze figure representing the “everyday heroes” who made the Revolution possible, or helped to build the subsequent Soviet State: Red Guards, farmers, sailors, sportsmen and women, parents and children…

Our third stop was Novokuznetskaya, honouring Russian military heroes, particularly from WWII. The decorations include seven octagonal ceiling mosaics on the theme of wartime industry and a bas-relief frieze running along the base of the ceiling depicting the soldiers of the Red Army in combat. (wiki)

At this third station we actually went out, and walked to the Tretyakov Gallery, but I’m going to keep all our metro station photos together… they are like galleries unto themselves.

Kropotkinskaya station, sporting clean lines and simple colours, flared columns faced with marble, and a floor of grey and red granite, was named after the anarchist, Prince Pyotr Kropotkin.  I loved the way the columns were lit at the top.

Park Kultury station is at Gorky Park, which we visited a few days later.  (Touring the stations, we didn’t often go above ground…) Niches in the walls of this station hold white marble bas-relief medallions which depict sporting and other leisure activities of the Soviet youth.

Kievskaya station features large mosaics, with ‘idealized’ scenes of Russo-Ukrainian friendship… in some, portraying healthy, happy peasants celebrating agricultural abundance, which ignores the terrible famine that resulted from Stalin’s forced collectivization policy of the early 1930s.

The next station, Vystavochnaya, was opened only in 2005, and is completely different from the old-world stations… very modern!

Some stations have two halls because they are on two lines. After viewing the modern station above, we returned to Kievskaya, but transferred to a different line, and discovered this side of the station is completely different from the ostentatious mosaics…

Belorusskaya has a central hall with octagonal mosaics depicting rural Belorussian life…

Mayakovskaya station: the name as well as the design is a reference to Futurism and its prominent Russian exponent, poet Vladimir Mayakovsky. Considered to be one of the most beautiful in the system, it is a fine example of pre-WWII Stalinist Architecture and one of the most famous Metro stations in the world. It was designed by Aleksey Dushkin in 1938 and won the Grand Prix at the New York World’s Fair. It is most well known for its 34 ceiling mosaics depicting “24 Hours in the Land of the Soviets.” (wiki)

Don and I thought the next station rather plain. Partizanskaya is dedicated to the Soviet partisans who resisted the Nazis in the “Great Patriotic War,” as they call WWII.  Two statues adorn pillars closest to the exit…

We saw the two most beautiful stations the next day, but I present them now… Komsomolskaya station is one of the busiest as well as the most ‘palace-like.’ Its lead designer, Alexey Shchusev, designed it as an illustration of a historical speech given by Stalin, in which Stalin honoured military leaders of the past. These people appear in the ceiling mosaics.

Last, but definitely not least, Novoslobodskaya is best known for its 32 stained glass panels, which are the work of Latvian artists. Each panel, surrounded by an elaborate brass border, is set into one of the station’s pylons and illuminated from within. Both the pylons and the pointed arches between them are faced with pinkish Ural marble and edged with brass molding. (wiki)

Well, as mentioned earlier, we also went to the Tretyakov Gallery, with the world’s largest collection of Russian art.  Along the way:

Pavel Tretyakov began collecting art in 1856 and in 1892 donated it to the city of Moscow. It is housed in what was his home. The collection has expanded over the years as “numerous private collections were nationalized by the Soviet regime.”

Inside, we wandered the galleries, looking for a few paintings that our Eyewitness Guide to Moscow highlights, and stopping to enjoy what struck us.  Of course there were an abundance of paintings on religious themes, but my favourites are always the more personal, like this one of a ‘family.’

The Russian Orthodox church uses icons for both worship and teaching.  Every Orthodox church we went into was *full* of them (as you will see in photos to come). They serve(d) to tell the stories to the people who couldn’t read. The first icons were brought to Russia from Byzantium. Kiev was Russia’s main icon painting centre until the Mongols conquered it in 1240. Influential schools then sprang up in other areas. The Moscow school was founded in the late 14th century, and its greatest period was during the 15th century. The Tretyakov Gallery has a large collection.

We enjoyed a late lunch at a restaurant right beside the gallery, and then continued our metro station tour, (as already shown), and did some more walking…

That evening we had dinner at Café Pushkin and ate in the Library Hall, of course. 😉 This lovely lovely restaurant was recommend by American author Amor Towles, when I went to see him, and others, at a reading. He was talking about his book A Gentleman in Moscow, which my book club had read and loved, which takes place almost solely in the Metropol Hotel in Moscow. When I got him to sign my book, I mentioned we were headed to Moscow, and that we would have a drink at the Metropol. He then recommended this restaurant.  It was a fantastic meal in an old-world-charming ambience.  Please click on the above link to see the details because our pictures did not turn out, except for this next photo.

The next day, Sunday, we met our private tour guide in the hotel lobby at 10:00. I had booked Alina from home, through a company called Tours By Locals, which was started several years ago by a couple of Vancouver fellows – how could I *not* choose this company 😉  We had two 5-hours days with her. We started by discussing what we had already done, and what we would do today, and then we set out.  Because our hotel is so close, we started at Theatre Square, with the Bolshoi, and learned about the other beautiful theatre buildings.  From there we walked to Tverskaya Ulitsa, which links Moscow to Saint Petersburg and which was the street, during imperial times, along which the tsars arrived from the Northern capital to stay at their Kremlin residence. At the end is Resurrection Gate, the entrance into Red Square, which is called such not because the building are red (though many are), but because ‘red’ means ‘beautiful.’

As we walked through the square, Alina imparted history and other details. We passed by the Lenin Mausoleum, but did not go in.  Next stop, the iconic St. Basil’s Cathedral, into which we did go.

Inside was not what we expected…a gallery around the central chapel leads to the other chapels found under each dome, and it feels like you’re wandering in circles. The intricately painted walls seem to add to the confusion. It’s all quite stunning, and best of all we happened upon a singer demonstrating the lovely acoustics…

the end of an ethereal performance..

From St. Basil’s Cathedral we walked to the famous GUM shopping mall. It was built in the late 1800s, and used to have more than 1,000 shops. For a period during the rule of Stalin, however, GUM’s shops were requisitioned as offices. Now it is a shopping centre that houses many Western chains. The fountain in the middle changes its theme regularly. During our time there, it was watermelon season, and thus it was the watermelon fountain:

Right across the street from the former KGB headquarters, now the Federal Security Service, is Russia’s largest toy store –maybe the world’s largest toy store!– of which the Eyewitness Guide to Moscow says, “With a customary lack of irony, the Soviet authorities built Russia’s largest toy store directly opposite the KGB headquarters in 1957.” We went inside, and up to the roof top, which has a great view over the city.

We stopped for a light lunch at a Georgian restaurant – salads and this dumpling that is much like Chinese dumplings, with the soup inside, though these ones are bigger…

After lunch we stopped in at the gorgeous Eliseevsky Food Hall, a Neo-Baroque building showcasing imported and Russian delicacies…

It was nearing the end of the tour. We expressed an interest in checking out Russian shawls and other souvenirs, so Alina took us by subway to the Izmailovsky outdoor market, where she left us to wander the stalls on our own…

After wandering through the market, but not finding anything we couldn’t live without, we went back on the subway to our hotel.  We utilized the executive lounge for some wine and light dinner, and then went back out, to the Ritz Carlton roof top, for drinks and fantastic views over the city – the perfect end to our day…

On Monday morning, Alina was back at 10:00 and off we went, first to take the subway to Gorky Park, Moscow’s most famous park, named for the writer Maxim Gorky. It’s huge (297 acres), lies along the banks of the Moskva river, has beautiful gardens, winding paths, boating lakes, an outdoor theatre, fairground rides, and in the winter months becomes a skating rink, when some of the paths are flooded.  (A bit of trivia: the movie Gorky Park was not filmed here but, rather, in Finland.)

Across the main entrance of Gorky Park is Muzeon Park of Arts, formerly known as Park of the Fallen Heroes, or Fallen Monument Park, an open-air sculpture museum, which reminded us a little of Memento Park in Budapest.

Walking along the river from this sculpture park, we could see a very large statue of what looks like Christopher Columbus on a boat.  The artist who made this statue was making it of Columbus for his own personal benefit, when the city of Moscow commissioned him to do a statue of Saint Peter to give to the city of Saint Petersburg.  He changed the head of the statue, but several symbols of Portugal remain. Saint Petersburg rejected the statue, so it remains in Moscow…rather meaningless.

We now headed to the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. This cathedral was only recently rebuilt (within the last 20 years), on the grounds of what used to be an outdoor swimming pool. The original cathedral, built to commemorate the miraculous deliverance of Moscow from Napoleon’s invasion in 1812, begun in 1839, completed in 1883, was blown up on Stalin’s orders in 1931. From the Eyewitness guide: “The reconstruciton of the city’s pre-Revolutionary buildings (including this one), is evidence of a growing nostalgia for Russia’s past, and a renewed interest in the nation’s architectural heritage.” This cathedral is where Putin goes to celebrate Christmas and Easter, and is also where the Pussy Riot protests took place.

Then through a lovely little park, whose name we can’t find, which includes a monument to Russian writer Mikhail Sholokhov, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1965 for his novel, And Quiet Flows the Don.

Next we passed by the Russian State Library, largest in the country and fourth largest in the world for its collection of books. A statue of Tolstoy sits in front…

From here we walked to the Kremlin, where Alina helped us to buy our tickets, and then we said thank you and goodbye to her, as we went to tour the Kremlin on our own…

The name “Kremlin” means “fortress inside a city” and is the fortified complex at the heart of Moscow, overlooking the Moskva River. It is the best known of the kremlins (Russian citadels) and includes five palaces, four cathedrals, and the enclosing Kremlin Wall with Kremlin towers. Also within this complex is the Grand Kremlin Palace. The complex serves as the official residence of the President of the Russian Federation. (wiki)  From the Eyewitness guide: “Citadel of the Tsars, headquarters of the Soviet Union and now the residence of the Russian president, for centuries the Kremlin has been a symbol of the power of the State.”

We had already walked 22,000 steps with Alina, (our feet were getting tired!), so we explored the complex, and several of the cathedrals, but chose not to go into the Armoury, which is a whole museum unto itself.

The Cathedrals were all built for different reasons: The Assumption Cathedral, erected in 1479, was the major church of the state in which all Russian Tsars were crowned; The Archangel’s Cathedral, 1508, was used as a burial vault for Moscow Great Princes and Russian Tsars; Dormition Cathedral, 1485, was the burial place of Moscow Metropolitans and Patricians; etc. We didn’t take photos inside any, of course, and I seem to have captured only one fully. However, the domes and spires gleaming in the peak-a-boo sun, inspired a few shots…

We walked back to our hotel for a rest, passing Marx along the way..

…and after resting and cleaning up, headed to the Metropol Hotel for drinks in their bar… As I mentioned earlier, my book club read A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles, most of which takes place in this hotel. We loved the book, and of course I had to go here!

After enjoying a couple of drinks, we went for a refreshing walk, mainly to capture St. Basil’s Cathedral at night…

…and then went to Gogol Café, a ‘funky’ little bar/restaurant with eclectic decor…

and then encountered this young street trio, with a clarinet rocking Smoke on the Water…

The next morning we woke to rain. I had a relaxing morning in the hotel while Don went off for a work morning. I’m going to let him “guest” and explain what he was doing.

Thank you….

I was invited to visit the Skoltech campus – the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology – a private graduate research university in Skolkovo, Russia, a suburb of Moscow. Established in 2011 in collaboration with MIT, Skoltech educates global leaders in innovation, advance scientific knowledge, and fosters new technologies to address critical issues facing Russia and the world. It is the only university in Russia with a fully English curriculum. I was the guest of Lawrence Stein, a Calgary native and their VP of International Business Development, whom I met through a work colleague here in Michigan, and I was also honoured to meet the president, Alexander Kuleshov, a prominent Russian mathematician.

While the primary purpose of my visit was to meet Dr. Kuleshov and see, first hand, the scope of their operations, the Skoltech team was anxious to talk about a possible collaboration with my motormindz team (www.motormindz.com) in helping Skoltech commercialize some of their technologies – particularly in western markets. It was all very impressive, and we (motormindz) have planned a follow up trip for 2018 (when Moscow warms up!)

Once Don was back, we grabbed a quick lunch at the hotel, and then set off, with our umbrellas, to take the metro to the Novodevichy Cemetery. We have been to several pretty cool cemeteries, but this one may be the best.  It’s like an outdoor sculpture gallery… forgive the *many* pictures, but it was truly atmospheric (even better that it was raining) and amazing…

You see what I mean about evocative and atmospheric… I’ll end with just one more (but we took many more!)…

Back at the hotel, we got ready to meet Lawrence and his wife Irina for dinner at a fantastic restaurant called Dr. Zhivago.  Irina is from Moscow, and she did all the ordering of the food – and champagne: several different speciality dishes from various parts of Russia, that we all shared.  Amazing food and wonderful company to end our Moscow visit!

The next day was a travel day: we had a leisurely morning to pack, and then took the 1:45 train from Moscow to Saint Petersburg, a four-hour journey. We had booked our seats before we left home, in first class. The compartment was comfortable, the service good, the meal very fine.

After a smooth journey, we arrived at 6:00, grabbed a taxi to our hotel, another Marriott, though not as fancy as the one in Moscow. After settling in, we set out on foot, to stretch out after traveling, see a little of the city, and find a place to eat.

We chose a Rick Steves’ recommendation for dinner, the Zoom Café, with a “lively atmosphere and fresh menu.” The decor was ‘playful’ (as they say on their website), and the food was very good and very reasonably priced, perhaps why it’s a young people’s hangout. We were the oldest people there!

The next day, Thursday, our tour guide, Roman, picked us up at our hotel, for a 4-hour overview of the city, by car and walking.  It was raining, and the city turns out to be quite spread out, so we were very thankful for the car.  Roman is a young man with a degree in history and Russian-American relations, so he has some great knowledge, and is very proud of his city.

As we drove around the city centre, we tried to absorb the details. Our first stop was outside the Mariinsky Palace, also known as the Marie Palace, the last Neoclassical palace to be constructed in Saint Petersburg.

We also saw the main post office (no picture) and learned that all distances between cities in Russia are measured from post office to post office, rather than from city centre to city centre.

One next stop was at the Grand Choral Synagogue of St. Petersburg, which is the second largest synagogue in Europe, after Budapest (to which we have been).

Then to St. Nicholas Naval Cathedral, a Baroque Orthodox cathedral, closely associated with the Russian Navy.

We went across the Neva River, to the University Embankment, in front of the Imperial Academy of Arts, to see the oldest monument in Saint Peterburg, sphinxes that were brought to Russia from Egypt in 1832, but which are about 3500 years old.

From here we went to the Peter and Paul Fortress on Hare Island. Peter and Paul Fortress is the original citadel of St. Petersburg, Russia, founded by Peter the Great in 1703 and built from 1706 to 1740. In the early 1920s, it was still used as a prison and execution ground by the Bolshevik government. (wiki)

There is a fascinating monument to Peter the Great within the fortress – controversial for it’s interesting features…

The Peter and Paul Cathedral, is the first and oldest landmark in Saint Petersburg, built between 1712 and 1733. The cathedral’s bell tower is the world’s tallest Orthodox bell tower. The cathedral houses the remains of almost all the Russian emperors and empresses, from Peter the Great to Nicholas II and his family, who were finally laid to rest here in 1998. (wiki)

We stopped for a small refreshment…

…and then drove back across the river, past other significant buildings, including the Church on the Spilled Blood, and got dropped off at the National Library of Russia, which I wanted to tour. I have mentioned in other blog posts that I have a book entitled The Most Beautiful Libraries in the World, and whenever we travel, if where we are going has one of these libraries, I make a point to go and see it. Well, it turns out you can not go into the National Library of Russia without being on a tour. 😦  We took down the touring information and left the building.

Across the side street from the library is a park with a monument to Catherine the Great. On the pillar, among other statesmen, is Prince Grigory Potemkin, with whom Catherine collaborated and consorted. Interestingly, Potemkin is the namesake of the term, “Potemkin Village:” any construction (literal or figurative) built solely to deceive others into thinking that a situation is better than it really is. (wiki) After Potemkin conquered the Crimean peninsula during the Russo-Turkish War, Catherine visited to survey her new domain. To convince her that “Russification” of the Crimea had been a success, Potemkin created artificially perfect villages, with stage-set houses peopled by “Russian villagers.” (Rick Steves)

We walked to the Church on the Spilled Blood, built on the place a suicide bomber killed Czar Alexander II in 1881. As decorative as it is from the outside, the interior mosaics are stunning (you *must* click on the interior pictures to see them full screen).

From here we walked to St. Isaac’s Cathedral, to climb the 262 steps of the colonnade, for a view from the roof.

Down on the ground, we went inside St. Isaac’s…

When we got back to our hotel, we realized the ballet that evening, for which we had bought tickets from home, started at 7:00, not 8:00, so we quickly changed, had a lovely quick dinner in our hotel, and walked to the New Mariinsky Theatre.  We were in Russia too early for the “season,” but we had learned the newer branch of the Mariinsky, which usually performs more modern pieces, had a few performances of Cinderella during our time in the city.  Ballet, practically invented in Russia, is a type of performance dance that originated in the Italian Renaissance courts of the 15th century and later developed into a concert dance form in France and Russia. (wiki) It seemed that if we were to attend a ballet, Saint Petersburg was the place to do so.  It turned out to be a modern interpretation, with great costumes, which we really enjoyed, though I found Prokofiev’s music to be rather boring.

After the performance we walked back to the hotel to enjoy a glass of wine in the bar before bed.  On Friday, we *had* planned to tour the Hermitage, but first we asked our concierge to phone the National Library to inquire about a potential tour. She managed to arrange for us to have a private tour in the afternoon, for a not-insignificant fee, to which we agreed. We postponed the Hermitage for Sunday, and set out to follow Rick Steves’ walking tour around the city. (Everything in italics is a quote from his book.)

Our first stop was to take note of the memorial to the Siege of Leningrad, as the city was named during the Soviet era. As you know, during WWII, Nazi forces encircled the city and bombarded it for 872 days (Sept 1941-Jan 14944). At the outset, the city’s population, swollen with refugees, was at 3 million, but the the siege’s end, a million or more were dead, mostly civilians who died of starvation. The assault claimed more lives than any other siege in world history.  We just happened to be here for the anniversary of the beginning of the siege, September 8th, and thus the two young people flanking the memorial.

Next stop, the Stroganov Palace: the aristocratic family left their mark all over Russia – commissioning churches, financing the czar’s military agenda, fostering the arts – but their lasting legacy is the beef dish, likely named for them, that has made “stroganoff” a household name around the world.

We come now to the “Singer House,” which was the Russian headquarters of the American sewing machine company. The Art Nouveau building is topped by a globe, at the base of which is an American bald eagle, wings spread, grasping a laurel wreath in its talon and wring a stars-and-stripes shield on its breast. The building is now a bookstore and café.

This next photo is of a spire that was part of an early 19th-century optical telegraph system that stretched more than 800 miles from St.P to Warsaw (then part of the Russian Empire). Each tower in this line-of-sight chain across the empire winked Morse cold signals at the next with mirrors.

The Grand Hotel Europe opened in 1875, its opulence attracting the likes of Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky, Debussy, and H.G.Wells as guests. We wandered into this old-world-charming place to take a look…

Next, the glass-roofed “Passazh” arcade, an elite haven for high-class shoppers since 1846, making it one of the first shopping malls in the world. The communists converted the Passazh into a supermarket and, later, into a “model store,” intended to leave foreigners with a (misleadingly) positive impression of the availability of goods in the USSR.

Across the street, Gostiny Dvor, (an historical Russian term for ‘market’), a huge yellow building that has a quiet outside arcade with beautifully symmetrical arches on the 2nd level:

Don also spotted a shop selling hockey sweaters and souvenirs, and just had to check it out..

The Aurora Cinema, the first in Saint Petersburg, opened in 1913, and is still in operation today. It is ‘old-world’ grand…

It was time to head to the library for our tour…

Our tour guide met us with forms to sign, and then off we went, for a *very* comprehensive tour of behind-the-scenes of the National Library of Russia, the oldest public library in the nation, and the eighth-largest library in the world by number of items (36.5 million). It was established in 1795 by Catherine the Great. (wiki)

Catherine the Great was a friend of Voltaire, and they corresponded regularly. When he died she purchased his entire library, which is housed in a lovely, locked, temperature-controlled room, along with some of their correspondence.  The French, no doubt, would like it back.

Last, but definitely not least, the most beautiful neo-Gothic room, full of the oldest books…

With huge thanks, we said good bye to our excellent guide, descended the beautiful staircase..

…and made our way to the exit, and the street, to find a late lunch…

After our late lunch, from 5:00-6:30, we took a canal and river boat cruise, which confirmed that our tour guide had given us a great overview of the city… It was freezing on the boat, we wrapped up in blankets, enjoyed the narrator’s highlights of the city, and snapped a few photos…

We walked back to our hotel, to warm up, stopping in at a jazz bar to reserve for the next night, and stayed in that evening for a light dinner in the hotel.

On Saturday morning our guide, Roman, was at our hotel at 10:00, to drive us to Peterhof, the Summer Home of Peter the Great, where we walked the full grounds of fountains and gardens, at least 6 km.  The fountains are stunning, so here are a LOT of photos, first from the very grand entrance…

From the stunning grand entrance, we walked the park…

Roman drove us back to the city and dropped us on Vasilyevsky Island, so we could follow Rick Steves’ back-streets walk. First we grabbed a delicious lunch of borscht and goulash and a couple of very good ciders at Dr. Inki Bar & Restaurant. Fortified, we set off along the back streets, about which Rick Steves says, While these are a bit sterile, you can imagine how they originally served as a mews (stables). Throughout the town, formal parade entries to grand buildings face the front, while the rough “back entries” are for servants and the poor. With the 1917 Revolution, larger buildings were divided up to house many families – Dr. Zhivago-style. Vast blocks were divided into a series of courtyards, with apartments becoming cheaper the deeper they were buried. Walking around town, you can see how fine 19th-century features survive on some buildings, and other buildings – shelled in WWII -were rebuilt more simply in the 1950s and 60s.

The House of Academicians was where big brains lived in the 18th century, and in Soviet times it functioned as a residential think tank. Each of the black plaques between the windows honours a great Russian scientist. The blue plaque by the door identifies the former apartment of Ivan Pavlov, who was the first Russian to win a Nobel Prize.

We crossed back over the river to head to our hotel…

That evening we enjoyed an excellent dinner while listening to a jazz quartet at 48 Chairs.

The singer sang in English, but sometimes it seemed it was a Russian translation of the words… Here they perform Georgia on My Mind, one of my favourites…

When the evening was over, they brought the bill in a top hat. 🙂

On our last day, Sunday, we toured the Hermitage.  We had bought our tickets before leaving home, and with those we breezed by the line of waiting people, entering just after the palace opened.

We followed Rick Steves self-guided tour, up the Ambassador’s Stairs… The Winter Palace, the czar’s official city residence, was built by Italian architects between 1754 and 1762 in the style called Elizabethan Baroque – named for the czarina who popularized it. At this time, all of St. Petersburg – like the staircase – drew on the talents of artists and artisans imported from Western Europe. The palace is designed to impress, astonish, and humble visitors with the power of the Romanov dynasty. 

At the top of the stairs, the Malachite Room: This drawing room, which dates from just after the 1837 fire, is decorated with malachite, a green copper-based mineral found in Russia’s Ural Mountains.

The War Gallery of 1812 hall, displays over 300 portraits of the generals who helped to expel Napoleon from Russia in 1812. The large portraits show the most important figures, and the squares of green cloth represent the generals who weren’t available for sittings.  At the end of the hall is an equestrian portrait of Czar Alexander I, the czar who pushed out the French.

Into the Pavilion Room, which is actually outside of the Winter Palace, in the original Small Hermitage, founded by Catherine the Great in 1762, to house her original art collection is a fascinating timepiece made by British goldsmith James Cox, purchased by Catherine the Great. There’s a video in the room, showing how this mechanical masterpiece tells the time. You can check it out on youtube…

Of course the place is *full* of art. Rick Steves does a wonderful job of summarizing a few key pieces without overwhelming with information. The palace houses more religious pictures than we cared to see, but there were a few interesting-to-us works., including two depictions of Danae, one by Titian (1554) and one by Rembrandt (1636), worth a look, for the different ways this character from Greek mythology is portrayed.

The Loggia, a long narrow hallway – more than 200 feet long, and only 13 feet wide – is a an exact replica of painter Raphael’s Vatican Loggia, though the paintings here are tempera on canvas. The ceiling tells the Christian history chronologically, starting with the Creation and expulsion of Adam and Eve and ending with Christ’s Last Supper.

I was thrilled to learn there is a Michelangelo sculpture here. Prior to our trip to Italy two years ago, I had read a great deal about him, and we searched out as many of his sculptures as we could, as well as visiting Carrara, where he got his marble. Here, the Crouching Boy, c. 1530, not fully finished, apparently, but evocative anyway.

We were also taken with The Three Graces by Canova (1813-1816).

In addition to the Old Masters and newer Masters, there was an exhibit of a contemporary porcelain sculpture-artist, Vladimir Kanevsky, who creates stunning work.

From the Winter Palace, we went to the General Staff Building, across Palace Square, to see the Modern Masters collection of paintings – our preferred era.

This section houses Van Gogh, Monet, Degas, Gauguin, Matisse, Cezanne, 3 rooms of Picasso, etc., etc.  It’s a huge collection, which came to be ‘owned’ by the museum when the original owners fled the country in 1917 and the Soviet Union nationalized their collections.  A sample few favourites:

There was a great view of the square and palace from this part of the museum..

We had dinner in a funky little restaurant Rick Steves recommends, called Obshhestvo Chistyh Tarelok… which apparently means “Clean Plates Society.”  Again, we were the oldest people there!

And then walked home on our last night in Saint Petersburg…

On Monday we took the train from Saint Petersburg to Helsinki, another 4-hour journey, in first class, with a nice meal.

We arrived in Helsinki at 4:00, took a taxi to the AirBnB we had rented with Whitby friends Ed & Lori, who had already arrived from their travels to Iceland and Stockholm.  We stocked up on groceries, did some laundry, and cooked dinner in, for a wonderful first evening of catching up with each other.

We woke to rain on Tuesday morning, so had a leisurely breakfast in our lovely apartment, finally leaving at 11:00 to start our first day of sight-seeing. Don and Ed figured out the tram system, which we took to the downtown Market Square.  From here we followed Rick Steves’ walk, with several shopping stops along the way…

At the heart of the square is the Czarina’s Stone, with a double-headed eagle of imperial Russia.  It was the first public monument in Helsinki, erected in 1835 to celebrate the visit by Czar Nicholas I and Czarina Alexandra. The blue and white City Hall building was the town’s first hotel, built to house the czar. The large building behind the Stone is the Swedish Embassy, and the yellow building to the right is the Supreme Court.

Also in the square, the fountain, Havis Amanda, designed by Ville Vallgren and unveiled in 1908, it has become the symbol of Helsinki, the city known as the “Daughter of the Baltic.”

Up the hill, to Senate Square: It was once a simple town square but its original buildings were burned when Russians invaded in 1808. Later, after Finland became a grand duchy of the Russian Empire, the czar sent in architect Carl Ludvig Engel (a German who had lived and worked in St.Petersburg), to give the place some Neo-class.  Engel represents the paradox of Helsinki: the city as we know it was built by Russia, but with an imported European architect, in a very intentionally “European” style, so Helsinki is, in a sense, both entirely Russian…and not Russian in the slightest. The statue in the centre of the square honours Russian Czar Alexander II. He was not popular in Russia (assassinated), but he was well-liked by the Finns, because he gave Finland more autonomy in 1863 and never pushed “Russification.”

Across the side street from the cathedral, the National Library..

Wandering up The Esplanade, Helsinki’s top shopping boulevard, full of flagship stores of top Finnish designers.. passing the Canadian Embassy..

I hadn’t realized how many Finnish designers there were that I recognized. It turns out this country is famous for design, and a few days later we would tour the Design Museum.

We lunched at Teatterin Grilli, within the Swedish Theater building, built under Russian rule to cater to Swedish residents of Finland. The food was delicious and the decor was delightful.

Continuing our walking tour, we came to the Three Blacksmiths: while there’s no universally accepted meaning for this statue (from 1932), most say it celebrates human labour and cooperation and shows the solid character of the Finnish people.

The train station was designed by Eliel Saarinen, and the four people on the facade symbolize peasant farmers with lamps coming into the Finnish capital.

Next we come to Kamppi Plaza and the Chapel of Silence. This is one of Helsinki’s newest and most surprising bits of architecture: a round, wooden structure, that is solely to enjoy a moment of serenity. As you can see, we were taken by the unique architecture.

From here we walked past Carl Gustaf Mannerheim, a Finnish war hero who frustrated the Soviets both in Finland’s “Civil War” for independence, and again later in WWII…

…to the area in and around the Helsinki Music Centre…

Next, Temppeliaukio Church, otherwise known as the “Church in the Rock”. Built in 1969, this church was blasted out of solid granite. It’s simple and stunning.

To end our city touring, we went to the Sibelius Monument: six hundred stainless-steel pipes called “Love of Music,” built on solid rock, as is so much of Finland, shimmer in a park to honour Finland’s greatest composer, Jean Sibelius. The artist, Eila Hiltunen, was forced to add a bust of the composer’s face to silence critics of her otherwise abstract work.

We went back to the city the next morning, to tour different areas. We took the tram to the market square again, and shopped along a few streets…

and then went to the Old Market Hall, beautifully renovated and full of fantastic and enticing food. We bought reindeer meat sandwiches and pastries for our lunch…

We climbed the hill behind the market to eat our sandwiches overlooking the harbour, and then made our way back down again, to walk along the Peninsula Promenade…

We came to this unique pier, which is specifically for washing rugs, which is the job of Finnish men. Saltwater brightens the rag rugs traditionally made by local grandmas. After the scrub, the rugs are sent through big mechanical wringers and hung on racks to dry.

From the water, we headed up into the Design District.  I know you’ve been wondering, so here are some doors and windows spotted along the way.  🙂

The Design District is several blocks of streets lined with one-off boutiques, galleries, and shops highlighting local designers of clothing, jewelry, furniture and kitchen accessories – all great fun to browse in…

There were roving groups of university students… it was some kind of frosh week craziness…

That evening we went out to a local Georgian restaurant for a delicious dinner…

Thursday morning we were up at 5:30 to shower before our taxi picked us up at 6:15 to take us to the ferry terminal..

…and away we sailed at 7:30 for the 2-hour journey to Tallinn, Estonia. We had two full days and a night in Tallinn, with an all-day tour guide for our first day. Mati picked us up at the ferry terminal at 9:30, and we sat in his large, comfortable van while he showed us a map and gave us a geography overview of Estonia, and then a 10-minute overview of its early history. We then drove a quick perimeter of the old town, before heading to Kadriorg Park, where Peter the Great, after Russia took over Tallinn in 1710, built this summer home for Czarina Catherine.

Next we drove to the Song Festival Grounds (Lauluväljak), a large open-air theatre built in 1959, where the Estonian nation gathers to sing. Every five years, these grounds host a huge national song festival with 25,000 singers and 100,000 spectators.  Most moving, in 1988, 300,000 Estonians (1/3 of the population!) gathered here to sing patriotic songs in defiance of Soviet rule, an event called The Singing Revolution, and since then these grounds have had great symbolic importance. A statue of Gustav Ernesaks, who directed the Estonian National Male Choir for 50 years, through the darkest times of Soviet Rule, and who was a power in the drive for independence, overlooks the grounds.

We drove past the Forest Cemetery (should have stopped, but didn’t). Traditionally Estonians bury their dead in forests because of a deeply rooted belief that their spirit will live on in trees. I like that.

Next we drove to the TV tower, with its 1000-foot tall antenna, built for the 1980 Moscow Olympics (the sailing regatta took place in Tallinn). In front of the tower is a monument to the brave Estonians who faced off against a potential Soviet counterattack during the move for control by Yeltsin in Moscow in August 1991, when they prevented the Soviets taking over the tower and cutting off Estonian communications.  Yeltsin gained control, told the Russian troops to stand down, and just a few weeks later, Russia recognized this country’s right to exist.

We headed back into the town to tour the sites, stopping for lunch first…

After lunch we spent a few hours walking the lower and upper sections of the town, learning history as we went. The weather was very mixed – a little sun and a whole lot of rain, and when it rained, it poured, so we didn’t always take pictures, but here’s what we did capture…

The monument in Freedom Square is a memorial to the freedom fighters who lost their lives in the Estonian War of Independence, 1918-1920. The ‘cross of liberty’ at the top of the glass pillar represents a military decoration from that war, and every war since.

We walked up the hill to the upper town (Toompea), stopping to take note of the granite boulder memorial commemorating the date the Declaration of Independence was signed. At the spot, several rocks were placed across the road, as described (below) in the marker accompanying the bolder, and Mati was among the students who helped place the blockade.

“Estonia’s road to freedom from the decades long occupation by the Soviet Union was complicated and full of hazards. On 18 January 1991, after the bloody events in Vilnius and Riga, all access roads to Toompea were blocked with boulders and concrete blocks. On 20 August 1991, during the attempted coup d’etat in Moscow, The Supreme Council of the Republic of Estonia passed a resolution about the state sovereignty of Estonia. The Republic of Estonia was restored without bloodshed and casualties. This boulder was one of the blocks on the road to Toompea. It was turned into a memorial in August 1993.”

We stopped briefly into the Russian Orthodox Church. (40 percent of Tallinn’s population is ethnic Russian.) Don and I had seen several in Moscow and Saint Petersburg, of course, but Ed and Lori hadn’t been into any. Mati would not go in.

Mati did want to take us into the Lutheran Dome Church, though.  (Estonia is ostensibly Lutheran, though few Tallinners go to church.)  It is simple Northern European Gothic, built in the 13th century during Danish rule, then rebuilt after a 1684 fire. In its early days it was the church of Tallinn’s wealthy German-speaking aristocracy, and there are more than 100 family coats of arms, carved by local masters. Stunning!

It was our great fortune to visit during an organ rehearsal. In the clip I’ve included below, you can hear Mati’s voice in the background, though it’s rather impossible to understand what he’s saying.

At the top of the town, a great viewpoint..

After wandering through the old town, seeing highlights, discussing the differences between the medieval, Swedish and Russian architecture, which can be found side-by-side in the old town (all of which we photographed the following day when the sun was fully out), etc., we got back into Mati’s car and headed out of town to see some of the countryside and Baltic shoreline, none of which can be found in the tourist guidebooks.

Next stop, the Keila-Joa waterfall, with beautiful hiking trails and park surrounding.  We were the *only* people there!

We stopped at the memorial at Klooga Concentration Camp, where we learned something none of us had known: there were several concentration camps in Estonia during WWII. Virtually all Estonian Jews were exterminated, and Jews from other countries were shipped to Estonia’s camps, as well.

We drove through Paldiski, which used to be a closed town as the Soviet nuclear submarine training centre was located there, to the Pakri Peninsula. This area is where Peter the Great placed canons that could fire a 30 km. distance. There were also canons on the other side of the Bay of Finland, which is, at this point, a total span of 60 km., and thus these canons could prevent invaders from coming through the bay, to Saint Petersburg.

Thinking we were going to our hotel at this point (we were well past the 8 hour tour length we had expected), we made one final stop at the Padise Monastery, an architectural and historical site of importance. It was constructed in the 14th century by Cistercian monks, though extensions and improvements continued for over 200 years. It fell into ruin after a number of wars, with some restoration starting in the 1930s.  It would have been really lovely in a bit better light and on a warmer day, but we still appreciated it.

It was *now* time to head to our hotel. Mati had spent an amazing 11 hours with us, imparting information, answering questions, passing on his very strong views of Russia’s occupation and Estonian history. We were exhausted, but completely blown away by our day.

We checked into My City Hotel, which was really lovely (a recommendation by a friend), and too tired to venture out again at 9:00 p.m., we had a spectacular meal in the hotel dining room.

The next morning, after an excellent buffet breakfast in the hotel, we set out to wander the old town on our own, revisiting much of what we’d seen to take photos in the sunshine, doing some shopping in the lovely artisan shops…

We climbed the old city wall for the view over the town..

After a nice lunch in the square, we went to the Museum of Occupations, which tells the history of Estonia during its occupations: locals insist that Estonia didn’t formally lose its independence from 1939 to 1991, but was just “occupied” – first by the Soviets (for one year) then by the Nazis (for three years), and then again by the USSR (for nearly 50 years).

That evening we ate at Farm, which had been recommended by Mati.  The food was farm-to-table delicious….

…but the very best feature was the eclectic, delightful, window display…

After dinner we walked back to our hotel to pick up our luggage, and then walked to the ferry terminal for our late night  (10:00-midnight) trip back to Helsinki.

We woke late the next morning, dallied at home, bought groceries, and then ventured out, first to have lunch at that great market…

…and then to tour the Design Museum.

Design is integral to contemporary Finnish culture, and the museum offers a good overview, tracing the evolution of domestic design from the 1870s, when “applied arts” (merging artistic aesthetics and function) first caught on throughout Europe, through current times. The 1900 World’s Fair in Paris was when the design world became aware of this nation. After WWII, Finland entered a Golden Age of design, and I’m sure we all have at least one item in our homes designed by a Finn – such as the iconic orange-handled Fiskars scissors.  I found the museum fascinating: I hadn’t realized how much design work comes out of Finland.

Design is jewelry, design is art, design is furniture, design is games, design is innovative technology…

There were displays of works from new designers, including “Reflector,” a glass cube you can walk through. Quoting from the placard beside it, “While looking simple on the outside, it contains a labyrinth. According to designer Elina Elvio (born 1981), passing through the cube is like a journey in a dream where changing direction will change the script of the dream. The materials of the cube have been chosen to be simultaneously reflecting and translucent. The journey becomes mixed with the outside world, which is an aspect of dreams.” Here, Lori demonstrates:

There were a few videos, as well. This one was simultaneously simple and moving, called “Blood Field” by Anna Salmi:

Because it was the 50th anniversary of Fiskars Scissors, there was a lovely exhibit paying tribute to the scissors – art incorporating the scissors, or art creatively using scissors…

After the museum, we took the tram to the main shopping street, The Esplanade, to pick up some souvenirs. And then, ‘home’ to cook dinner and enjoy our evening together.

Sunday was a beautiful, sunny day, perfect for a walk. We took the tram to the ferry terminal and caught the 15-minute ferry to Suomenlinna Fortress, a strategic fortress built on an island guarding Helsinki’s harbour. Fortification began in 1748, under Augustin Ehrensvärd’s direction, when Finland was under Swedish rule, to counter Russia’s rise to power. With 5 miles of walls and hundreds of cannons, it was the second strongest fort of its kind in Europe after Gibraltar. It fell to the Russians in 1808, and remained in their hands until the Finns achieved independence in 1917. It is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site for its unique example of military architecture.

Back in the city centre,we climbed up the hill to see the Uspenski Orthodox cathedral, (built for the Russian military in 1868, a time when Finland belonged to Russia), only to find it had just closed.

So, we then took the tram to the area of Olympic grounds, for a brief walk around, though we didn’t see much as most of the area was under renovation…

We went back to the apartment for a dinner of leftovers and an early night.

On Monday we were up fairly early to pack and clean up the apartment. Then, we took the tram to the Helsinki City museum, which we all found interesting.

From the museum we walked to the metro station (which we hadn’t used yet), discovered an international food market by the station, which we wandered through, sampling some treats, and then took the subway to the stop closest to our apartment.  We wandered this largely factory area which is being rejuvenated, and ate a delicious lunch at a place currently catering to the construction workers.

Back to the apartment for a brief nap for the men folk and computer time for the women folk, and then we ‘checked out’ of our home-away-from-home and took a taxi to the airport hotels. We were in different hotels, but met up for dinner at ours…

Don and I flew out VERY early the next morning, with Ed and Lori following several hours later, after a truly excellent adventure!

 

 

England – May 2017 June 27, 2017

Posted by freda in Uncategorized.
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Don’s responsibilities on the Advisory Board for MSX International took us to London this year for their annual meeting.  The meetings were actually outside of London, but I tagged along anyway, and “hung out” in London while Don worked.  Yup, life is okay. 🙂

We went two days before the meetings so as to have a little London time together, arriving early afternoon on Sunday, May 14th. After getting to the hotel – Xenia, a Marriott Autograph Collection, boutique-style hotel, on Cromwell Rd in the Kensington area, which we really liked for it’s smaller size and lovely staff, though we had to shuffle around each other in the tiny room (but that’s London, for you!) – we unpacked, showered, and then headed out for a wake-up walk through Kensington Park.  I title these pictures “Sunday Afternoon in the Park With Don”…. 😉

We left the park through the Albert Gate, by the Albert Memorial, an ornate monument, designed by George Gilbert Scott, to commemorate the death of Prince Albert, Queen Victoria’s husband, who died of typhoid fever at the age of 42.

We walked back to the hotel, changed, and then took the underground to meet up with young friends Rob and Allison.  Rob is Nico’s best friend from university, and Allison and Lucas were in Creative Writing together. Rob has been living in London for several years, where he is a Magic & Psychology Consultant & Speaker. Allison is writing a book. We met at their favourite tiki bar at Trader Vic’s.

We enjoyed a couple of cocktails, some delicious appetizers, and a great deal of conversation, and then we moved on to the Library Bar in the Lanesborough Hotel for a few more cocktails and small plates.  A perfect first evening in London.

We’ve been to London several times, and so we try to do something ‘new-to-us’ each visit.  We started our day by touring the Churchill War Rooms Museum, the historic underground bunker which was the British government’s command centre throughout WWII, as well as a museum exploring the life of Winston Churchill.  Fascinating!

After spending a few hours touring this very worthwhile museum, we headed out for lunch. Fortuitously, The Red Lion was very close to the museum. Lunch was excellent!

After lunch, we plugged in our downloaded walking tour podcast by Rick Steves, of the Westminster City Centre, and went walking and listening. I know I’ve talked about these podcasts before (previous blogs), but I just have to emphasize again how great they are for overviews and details easily missed.  Even though we’ve been several times to London, we still learned new things, and were reminded of details forgotten… Here are a few pictures we took along the way…

After our walk, we tubed it back to our hotel to change and then tubed it to meet up with Diane, (friend who now lives in Spain), who arranged to come to London for business to coincide with our time there.  We had a delicious dinner at Villandry St. James’s, and then walked a block to the Royal Haymarket Theatre, where we had tickets to see “The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?” by Edward Albee, starring Damien Lewis and Sophie Okonedo. Having watched, and enjoyed, Lewis in both Homeland and Billions, it was great to see him on stage, in something completely different.

The next morning, Don left early to join the MSX International team, who were meeting for 3 days at Tylney Hall, in Rotherwick, Hampshire, about an hour west of London, and I stayed on in London while he was gone.  Don’s room there was *much* bigger than our room in London, and the location was lovely.  But, there would have been nothing for me to do, and London is FULL of great things to do.

I set off on foot along Cromwell Road …

and into the beautiful Victoria & Albert museum..

…where I discovered they had just opened a special exhibit on Pink Floyd, and because I was a ‘single,’ I could get into the next opening of the timed-entry exhibit. 🙂  I spent two hours in the very excellent show!

From the V&A, I tubed to the St. Pancras/Kings Cross station to go to the British Library’s special exhibit on the Russian Revolution. As Russia is part of our next trip, it was a fortuitous chance to learn a little in preparation, in a lovely setting…. No pictures.

And then, last stop for the day, one of my favourite book shops, and the oldest in the city: Hatchard’s…

And then I tubed back to our hotel, quite exhausted, to have a very nice dinner, and a couple of glasses of wine, in the hotel dining room.

I woke up Wednesday to cloudy skies and rain in the forecast – a perfect day for the National Gallery, the beautiful art museum in Trafalgar Square.  I’ve been there a few times, but with over 2,300 paintings in its collection, it’s impossible to see it all in one visit. Here’s a selection of paintings I saw that struck me…but not all of them – I don’t want to bore you… 😉

I didn’t know this myth – love the explanation for the Milky Way – “According to myth, the infant Heracles was brought to Hera by his half-sister Athena, who later played an important role as a goddess of protection. Hera nursed Heracles out of pity, but he suckled so strongly that he caused Hera pain, and she pushed him away. Her milk sprayed across the heavens and there formed the Milky Way. With divine milk, Heracles acquired supernatural powers.” (from Wikipedia)

The object on the floor between the two men in The Ambassadors is an example of anamorphosis – it’s a skull, which becomes obvious when looking at it from the side, as captured below…

The National Gallery has several of van Gogh’s painting, like his wonderful Sunflowers, but I wasn’t aware of this one:

My favourite painting at this gallery was on loan, sadly… If you’ve never seen The Execution of Lady Jane Grey, by Paul Delaroche, it’s extraordinarily moving.  However, my favourite for sentimental reasons *was* there:

Exiting the gallery, it had stopped raining and Trafalgar Square was getting busy..

From the National Gallery, I walked up Charing Cross Road, past the theatre showing the new Harry Potter play,

to Foyles book store…

…where I browsed (and bought), and then back to the underground to the hotel to change, before heading out to meet Diane at her hotel on the south side.  She and I had a fantastic dinner at a little Spanish tapas place called The Port House, where we shared a variety of tapas, while enjoying a lovely Spanish wine, and then right next door to the Adelphi Theatre to see the rollicking-fun show, Kinky Boots.  A perfect London evening!

On Thursday I had a ticket to see the special exhibit, The Radical Eye, at the Tate Modern, a sampling of Elton John’s collection of photography – not photos he has taken but, rather, famous photography he has collected over the years.  It was an excellent exhibit, which of course didn’t allow photos.

Back down on the ground, I walked along the south bank…

From here I walked to the Wallace Collection, a collection of paintings, furniture, arms, armor, and porcelain housed in a stunning old townhouse.  I’d been here before, but this time I wanted to see, in particular, the painting entitled A Dance to the Music of Time by Nicolas Poussin because last year I read the 12-part series of novels by Anthony Powell named after this painting.  But first, a much-needed cuppa in the beautiful courtyard…

The painting turned out to be much smaller than I expected, but I’m glad I saw it..

You wander through ornate room after ornate room full of paintings, furniture, porcelain..

and then downstairs to the collection of arms and armory…the collection is huge; my boys would love it! This is just a tiny sample.

From here I walked to another favourite bookstore, Daunt Books.  It’s mostly a travel book shop, organized by countries and regions so that, if you’re interested in traveling to Russia, you go to the section on Russia, and you will find: guide books; non-fiction about the country; and fiction by local authors, as well as authors from other places writing stories that take place in the country.  A reader/traveler’s paradise!!   I mention Russia, in particular, because (as mentioned previously) that’s our next destination and so I was looking for (and found a few 😉 ) appropriate-to-our-trip books!

And after a lovely time in this store, I walked to meet Diane and two of her friends at Jikoni, an Indian-fusion restaurant, where we had excellent food and drink and a great time.

And thus ends the London portion of our trip.  The next morning, Friday, Don left his meeting location, picked up a rental car, picked me up, and we were off for three nights in the Cotswolds. On our way to the Cotswolds village of Chipping Campden, which was to be our ‘home base,’ we stopped to tour Blenheim Palace, which is the Duke of Marlborough’s home – the largest in England – and still lived in. John Churchill, first duke of Marlborough, defeated Louis XIV’s French forces at the Battle of Blenheim, in 1704. This pivotal event marked a turning point in the centuries-long struggle between the English and the French, and some historians claim that if not for this victory, we’d all be speaking French today. A thankful Queen Anne rewarded Churchill by building him this nice home. Eleven dukes of Marlborough later, the palace is as impressive as ever. In 1874, a later John Churchill’s American daughter-in-law, Jennie Jerome, gave birth at Blenheim to another historic baby in that line, and named him Winston. (from Rick Steves)

Exiting the palace..

We visited the worthwhile Winston Churchill exhibit on the site, a display of letters, paintings and other artifacts of Churchill, who was born here.

We grabbed lunch in the cafeteria, and tried a new cider…

..and then we were off to Chipping Campden, in the Cotswolds, to check into the Noel Arms Hotel.

Says Rick Steves: The Cotswold Hills are dotted with enchanting villages. As with many fairy-tale regions of Europe, the present-day beauty of the Cotswolds was the result of an economic disaster. Wool was a huge industry in medieval England, and the Cotswold sheep grew the best wool. The region prospered. Wool money built fine towns and houses. With the rise of cotton and the Industrial Revolution, the woolen industry collapsed. The wealthy Cotswold towns fell into a depressed time warp; the home of impoverished nobility because gracefully dilapidated. Today, appreciated by throngs of 21st-century Romantics, the Cotswolds are enjoying new prosperity.

Rick Steves has a walking tour of Chipping Campden, so once we settled in, we set out to get our bearings, explore the town, and follow the beginning of the walk while searching out a dinner spot. We started at Campden’s most famous monument – the Market Hall.  It was built in 1627 by the 17th-century Lord of the Manor, Sir Baptist Hicks. Back then, it was an elegant shopping hall for the townsfolk who’d come here to buy their produce. Today, the hall, which is rarely used, stands as a testimony to the importance of trade to medieval Chipping Campden.

Turns out the Eight Bells pub is popular, so we couldn’t eat there. We made a reservation for the following night, and set off to find an alternate place for dinner. Turns out all of Chipping Campden is busy on a Friday night, but we finally got lucky at The King’s Hotel and had an excellent meal.  After dinner a night cap in our hotel bar, and then to bed.

The next morning we set out to explore more of Chipping Campden, including a stop in at the Tourist Info to pick up a detailed map of the area for later when we set out exploring further afield. The day was overcast, but that took nothing away from the quaint and lovely beauty.

Following Rick Steves’ advice, we turned down a lane leading to an old Industrial-Age silk mill, in existence since 1790. Today it houses the handicraft workers guild and some interesting history. In 1902, Charles Robert Ashbee (1863-1942) revitalized this sleepy hamlet of 2,500 by bringing a troupe of London artisans and their families (160 people in all) to town. Ashbee was a leader in the romantic Arts and Crafts movement – craftspeople repulsed by the Industrial Revolution who idealized the handmade crafts and preindustrial ways. Ashbee’s idealistic craftsmen’s guild lasted only until 1908, when most of his men grew bored with their small-town, back-to-nature ideals. Today, the only shop surviving from the originals is that of silversmith David Hart. His grandfather came to town with Ashbee, and the workshop is an amazing time warp – little has changed since 1902. Hart is a gracious man as well as a fine silversmith, and he, his son William, and nephew Julian welcome browsers. They are proud that everything they make is “one-off.”

We bought a silver bracelet for me and silver cuff links for Don, pooling the last of our cash (they didn’t accept credit cards) to make the purchase. Kindly, Mr. Hart returned our last 5 pounds to us (a discount!) so we wouldn’t be penniless.

It was time for a scenic drive. Armed with the map, and google maps (SO helpful!), we set off along narrow, curvy, picturesque roads to our first stop: Chastleton House, just past Moreton-in-Marsh. (I *love* the names of the towns here.) According to a sign on the property: Chastleton House is the Jacobean home of the Jones family. Built from 1607-12 and almost unchanged for over 400 years. Proud poverty has preserved the house much as it would have looked then. Dust, cobwebs and rambling roses add to a feel of ‘romantic neglect.’  It’s so authentic, it was used as the location for the Seymour home in the BBC series “Wolf Hall.”  Docents are scattered throughout the house, which is a fascinating place!

And because we’re in sheep country, here’s a field of sheep we saw as we left Chastleton…

From Chastleton House we drove to Stow-on-the-Wold. We had a great pub lunch at The Bell at Stow…

and then followed Rick Steves’ little walk around town.  The Market Square has a long history: Stow was born in pre-Roman times; it’s where three trade routes crossed at a high point in the region (altitude: 800 feet). This square was the site of an Iron Age fort, and then a Roman garrison town. This main square hosted an international fair starting in 1107, and people came from as far away as Italy for the wool fleeces. With as many as 20,000 sheep sold in a single day, this square was a thriving scene. 

At the back of the town’s church, is a door flanked by two ancient yew trees. While many view it as the Christian “Behold, I stand at the door and knock,” door, J.R.R. Tolkien fans see something quite different. Tolkien hiked the Cotswolds, and had a passion for sketching evocative trees such as this. Lord of the Ring enthusiasts are convinced this must be the inspiration for the door into Moria.

Next stop on our scenic route: Upper Slaughter…

…and then Lower Slaughter…

Our last stop of the day was at Bourton-on-the-Water, the so-called “Venice of the Cotswolds” with several canals.  We had a quick walk around, before heading back ‘home.’

On Sunday, our last day in the Cotswolds,we started by finishing our walking tour around Chipping Campden…

The Green Dragons house has a sundial over the door, and decorative black cast-iron fixtures (originally in the stables) that once held hay and functioned much like salad bowls for horses. Fine-cut stones define the door, but “rubble stones” make up the rest of the wall.  The pink stones are the same limestone but have been heated.

In 1367 William Grevel built what’s considered Campden’s first stone house. It also has a sundial high above the window...

…and then we followed the scenic route in the opposite direction from the day before, our first stop being at the Broadway Tower, before stopping in the town of Broadway. The Broadway Tower is a “folly” – a whimsical or extravagant structure built to serve as a conversation piece, lend interest to a view, commemorate a person or event, etc.: found especially in England in the 18th century (dictionary definition).  

Before getting to Broadway, we came to the much smaller and picturesque village of Snowshill, population 164, (Rick Steves calls it “another nearly edible little bundle of cuteness), which is basically a road that loops around the church and back out again, and of course has a pub…

On to Broadway, which does, indeed, have a “broad way” running through the centre of town… much broader than any other village we visited…

Next stop, Stanton:

While we meandered around the church, the bells were being rung, beautifully, in practise. Here’s a 30-second video, which I can’t seem to turn right-side up…

From Stanton to Stanway…

Between Stanton and Stanway, a thatched cricket pavilion, originally built for Peter Pan author, J.M. Barrie in 1930…

And just past Stanway and Stanton, Hailes Church and Abbey – a Norman church and abbey ruins. Richard, Earl of Cornwall (and younger brother of Henry III) founded the abbey after surviving a shipwreck, but it was his son Edmund who turned it into a pilgrimage site after buying a vial of holy blood and bringing the relic to Hailes around 1270. Thanks to Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries in the 16th century, not much remains of the abbey. However, the church – which predates the abbey by about a century – houses some of its original tiles and medieval stained glass, as well as cave-like surviving murals… (Rick Steves)

Time to head ‘home.’ We had dinner at Bistro on the Square, where they featured Cotswold gins …

Back at our hotel, there was a folk band performing in our bar – a perfect last night in Chipping Campden!

The next morning we were up early to head to Oxford for our last day in England.  We found our hotel, and the car park recommended, checked in to the Vanbrugh House Hotel…

and then set off on foot to explore the town.  Oxford, founded in the 7th century and home to the oldest university in the English-speaking world, originated as a simple trade crossroads at an ox ford, a convenient place for Anglo-Saxons to cross the river with their oxen. The University was established in 1167, and its graduates include 26 British prime ministers, more than 60 Nobel Prize winners, and even 11 saints, as well as an amazing number of literary greats. It was never bombed in WWII so retains the rich heritage of its original honey-coloured Cotswold limestone buildings. (Rick Steves)

We booked a tour of the Bodleian Library for a little later in the day, and carried on…

After lunch we toured Christ Church College, Oxford’s dominant college. It was founded by Henry VIII’s chancellor, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, in 1524 on the site of an abbey dissolved by the king. The buildings survived the tumult of the Reformation because the abbey and its cathedral served as part of the king’s new Church of England. It still has a close connection to the royal family, and a long list of esteemed alumni. *And* scenes from the Harry Potter movies were filmed here!!  😉

According to tradition, every night at 21:05 the bell clangs out 101 times – each chime calling the curfew for the 101 students who first boarded here. This gives the students 4 1/2 minutes to get from the pub through the gate by the last ring. Why not on the hour? When the tradition began, time zones had yet to be standardized – and since Oxford was 60 miles, or 5 minutes of longitude west of Greenwich, clocks here were set five minutes earlier. That means 21:05 Greenwich Mean Time was 21:00 on the dot Oxford time. Even though the UK standardized its time zone in the 1850s, Christ Church College has insisted on keeping Oxford time. (And that explains why the White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland is always late.) (Rick Steves)

It was now time to head to the famous Great Hall…after first climbing The (famous) Hall Staircase…and because we remembered about “Oxford Time,” we beat the crowds by 5 minutes and were almost at the front of the line as it re-opened after lunch.  😀

The Great Hall is where the academic community eat all their meals, and it is closed to tourists during those meal times. The hall is the largest pre-Victorian college Hall in Oxford and seats up to 300 people. It has a Gothic, hammer-beam ceiling and portraits of esteemed alumni line the walls, including the primary sponsor of the college – Henry VIII.  The Harry Potter movies were never actually filmed in the hall, but the movie’s dining hall was based on this grand place, and if you’ve seen the movies, it’s truly like walking into that movie, except this real hall has only three long rows of tables, not four. Very cool!!

It was now time to tour Bodleian Library.  You can’t take pictures inside, so click on the images link I attached to see this splendid place. Bodleian Library is the main research library of the University of Oxford, and is one of the oldest libraries in Europe. With over 12 million items, it is the second-largest library in Britain, after the British Library. It is one of six libraries that is legally required to receive one of every book published in Britain. (wikipedia) Because it is a research library, none of the books can be checked out, even by royalty, as we learned on our tour.

After the library tour, we went to the Church of St. Mary the Virgin, to climb the steep, winding staircase in the tower, for a view over the city… I don’t like heights, and am not fond of steep winding staircases, but the view really is spectacular…

Back down on the ground, we walked to Blackwell’s book store, one of the world’s largest bookstores, holding some three miles of bookshelves. :O

That evening we had a lovely dinner out at a little French Bistro recommended by the hotel staff, and a last cider in a bar on the way back to the hotel. The next day we drove back to London, returned the car, and flew home after our perfect little get-away.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A month of family – part three – the boys in Shanghai June 17, 2010

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Because we got home so late from Beijing (2 in the morning), the next day, Monday, was a stay-at-home-and-rest day, except for Don, unfortunately, who had to pack a suitcase and fly to Detroit for the week.  After he left, I treated mom and the boys to a foot massage – the perfect relax and rejuvinate activity.  (Though, Lucas who is very ticklish, found it a little stressful.  Oops.) 

Tuesday was my mother’s last day in Shanghai – she left late Tuesday afternoon.  The weather was lovely and clear on Tuesday morning so we decided we’d go up to the top of the Shanghai World Finance Centre for the views.  Mom had already seen city views, but the boys hadn’t.  In fact, they hadn’t really yet seen anything of Shanghai.   We walked over – just a few large blocks – while the boys took in the variety of building architecture:

and then ascended to the 100th floor of the SWFC, which is the floor right above that opening you see in the picture.  I was worried about Lucas, who doesn’t like heights, but it was mom who was really shaken by the height.  Not a nice thing to do to her on the morning before a flight (!), but she hadn’t expected it, either.  Great views, though!

After descending, we walked to Element Fresh for lunch, then back to our apartment for mom to put the last couple of things in her suitcase before Mr. Shi arrived to take us to the airport.  Mom’s 2 1/2 weeks with us flew by, and I think she thoroughly enjoyed herself.

The first place the boys and I went to on Wednesday was the fabric market – of course.  That’s where visitors always need to go early in their visit, so there’s time to get clothes made.  Over the course of the next two weeks both boys got cashmere coats, Lucas got two suits, Nico one, and they both got shirts – Lucas twice as many as Nico! 

Then we were off to mahjong.  I had asked Dorothy (wonderful hostess and mahjong teacher) if I could bring the boys along, and they could sit behind the table and learn the game.  Well, it turned out she had a couple visiting her, so she taught the four of them how to play while the rest of us carried on as usual.   The regular mahjong ladies were stunned, however, when Dorothy offered the boys beer – “hey, Dorothy, you never offer us beer!” someone shouted.  Hmm.   The boys, with those quick young minds, picked up the game that afternoon.  When we went back the following week, they had no problem holding their own, and Lucas mahjonged four times in a row, while I never went out once! 

The next day I first attended a going-away party for three GM wives being transferred, and then the boys and I were off to the Shanghai Zoo.  It seemed an appropriate place to go, given how many times I took them to the zoo when they were young, and I was anxious to see the pandas.  The Shanghai Zoo is a beautiful park and most of the animals have good homes, for a zoo.  

Unfortunately, the pandas were all sleeping….

The weather was perfect, we enjoyed our outing, and it’s always fun when you can spot a “Chinglish” sign!

The next evening, Friday April 30th, was the grand opening of Expo.  We had been warned by the staff of our apartment building that the roads around our building would be closed to all traffic, including walking traffic, starting at 6 p.m.,  as the main road beside our building complex is the main route to the Expo grounds on the Pudong side of the city, and security would be very tight.   We had planned to meet a few friends at the Blue Frog pub for drinks and dinner.  New plan needed.  We decided to meet for drinks and then order take-out and bring it back to our apartment, and stay put here, eating and drinking and hopefully watching the fireworks.   So, Sharon (our friend who moved here from Florida with GM at the same time as we did, though had lived here previously for 3 years), the boys and I set off to Blue Frog at 4 pm to meet Dave and Rob.  

(Brief interlude to tell you the story of Dave and Rob….  One Friday evening when our husbands were out of town, or otherwise busy, Sharon and I set off for Happy Hour (two for one drinks) at Blue Frog.  We didn’t get there until 7 p.m. (HH starts at 4 p.m. at BF, and goes until 8 pm.), and the place was packed.  Luckily the staff found a table for two and we squeezed in, only to find we were sitting very close to another table with two guys already well into HH.  Well, tables being as close together as they were, of course we said a few words to them – I think a “cheers” when our first drinks were delivered.  We exchanged some comments, and when it quickly became clear to me they were likely Canadian, I asked where they were from.  Canada was the answer.  So are we, we answered back.  Where in Canada?  BC.  So are we.  Where in BC?  Well, Dave was from Kitsilano, Vancouver – which is where our condo is located!!  Rob was from Trail, and Sharon had been in Trail many times when she was a District Manager for GM in BC, so they started discussing restaurants and pubs that Sharon knew.  And then it turned out Rob had been in Pentiction for university and they both know a GM dealer that Sharon and I know well.  (Isn’t it sometimes a very small world?!?)  Anyway, they both teach English at a university about an hour outside of Shanghai and regularly come into the “big city” for western-style food, etc, and always hit the Blue Frog.   I guess it was only a matter of time before we would meet them!)

Back to Friday, April 30th…. We all had our HH drinks, or maybe four, placed our food orders and then walked our food back to our apartment.  Fred (Sharon’s husband) joined us for dinner and a great time was had by all – I’m pretty sure (!).   And we were able to see some of the fireworks from our balcony, though we don’t live close enough to the Expo grounds to have had the full view.   Luckily Lucas had the presence of mind to take a picture.

Don got home from his week in Detroit on Saturday afternoon, his 53rd birthday.   We went out for a celebratory dinner that evening, to a wonderful steak restaurant in the Jimmao Tower, and then had after-dinner drinks in the lounge, with a four-piece band of Chinese instruments,  playing background music. 

On Sunday we went out for Chinese DimSum brunch with a huge gang.  The four of us, Sharon and Fred, Diane and Julio, and four members of Julio’s family visiting from Spain, as well as a friend of theirs.  It’s a great way to sample a large number of dishes! 

Totally stuffed, the four of us, along with Sharon and Fred, went for a long walk through the Old Town.  We meandered through the Dongtai Lu Antique Market (though don’t expect to find “real” antiques!)  and the YuYuan Bazaar. 

 

 

 

We had planned to go to the YuYuan gardens as well, but it was hot and we were tired.  We went home on the ferry.

 Don took the next few days off and we went to the fabric markets (again) and the fake market (always fun!) and the flower market, as well as doing a few other errands like furniture shopping and grocery shopping, and then while I had a hair appointment, Don took the boys to the Urban Planning Museum, which I had been to twice, but he had never seen.  All the ‘boys’ loved it!   I’ve posted pictures from this Museum before, but just to remind you…

 

The rest of the week was a busy one for Don at work because several dealers and executives were in town from the whole region, as winners of the Grand Masters event (top dealers from all the countries).  Don and I attended the opening night cocktail reception on Thursday; Don had to drop into a few of the dine-around dinners on the Friday (I stayed home that night with the boys) and Don and I attended the Saturday night gala event.  We didn’t see much of Don, but the boys and I spent the day on Thursday at the Shanghai Museum  (I’ve posted pictures from that day already – under my mother’s time at the museum) and then on Friday we went to Qibao, an ancient traditional town on the outskirts of Shanghai.  There was a temple, small museums of interest, beautiful gardens and a canal where we took a little boat ride.  Not as big as the water towns, but a good replacement as time constraints meant we wouldn’t be making it to a water town.

 

After touring Qibao, we were off to the Jade Buddha Temple.  I had been there in early March with Elsie, but this time we were lucky to find the temple full of chanting monks.

 

I’m going to leave the last few days of the boys’ visit here for a separate blog, because I have so many pictures to share from those last days (we went to Expo, Rob & Dave’s university, and on a guided walk with the Shanghai photographer Gangfeng Wang) and the blogs take a long time to ‘post’ when there are so many photos.  To be continued….