Burlaki on the Thames

I guess, in the current environment, I should be happy with the amount of work I suddenly have. Except, to be honest, I’ve been starting to forget the time in my previous life when I habitually put in 11-12-hour days, and I don’t believe regret has been figuring as a related emotion…

Anyway, the corollary to my newfound busy-ness is the fact that I cannot find much time for a lengthy post. Therefore, today, all I can do is treat you to a view that I come across every morning on my commute to work. This is how the Canary Wharf DLR station looks from the front seat of a train. Somehow, my mental picture of it is grander than the way it came out on the photo, but it’s still a pretty cool structure.

The image is clickable for a larger view, as always.

The southeast fringes of the Greater London, where we live, are home to several strings of little parks, fields and playgrounds collectively known as the Green Chain Walk, established in the 70’s. Many of these are in various stages of disrepair and neglect, and the walks between them are not always “green” and often require moving along busy streets, but the idea to counteract the suburban sprawl with these little oasises of greenery is quite nice, and we even explored some of the nearby links in the chain in the months following our arrival.

The chain may be up for a revival. At least, that’s what the signposts indicate.

Every major tourist destination has numerous signposts pointing the visitor towards this or that attraction. London is no exception; furthermore, it is arguably one of the best signposted metropolises in Europe. But that is mainly in the city center. On the outskirts of the great city, and with the Green Chain Walk in particular, the signs tend to be obscure and infrequent. You will not get lost, if you are attentive and observant, but you would have to work at making sure you stay on the right course.

Then, a while ago, I noticed new signposts, bright, clear and positioned in plain sight at important turns. Happy to see my council taxes in action.

I realized that I work in a pretty cool-looking building myself. Not as cool as most of the edifices in the collection mentioned the other day, but still not bad.

We dithered a bit in the morning whether to go anyplace or stay home. Early in the week, we sort of decided that if the weather was nice on Sunday, we’d pick one of the nearby points of interest that we have not yet visited and go there. In the morning - which was awfully close to noon today, since all members of the family made a concerted effort to catch up on sleep lost during the previous, “sleepover”, night - the skies outside did not look too promising, but it got brighter by the time we finished breakfast. So we went to Rochester, about half an hour away from where we live by car.

The compact historic town of Rochester boasts several architectural gems, some of which are closely associated with Dickens. (For instance, Restoration House is the residence of Miss Havisham in Great Expectations, although in the book it is called Satis House, which happens to be the name of another building in Rochester.) Most of these houses are situated along the pretty High Street, full of quaint little shops. We ventured inside some of the shops, but not inside any of the houses. Instead, we stepped into the fine Cathedral and spent some time exploring the ruins of the Castle.

In the end, the nice little trip was accompanied by sunny skies for most of the time. And as soon as we returned home, the firmament changed its color to more seasonably appropriate gray.

By the way, we decided to take the new Fuji with us instead of the Nikon, and took quite a lot of pictures, most of which came out reasonably well.

On a related tangent, we used our English Heritage membership to get into the Castle for free (it costs £14 for a family, otherwise). In this post about a year ago, I wrote about how we didn’t exactly cover the cost of the membership in the first year of getting it, but how the society still sent us new cards for the second year. I’m starting to think that I could have not been paying attention when we signed up and that the membership was for two years. Natasha used the cards without a problem - validated at the entrance - a couple of times at the Eltham Palace with her parents this year, and we used them today as well. The original cost of membership, £65, has now certainly been recouped with interest.

We have not been sent cards for the next year…

Taking advantage of what might be the last - and first - nice-weather weekend in September, on Saturday we took the kids for a long-promised visit to Legoland.

Of course, half of London had the same idea as us…

The amusement park, located near Windsor, failed to make a great impression on us. It wasn’t just hordes of people and interminable waits for rides. It was mostly the fact that the rides were underwhelming and fairly short.

We collectively tried around a dozen, of which only Vikings’ River Splash (a river rapids ride), Spinning Spider (like the Teacup Party in Disneyland) and Wave Surfer (a fast watercraft circular ride) received top marks from those who went on them. The roller-coasters, The Dragon and Jungle Coaster, were short on thrills, although the former started with a fun “tour” of a castle full of various Lego statues. The water log ride, Pirate Falls, also went for a tour, that of a pirate island, but it had only one single lift-and-drop, which made it ultimately disappointing. The big rotating gondola swing, Longboat Invader was ok.

Kimmy went on a bunch of smaller rides, of which she especially liked Boating School, and that only because she got to drive the boat herself around the water course. The speed is much too slow to make this appealing to anyone older than 8 years of age. Chairoplane (circular swing ride) and a little Ferris Wheel were mildly amusing for her, and Rat Trap (a tree-house playground) provided an opportunity for some climbing and sliding exercises.

Miniland, a collection of models of buildings from around the Britain, the rest of Europe and the US, was a nice non-ride attraction.

In short, smaller kids might find things of interest to do at Legoland, but teenagers will likely get bored, and the adults will have to contend themselves with being happy for the kids (as opposed to maybe finding attractions of their own liking).

We availed ourselves to the Q-bot technology, thereby reducing our potential levels of wait-queue aggravation. Q-bot is a small wireless gadget that allows you to “reserve” your place in the queue for the next ride that you want to get on. It is not a “fast pass”; rather, it gives you an appointment for the approximate time that you’d be able to get on the ride if you were to join the queue at the moment of making your reservation. The upside, of course, is that you do not have to physically spend time in line; you can explore other attractions in the meantime, or even get on another ride; the gadget only allows one reservation at a time, though. The largely acceptable downside is that renting the Q-bot costs £10 per person (which is an introductory rate; in 2009, the price will double). And your “reservation” will always be for exactly the number of people that you rented the Q-bot for (so, if there are four of you and you only rent a Q-bot for three, you will always have to leave someone off; conversely, if you rent a Q-bot for all four of you, but never get on any ride all together, you simply waste money). Plus, some rides cannot be reserved via a Q-bot, which is quite annoying.

No matter, not standing in queues beats the alternative any busy weekend day.

At any rate, we liked being out of the house and we had as much fun as we could squeeze out of Legoland, aided in large part by the fact that we met with our friends Mila and Andrey and their kids at the park. Towards the end of the day, we all retired to their place and spent the evening catching-up around the dinner table. We should do that more often!

Our guests not only managed to visit several of the London sights that we thus far shunned; they also came by an audience with Her Majesty the Queen.

Ok, not really. But we ourselves only see the reigning monarch on TV, despite living just a dozen miles away from the Buckingham Palace. Our friends, who planned to visit the St Paul’s Cathedral on their last day in London, were turned away on account of some official ceremony; they decided to stick around to see who would show up for the occasion and were rewarded with the sight of Elizabeth II getting out of her royal carriage black limo in full royal dress and regalia. I do not have any pictures in my possession to illustrate, but the guys were pretty excited at having been around to see that.

We Americans have a weird fascination with the royals…

The weekend was spent in various activities involving our latest visitors, which explains the first non-travel two-day post gap since sometime last year. With our approaching long holiday, it should be the last active “home” weekend for a couple of months. Anyway, here is a brief re-cap.

On Saturday, we went to one of the last remaining “major” destinations in greater London not visited before - the Windsor castle. While overall very impressive, to say nothing of huge, it left us slightly underwhelmed. Possibly we’ve seen too much opulence at various palaces over the years. Or the absence of usually requisite vast surrounding grounds diminishes the impression.

Continue Reading »

Lest anyone thinks that we long exhausted potential destinations in or around London, let me assure you that that is not true. Our target list has certainly dwindled down from several dozen point of interest to less than a dozen, but that less than a dozen remains.

Today, we used the arrival of our newest guest as a pretext for visiting Sissinghurst Castle Gardens. The very compact grounds consist of several thematic gardens, intimately separated from one another by hedges and old castle walls. The gardens are not showy, but that adds to the attraction - you get a feeling of authenticity, of what the quintessential English garden should be like.

Continue Reading »

The notion that we might have exhausted travel destinations by now could not be farther from the truth. Still plenty of places to go and see. So, today, we made a visit to Canterbury, the medieval spiritual center of England.

The chief attraction is the soaring cathedral that dates back to 11th century. It is an impressive architectural masterpiece, easily holding its own in comparison with other grand Christian edifices that we had the opportunity to see in the past. The cathedral is surrounded by peaceful gardens and atmospheric ruins, which make for a pleasant stay.

The city itself is very walkable, with many examples of medieval architecture. Absence of motorized traffic in the town center is a tremendous plus. There are a number of minor museums, including one full of animatronic figures that bring to life Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, but we skipped museum-going this time around, limiting ourselves to the exploration of cathedral and its “precincts” and then just strolling around town.

The weather was not great - what else is new? - constantly threatening with showers and being generally on the cooler side, so we also decided against taking a boat around narrow (and shallow) canals that circle the town. Nonetheless, it was a good little day trip, of the kind that we have not taken for a while.

I got back home just in time for the opening game of the Euro-2008 football championships. My attention will be largely devoted to that for the next few weeks.

The weather has been holding up pretty well all week - sunny at intervals, and quite warm, - but turned colder on Saturday. I had an idea all week, of visiting a couple of museums that I would be unlikely to visit in the company of my ladies, and the prospect of spending however limited time outside gave me pause. The prospect of spending an entire day alone in front of electronic appliances tipped the scales on the side of the original plan. Off I went.

Continue Reading »

The spring showed a bit of skin today, and I could only look out the window for so long before deciding that I’d better get up and go out.

One of the first thoughts was a round of golf, but my last round in December managed to dampen my enthusiasm for the activity. Instead, I printed myself a few suggested walking routes from a tourbook and went to the central London.

The routes took me to heretofore unexplored parts of Bloomsbury and Holborn, with many architectural stunners and several pleasant squares. Some streets I had entirely to myself, while motorized traffic was largely non-existent. I lingered in the sun here and there, reading a magazine or watching infrequent passerby, and managed to kill almost four hours doing practically nothing. It could have been even longer, but many places on my circuit that I thought of checking out are closed on Sunday. I always say that sightseeing in solitude is a boring exercise, because you need an ability for spontaneous emotion-sharing to make it truly rewarding. But when the weather is nice, aimlessly wandering unfamiliar streets could be quite fulfilling, not mentioning the huge upgrade over sitting home alone in front of a PC…

A quick check of my posts for the last few months reveals that the chronicles of our daily doings have been lately limited to weekend happenstance. I can’t say that I am surprised by that. Sitting here thinking about things to write about, I am quite perplexed to pick something that does not qualify as “mundane”. It’s work, school, house chores, repeat Monday through Friday, for the four of us.

During weekends, though, we still manage to have some fun, even when we are not traveling to destinations old and new.

Continue Reading »

Today, we went to an exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts called “From Russia”. It presented over a hundred paintings from the collections of four leading Russian art galleries, of French and Russian painters, such as Monet, Renoir, Repin, Petrov-Vodkin, Chagall, Malevich, etc. Too much space for cubists, abstractionists and the like, for my taste, but a good exposition nonetheless, although probably not as fascinating as the erstwhile Russian Masters collection at the Guggenheim in New York. We went with our friends. The kids expressed their reluctance to go look at paintings, and we decided not to insist. It illustrates how we reached a whole new stage in our cultural life, where we no longer feel that we should be forcing the girls to participate in our activities. Thankfully, we no longer fret much about leaving our children home by themselves for a few hours. They had their own cultural program: TV and computers…

On the positive side, we were free to enjoy the adults-only company, and topped off the gallery visit with a lengthy repast at a nearby pub. As always, nice conversation on a vast variety of topics left all parties pleased with the event.

We also popped in for a quick look into the nearby Fortnum & Mason, which is about plenty more than just tea: A multi-level department store that sells pretty much everything. And pretty much on the high end…

The indefatigable London mayor, Ken Livingstone, has just inaugurated a low emission zone (LEZ) scheme. It establishes stinging fees - £200 per trip - for high-polluting vehicles’ privilege of driving within Greater London. The heaviest lorries are subject to restrictions effective today, while other lorries, buses, coaches, minibuses and large vans will be phased in over the next four years.

For newer vehicles that satisfy Euro III emission standards the fees are waived (the standard goes to Euro IV in January 2012). The owners of older vehicles will have to clean their engines if they want to avoid the penalties.

For any expatriate that may be concerned with this, cars and motorcycles are exempt. Although, if you are relocating, you may be on the hook from your moving company for the extra couple of hundred quid if their lorry does not meet emission standards.

Information about LEZ can be found on Transport for London website.

Life has a funny way of repeating itself. Almost exactly a year ago, I was writing about a weekend that had been comparatively slow at the time. Even though we have clearly adjusted our living patterns in the intervening twelve months, I could practically use that post word for word in describing this weekend.

Natasha and I did start it with a trip to by now well familiar to us St John’s Wood, where two couples of our friends who live there met with us for dinner. Three hours plus at a tapas restaurant is an excellent way to spend time, especially when only adults are present. If not for the hour-long trip in each direction, it would be even more pleasurable (ever since penning the extended suburbs-vs-city center post, I am coming down stronger and stronger on the side of city living - for an expatriate family, that is).
Continue Reading »

One of the things that Natasha remarked upon her return from Rostov is that people you see on the streets appear to be better dressed over there than in London. I was obviously skeptical, instantly recalling that I even made an argument in the past that women in London looked very pretty on average partially on the basis of dressing up well in public.

I had to agree, though, that vast majority of London population wraps themselves in blackish/brownish/grayish colors for winter. Natasha’s snowy-white overcoat looks positively blinding on this otherwise drab palette. I had to further logically acquiesce that if Russian population has more colors in their collective winter wardrobe then, certainly, they would appear to dress visibly nicer.

That’s where it got hairy.
Continue Reading »

It turns out that there are German Christmas Markets right under our noses in England. Only a week ago we were touring the real thing, and today we spent time at one in Hyde Park, smack in the center of London. Actually, as markets go, it was less than impressive, but the Winter Wonderland amusement area erected for the holidays is very lively and enjoyable.

 
Continue Reading »

As if to make sure that my complaints about general inactivity were unfounded, we have decided to entertain ourselves in the middle of the week.

We went to the seasonal attraction called Lapland UK, in Kent. As the name suggests, it is a Lapland-themed little village that holds a number of Christmas activities, aimed primarily at children who have not grown out of believing in Santa Claus yet. Our expectations were quite low, as Natasha have read a number of reviews on TripAdvisor which posited that the attraction was quite underwhelming. Alas, we bought the tickets over a month ago, so we had to go anyway.

Continue Reading »

On Wednesday I thought, I don’t feel like posting right after 9/11, I’ll write something Thursday. On Thursday, I went out for drinks with co-workers, and after a few beers, whatever little desire for blogging I might have had was encompassed by the strong desire for bed…
Continue Reading »

On our first weekend back together, we couldn’t just stay home, could we? Suppressed for the last couple of months, the urge to resume our explorations dominated our thoughts and ultimately led to a couple of excursions.
Continue Reading »