London

London was, in a word, amazing.  The sidewalks were wide, flat, and impeccably clean; the public transit was reliable and well-communicated; almost all of the museums were free; and the very polite inhabitants spoke English.  I never even needed an umbrella, which was something of a miracle considering Rome was getting flooded at the same time.  The chief downsides were one, the cold, which made it less enjoyable to be wandering the streets, and two, the strike at the National Gallery that left it virtually closed until Sunday.  I knew the strike was happening, but "some galleries closed" on the website didn't mentally translate to "every painting you came to London to see" until I walked in and all the gallery doors off the main hall were locked!  I actually started tearing up and had to go to the ladies' room to cry briefly, but recovered once I learned from a guard that the strike would be over on Sunday--just in time for me to visit before going to the airport.

I flew into Stansted, which required a transfer via Easybus of about an hour and a half.  It was actually quite nice, because I got to see a little bit of the English countryside.  It was interesting how immediately apparent it was that this wasn't Mediterranean farmland, nor even American; certainly the houses, with their particular silhouette, particularly when half-timbered or clustered around a town steeple, were very identifiably British.  I stayed in Notting Hill in my first true AirBnb experience with a woman named Marina, who turned out to be kind of like Phyllis' British doppelganger!  Middle-aged, and never married, well-educated and widely travelled.  She used to work for the NYTimes television division in London--who knew they even had that?--and now is a horticultural...consultant? I suppose is the term.  One got the idea that she'd have to have socked away quite a pile from past careers, considering she owned the entire building where her flat was located.  She took a shine to me, much like Phyllis, and insisted on making me bangers and mash (sausages and mashed potatoes!) the night of the National Gallery disappointment.  Knowing she was half-Irish I might have been concerned about the cooking--except I had already learned that her mother was an Italian war bride from Sorrento, so the cooking was great!

One of the wonderful things about being in an Anglophone country is the amount of confidence you feel in taking public transportation.  Buses are usually my last resort when traveling, because the maps are always confusing and you almost never know where to get off.  Not so in England!  Not only are there clear route maps and city maps at every station, the buses actually announce each and every stop.  Unbelievable.  I enjoyed riding the buses so much that I took them rather than the Tube most of the time--one metro is much like another, and it was so enjoyable to go to the upper level and sit in the front seat with the huge window, London spread out before you.  That's what I did when I arrived: dropped off my bag, chatted with Marina, and then took the bus to the Victoria and Albert Museum.  This is a museum of material culture, so every kind of object imaginable (furniture, ironwork, clocks, sculpture) from all cultures and periods.  It was really impressive (not least for its commitment to education, "please touch" exhibits were in practically every room), but overwhelming in the same way that the Met can be.  Most memorable for me was the gallery on Queen Victoria, which included film quips of the aging monarch shot in 1900.  I know that Victoria lived into the 20th century and that video was invented in the 1890s, but it just seems incredible somehow for there to be film footage of the quintessential 19th-century figure.

Thursday morning was my National Gallery shock treatment in the morning, albeit one fortified by breakfast in the Crypt Cafe at St. Martin-in-the-Fields beforehand.  Afterward I wandered out down toward Whitehall, intending to visit Inigo Jones' Banqueting House, but adding to my annoyance, I couldn't find it! (I later figured out it was completely under scaffolding).  I watched the Horse Guards briefly, passed by Churchill's War Rooms figuring I would just see them with Sean when we come back, and ended up paying the ridiculous amount of $25 to get into Westminster Abbey.  Now, I'm familiar with Italian churches filled with tomb memorials, but they have nothing on this place.  There didn't seem to be an inch of wall that wasn't covered with a classicizing bust and a Latin inscription!  The audioguide was voiced by Jeremy Irons, which was quite nice.  After Westminster Abbey (and admiring Big Ben, the gilding on which in sunlight sparkles magnificently), I took the bus over to Tate Britain, which was chiefly interesting for the Pre-Raphaelites and the Turner painting Snowstorm: Hannibal Crossing the Alps.

Finally, in the afternoon, my steps turned toward the British Museum.  Like the National Gallery, this was a place for meeting old friends heretofore known only remotely!  The Rosetta stone, the Bast statuette, the Assyrian reliefs of Asurnispal-whatever killing lions.  There were some surprises (the Standard of Ur is so tiny!) and only one disappointment--namely, the Parthenon marbles left me rather cold.  I was expecting to be more impressed by them than I was.  The museum itself is exquisite, particularly in the massive courtyard, which has been roofed and transformed into a skylight space for the cafe and shops.  Shops in British museums are no joke; since the museums themselves are free, the shops and the cafes are even more important than they are in the US.  I was definitely reeling from how expensive London is.  2 pounds for a macchiato, 4 pounds for a tiny sandwich.  I spent an insane amount of money just on food, since Westminster was the only attraction I paid to see.  I skipped St. Paul's, for example, since it was another $25 ticket; I figured I can see the source material here in Rome!

Friday was another round of museums.  The Courtauld Gallery, home to friends like Manet's Bar at the Folies Bergere; John Soane's unusual house-museum, stuffed with antiquities, casts of sculptures and bits of architecture; Tate Modern in Southwark, housed in a repurposed power facility.  Saturday I didn't do much but wander, eat fish-and-chips (result, not different from what's available in the US) and visit the Wallace Collection, another fabulous and free experience.  If it hadn't been so cold I would have enjoyed walking the streets more, but as it was I took buses wherever possible.  The architecture was great, and not just the 19th and early 20th century grandiosity (the temple-cum-theater of Selfridge's, for example), but the wealth of interesting contemporary architecture.  Debenhams, for example, recently received an innovative 'cladding' with small, individually hung tiles that form a shimmering, shifting veil, something that was particularly attractive at night when lit by warm, orange light.

Finally, finally, the National Gallery.  I was there on Sunday when the doors opened, and spent a blissful 3.5 hours inside.  It's one of the best museums I've ever visited, full of top-quality works but uncluttered.  It helps that it's painting only, unlike a museum like the Met.  I spent the first half-hour just in the first room with Titian's Bacchus and Ariadne, flanked on either side by the Man with the Blue Sleeve and La Schiavona.  I noticed wonderful details, like Bacchus' long, unbound hair, and the blue flowers at the lower right.  A gallery or two over, Holbein's Ambassadors was huge!  So much larger than I expected; I thought something like the scale of the Thomas More portrait in the Frick.  (Most of my photos taken here were scale comparisons with people stopped in front of paintings, for later use in teaching).  The Diana and Callisto, Diana and Acteon, and Death of Acteon pictures were next.  I did find myself leaning toward the 'unfinished' side of the argument for the latter picture; or rather, unfinished in parts, for Diana is pretty highly finished while the plant at dead center foreground is just too rough, like it jumped out of a Van Gogh.

 Jewel-like colors in the small gallery with Pontormo and Bachiacca's Joseph paintings, and then another grand gallery full of friends.  Sebastiano's Lazarus and Raphael's Julius II have always left me cold, but the two unfinished Michelangelo paintings were wonderful. Bronzino's glowing flesh, even when it's nominally a night scene like his Holy Family (love the turquoise tint to Mary's robe), the delightfully sexy Andrea del Sarto portrait.  Next a room full of Veronese, including the marriage paintings where the "Respect" theme is illustrated by a man not  raping a sleeping woman.  Nice.  A lovely Titian Venus and Adonis, where she sits on a man's military jacket.  Lotto's Lucretia--he loved those off-kilter poses.  Then the Sainsbury wing, where Leonardo's cartoon was much larger than I had thought, and ragged around the edges--the gift of seeing a material object in the flesh, as it were!  Raphael's Knight's Dream, in contrast, was miniature.  The green sleeve of his Saint Catherine--painted with a tempera-like stroke, incidentally--was divine.

The 17th through 19th century galleries didn't fill me with quite as much admiration, of course, though there were still familiar faces to greet, like Caravaggio's Supper at Emmaus (where the innkeeper is clearly thinking, 'I could care less who you are, bub, are you going to pay for this spread or not?') and welcome new ones like Mignard's delightful portrait of a lady as Thetis, or Guido Reni's Europa.  For the colors alone he deserved the word divine!