Traveling to Paris (the Prof)

Waiting at St Pancras

Not sure how we can really describe our trip to Paris.  Two very special days and it's a bit difficult to pick pictures out of the 500 or so we took.  For this, I just want to talk about the trip itself.

We traveled on the Eurostar--the train that connects London to Paris through the Chunnel (the Channel tunnel, if you're not familiar).  It's a great way to travel--much more freedom than on an airplane, less time wading through security checks, better food, and far more comfortable seats.  And it moves pretty fast, too. I'll probably post a video that I took out the window on Facebook at some point (the blog just doesn't like my videos).

We left London early Thursday morning from St. Pancras Station.  St. Pancras is a huge station connected to the King's Cross Station (think platform 9 3/4), but our bus dropped us right by the right door to get into the international terminal.  We ate breakfast and rode up to the train platform.  The station was quite pretty in itself.

Comfortable seating helps a lot

This was Tink's first train ride, and my first since I was younger than her.  We made one stop to pick up a few extra passengers outside London.  The Chunnel isn't really a big deal--it's just dark for about 20 minutes.  We arrived at Gare du Nord station in Paris about 2 1/2 hours later.  The countryside goes by very quickly, but it was a nice view of both England and France.  It's just hard to watch it for very long at a time.

Looking down the street to Gare du Nord

We figured out at the end of Thursday that we had taken a bus, a train, a subway, and a boat all in the same day--and still managed to walk about 3-4 miles.  Sleep wasn't hard to find in Paris.

Home again

The Old Operating Theatre

Our Monday class--British Life and Culture--was themed around Shakespeare and Dickens this week, but it also included a visit to a very interesting place.  The place was the "Old Operating Theatre" of St. Thomas hospital.  The hospital was a charity hospital directly connected to the St. Thomas church on the south side of the river Thames.  During the 1800s, they built an operating theatre in the top of the church--where there was a lot of natural light from a skylight.  The operations done there were done in the age before anesthetics and antiseptics.

We got to see a demonstration of how the operations were done (here's Andrew, one of our students, about to lose a leg), and a description of how fast: since there were no anesthetics, speed was of the essence.  A good doctor could amputate a leg in less than 30 seconds--yikes.  The med students would stand in the theatre to watch and learn.



This is the only operating theatre of its kind in England.  Others were upgraded as the hospitals developed new techniques--especially in terms of cleanliness.  St. Thomas was overrun by the local railroads, though, and stopped being a working hospital.  The operating theatre was boarded up and forgotten for decades--before being found during some work on the church.  So we get to see a bit of history because no one was trying to push this particular theatre into the late 19th century.

The theatre seen from above.  Wood operating table, only the natural light

Coventry

Saturday, March 12

On the very last day of our Scotland/Wales trip, we spent the morning at Stratford, and then made our last stop in Coventry.  We stopped to see the new cathedral there.  I'll admit that I was less than excited.  We've seen three large gothic cathedrals and the neo-classical St. Paul's.  I just couldn't see how a building built in the 1950s could compare.  It turned out, though, that it was an extra-ordinary place in its own right.  Unfortunately, pictures weren't allowed inside.  We're running out of picture space, so I added a link to Wiki that has a lot of inside pictures.

Coventry was bombed badly by a German raid in November 1940.  The raid was devastating to the city.  Coventry had a large section of city that dated from the medieval period.  Almost all of it was destroyed in the raid.  The large cathedral was left with just the outside shell.  The church leaders re-conceived the church on new lines: as a center for reconciliation between people.  The church's rector wrote the words "Father Forgive" on the burned out walls of the building on the day after the bombing.  He made it clear that he didn't just mean "forgive our enemies" but "help us realize our own sin" as part of the process.  That began the emphasis on reconciliation.

The wood cross in the picture below is a replica of the one built from the burned out wood of the fires.  The original is on display inside the new building.  It's hard to make out the gold lettered "Father Forgive" behind the cross; the original was written in black.

In the middle of the now empty shell of the old cathedral are several striking monuments.  The one below of two people experiencing reconciliation has copies in Berlin, Northern Ireland and Hiroshima.

The new cathedral makes beautiful use of glass, but it wasn't possible to take pictures from the inside and the outside pictures are a bit hard to see.  Here's Tink with her friend Claire in front of the main worship entrance, also seen below.  The stained glass picture from below is from Wiki

See the inside of the Cathedral at Wiki

York Minster

Friday, March 11

Friday was our last night on the road and also our busiest day.  We traveled from Edinburgh, Scotland down through York and on to Stratford upon Avon.  That made for a lot of time in the bus and a very hurried stop in York--which was a shame because York is a beautiful city that still has a lot of medieval elements.  We spent most of our time in York touring York Minster--the city's cathedral.

York Minster is a gothic cathedral, which means it resembles Westminster Abbey and Canterbury Cathedral.  It was built over a period of about 250 years (good grief, can you imagine anyone today sticking with a project that long?).  It's one of the few cathedrals that uses wood for much of its roofing material.  That gives the church a sense of lightness, but it also means it is susceptible to fire--there have been three major ones in its history.







One of the things that York is known for is the stained glass.  A lot of medieval stained glass was destroyed during the post-Reformation period and during Cromwell's Puritan era.  It was seen as being "too Catholic" and somewhat idolatrous.  York's stained glass was saved during that time, though, because a local leader was part of the army that captured York for the Puritans--and he ordered that the city be left alone.

One thing I learned about stained glass is that it has to be repaired a lot.  Every 150 years or so, it has to be removed and redone or else it would crack up.  Even as it is, it develops a lot of cracking.

The first picture here shows the old method of fixing the glass--adding lead.  It worked, but created a lot of black lines that separate the picture.  The new method works much better in terms of preserving the look and beauty of the glass.  It's seen in the next picture.  The method?  Super glue.

Looking over the reader's lectern at the quire (choir)

How to do it justice with a camera?

Looking down the river from the bridge into the city center

The old city wall--dating from around 1200-1400

Wales and Caernarfon Castle

Saturday, March 5

This was actually our first major stop.  Caernarfon is a beautiful Welch seaside town.  Wales resisted English advances into its territory for a long time.  Especially after the Norman conquest, there was significant effort by the Normans to extend their influence into Wales, but they found the wild forests and the excellent bowmen a difficult match (Steven Lawhead has written an interesting trilogy that retells the story of Robin Hood as a Welch leader--it's the books Hood, Scarlet and Tuck--good reads if you like the Robin Hood stories).

Anyway, Edward I (that's the same Edward from the Braveheart movies) finally managed to conquer Wales in the 13th century.  He built a series of castles to intimidate the Welch and protect his gains.  That was when Caernarfon Castle was built.  He also promised the Welch a noble prince who would not speak a word of English.  He then had his wife come to Caernarfon and deliver a baby that he introduced as the "Prince of Wales."  The legend is that this was the source of naming the next king in that way, but it really didn't catch on until centuries later.



The Queen's Gate of Caernarfon was one of the two key gates, and it was where the king could be presented to the public, but there is no longer a direct land connection to the gate, so it's quite a view over the city.

View from the top of the castle

Tink at the top

The way up in these places is small-and has two way traffic

Tink liked the cannons

Edinburgh Scotland (the Prof)The

Thursday, March 10

Thursday saw us in Edinburgh (pronounced Ed in bur uh) Scotland.  We had a tour of the city and the castle, then spent the afternoon sightseeing in the city.  We had a fabulous guide who met us at the hotel and took us around to see the sights by bus, then led us into the castle before leaving us on our own.  He told us some great stories of "body snatchers," "radical rascals," famous writers, and less famous personalities.  We went up the hill near the dormant volcano (more than a million years dormant, so not exactly a threat) to get a view of the whole city (see picture on the right).  The view of the castle below is also from the hill.

One of the stories that Tink really liked was the story of "Greyfriar's Bobby."  Bobby was a dog who loved his master dearly.  When his master died, Bobby showed up at the cemetery every day (after hours because the priest wouldn't allow dogs in the cemetery) to sit by the grave.  When he finally died years later, the locals insisted that he should be buried close by.  He's buried just outside the cemetery, and has his own statue out on the road.  He's also the subject of a Walt Disney movie by the same name. The cemetery is also famous as the source of the names that JK Rowling used for a series of novels--but I'll let Teach and Tink tell about them.

Edinburgh Castle is a working castle that is one of the largest we've seen in England.  The original structure was very old, but Robert the Bruce tore it down after his men massacred the English soldiers there.  Bruce didn't want to use the fort because of the massacre, but didn't want the British to acquire it.  The castle was rebuilt in the 16th century.  The castle is still a working military base.  It has a garrison and is the location of the "one o' clock gun" that is fired each day at 1:00 pm to let people know what time it is.  The Scots, being practical, fire the gun at 1:00 so they only have to fire once--rather than 12 times at 12:00.

Firing the 1:00 gun

Entering the castle, below, takes you through the various defenses that were used to make sure no one made it through the gate during an attack.  It certainly wouldn't have been fun to try--archers, multiple portculis setups (that's the iron gate you see drop in the movies), boiling water (they didn't generally use oil--too expensive) and--just to demoralize you--the waste buckets.  It's a lot easier today.

The weather was interesting on this day.  We already had blustery winds--30-35 MPH most of the morning.  Just as we were about to start looking around inside the castle, we went from sunny to rain to snow to hail in about 15 minutes.  The hail pretty well drove us indoors.  The pic below gives a bit of a feel for the chaos that ensued.  It's hard to tell much about him, but that's our guide in the middle of the picture--complete with full Scottish regalia (including the kilt that costs about 500 pounds)

At the top of the castle, looking out over the city

St. Giles Church -- the "mother church" of Scottish Presbyterianism

The castle from the main town

Sunset over the Edinburgh skyline

Shakespeare's House and Gardens by Teach

Anne Hathaway's Cottage

the courting chair that William used

Hope and Stacey

A little time alone in the gardens

Beautiful spring flowers at every corner

Staying in Stratford proves to be the perfect taste of English countryside. All of our high school English teachers would be green with envy. We arrived and literally dropped our suitcases at our B&Bs so we could briskly walk to the theatre a mere 10 minutes away.  The Royal Shakespeare Company put on one of the most entertaining adaptations of Romeo and Juliet I've ever seen.  It was fun to recognize actors and actresses from Julius Caesar. Even more fun was running into Romeo at the Dirty Duck afterwards! He graciously agreed to come in and say hi to the group and have a few photos made with us. As some of our group would say, "Epic Evening"!

As we came out of Shakespeare's home actors performing short scenes greeted us.

Hanging out with Shakespeare's Ghost

on the street in Stratford

a little lunch with Will

   The next day we had glorious weather to match the beautiful grounds at Anne Hathaway's Cottage.  This is the home where Will courted Anne and they may even had lived for awhile. If you go, take the tour through the house, roam the grounds, see the orchard and get lost in the shrubbery maze! The place invites you to sit and linger.  After this we saw Shakespeare's homeplace and roamed around Stratford. We know that the couple lived here for awhile.