Hamton Court Palace

Hampton Court Palace is most famously known as the preferred residence of Henry VIII, and later William and Mary.  It's a 30-minute train ride from Central London, and aside from being outrageously photogenic, it's one of the few palaces that you can take pictures in.

Approach the main gate with the unicorn, one of the symbols of British Monarchy (perhaps because it, too, is based on fiction?)

 This is the peasant's -- sorry, visitor's -- entrance:

 In the main courtyard, they have concerts during the summer, feautring some pretty big names.  here's the stage:

View of the bleachers for the performance arena:

Clock tower.

 This is the main reception hall.  The decor reflects that Hamton Court was mostly used as a hunting lodge.

This is in a stairwell.  A stairwell!

Gotta paint the ceiling

More stairwell art

Ceiling of a stairwell

Not sure which king this is supposed to be

 Nice courtyard

In this stairwell, the painting runs off the ceiling and down onto the wall

More of that:

Here's the famous 24-hour clock

Nice bed!  I think this was for Queen Mary

 The back entrance...

The gardens.  Unfortunately the weather was heavily overcast

Gardens...

More gardens

Outside the greenhouse where the vine is planted, they keep a section of ground unplanted:

 The Great Vine is the largest grapevine in the world.  It was planted in 1769, and the base is at least 4 feet in diameter.  This is the base:

More of the Great Vine

  Hey, look, gardens!

 Gotta have a fountain

  They really are terribly lovely

 The Maze.  This is a real hedge maze that you can legitimately get lost in.

 I was starting to get a bit nervous before I stumbled upon the exit.

Cost:  £16

Getting there:  Hop on a train from Waterloo station and you're there in half an hour
Kid-friendliness:  Pretty good if they are into the history.  The audio tour is definitely targeted at kids, which means I stopped using it after about five rooms.
Italian Tourist Factor:  Medium risk of Italian tourists.

Stamford Bridge -- Home of Chelsea FC

My flat is about a 10-minute walk to Stamford Bridge, home stadium of the famous Chelsea Football Club.  Chelsea's a big-time team here with a billionaire owner and money to spend on top players.  On game days, you can hear the crowds cheering from my flat.  Recently I took a tour of Stamford Bridge.

Some nice shots of the field and stands:

 The field has just been re-seeded, so we were not allowed onto it.

 Not sure about the grammar on this banner, but the sentiment is clear.

 Chelsea supporter clubs in America.  North Texas, seriously??

 Here's the press room, where the team does pre-and post-game press conferences.  The tour guide was telling us about all of the "famous" players who signed their contracts on this very desk.  Our tour guide was a lifelong Chelsea supporter (they use the word "supporter" more than they use "fan"), so giving tours was clearly a passion for him.

 Visiting team's locker room is pretty awful.

 Compared to the home team's locker room

 Since the tour was during the offseason, they can dress things up.  These are the jerseys of the starting players, hanging at their lockers.

 Goalies wear yellow, I think to make it harder for opposing players to find the goal.

Cost:  £8.00
Getting there:  If you live where I do, it's a 10-minute walk
Kid-friendliness:  Very high
Italian Tourist Factor:  Extreme Risk of Italian tourists.  They will travel in large family packs, carrying the flag of their home team (it was "Verona" on my tour), that they will photograph themselves holding up at every opportunity.

Thames Barrier

An engineering marvel, the Thames Barrier sits in the river to the east of London to protect the city from flooding due to tidal surges.  Although London's history is usually a tale of fires and wars, flooding has also been a serious problem for centuries.  You can take a boat cruise from Greenwich to the barrier.
Here the boat approaches the Barrier in the distance.

 Apparently the tide can get above the top of this sign.

The Barrier is set up as a series of "gates" that normally lie at the bottom of the river, so that ships can pass through.  When a dangerous tide is expected, the gates are raised to hold back the water.  We were lucky enough on our tour to see one of the gates raised for servicing (needless to say, the system doesn't work well unless all of the gates are raised together).

 The aluminum (I refuse to say "al-you-MIN-ee-um") domes contain the hyraulics to raise the gates.

 Here's a closer shot of the raised gate.  The yellow arm is in the raised or "defensive" position.

 The piers sit between two gates.  Here's one gate in the raised position.

 I just think these things are cool to photograph.

Near the bottom of this photo, you can see the circular nature of the gates.  Each gate is essentially a cylinder that's been cut in half lengthwise.  To raise the gate, the cylinder is rotated.

 The raised gate from upstream, gives you a better sense of the cylindrical design.

I don't think I've explained this well, so let's have the official version with this animation:
http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/homeandleisure/floods/117704.aspx
(be patient, it starts out kind of slow, but the drama builds)

Along the cruise, you pass this abandoned old ferry boat.  Legend has it that this is the ship referred to in the song "Ferry Cross the Mersey"

Cost:  £8.50
Getting there:  Once you're in Greenwich, easy to hop on the boat.  You can also board the same boat right at Westminster Pier
Kid-Friendliness:  Pretty low, unless the kids are into engineering works
Italian Tourist Factor:  Very Low Risk

Greenwich Observatory -- Prime Meridian

Greenwich Observatory is famous for being the reference point for 0 degrees latitude, aka the dividing line between the Eastern Hemisphere and the Western Hemisphere.  The museum at Greenwich is worth a visit.

The Observatory dome still houses a telescope that you can take a peek through:

The rest of the compound sits on a hill to the southeast of central London.

Nice view of the O2 Arena (formerly the Millennium Dome)

And of the Canary Wharf district:

 Here is the famous Prime Meridian line, embedded in the ground:

 It even comes with instructions

 Along the marker, it shows the locations of various major cities.  A bit disappointed that Philadelphi doesn't make the cut, but that could be due to lingering resentment over the unpleasantness in 1776.

 It is obligatory to have a picture of yourself straddling the line.

 Curious scultpure atop the line. 

 There's also an Astronomy Museum, which may be the only one in the world without an IMAX theatre.

Price: £7
Getting There:  Bit of a haul on the Tube system, although the ride through Canary Wharf on the Docklands Light Railway (DLR) is impressive.  You can also get there by tour boat, which is a pleasant ride and the tour guides on the boats are hilarious in a very British way.
Kid-Friendliness:  Ok, but not great.  It's largely an historical site
Italian Tourist Factor:  Medium Risk of Italian tourists

Food in Britain

While British food gets a bad rap, it’s not all that terrible.   Pub food is inconsistent, and in one place I had what was by far the most overcooked hamburger I’ve ever eaten.  They serve chips (French fries) with almost everything here, and I’m no big fan of that.  If you like sausages, this is the place to get them.

Let’s talk about cheese.  The Brits love their cheese.  Actually, the Brits love their cheddar cheese.  In a typical market, I’ll get all excited because the cheese section will have 50 different cheeses to choose from, until I realize that 45 of them are varieties of cheddar.  Now, I like cheddar cheese, but would it be asking too much for some havarti or double-cream?  Forget about Monterey Jack, or, dare I say it, American Cheese (the latter is, like a former roommate, fondly remembered but not truly missed).

One of the more bizarre taste preferences here is for meat-flavored potato chips (crisps).  Popular flavours include beef, ham, chicken, and prawn.  I have tried the ham, the beef, and the chicken, and they just taste weird.  I won’t even think about trying the prawn-flavored crisps.

And then there’s the pizza.  If you think of the flatbread pizza that you can get as an appetizer in many American restaurants as “pizza” then you will like it here.  If you enjoy a thick, chewy crust with mountains of mozzarella and cheddar cheese, gobs of tomato sauce, and heaps of toppings, you will not like the pizza here.  I think you can guess where my preferences lie.

I do like the pastys (pronounce the “a” as in “last”), which is sort of like a large empanada.  It’s a half-moon shaped pot pie that you hold in your hands.  The curved part has an extra bit of crust sticking out (think of the fringe on a ravioli), and the story behind this is that pastys were popular food for tin miners, and they could hold the pasty by the extra crust with their dirty hands and not worry about eating the gunk on their hands.

Europeans in general don’t eat a lot of corn.  It’s considered feed for livestock.  So, one of my favourite breakfast foods, corn muffins, aren’t sold here.  The first time I went to a cafe and asked if they had corn muffins, the guy behind the counter looked at me as if I had asked for a gunpowder muffin.  I really miss corn muffins, and can’t even find cornmeal in the market.

Random food translations:

-          Rocket = arugula

-          Gammon = ham

-          Chilli (two ls) = red peppers, usually diced and with a binding agent like olive oil

-          Bacon = thin slice of fried ham

-          Crispy bacon = what we in America call bacon

-          Courgette = zucchini

-          Bap = hamburger bun

-          Butty = a sandwich, with lots of butter on the bread

-          Jacket potato = baked potato