Canary Wharf and the Docklands Museum

One Canada Tower - the original skyscraper

Dave has wanted to pay a visit to Canary Wharf since we moved here, it being an up-and-coming financial centre of London.  It is a strange place to visit, in fact the buildings present all date from the 1980's and later.  In fact the area used to be the docks of London, hence the Docklands Museum, and you can still see the canals as you walk around the massive skyscrapers which are now present.  The UK's tallest buildings are all located here, though there are a few being built closer to the City which will take back that crown.  The first buildings were all completed in 1991, and it must have been a very strange place back then, not that it is much more normal now.  To give you some idea, it is built on the Isle of Dogs, and historically it certainly hasn't been a pleasant place, full of marshes and biting insects.  So to see the gleaming skyscrapers and endless panes of glass it has certainly come a long way.  Though there are still back-lots which appear as if the money hasn't quite reached there yet.

Back-lots on Canary wharf, quite a contrast, still waiting re-development

Empty streets on the weekends - a land of zombies?

Whilst the skyscrapers are massive, and fairly plentiful, it doesn't feel like there's anyone living there.  Walking around on the weekend was like a ghost town, and whilst the City of London is not much better, there are at
least little pubs and churches thrown in to mix things up a bit.  Here it was all massive buildings and empty streets and not a lot of people walking around.  It was a bit like the Sydney, in that there were many shopping centres built under the ground.  Once you found them you saw there were actually a few people around, it's just they were mole people.  I wonder if the apartment blocks there have a direct route to both the underground station and the shopping centres, so that people never have to venture onto the streets?

Along the Thames towards the city

Outside the Docklands Museum

After reliving 28 Days Later we went onto the Docklands Museum, this, for us, was a trip down memory lane.  When we first moved here the Museum of London was 5 minutes away from our temporary accommodation, and they also run the Docklands Museum.  It was back to the beginnings for us.  I would recommend this museum, London is a city built on the river, and the docks were an integral part to it's history.  From the East Indian company, to the slave trade in the Caribbean, to whaling and pirates, it was all there.  In fact I think the section on the slave trade was really well done, though I think I also seem to have a fascination with the worst of humanity.

A slave collar and a whip, the idea being that the hooks of the collar would get caught in the trees

Before there were bridges, there were ferries, in fact the City had to pay the ferries compensation when the bridges were built

The Christmas lights of Canary Wharf

British Museum - Part II

I love this building!

This is the second time we've been here, but I have a feeling it's going to be a recurring theme, this place is like the Louvre of London, it's that big!  We went along with our various pod devices so we could listen to some of the History of the World podcasts as we saw the different objects.  It was kind of interesting to do it this way, it sort of was like our own personal audio guide, just really in-depth on only a few objects.

First up I wanted to see the really old, neolithic stuff, like carved reindeers swimming, but I couldn't see exactly which section that was in.  So instead we ended up in the Egyptian section, which seems to be almost the default section to end up in.  There are so many signs up saying "Do not touch" and yet still nearly everyone was all over the stuff.  It's pretty bad really, given just how many visitors the British museum gets every year.  And doubly so given that one of the main reasons the museum gives for not returning a whole bunch of objects is that they can look after them better than the country where they really come from.

Poor show really, on both the part of the visitors and the museum staff.  It may have to become a case of the Sistine chapel, were you just have a whole

Ramses II with a whole left by Napoleon

bunch of security guards standing around yelling out "No touching!"  Maybe then people will be a little more careful.

We saw the statue of Ramses II, apparently this guy was a great propagandist.  He would go around "updating" existing statues with his name.  And even though he never really won that many battles, he erected an awful lot of statues proclaiming his "victories".  So many so there were

Centaur vs Lapith

about 9 following Pharaohs who used his name in order to increase their status.  Nice work on his part.

Another Athenian statue from the Parthenon

Next up were the Elgin marbles, or rather the Parthenon sculptures.  I didn't really realise just how many he had taken, I haven't visited the Parthenon, but either it is really big, or it's looking remarkably bare, because there were three galleries worth of statues there.

The main subject of the podcast was one particular sculpture, of a centaur fighting a Lapith.  I think the Lapiths were a mythical people of Greek mythology, who are mainly known for their fight with the centaurs.  In this particular case though it is thought that the centaurs were meant to represent the foreign enemies, that foreigners weren't really human, and the Lapiths were the Athenians, fighting for their city.

It was also interesting to hear that the Parthenon was basically a museum for all the spoils of war at that time.  That the people of Athens would display there objects depicting their glory and the conquests over their enemies.  In fact, one of the historians was saying that if you were a foreigner at that time, the Parthenon would have been something you spat on, as it showed the Athenian arrogance.  Certainly different from now, where the British museum is almost the spoils of war itself.  The curator didn't really go into the controversy surrounding these objects, I think it's probably too divisive perhaps.  And he just wanted to focus on the amazing sculptures.

Greek gods surveying their realm

Four small clay cows

Next up it was back to the Egyptians, but this was much earlier than the Ramses II statue.  Just 4 little clay cows, found in a tomb 5,500 years ago, before the Pharaohs or the pyramids.  At this point people probably couldn't even drink their milk, and their meat would have been incredibly tough.  Instead they used them as walking blood banks, mixing their blood in with their gruel.  It was interesting that they chose these little cows in the podcast, as they were in the same room as the mummies, which are perhaps a little more spectacular. But then it is a very clever podcast, and they used this opportunity to talk about how people's tastes have evolved over the millennia.

Basse Yutz flagons

Dave was also keen to see a bit of the Celtic objects, seeing as how we are living in a Celtic land.  So it was off to the ancient British section and this 2,500 year old bronze drinking flagon.  This flagon was so much better than everything else from the same era, so you could certainly see why it had been chosen as one of the 100 objects.  If you look closely you can see a little duck figurine at the end of the spout.  The idea being when you pour your wine or mead it would look like the duck was swimming on the liquid.  Quite impressive artistry for something that old.

We were starting to get a little historically overloaded so it was off to see the models of the Olympic medals.  They are surprisingly large.  

There was also a little exhibit on the history of clocks.  I always love clocks, the ability to keep time before the advent of the quartz crystal was a difficult problem.  That gold ship was actually a clock, if you look really closely you can just see the clock face.  The idea was that it would be a magnificent centre-piece to your table.

Olympic medals

Yes, this is a clock

Let the Tasting Commence

We couldn't resist the call of the mini-bottles too long, so tonight we cracked them open to see what whisky we could taste.  It seems that blogger is set to Irish spelling as it keeps wanting to put an 'e' in whisky.

We started with the Auchentoshan, which is a blended whisky from the Lowlands region, ie the region where most people live in Scotland.  These are meant to be lighter, fruity dry whiskies, which is why the guy at the shop suggested it.  We found it easy to drink, though it had a strange soapy feel on the tongue, but then they all had that.  There was certainly a pleasant burn as you drank it, and there was a real earthy, smokey smell to it.  Probably our third favourite of the night.

Next up was the 10 year Macallan, this is from Speyside.  Actually three of the whiskies we tried tonight were from that region.  It's a tiny region geographically, but seems massive in the number of distilleries.  This region lies between Inverness and Aberdeen, in the Grampian mountains.  This must be where the name comes from (for the Grampians near Melbourne, I never appreciated that).  This region is meant to be the lightest in Scotland, though this one was a real Sherry number.  It was certainly smoother than the Auchentoshan, with a pleasant floral, fruity smell, which was repeated in the taste.  Though still there was that strange soapy feel on the tongue.  This one was slightly sweeter than the first, and we enjoyed this one more.

The discarded Ardbeg

Next up was one we couldn't finish.  This was, I'm guessing, the full-on Scotch whisky flavour, full of medicinal flavours, really smokey/peaty.  This one is not going to get a repeat.    It was the Ardbeg from the Islay region.  This region is a little island of the north-western coast of Scotland, and is meant to be a real peaty one.  We chose this one just so we could get the contrast between the rest of the lighter, more pleasant whiskies we had chosen.  And it sure was a contrast, if I wanted medicinal I'd buy cough syrup.  I'm so glad we didn't finish off with this one, that would have been a real unpleasant end to the night.

We had high hopes for the fourth whisky, a 12 year from Balvenie, which is another Speyside region.  This one was really easy to drink, definite honey flavours.  There was no smokey aroma, but again that strange soapy feeling on the tongue was there.  One of the favourites though for sure.

We finished with the oldest whisky, a 16 year old from Tomintoul, which is another Speyside one.  This is actually from the highest village in Scotland, and often gets cut off in winter due to the snow.  This had a lovely floral, sweet smell.  Though it wasn't as smooth as what we were hoping for, there was a rather unpleasant afterbite.  But as a bonus there was no real soapy feel. 

I think in the end we have definitely narrowed it down to the Speyside region, as we certainly preferred those over the others.  I'm starting to appreciate how people can go crazy for whiskies, they are rather like wine, in that the variation between the different types is stark.  I think we are still in the alco-pops phase, in that the sweet, sherry flavoured ones were our favourites.  Whereas I'm sure true connoisseurs only drink the disgusting medicine ones.  Though when I was young I thought beer was disgusting, so perhaps I should revisit this in 10 years time or so.  I have to say though, I think whisky is going to be more Dave's drink than mine.  I might get into cognac.  We'll have to pay another visit to this whisky shop, and hopefully they have cognac tasters as well :)

Winter is Here

Lovely trees on the Heath

I think winter has finally arrived, not that it's particularly cold just yet, in fact I think we have been extraodinarily lucky with the weather so far.  Perhaps it's because it's a La Nina this year, and Australia is getting all the rain.  After the big-freeze of last year, we are still to see any real snow.  We had one snow flurry a few weeks ago, but nothing settled, and Christmas day was about 15 degrees, cold enough for a roast duck, but certainly no white Christmas.  But even though it is still warm-ish, the trees persist in losing their leaves, and running through the Heath the other day, you were certainly sure it was winter.  Still pretty in it's own, bare, way though.

Snow only settled on gloves

And cars

Natural History Museum

The main hall, I love this building!

I went back to the Natural History Museum the other day, mainly to see the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition.  A combination of two of my loves, photography and animals, so I was definitely looking forward to that.  You can't take any photos of the photos, I hate that rule, but you can see the winning photos online here.  There were a variety of different categories, but it seemed that some of the photographers were taking a bit of an easy way out by taking extremely similar photos and then submitting them for different categories, which I thought was a bit dodgy.  Some of the shots were incredible, and the photos by children were pretty amazing, and these were often just taken in their backyard.  Which goes to show you don't need to travel for miles to take good shots. 

I think the Natural History Museum has to be one of my favourite buildings, though I think they could spend a little more time on the display labels.  There's actually quite a

Standing guard at the entrance to the dinosaurs

big difference between the British Museum and the Natural History Museum, and whilst I think they both have great stuff in them, it just seems that the British Museum has a lot more money to be able to spend on explaining the different displays.  Everything in the British Museum has a detailed explanation, whereas most of the stuff in the Natural History Museum, just has a name plate.  The stuff that does have a more detailed description looks like it was last updated in the 1960's.

The museums here in Britain are all free, and it makes me wonder where do they get the money to prepare any exhibits, is it purely government funded, or do they rely heavily on donations?  And if that is the case how is it that the British Museum has so much more money than the Natural History Museum?  Are they just better at pulling in the donations?  They would certainly get more visitors, but then you wouldn't think the average-joe visitor would actually donate all that much. 

A little guy casting shadows

Anyway it seemed a little quieter at the Natural History Museum this time round, so I thought I would try their dinosaur exhibit, by far their most popular, permanent exhibit.  It was certainly pretty good, they had a lot of complete skeletons, and quite a bit of general dino info.  They also talked a bit about how they couldn't really be sure of much, and the different evidence leading to why they think they were cold-blooded, or warm-blooded, or why they died out.

T-Rex and Triceratops skulls

The strangest thing about the exhibit though is the way it is structured.  It is very much a one way path, you walk in, up some stairs, and then you walk along an elevated walkway over all the exhibits, past skeletons, until you get to the very back of the room.  You see a sign saying T-Rex, so you think, oh cool they have a T-Rex skeleton, it's strange that it's behind a wall, but fair enough.  You then walk around the wall, and you find you are on a ramp, leading back down to the ground.  And it's not a T-Rex skeleton, but a strange animatronic T-Rex, which I assume was life-size, but it was hard to tell.  And I'm thinking, why are we all forced to go past this thing?  I mean it was a major crush up on the walkway, and if it was only leading to this weird robotic thing, then I would gladly have skipped the crush and the robot, and focused on the rest of the exhibit.

Freaky alien model

After the dinosaurs, the other exhibits seem a bit half-hearted, I think they sunk all their donation money into the robot.  I checked out the human body section, which looked like it was last updated 40 years ago.  I have to say the highlight here was the 80x scale model of a foetus, that thing looked like an alien!

Christmas Lights

Why umbrellas, is there a hidden Christmas message here?

A quiet patch on Oxford street

Lights down the street, before it's closed to traffic

I realise these Christmas related posts are coming a little late, but I think even bloggers deserve a break over Christmas.  London does do quite a good Christmas light, they haven't quite fully grasped the Christmas market, I think they just see them as another chance to consume random stuff.  And speaking of consuming, these shots were all taken on Oxford Street, which has to be London's temple to consumption.  It is also rapidly becoming my least favourite street in London.  The people! The barging! They had to close Oxford Street for the week leading up to Christmas, I think there would have been casaulties if they hadn't.

When I took these photos I vowed not to return until after Christmas.  I should have extended that vow until after the after Christmas sales. 

Recent Shows

Ceiling at Albert Hall

We've managed to get out to a few shows recently, unfortunately "the show" does not lend itself to photos, what with the excessive number of "no recording device" signs around the place.

We managed to see the Messiah at the Royal Albert Hall, that was a highlight, though really everything we've seen has been good.

The bassist was fantastic, even though when it wasn't his turn to sing he sat slumped in his chair and appeared to nap.  He made up for it when he opened his mouth.

Going to the shows you do get to experience freaky humanity in all of it's glory too.  There were two wonderful freaky instances, one was at the Messiah. To be fair the Messiah is certainly something that you really have to concentrate on, to understand what they are singing, and these people didn't seem to speak much English, which would have made it a couple of orders of magnitude harder.  So within about 20 minutes at least two people in front of us had fallen asleep and then proceeded to doze throughout the performance.  At the very last minute of the performance, where everything is rising to the conclusion, one of them managed to rouse herself and then offered a mint to the person sitting next to her.  Apparently she couldn't wait 30 seconds for the show to end before freshening her breath.

An even better example of strange show behaviour was at a play we went to see, it was the Veil, a new gothic Irish play set in the 1800's.  It was at the Royal Theatre and the staging was unbelievable, seriously there was a full-blown tree on stage, as well as a working fireplace and dozens of candles, all of which were constantly being lit throughout the play.  This time sitting in front of us there were two incredibly drunk people, who found the tense moments hilarious.  At one point in the play one of the actors is screaming out "Who's there?!?!" over and over again, and I'm afraid the drunk people could not resist the call.  Luckily they didn't make it past intermission, and disappeared to polish off the bottle of wine they were carrying with them.  I am starting to appreciate why the boxes exist in these theatres, the rich people don't want to be mingling with the riff-raff.

Again though this play was fantastic, and even had an actor from the Vicar of Dibley, not Dawn French, the sullen farmer one, and he was really good, completely different from his character in the Vicar of Dibley :).

A small portion of the choir at the Messiah, with the orchestra yet to arrive

It being Christmas time we also couldn't resist a showing of the Nutcracker.  There were at least three different theatres showing it at the same time.  I think that really brought the difference with Australia home.  In Oz you would be lucky to get one showing, which would sell out weeks in advance.  Here we could still getting reasonably good seats the week before we wanted to go.

It was a Matthew Bourne production, apparently he did a version of Swan Lake in Sydney, which was an all-male production, so it seems that he's willing to try different things.  I really liked the Nutcracker, perhaps it wasn't true high-ballet, at some points it really seemed more like contemporary dance than ballet, but then I don't really know what the technical difference is sometimes.  I quite liked the opening scene, which was set in an orphanage, and though at the beginning you keep expecting them to open their mouths, the exaggerated facial expressions and body movements soon seem to be natural.

Long Nights

 The long nights and cold weather here seem to be leading to an uptick in our booze consumption.  In the last couple of weeks we have bought a bottle of port, a bottle of rum, and 5 mini-bottles of whiskey.  Dave is particularly keen on trying the whiskey, and we finally found what seemed to be a proper whiskey shop near the British Museum the other day.  As we really don't know much about whiskey, we thought what better way to work out what we like than buying a few small bottles and conducting a tasting session. 

We have started with what the sales-person said was the lighter, more sherry flavoured ones, though he did give us a peaty one just so we can see if we like that as well.  He didn't really start off on a good foot, describing the whiskey he likes as having an almost antiseptic flavour.  But he got better from there and certainly seemed to know what he was talking about.  But then as we know nothing about it, he could have been telling us that the moon was made of cheese and we would have believed him.

I'm thinking we'll be tasting a few of them this afternoon seeing as how Dave has just spent 50 minutes on the phone with some idiot from Singapore Airlines trying to book tickets to Australia.  Let's just say Dave handled the off-shoring of Singapore Airlines reservations office much better than I would have done. Especially when the guy on the phone told him there were no seats available on a flight we had just looked at online, which had half the plane empty.  But he got there in the end.  So we can enjoy a week of Australian warmth in March this year.  Or at least I think we can, I'm still not convinced that the guy on the phone managed to book the correct tickets.

Uggs - You're Doing it Wrong

Uggs are super popular here, the only problem is that people seem to treat them as outdoors shoes, as opposed to the slippers that they really are.  It's really weird to see people wearing Uggs into the office on cold winters mornings.  For me it's like they are still wearing pyjamas.  I means Uggs are only really used outdoors if you need to do a last minute dash either to pick up a takeaway or for milk and bread.  And even then you should be also wearing tracksuit pants and hanging your head in shame.

But then I suppose to be fair to the British, Uggs cost 200 pounds here.  So that does seem to give them a bit more of a glamorous air.  In fact if I had spent 200 pounds on a pair of Uggs they would be glued to my feet.

Sunrises

Golden colours in Hampstead

Winter solstice is over here, and whilst the days are not yet growing noticeably longer (or warmer) I have to say there is a bonus for the incredibly late mornings. Today's sunrise occurred at 8:06am (the latest morning of the year) and it was a beauty!  I've been running in recently, and on occasion London pulls out an impressive sunrise, which you actually get to enjoy because it isn't 5am and you aren't dying of sleep exhaustion.

Sunrise over the city in the distance

In fact I would go so far as to say that the mornings are really the best time of the day here.  Today I ran into work, a nice 9km downhill run, the route back home is not nearly so pleasant :). The photos here give some idea as to the sunrise that was awaiting me as I stepped out of the front door.

I would suggest that if you are visiting really try and get out in the mornings, most of the time I would seriously say that it is the warmest part of the day, there's no wind and the clouds have rained themselves out overnight.  For example I got this sunrise in the morning, whilst on the way home from work it was blowing a gale and my coat was drenched.  I find that midday is the turning point here, the clouds come over and the wind picks up.  So museum it up in the morning and then find a nice warm pub for the afternoon.