Jane's adventures
This blog is about my travels. At home in New Zealand, in other parts of Oceania, North, Central and South America and in Europe.
How amazing to arrive in Paris! I couldn't wait to see this famously beautiful city. There are so many sights to see, but you can really see a lot just wandering along the Seine. There is so much beautiful architecture, and the blossom trees were in flower. There were also these little cotton tufts that would float off the trees and catch in the breeze. Tres jolie! It's easy to get an idealistic sense of what life for Parisians is like, but even beautiful Paris isn't perfect. When I was there, I wandered past stores that had just been vandalised (smashed windows and graffiti) in the weekly protests by the yellow jackets (gilets jaunes), who were protesting the high cost of living for workers.
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Just outside of Paris is Monet's famous garden. It is a beautiful serene place, and of course the scene of his famous paintings of waterlilies. From London, my friend and I traveled down to Dover in the train. We visited Dover Castle, which is an amazing Norman fortress. The inside has also been done up amazingly to represent the time period in which it was first built. From Dover we took the ferry to Calais. You can see the famous white cliffs of Dover as the ferry departs. The ferry crosses this short stretch of water pretty quickly. For so many periods in history this short stretch of water was what separated warring regimes, the Allies vs. the Nazis, as well as the long periods of fighting between England and France! Arriving on French soil in Calais we traveled through the beautiful countryside of Normandy, and towards the town of Bayeaux. On the way we drove through the Somme. This sleepy stretch of countryside was the sight of the most awful, bloodiest battles in human history. Now there are just filled with tilled soil where enormous numbers lost their lives. The town of Bayeaux is just gorgeous. We visited the Bayeaux museum to see the famous Bayeaux tapestry. The light is kept dim, and photography is strictly prohibited. This ancient, nearly one thousand year old tapestry has miraculously survived. It tells the story of the brutal conquest of Britain by the Normans. From there we also visited the surreal monastery of Mont-St-Micheal. It really is unusual to see a turreted monastery rising out of an island in the sea. From London I traveled up to Stoke-On-Trent to visit a friend. While we were there we went to see a Tudor manor house called Little Moreton Hall. It was built in 1504. Because it is made of wood and was built hundreds of years ago, it has some delightfully wonky angles, but it is structurally sound! The house was owned by the Moreton family for nearly 450 years. They were wealthy landowners, but their fortunes declined after they supported the royalists during the English Civil war and their house was requisitioned. They did get it back but at great cost. It is now owned by the National Trust. The house has lots of glass in it, a sign of great wealth for the time. It is run by the national trust, and they have done a good job of making it feel like a home of the time. There are replicas of the kinds of food that were eaten in tudor times, the national trust staff dress up in Tudor costumes, there are tudor customes that you can try on yourself and the gardens are done in the style of Tudor times. One place I really loved on my visit to London was the National Portrait Gallery. It really is like stepping back in time and locking eyes of some of the most influential people in history. I really liked the room with Tudor portraits. After reading 'Wolf Hall' by Hillary Mantel, it really is interesting to see the portraits from the people from the power grabbing, dangerous world of the Tudor court. There are amazing details in the portraits, many of the portraits of Elizabeth I show symbols of the exploration that was going on at the time, and seeing the portraits of her and her mother, Anne Boleyn, you can see the same canny brown eyes! The rooms containing portraits from the Enlightenment were interesting. Times were really changing, and so much of it was fueled by radical new ideas about equality, liberty the separation of church and state and so on. I made a beeline for the portraits of Mary and Percy Shelley. I had wanted to find see the portrait of Jane Austen, and I had some difficulty in finding it, it is absolutely tiny! At first I couldn't find it in the room it was supposed to be in, and had to get detailed instructions from one of the gallery attendants. It is one of the only images of her, drawn by her sister Cassandra.
There were also the 19th century rooms with all sorts of interesting people, including Charles Darwin! The next day I took the tube to visit the Tower of London. I have to say, I wasn't that fond of it! It has such a dark history of unjust imprisonments, terrible tortures and brutal executions. It was a grey and drizzly day and the crows (they are traditionally kept there) were squawking. All sorts of prisoners were kept at the Tower of London, Queen Elizabeth the first once spent 2 months there. Anne Boleyn was executed there, accused of a series of bizarre charges which included witchcraft and a long list of invented affairs. During power struggles for religion, some of the prisoners of the Tower were imprisoned just for owning the wrong sort of religious books. Even a polar bear was chained up in the Tower for a while, a gift to King Henry the third of England from a Nordic King in 1251. The polar bear did have a long leash though and could swim around in the Thames for fish. The oldest part of the Tower is the central Norman Tower which was built in 1080. The top part of the part of the building was where the Royal family lived, and the basement is where prisoners would be dragged off to. I'm pretty sure guests were generally careful to say the right thing at dinner! I also visited the little room where the 'princes in the tower', the two young heirs to the throne were kept by their power crazed uncle until 1483 when they were 'disappeared'. I also saw a room where prisoners were kept, some for minor religious offences, one was a 'sorcerer' who engraved the walls of his prison cell with an astrological chart. Another prisoner (imprisoned for possessing banned books) wrote on the wall: "Fear Fortune's Flattery, Frail of Felicity, Despair not in Danger, God is Defender". After being reminded of all these miscarriages of justice was glad to head home and that we live in (somewhat) better times these days! From Aberdeen I caught the train to Edinburgh and from Edinburgh down to London. The first sight I visited when I got to London was the British Museum. There are some pretty amazing things in the museum. I particularly liked an interactive exhibit of ancient coins, you can chat with one of the historians from the museum about them. There are artifacts from ancient civilizations. Winged horse men built to stand by the tomb of an Assyrian King, a bust of Alexander the Great, the famous Benin Bronzes from Nigeria, friezes from ancient Egyptian tombs. The relics of all these ancient civilizations remind me how the present is just a passing moment, and how important it is to make the most of it! The author of one of the translated inscriptions from ancient Levant in 1400BC had the same thought - the inscription read: "Follow your heart while you're alive. Put perfume on your head, Clothe yourself in fine linen... Make holiday and don't tire of it!" The last thing I went to see was the famous Parthenon sculptures. They are incredible works of art. More than 2,000 years old, the Parthenon was built at the top of the acropolis in Ancient Athens. It was built for Athena, goddess of wisdom. The pantheon was taken from Greece to England in 1801, and the controversy over it's ownership continues to this day.
From Aberdeen I caught the train to Edinburgh. It was quite a scenic journey! The journey from Aberdeen to Edinburgh follows the coast and there are lots of pretty sights like little beaches and old ruins dotted along the seaside. From Edinburgh I then headed down to London.
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I am a traveller from New Zealand. My blog is to inform friends and family about my adventures. I hope you enjoy it! Archives
August 2020
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