First House Guests

We've had our first house guests in London -- Bill and Sandy Solitario. Bill is a Visiting Industry Professor of Systems Engineering at the Naval Postgraduate School where he and Chuck worked closely together. He is a senior executive and engineer with Northrop Grumman Ship Systems, which builds Navy ships (and many other things). He and Sandi are living in Monterey for what is expected to be a three-year assignment and Chuck and Kathi spent many enjoyable hours at their beautiful house there. Bill delivered a paper at a symposium in London and he and Sandi combined that business travel with a personal vacation, including three days at Chez Calvano.

After they arrived at our house at noon on Wednesday, Chuck took them to a pub for lunch then a walk around the Marylebone area, where we live, to give them a chance to see some of residential London. Bill and Sandy are both experienced travelers and have been in London many times, so they were on their own the rest of Wednesday. On Thursday evening (thanks to Sandi's willingness to spend two hours in the ticket line) we were able to get tickets to Mary Poppins, the musical based on the movie and one of the hottest tickets in town. The show was spectacular. Most good musical shows have a number which is a "showstopper" -- but Mary Poppins has four of them. The stage version of "Supercalifragilisticexpealidocsious" was almost unbelievable. It was one of our best-ever theater experiences.

Kathi and Chuck both had Friday off and we used the day to go back to Greenwich; Bill and Sandi had never been there and our visit a couple of weeks ago had been so short that we'd barely seen any of it. This time we made it to the famous Royal Observatory, the sight of the prime meridian from which the longitude of every place in the world is measured. It was a bit of a rainy, cold day, but we were all in good company and enjoyed it. Friday evening we had dinner with American friends of Bill and Sandi who also are living here in the UK; they hosted us to a sumptuous dinner and we feel that we've made some new friends whom we hope to be able to visit at their place in the country, while they may visit us in the city.

For the pictures from the Solitario visit, go to: http://chuck.smugmug.com/gallery/485269.

Miscellany

This first weekend in April we attended a play at the Trafalgar Studios theater -- one we hadn't been to before. It was a comedy called "Losing Louis" and was enjoyable -- not one of the three or four best we've seen, but inventive and enjoyable.

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We just caught a part of a special program on TV -- about the running of Windsor Castle. The castle had a full time watchmaker who keeps the 430 clocks in the palace working properly. When daylight savings time is over, it takes him in excess of 16 hours to visit each of the clocks and change the time! Just a fact I bet you didn't know!

Beautiful Buildings

One of the delights of London is its buildings. From very old ones dating to the 14th or 15th centuries, to the many Victorian era design and engineering gems to the elegant Edwardians, London architecture always seems to have something wonderful to offer. In fact, the varied street scenes and variety of elegant buildings make London walks a real pleasure and make it possible to cover several miles on foot without even being aware of the distance. See some examples at: http://chuck.smugmug.com/gallery/259679.

Happy April

April has arrived in London -- and, in fact, the last few days have begun to feel spring-like. We're not counting on anything and are sure we'll have a couple of last wintry blasts before the real spring weather, but it has been nice just the same. Today, Sunday, April 3rd saw us taking a long walk from Trafalgar Square, along the northern bank of the Thames (on the Thames Path), all the way to the Tower of London, where our sore feet (and empty stomachs) insisted on a stop for lunch.

We then had the idea to take one of the river cruise boats farther downstream to Greenwich, the sight of the Royal Observatory and a number of historic British Navy institutions -- the old Naval College and Hospital and others. One of the buildings is now the National Maritime Museum. Also there is the Cutty Sark -- one of the latest-built (and fastest) of the famous clipper ships. She was a "tea clipper" involved in the competition to be the first ship each season to bring tea from the new Chinese tea crop to London. The owner whose ship brought the first tea cargo of the season could demand a premium price and a single such voyage could make his fortune -- making the quest for speed a fierce competition. We concluded that getting a late start, as we did, arriving at Greenwich after 3 pm was not the way to enjoy the Greenwich sites. So we've made a plan to return at a later date. To see some of the sights from our Thames walk go to http://chuck.smugmug.com/gallery/465445.