Three Days in London

The Easter weekend provided an opportunity to spend three days in London (Easter Monday is a holiday in France but Good Friday is not), although I really should call it three days in England as I spent one day on an excursion outside of the city. If you're wondering why it's taken this long for me to get out to London, it's because the United Kingdom is outside of the Schengen area and I wanted to get my French residency card to minimize any border hassles, but then by the time I got the card it was already too cold for an enjoyable trip. Early April sees moderate weather in London and fortunately it did not rain during my visit.

I'll also mention that I took the train from Paris to London, which meant travelling through the Chunnel. There was nothing photo-worthy of the experience, as I was simply in a tunnel for about half an hour.

Day 1

I started the first day by strolling around Buckingham Palace and the two neighbouring parks: Saint James's Park (which contains a lake filled with ducks, geese and even a few pelicans which will walk right up to you) and Green Park (where I found the Canada Memorial for the one million Canadian men and women who served in World Wars I and II). Both parks are quiet and spacious, and even Buckingham Palace was sparsely visited at first but was then heavily crowded for the Changing the Guard ceremony at 11:30.

A shot of the small lake in Saint James's Park, with three geese cleaning themselves, a few ducks swimming in the lake, and a pigeon swooping in to join the crowd. All of the birds were very tame and would walk right up to you in the hope of being fed.

Changing the Guard at Buckingham Palace. This was the closest I could get to the fence.

I then walked east to see Westminster Abbey, the Houses of Parliament, Big Ben and the Horse Guards. By that time, it was already around noon and everything was getting crowded. I did not enter any of the sites due to the long lines and the absurd entry fees (£20 to enter Westminster Abbey? A church?).

A shot of Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, with the iconic double-decker bus in the foreground.

 

A few blocks north of there was Trafalgar Square, where I visited both the National Portrait Gallery and the National Gallery. The National Portrait Gallery was filled with classically-styled portrait paintings of famous British people from around the 1500's to the 1800's. The subjects of the paintings were not particularly interesting (unless you are a history buff) but the quality of the works was very high. The National Gallery was a large art museum containing a wide range of works including Renaissance, Baroque, Impressionist and post-Impressionist art. It seemed like the gallery had at least one/two works of every big name artist from each era.

At the National Portrait Gallery, this is The Anti-Slavery Society Convention 1840 by Benjamin Robert Haydon.

There were a lot of works by famous artists at the National Gallery, but my favourite painting was a luminist style work by a lesser known artist: Fra Nordkapp by Peder Balke

That is not snow. April 4 is International Pillow Fight Day, so when I exited the National Gallery (background), there was a large pillow fight going on in the middle of Trafalgar Square. Despite a good head shake, my hair was filled with feathers for the rest of the day, which led to some strange looks from other tourists when I headed to other parts of the city.

I quickly checked out Picadilly Circus (which as most travel site reviews will attest, is little more than a tourist trap) and then headed north to the British Museum. By this time, I was fatigued from already visiting several landmarks and two art galleries, so I took a cursory look at most of the artifacts at the British Museum, and only stopped for the most notable works such as the Rosetta Stone and the Parthenon sculptures.  

The Rosetta Stone at the British Museum.

After the British Museum, I had enough time and energy left to visit the Camden Lock Market and the eastern edge of Hyde Park (at least to see the Wellington Arch and the Ionic Screen).

Day 2

After a hectic first day where I managed to visit a high quantity of sites around London, I went for a more laid back second day where I could rest my feet and take the time to see a priority site that was out of the way from everything else. Stonehenge is about a 90 minute drive from London (with light traffic on Easter Sunday) so it was worth heading out there to see the prehistoric site.

A shot of the trilithon stones of Stonehenge. The site is much larger than this, as it also includes a circular bank and ditch that formed the first Stonehenge, a series of postholes (now filled) that comprised the second Stonehenge, and some smaller outer stones that, along with these standing stones, formed the third Stonehenge.

A close-up shot of the stones. This was about as close as you could get to the inner circle.

The bus tour that I booked for Stonehenge also took me to Bath, a city that the Romans built to house a series of baths located on top of hot springs. The Roman Baths were more interactive than I expected. Several of the pools were accessible enough that you could dip your hands in to feel how warm/hot the water was, and there was even a tap where you could fill a cup and drink the spring water. Aside from the Roman Baths, the city has some beautiful architecture, although it seems a lot of cleanup work was conducted to boost the tourist trade.

This is a common shot taken of the Roman Bath, as it also contains the tower of the Bath Abbey in the background (top left). 

The Pulteney Bridge in Bath. The side of the bridge facing the artificial waterfall is enclosed and contains various cafes and souvenir shops.

I didn't realize how far I travelled until checking the map afterwards, as Bath is near the west coast of England and close to Wales, but that also explained why it took over two hours to drive back to London.

Day 3

The plan for the third day was to see a few other notable landmarks that I didn't have time to visit on the first day, and take in a football match before my train headed back to Paris. I managed to visit the Tower of London, the Tower Bridge and the Borough Market in the morning. As it was Easter Monday, most of the shops at the Borough Market were closed, but the few shops that were open offered various sea food and meat-centric dishes. I also visited Shakespeare's Globe and took the tour, but did not stay for the daily 2pm play as that would not have left me with enough time to catch the football match in Leyton.

A shot of the Tower Bridge from the north side. None of my photos of the exterior of the Tower of London turned out as there was too much glare from the morning sun.

The stage at Shakespeare's Globe, a replica of the original Globe Theatre. The modern version is built almost entirely with oak and other materials that would have been used in the first Globe. This includes a thatched roof, which is easily flammable and contributed to the first Globe burning down. The modern version has an extensive sprinkler system to protect against fire.

After Shakespeare's Globe, I walked along the Millenium Bridge (a steel suspension bridge for pedestrians) to Saint Paul's Cathedral, where I also found a terrific fish and chips shop around the block.

The front of Saint Paul's Cathedral. Its bells were ringing non-stop, but I wasn't sure if this was because of Easter Monday or if this was an everyday occurrence.

I had just enough time to check one more site off my list, so I went to the British Museum to see their treasures gallery. Unfortunately, the Magna Carta was not part of the gallery, but tucked away in a separate exhibit with a lineup and I was already short on time. I still managed to see some interesting works at the treasures gallery though, including Leonardo Da Vinci's notebook, a Beowulf manuscript, Handel's composition notes for Messiah, and a Gutenberg Bible.

Photos were not allowed in the treasures gallery of the British Library, but I accidentally took a picture of one of the library's Gutenberg Bibles (second book from the right). I thought it was a big deal until I found out that there are 21 complete versions of the Gutenberg Bible and two of them are in Paris.

I ended my trip by watching a Football League One match between Leyton Orient and Gillingham. League One is third division football in England, so the quality of the football was low, but the stadium fitting 9,200 fans was still at about 90% capacity and fans of both sides were vocal. The match ended in a 3-3 draw, which was bad news for the home team Leyton Orient, as they are near the bottom of the League One table and in danger of getting relegated to League Two (fourth division, ouch).

If you're wondering why I didn't see an English Premier League match when three first division London teams were playing at home during that weekend, it's because all of those matches were sold out and the resale tickets were going for ridiculous prices. Club members get first crack at the tickets so getting a seat at an Arsenal, Chelsea or even Crystal Palace match can be difficult. While I'm a fan of football, I'm not obsessed enough to pay over £150 to watch the plastic teams of the Premier League.

Brisbane Road Stadium during a match between Leyton Orient and Gillingham.

So that was London on a long weekend. Overall, the city is very accessible for beginner tourists, since everyone can speak English and the culture there lends itself more towards politeness, especially among hotel, restaurant and museum staff (which isn't always the case in continental Europe, where staff can be gruff). Combined with the quantity and wide variety of famous sites, this led to a higher volume of tourist traffic and a higher proportion of those tourists bringing their children along, which made for a chaotic atmosphere at some venues. Of all of the cities that I have visited so far, London also had the most North American vibe, although I guess it is really the other way around (Canada and the US have retained a lot from their English roots).

Also, someone asked me why I haven't posted game ratings for the last couple of football matches that I watched. My plan is to consolidate the ratings and post them after every five matches. Leyton Orient was the fourth match that I've watched since my last football recap, and I watched a fifth match since returning from London, so I'll post the ratings in a future post shortly.

Ein Wochenende in Basel (A Weekend in Basel)

I planned to attend a couple of major festivals during my stay in Europe and BaselWorld was near the top of my list. For those not familiar with BaselWorld, it is the largest trade show of the watch and jewelry industry (although watches dominate the show). The show has become large enough that every reasonably-priced hotel in Basel was fully booked several months in advance, so I relied on AirBnB to book a place to stay for this trip. I ended up booking an apartment in Lörrach, a small town in Germany just east of the border with France and just north of the border with Switzerland.

The itinerary was to spend one day attending BaselWorld and the other day exploring the city of Basel.

Day 1

Watchmaking combines the art of making an attractive fashion accessory for the wrist with the science of crafting an accurate instrument to measure time. While the casual observer normally focuses on the artistic side of this endeavour, the true beauty of a watch comes from within, from the precise engineering that has gone into designing and constructing a mechanical movement that, without any electronic assistance, using only gears and springs, can track time to within +/-12 seconds/day (or even better) and keep itself powered from the movement of the wearer, all within a watch case around 40mm in diameter. The new dimension to all of this is the business side; some brands are clearly better at marketing than others, and this became apparent at the convention.

BaselWorld is basically divided into five pavilions. The first pavilion contains the well-known global brands spread across three floors, with the high end brands on the first floor (Patek Philippe, Rolex, Tag Heuer and the Swatch group of Omega, Longine, Tissot, etc.), the less expensive fashion-focused brands on the second floor (Bulova, Emporio Armani, Hermes, Citizen, etc.), and the lower end brands on the third floor (Guess, Festina, Casio, etc.). There were some exceptions to floor assignment, probably because of size constraints, but there was a general pattern there.

It seemed like in recent years, Omega had focused most of their marketing on their Seamaster collection (the watch of the Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig versions of James Bond). However, at this year's BaselWorld, the marketing clearly shifted back to their Speedmaster, the first watch worn on the moon. Omega built a separate display room just for the Speedmaster series, although the lighting didn't do the watches any justice.

Tissot has the advantage of being part of the same company as Omega and Longines, so they were able to have an exhibit located right next to their pricier counterparts. 

Tissot's latest innovation announced this year was a solar powered version of their T-Touch tactile sports watches (with the built-in compass and altimeter). However, they also exhibited the wide range of other watches they've developed over the past few years and I found that they still displayed several versions of the Automatic III, including the one that I have for daily wear (the T065.430.11.051.00, pictured). It may not be a luxury watch, but it's a good value for a Swiss-made mechanical watch with sapphire crystals at the front and back.

I was glad to see Frederique Constant on the first floor. They are a relatively new company but they deserve the extra attention for the elegant designs of some of their watches. Granted, they have their share of hideous watches, but so does nearly every company. If you want some examples, Bloomberg wrote an article on the ugliest watches of this year's BaselWorld (Frederique Constant's gaudy Love watches did not make the list).

Smartwatches are the latest trend in electronics, and I was interested in seeing how the mechanically-focused watchmaking industry would react. It turned out that there were only a few brands that released smartwatches at this year's BaselWorld, one of them being Frederique Constant's Horological Smartwatch. It's a (mostly) mechanical watch with a transmitter that sends basic motion data to your smartphone, primarily for tracking how long you sleep and how much you move around during the day.

Emporio Armani had the best designed exhibit, relying on a bank vault theme. The interior looked like a room full of safety deposit boxes, with some boxes sliding out to display the latest watch models. Photos were not allowed inside, which was strange seeing as how none of their watches were noteworthy anyway.

Seiko announced their latest innovation of the first solar powered GPS watch: the Astron. This model had a mother of pearl dial, which is better suited (but underutilized) for jewelry watches rather than sports watches.

Maurice Lacroix is not well known compared to the other mass market brands on the second floor of the main pavilion, but they upped their marketing game by becoming the official watchmaker of FC Barcelona and designing a different watch for each of about a dozen of their key players. Funny how after the handball incident at the 2010 World Cup, and three separate biting incidents in the Dutch Eredivisie, English Premier League and 2014 World Cup, I see Luis Suarez promoting more products than almost any other athlete.

A watch show is not complete without the Rolex Submariner. I'm not sure if it was deliberate or not, but several watch brands used low frequency lighting in their exhibits, which caused vertical striping in all of the digital photos that were taken. Press photographers were allowed private viewings with close-up shots.



The second pavilion contained the lesser known watch brands. The first thing that I noticed was that while the first pavilion (especially the first floor) was crowded with tourists, press and jewelry store purchasers, the second pavilion was quiet and sparsely attended. I took some time to see as many of these brands as I could, hoping to find a great watch that only an aficionado would know about, but I found that most of the watches used derivative designs and most of their movements were quartz. For the few brands that had more original designs, I decided to take some pictures, only to have a sales rep immediately approach me hoping to make a big sale. Each one seemed visibly disappointed to find out that I wasn't a purchaser. Aside from my running shoes, I was dressed business casual, which I guess raised the hopes of a few salesmen.


One independent watchmaker takes various Van Gogh paintings and prints them on the watch dial. More art than science in this case, but at least they picked a great artist.

The third pavilion contained primarily jewelry manufacturers, so I skipped that section. The fourth pavilion contained watch retailers from Hong Kong on one floor and Thailand on another floor, as well as watchmaking equipment companies in the basement. I was short on time so I only quickly browsed through these areas.

 

The fifth pavilion is the most exciting part of BaselWorld, as it contains a few high end independent watchmakers who try to be on the cutting edge in complicated mechanical watches. Three years ago, HYT came out with hydro-mechanical watches, which were displayed again this year, but there were no huge developments for 2015 (although there were still a lot of very interesting watches on display).

 

If I had to pick a watch of the show, it would be Cecil Purnell's V17 World Time Bi-Axial Tourbillon. Several luxury brands are now designing their world time watches to display the world time using a rotating polar view of the Earth, but Cecil Purnell took it one step further by using a rotating three dimensional half-sphere, with dimensions proportional to the tourbillon just below it. Only ten of these were made so I can't imagine what the price must be to cover the design and production costs.

So BaselWorld was a lot of fun, and physically demanding as I was lugging a lot of product catalogs and free watch magazines throughout the day. The only disappointing part is that even with the hundreds of companies that attended, there were some great brands that were not present. Both Jaegre Lecoultre and Baume & Mercier are brands that I can see at Galéries Lafayette here in Paris, but they were not at the show. A.Lange & Söhne was also absent and they are arguably one of the world's best watchmakers.

Anyways, it was hard to take any great photos of the watches, with all of the bright lights and thick security glass, so if you want to see some better pictures of various watches from the show, here are some links to other articles on this year's BaselWorld:
Gear Patrol
A Blog To Watch
Bloomberg


Day 2

Since Lörrach is right at the southwest tip of the Black Forest, I spent the morning strolling to the east side of the town to at least catch a glimpse. I wasn't sure when I'd be in southwest Germany again, so I might as well take a quick look.

At the southwest edge of the Black Forest, overlooking the town of Lörrach.

I had a few hours before my flight back to Paris, so I managed to take in a few of the sites around Basel. While the city is small and doesn't have a lot to offer for sightseeing, it was very clean and quiet, reminding me a lot of Luxembourg.

The front of Basler Münster (Basel Minster). Sightseers were discouraged from entering as there was a Sunday service in session.

The Tinguely-Brunnen, or Tinguely Fountain, contains mechanical sculptures spraying water in every which way.

The Rathaus Basel, or Basel Town Hall. The interior is small but contains a well designed courtyard.

The weather was still too cold for any plants to have bloomed at the Botanischer Garten der Universität Basel, but there were four large greenhouses containing active plants from tropical, desert and temperate climates.

The Spalentor, or Gate of Spalen, a former city gate of the ancients walls of Basel. It looked out of place surrounded by the modern buildings and traffic of the city.

So that was Basel in a weekend. On account of BaselWorld, the local football team (FC Basel) was scheduled for an away match so I did not get to see them, which is too bad because they are the top team in Switzerland.

I'll also mention that while Switzerland was the tenth country that I've visited since moving to Europe, it was the first country I visited that did not use the Euro. However, I was still able to pay in Euros at some shops. My next trip is England for the Easter weekend, so details will be posted in another week or so.