London: A Learning Nerd's Wet Dream

London has a large collection of free museums which equates to hours and hours or days and days (if you have the time) of perusal of the past. The British Museum is probably one of the biggest and greatest of all museums in the world. It was founded as a “universal museum” and consists mainly of cultural art and antiquities from around the world. The Museum started in 1756, three years after its founder Sir Hans Sloane died. Sloane wrote in his will that when he died he wanted his collections and curiosities to be bought be King George II and shared, free of charge, with the people. He wanted the collection to be “something from everywhere for everyone.” The King didn’t want to pay for the collection that totaled some 71,000 objects, but a group of citizens that believed in the value of the collection raised the £20,000 sum and bought everything.

The museum is wonderful and probably one of the best museums that I have ever been to. The layout of the museum allows one to wander from Asia to Africa to the Americas and back again in a single day without getting completely lost (at least with a map). Everything is labeled and even contains commentary on the possible uses, history, or beliefs that surround various pieces. There are free tours that expand upon the written material and there are enough sections that you could happily live in the place for days.

In order to make sure that I go the most out of the free museums in London, I made sure to hit up the Tate (a modern art museum), the Natural History Museum, the Science Museum, and the Victoria and Albert Museum (V & A). I was one busy museum hopping tourist on this visit. I still need to go back though because I didn’t have enough time to explore all of these museums to their fullest nor did I have time to visit a few of the other free museums that the city has to offer, but I did take advantage of what I could during my stay.

In addition to the free museums, I decided to pay for one museum, the Sherlock Holmes Museum. Now who didn’t see that coming? I couldn’t go to London and not see Sherlock’s house. The Museum is really located at 221B Baker Street and set up just as the book describes, at least for the first floor. The second floor contains some creepy mannequins that portray characters and scenes from various stories and there is a book containing letters from people that have written to Sherlock asking for help. The place even had an eighty year old Sherlock that welcomes you to his home and tells you to take all the pictures that you want. He was so quiet though when he said this that at first I thought he was just another patron.

In order to balance out my time indoors exploring the past and to take advantage of the unseasonably warm weather that followed me from Spain to London, I made sure to wander a few of London’s more well know areas. On my first full day in town I walked from the British Museum to the waterfront, across a bridge that I thought was the Millennium bridge (but turned out to just be a neat architectural design of no real consequence), and down to Parliament and Big Ben. I wasn’t really aiming for anywhere in particular, but saw what appeared to be a niffy looking clock tower and headed towards it. It turned out to be Big Ben. I tried to get one of the guards out front to take a picture with Mustacheio, but he looked at me like I was insane and stated that they were forbidden from taking pictures. I think he was just afraid of the little guy and what it would do to his image.

On my last day in town, after hitting up the Natural History Museum, the V&A, the Science Museum, and the Sherlock Holmes Museum, I walked across Regents Park and headed for Camden Town. Regents Park is one of the Royal Parks (used to belong to the Castle and was used as a hunting ground in the past). The park now is home to the London Zoo, Regents College, Sports fields, ponds, boating areas, beautiful houses by architect John Nash, and a pleasant way to cut from Westminster to Camden. It’s a nice place to go to relax and soak up the rays.

Camden Town was suggested by my cousin, Eli, as somewhere that I would like. He described it as a series of markets that made up the Haight-Ashbury of London. With a description like that, could I not go? The area is well known for it’s markets that sell everything from fashion clothing and accessories, to books, food, antiques, and photographs. Originally there was just the Inverness Street Market that catered to the local food scene, but times have changed and the markets have expanded to include the Camden Lock Market, the Buck Street Market, and the Stables Market, among others. It’s probably a good thing that I arrived at the markets only a few hours before closing time because I could easily have spent a good portion of a paycheck on miscellaneous goods here.

In between Thursday night when I arrived and Tuesday morning, when I left, there was the weekend, which I spent primarily with my cousin, Eli.

During the weekend, there are a number of farmer’s markets that crop up throughout London. I went with my cousin to the Borough’s Market and met up with a friend, Bex, who I had met last year while traveling in Guatemala. Borough’s Market is a series of food vendors that set up shop and entice you to buy their wares with free samples and scrumptious smells. After wandering around this wonderful place for a few hours, I finally settled on a Halumi cheese sandwich. It’s awesome to know that Halumi cheese is everywhere in London. If you’ve never tried this cheese, then you should…it’s excellent.

On Sunday, Eli and I set out on a tourist bus to see Windsor Castle, Bath, and Stonehenge. As our tour guide liked to repeat over and over again, “Windsor Castle is the Queen’s home….it’s not just a palace, but a home, like yours or mine…” If she meant a home that was decked out in gold, silk, gems, statues, frescos, and a miniature doll house with priceless works of art and full electricity and pluming, then yeah, it’s a home just like mine. The Castle was beautiful and the town in which it’s settled is quite picturesque, but as tours tend to go, your time is limited. We had barely enough time to see the main living quarters before we were racing back to the bus to depart for our next stop. There was a couple that didn’t make it back by the deadline and we left them in town. The tour guide was all shaken up for about 30 seconds, before switching back to her overtly cheerful tone and telling us about Bath.

Bath is about 97 miles from London and famous for a few reasons. The main one being the Roman Bath Houses; that were filled with natural spring waters and stated to care illnesses during the medieval period. The main bathhouse is now a tourist attraction in the center of the town. This town was once popular because of the baths, but then fell into disarray and unpopularity for a number of years, before being reborn as a tourist trap and home to movie stars and elite looking for a country home with the amenities of a bigger city.

Another thing that Bath is known for, although to a lesser extent, is a taxation law that has to do with windows. William Pitt the Younger introduced the “Window Tax” in the 17th century. Since glass was expensive and therefore a good estimator of a person’s wealth (the more windows, the more wealth) it was an easy tax to enforce. Some families, to avoid huge fees, created false windows. They’d brick up their existing windows and paint home scenes on the bricks or they’re paint windows in black paint so it looked like there were windows, when there actually weren’t. It’s definitely one of the weirder taxes out there. The lax was retracted in 1851.

Our last stop on the tourist bus was the mythical Stonehenge. Stonehenge is a prehistoric monument set in the center of one of the densest collections of Neolithic and Bronze Age earthworks, including numerous burial mounds. Archaeologist believe that the stones were placed in their current location between the years 2000 – 2400 BC, but that there may have been three separate building phases, the earliest of which could be 500 or 600 years older than this timeframe. The stones are massive and it’s mindboggling to imagine the cooperation and manpower that would have been needed to move them and set them up. And to what purpose? That is a mystery we’re going to have to wait for the advent of the time machine to answer.

Thus here ends my 2011 adventure to Spain and London. With one quick side note, that I was quite happy to be taken to a plethora of British pubs throughout London with the sole intent of trying their array of ciders, this is my last entry for this trip. Cider is wonderful and I wish the Americans would see that and include it in all of the bars here. Until next time.

An Egyptian Temple? What's that Doing in Madrid?

Madrid is probably the most metropolitan of all of the cities that I a saw in Spain. It is the third largest city in Europe and mixes modern elements with the past quite nicely. I only had one and a half days in this mega place and therefore spent most of the time hitting up two of the three museums in the Golden Triangle of Art. The Triangle includes the Prado Museum, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofìa, and the Thyssen-Boremisza Museum. I hit up the former two on my visit.

The Prado Museum is considered the Spanish National Museum and is home to the largest collection of Spanish art anywhere. It is based on the Spanish Royal Collection. Most of the art comes from the 12th through 19th centuries and features a lot of religious motifs and themes. The pictures are magnificent, but not really my style.

The Reina Sofìa is Spain’s National Museum of 20th century art and contains more than just religious art. This though, can probably be attributed to the fact that styles changed from that type by the 1900s. This museum is gigantic, containing four floors of art from many great Spanish artists, most notably Picasso, Mìro, and Dalì.

Like the Louvre in Paris, The Reina Sofìa also contains a particular masterpiece that everyone who visits flocks to see; Picasso’s painting Guernica. This piece was commissioned by the Spanish Republican Government to represent the bombing of the town of Guernica in Basque Country by German and Italian warplanes at the behest of the Spanish Nationalist forces during the Spanish Civil war. Guernica shows the tragedies of war and the suffering that it inflicts upon individuals, especially innocents.

Both the Prado and Reina Sofia offer free evening admission to their respective museums during the last two hours of operation every night. I took advantage of this fact and used it to view both museums; running from one to the next and dragging a poor fellow hostel-mate along for the ride. She thought that I was crazy because I went on a 3.5 hour walking tour, then hiked around the city for 4 hours – part of that time trying to located the MAD (Madrid Archaeological Museum) – before heading to the Prado, and then the Reina Sofia. I definitely tried to fit as much as possible into my time in the city.

I did eventually find the MAD and in less than 4 hours. I was originally sent in the wrong direction and it took a mile of walking to realize I was headed to the Madrid Anthropology Museum so I can see where the direction giver could have gotten confused. The MAD though, when I finally found it, was closed for renovations. This made the second archaeological museum in the country that I tried to get to that was under renovations. Apparently Spain does not want me to see what they have in their collections.

Since I couldn’t go to the MAD, I went to the National Library Museum, which was actually really cool. There was an exhibit about book binding and about the invention of writing and other bibliophile things. So in essence, great for the nerds like me, probably not that interesting the rest of the populace.

In addition to the Library Museum, I wandered through the Parque del Buen Retiro (Park of Pleasant Retreat). The park is the largest in Madrid and used to belong to the Spanish Monarchy before being turned over to the public in the late 19th century. The park contains a rose garden, museums, remains of the Buen Retiro Palace, famous sculptures, and even a small lake for boating. It’s huge, beautiful, and a good place to get run over by joggers in the evening if you’re not watching where you’re walking.

For the few hours that I had on my last day in Madrid and in Spain as a whole, I ran around to see the Palacio Real de Madrid (the Royal Palace of Madrid), which is still the official home of the King of Spain, Juan Carlos I, although the King and his family choose to live in another, more modest palace on the outskirts of the city. The Palacio Real is huge and the rooms are filled with so much swag, that I’ve finally figured out what rich people spend all their money on.

The Palace has been added to, changed, and expanded upon by each successive ruler and as a result there is so much money in the Palace. There are rooms that have walls covered in two inch thick gold and silver threaded embroidery, rooms with priceless frescos covering their entire ceilings, gold accented chairs and tables, sculptures, and thick woven carpets. The place is beautiful and filled with many great and priceless gems and works of art, but so ostentatious that I don’t know how anyone could really live there and feel at home. I’ve come to realize that many palaces are similar though because this is how someone shows their wealth, by having these types of goods in their homes.

The really awesome thing about King Juan Carlos I is that he was voted by the Spanish people as the greatest Spanish citizen ever. Juan Carlos was named the King by the previous dictator, General Francisco Franco, who terrorized the country for 38 years and thought that Juan Carlos would continue his reign. Juan Carlos surprised everyone when he turned the country into a parliamentary democracy and gave Spain back to the people. He has since created peace in a country that has been torn apart by turmoil for centuries.

One last thing that I saw in Spain was a little bit of Egypt. In 1960 there was the Great Dam of Aswan project in the Nile Valley of Egypt that threatened to flood hundreds of temples and monuments. There was a worldwide plea sent out to help remove and relocate as many of these endangered temples as possible. Spain responded to the call and as a result was gifted with the Temple of Debod, which was rescued and rebuilt in a park in the middle of Madrid.

Here ends my “Great Spanish Adventure” and now on to London.

Granada = Poma-Granade

Granada means pomegranate in Spanish and is the symbol of Granada, even though there aren’t that many actual pomegranate trees in the city. Grenade also comes from the world Granada due to its similar shape and size. I went on a Graffiti art and walking tour and the guide pointed this out to us. The thing is he kept calling the pomegranates, “Poma-grenades.” Thus it is decreed that forevermore (or at least until I forget this little antidote) they shall now always be called this.

I arrived in Granada via bus from Seville and found my hostel in the middle of the Arab souk section of the city. This area is know for its pillowy shisha bars and tea houses that are good places to whittle away an afternoon in.

The area of Spain called the Andalusia is a region that was heavily Moorish for eight hundred years. Granada is the center of that region and was able to hold out against the invading Catholic Church in the 14th and 15th centuries AD while all of its neighboring cities fell. On January 2, 1492 though, the last Muslim in the Iberia, Emir Muhammand XII, signed over the city to King Ferdinand II and Queen Isobel I with the agreement that the Muslim people could continue to live there unmolested in their faith and ways. This treaty held until 1499 when Francisco Jimenez de Cisneros got impatient with the slow conversion of the people of the region and forced conversions or death or expulsions from the area.

As a result of the relatively non-confrontational surrender of the city, the area known as Albayzin, or Arab quarter, was not destroyed and the houses remain intact. This area is an intricate network of narrow step filled streets that wind their way up the hillside to Saint Nicholas Square. The streets are purposely narrow and set at angles to each other to create pockets of shade that cool the region in the 110+ degree summers. All of the houses are painted white and each is behind a wall and a garden. The style of the time was to show your wealth by having the most luxurious garden with the most variety and that hid your house from jealous eyes the best. It’s a neat little area to wander through and the shady streets definitely help block the heat.

At about the same level as Albayzin, but to the east is Sacromonte. This is the gypsy region and is located on Valparaiso Hill. At first the area was inhabited by the poor gypsies that came over after the conquest of the city and lived inside the surrounding defense wall. They dug into the hillside and created cave dwellings. Overtime, the cave houses have gained running water, electricity, frontal façades that look like normal houses, and the area has became quite sought after (although it is mostly still a gypsy area). It is not unusual to wander though the area and happen upon an impromptu Flamenco performance.

On the other side of the defense wall and next to Sacromonte is home of the hippie cave dwellings. This is an area where the current nomads of the area come to live for free in natural caves. The city turns a blind eye to these wanderers and the contently live in their shelters without electricity or running water. It’s said that there are upwards of 800 people living within caves as far as a 2 hour walk back in the Sierra Nevada mountains that surround the city.

The region of Granada is famous for a few different things, the Albayzin as previously mentioned, the Alhambra (yet to be talked about), and maybe not as well known, but nevertheless much sought after, the free tapas. Tapas, meaning “covers” (from the Spanish verb tapar) or “small lids” in Spanish, are small appetizers or amount of foods that are served at bars and in restaurants. There are endless varieties of tapas, but the reason that they’re so great in Granada, is that with the exception of some parts of Madrid, Granada is the only city left in Spain where they’re free with every drink you purchase.

There are a couple of different stories about the origin of free tapas, but the most prevalent is the following. King Alfonso X decided that the peasants weren’t getting fed enough because they didn’t have enough money for food and what money they had they were spending on drink. This was causing problems on many different levels, one being that they were getting drunk (and sick) and the other being that they were malnourished. King Alfonso X decreed that all alcoholic drinks must be served with a morsel of food from then forwards. The idea was that this way the peasants could at least get some sustenance. At the start of this tradition the food given out was typically a piece of bread or some meat on bread. The patrons would use the bread to cover their drinks to keep the flies out (thus the term tapas).

The tradition of only giving out bread had since expanded to many different and delightful choices. Some of the bars in Granada give out small portions of preselected items that they just bring to your table and some places allow you to choose what you want from a list. Usually though, if there’s a big group everyone gets the same tapa, just more of it. So for 2 euro you can essentially get a glass of sangria (so good) with a hamburger and fries for free. For most travelers, that’s a very very good deal. I went out with some friends and had octopus and fried dogfish.

On one of the walking tours that a hitched along with in Granada, I found out that I’d missed out on Flamenco while in Seville (the home of Flamenco in Spain), but that there was a pretty decent show here in town. No one really knows the true origins of Flamenco, but it is often attributed to the gypsies, who practice it today. Flamenco combines cante (singing), toque (guitar playing), dance, and palmas (handclaps). Everything is done with an emotional intensity that makes the audience feel like they are witnessing a heart wrenching confession. In true Flamenco (not the tourist contrived spectacles), much of the performance is improvised and done on the fly.

The performance I went to was set in the origin style. It was in a small bar (the Andalusian Dog) set back into the hillside and made to appear like one of the cave dwellings on Sacromonte. The stage barely contained two musicians, the three singers, and the one dancer (who was amazing). It was a wonderful performance that felt like somewhere between a impromptu hoedown and a depressing opera. This was based on the fact that it seemed as though the musicians, the singers, and the dancer would just kind of nod at each other in a “your turn now” kind of way (nothing set in stone) and then the intensity with which the singing and dancing was done and the facial expressions had you thinking that everything they sang about was related to something horribly tragic.

The last thing of great importance that I did in Granada was go see the Alhambra. The Alhambra was the fortress and royal palace complex built in the 14th century by the Moorish Caliphate. The palace was built for the last Muslim Emirs of the Nasrid dynasty. After the Reconquista (re-conquest) by the Catholic Monarchs in 1492, some portions were reallocated to Christian rulers. King Charles V even had a palace for himself built within the lands of the fortifications.

The Alhambra today contains the Nasrid Palace, King Charles V’s Palace, the Alcazaba (citadel), and many churches and towers, as well as outlying buildings. Attached to the Alhambra is the Generlife, or summer Palace with it immense gardens. The site is an UNESCO World Heritage site and as such only 8100 people are allowed to visit per day, so it’s best to get your tickets in advance. They say that you can see the entire complex in three hours, with breaks, but I found that that’s only if you want to run through the place and not actually get to admire anything. I got lucky when I was there because they were housing a portion of an exhibit on M.C. Escher’s works in King Charles V’s Palace and he’s one of my favorite artists.

And thus that is Granada in a nutshell. On to Madrid, my last Spanish adventure (at these least this trip).