Craig Cross's Blog, page 6

London blog: Jason's Canal Trip

Jason's Trip run a boat between Little Venice and Camden Lock. It's one of those narrow boats (houseboats with the sides missing) that retirees take waterway holidays on: low enough to float under the branches, slow enough not to disturb the ducks, and painted like one of those fairground gypsy caravans. But you definitely need a lazy day for it. It's the kind of ride you can try on a sunny afternoon when it's too hot to walk anywhere. I recommend starting at the Little Venice end because if...

London blog: British Museum

I always feel like a school kid walking round here, looking at all the broken bones and stones and pretending to be keen. "Yes, Miss... a piece of pottery from 1,000 BC. Amazing." Don't forget to tick them off on your sheet, she says. "When can we can we go home, Miss?" Not for another three hours, she says. "Oh Jesus Christ, are you serious? I can't take another three minutes of this!" Three hours of broken bones, busted rocks and blocks of concrete, smashed...

London blog: Thames River Services (TRS)

There's definitely something wrong with the sun today. It's so bright and white it's sucked all the colours from the sky. People are fanning the air with whatever they've got: hats, hands, bags and magazines, but I've decided I'm going on the top deck of a boat for a better breeze. It looks like everybody has had the same idea because the pier is packed out with fifty thousand tourists. Luckily it's not half as bad as it seems because most of them are queuing for the City Cruises kiosk...

London blog: Queen's House

Queen's House is one of those buildings that gets eulogised in all the guidebooks, but when you actually come and see it you'll think... huh, okay. Is that it?. If you weren't told it was famous beforehand then you wouldn't have a clue it was. Can you see the Old Royal Naval College on the other side of the road? That's where the Tudor Palace used to be. Whenever you read about Henry VIII and Elizabeth I staying at Greenwich Palace then that's where it was. James I added Queen's House in...

London blog: Garden Museum

I'm not really into gardening. I'm more into concrete, so my big interest in this museum is the church it's housed inside. The original one was Edward the Confessor-era, and sat alongside the gatehouse of Lambeth Place. When the Archbishop of Canterbury started using it as his local it became one of the most prestigious in town, and ended up with 26,000 burials in the walls and vaults and graveyard outside. The Victorians decided to redesign the insides in 1834, and Hitler remodelled the...

London blog: Florence Nightingale Museum

I'm going to see if Florence can do something with my knees. I can't even hobble to a coffee shop this morning so I end up sitting inside the little cafe at St. Thomas's Hospital (that's where the Florence Nightingale Museum is). Lots of glum chats going on in here, lots of depressed relatives staring out the window. One guy is obviously a patient because he's wired up to a wheeled machine and his wife has got her hand clamped around his gown so it doesn't blow open at the back. I think they...

London blog: Marble Arch

250 years ago there was just a wooden gallows and a mob of yobs wanting to see a show. That's how Londoners got their entertainment in those days. They'd pluck an unlucky soul from Newgate Prison (where the Old Bailey is today), chain him to a cart and cart him all the way to the west edge of town, where a crowd of thousands (literally thousands) were waiting to see him strung up and swung from the Tyburn Tree (that's what they called the gallows). The condemned man was expected to put on a...

London blog: Alexander Fleming Museum

Alexander Fleming was the Scottish doc who discovered penicillin. He received a Nobel Prize for it, a knighthood from the king, had streets and squares and schools named after him, and even had his face painted on a banknote. And now they've turned his little hospital laboratory into a museum. If you're expecting to see a sparkling science lab filled with microscopes and lab coats then prepare to be surprised, because it's just a pokey little office on the second floor. In order to get there...

London blog: Tower of London -- Yeoman Warder Tour

Don't call them Beefeaters because they don't like it. (That's what I've been told -- I'm not going to test it out.) Apparently the nickname dates from the days when they couldn't afford to pay them coins so they let them eat the meat from the King's kitchens instead. The starving local Londoners didn't like that very much and hissed "beef eaters!" at them every time they passed by. Beef eaters! Boo! Hiss! Back in those days the monarch still used the Tower of London as a Royal...

London blog: Guildhall -- Guided Tour

Not many tourists bother with the Guildhall because it's tucked away in a side street off Cheapside. Not a lot of locals bother with it either, which is a shame, because it's one of the most historic buildings in London. The Saxons are supposed to have built the first one on the stumps of the Roman amphitheatre, but the one we see today is 15th-century. Ignore the white facade at the front (that was added in the 1780s), and forget the roof, because that was rebuilt after the Luftwaffe...