Saturday, July 16, 2016

https://www.londoneye.com



Owned by British Airways.


Opened in 1999.


443 feet tall.


Each of 32 capsules can carry 25 people at a time.


It leans, hanging on cables instead of standing on solid feet.


It never stops turning; 
it is slow enough that people get on and off without stopping.



One revolution takes about 30 minutes.


Most popoular tourist attraction in the Kingdom.


“The Eye has done for London what the Eiffel Tower did for Paris.” 

Sir Richard Rogers


Almost 4 million people ride the Eye each year.


Friday, July 15, 2016

so not offal


Meat has been traded at the Smithfield Livestock Market in London for almost 1000 years.



This building dates from 1868 and right in its shadow is one of the finest meat restaurants in the world, the very small and humble St. John.


Founded in a bacon smokehouse by chef Fergus Henderson in 1994, he subscribes to a personal philosophy of wasting not one bit of an animal at slaughter.



Naturally, I had his Bone Marrow and Parsley salad...

...and Kid Liver with braised red cabbage.


I purchased his cookbook, too. This was back in 2009.



If all goes well, I'm eating there again tonight.


Throw me a bone. Please!


tickled pink



Thursday, July 14, 2016

saving money on overseas travel


I like scotch, architecture and motorcycles, 
and not necessarily in that order.


So with the high price of petrol I leased a buzzy little Honda and headed about 2 hours north of London to Audley End.


Originally built as a monastery, the abbey buildings were converted to a Jacobean style house c1538 by Sir Thomas Audley.


Naturally it was raining but the gloomy overcast sky seemed fitting to the history. The mansion is just magnificent.


And the detail still remains; timber floors, slate roof, vaulted brick, Flemish tile.


This hammered stepflashing is framed by red brick, green lichen and grey slate and is typical of the simple, unselfconscious beauty.


Fancy iron work is everywhere as in this doorbell pull.


And notice the way the mason zig-zagged his horizontal stone banding around the leaded downspout, so the leader could run true.


Everywhere I looked there were gardens and lush, breathtaking lawn.


So I got two out of my three top favs on this bike trip, 
and good scotch later that night.

I bought the first round with all that money I saved on gas.

Wednesday, July 13, 2016

art official intelligence


The Victoria and Albert Museum


A mission similar to our little CooperHewitt.





But with the political, cultural and social impact of the Met.






A London must-see.