Shower in a shoe box. This is the gee-whiz shower control in our very little bathroom. There is an on/off button, temperature control & water pressure control. The other is just for decoration I think. But maybe I haven't got it sussed yet- maybe it makes coffee.
Ali & Stephen

Barry at the prime meridian, Greenwich - with a foot in each time zone.

Chapel at Naval College, Greenwich

Greenwich Navel College, now largely used by Uni of Greenwich. Looking towards Queen's House with Royal Observatory visible on hill behind.

St Paul's. We didn't go in. When the Brit's charge for something they really charge! And there are so may stunning churches around.

Central Criminal Court - old & new, Old Bailey

Found a few interesting places up lanes off Fleet St

Went to Greenwich by river for day. 3 Museums there- Naval College, Maritime & Royal Observatory. Chock full of info about England's maritime history and centuries of discovery.

Cook's diary from later voyage in Maritime Museum. Harrison's 4 clocks in Observatory Museum, which were instrumental in establishing quick & accurate method for sailors determining longitude.

Greenwich also more like a quaint sea port than a suburb of London.

'Cutty Sark' still under wraps for another year (after being damaged by fire a couple of years ago)

Caught up with niece & nephew Alison & Stephen for lunch before they went to Paris for 2 mths back-packing around Europe.

One more day in London. Then we will be on canal boat with Jill & Steve & crew. Probably won't have wifi signal so will have to continue blog after a week's interruption.....J

London - the first

A cloister at Westminster Abbey. We didn't go in- cost too much. But we infiltrated by going to a free concert in an enclosed garden hidden inside the large compound and then managed to tag along with a tour group briefly & see a bit more.
Stephenson's 'Rocket- at the Science Museum. Wonderful Museum & free. We went for a morning & left at closing time 6.30pm.

St Pancras Station (!) - I think now the building is being turned into a hotel. Connects to London underground & Belgium & France with Eurostar.

Sir Humphrey Davy's 2 safety lamps & Lister's microscope from Science Museum. Sorry- photos a bit out of order

Sign from the (huge) aeronautical section at Science Museum

For Karen & Richard - some cactus photos from Kew Gardens.

Canada goose at Kew Gardens

Japanese garden @ Kew

Some of the extensive glass-houses at Kew Gardens. This is HQ for plant lovers around the world. The gardens are huge, with impressive vistas. One day wasn't really enough to see them all, but we did our best.

Lambeth Palace (home of Archbishop of Canterbury) with Houses of Parliament in background.

Deckchairs in Green Park -you can hire them for £1.50 per half hour.

Crowds outside Downing St. This was on a sunday & it is school holidays. We wandered past a few days later & the crowds weren't nearly so large.

London is big bustling & tiring, but I'm inclined to agree with Samuel Johnson- if you're tired of London you're tired of life. There's so much to do. If Art Galleries & Museums interest you, it's all free, and you probably won't find better collections of anything anywhere.

National Gallery has a fabulous collection & can't be rushed through. We went to the National Portrait Gallery too & it was very good.

The Science Museum was fantastic and the British Museum is so vast it's bewildering. Would be best to see it in parts, but we don't have time for that.

But one of the best things is the British Library. In an hour you can see a manuscript notebook of Leonardo da Vinci, the Magna Carta (1 of 4 copies in existence), Lewis Carroll's hand written & illustrated copy of 'Alice in Wonderland', musical scores from Mozart, Handel, Beethoven, Schubert & more, hand-written manuscripts of Charlotte Bronte, Oscar Wilde, Thomas Hardy (draft of 'Tess of the D'Urbervilles') , Sigmund Freud, Charles Darwin, Wordsworth, Scott's diary from his Antarctic expedition, Virginia Woolfe, Paul McCartney's lyrics for 'Yesterday' & 'Michelle' (literally on the back of an envelope), some very early versions of some Shakespeare plays, 'Aesop's Fables' printed by Wm Caxton in 1484 and Gutenberg's 1st large bible printed in 1455. I won't go on. Had to sit down & compose myself. There was also a map exhibition with some very early maps (including some of Capt Cook's & Mercator's, although we didn't see them- may be being rested. We only went there for a couple of hours, and we didn't get off the ground floor!

Apart from that, we've wandered around the monopoly board and found plenty else of interest. Our hotel is near Kings Cross/St Pancras Station so transport is easy. Re-loaded Karen & Richard's Oyster cards & are zapping all over. Buses good & plentiful too, and you see more than on underground.....J

Flanders Fields

Polygon Wood, one of the places where Albert Jacka fought.

Australian Cemetery at Polygon Wood.

The new & the old: Yorkshire Trench, with sniper post & wind turbine.

Tyne Cot Cemetery

A small section (Australian) of the list of names of missing soldiers on the Menin Gate. The lists are endless, covering most wall surfaces. Every night since 1928 (except for WW2 years when Belgium was again German occupied) at 8pm the traffic is stopped & a bugler plays the Last Post to honour the soldiers who came from the ends of the earth and never went home.

Island of Ireland Memorial

Crater hole still clearly visible at Hill 60 on Menin Ridge. This area has been left untouched as a memorial to all the tunnellers who died underground (German & Allies) and whose bodies were unrecoverable.

Memorial at Hill 60 to the 1st Australian Tunnelling Co.

The Great War isn't over. Belgian farmers still dig up unexploded shells, mines & ammunition on a daily basis. They either put them on the edge of their fields or next to an electricity pole like this, & notify the Army, who collect them twice a week. It's dangerous work -after rusting there for 95 years they can be quite unstable. In 2007 a couple who found an unexploded shell were killed when it exploded. And farmers also regularly find gas shells, which are highly dangerous and need careful disposal. I heard about one farm where 600 gas cannisters were found.

So that war is still affecting these people and how they live their daily lives. And of course they still uncover human remains, which are re-buried in a nearby cemetery. Some are being identified using DNA technology. The last funeral was 3 weeks ago.

Advanced Dressing Station where Dr John McCrae worked, near Ypres. Essex farm Cemetery now next to these bunkers
Well-known poem written in 1915 by Canadian Dr John McCrae

We did a tour from Brugge of the Flanders battlefield sites. There are 170 Cemeteries holding foreign soldiers in this area. And it's impossible not to be stunned by the size of some of them. Beautifully tended and restful places....J

Beautiful Bruges

For Jim- there is also a chip museum!! We had to check that out! It was actually a pretty good Museum- told the story of the potato from it's origins in the Andes, introduction to Europe after Columbus, attitudes to it before it became a staple, examples of more varieties than you would believe existed. Lots of other stuff as well. The Belgians claim to have invented the friet, and love to tell that story too....say the name 'French Fries' was given by some US soldiers in WW2 Europe, mistaking some Belgians for French. And yes- there is a cafe where you can try some extremely good chips/fries/frites/friets.

Market Square

There's a lot of chocolate in Belgium

One of the quainter chocolatiers

Bruges/Brugge in Belgium is a medieval city a little bigger than Bendigo. A lot of buildings date from 1200's and all times since. A few are earlier- like a seventh century church! It has been a dominant river port for centuries with a charming canal system, and is still clearly an important textile area judging by all the shops selling lace & tapestries. More chocolatiers than you can poke a stick at - at least one in every block. They seem to have a lot of festivals here- beer festival, chocolate festival (of course) fries festival, Thriller festival (called the Poirot Festival of course) etc. There's some sort of festival on @ the moment and there are marqees & sound stages set up all over town & music till late. So it might be old but it's not dead. Lots of people here get around on bikes -it's very flat.

The whole city centre is a UNESCO world heritage area. The pictures will show why. We did the 366 steps up the town hall belfry to get a better view of it. If the sound of big cities like Paris & London is police & ambulance sirens, the sound of Brugge is the clip-clop of horses hooves over cobblestones. Quite charmed by it and it's cafes & beer shops & cheese shops & interesting Museums. We went to a hospital Museum among others. Also some galleries & more famous painters......J

Lille, Northern France

Rebuilt trenches, Vimy Ridge

Extraordinary Canadian Monument @ Vimy Ridge, in a large park which was donated soon after WW1 by the grateful french to the Canadian people. It seems to have been left as it was, to clothe itself in vegetation. It is managed by Canada, and the visitor centre is staffed by Canadian students doing 4 mth stints on maintenance & leading tour groups. They have re-built some of the front line trenches and some of the communication trenches leading to command post 6 k's behind line are open & accessible. They also staff quite a good visitor centre. This monument was re-clad in early 1990's, using the original marble from Croatia. It was no longer available as the quarry there was long closed, so the Canadian Govt bought the quarry to provide the materials to do this huge job- that's how important it is to them. They seem to give this place 'birth of nation' status, as some Australians regard Gallopoli (although this was an astounding success & led to fundamental changes in military tactics)

This monument is sited just over the Ridge from the battlefield and is illuminated at night- it is really huge & can be seen from Belgium & Germany - how's that for giving someone the finger?

Communication tunnel through chalk, Vimy Ridge

Evidence of shell & mine holes everywhere, Vimy Ridge.

VC Corner, Fromelles - where allied soldiers are mass buried.

No individual graves. At battlefield site.

Tim W's great-uncle Harry, Fromelles

New Cemetery @ Fromelles (in town) - a month after official opening - for the Australian & British soldiers buried behind German lines & only recently found & moved here, many being identified by DNA testing of descendants.
Remains of German bunker @ Fromelles

'Cobbers' Australian Memorial on Fromelles battlefield.

Courtyard of old Stock Exchange, Lille

Place Charles de Gaulle, Lille, with old Stock Exchange on right.

Even their hanging baskets are classy!

Remnant of canal system & wharf area in background.

Old wharf area, Lille

A building with cannon balls still embedded in it's wall. From 1792 when the Austrians tried to take back Lille (unsuccessfully). Referred to as the seige of 1792.

Attractive Boulevarde de Liberte, Lille

Caught TGV from Paris to Lille. Not sure how fast but very fast.

Lille is a prosperous & cultured city- about the size of 2 Ballarat's. Was an important river trading port with an extensive canal system. Also has in past been an important manufacturing area, particularly in fabrics, threads & laces. Now is centre of farming area & university/college town with quite a young population. Has been part of a few countries, but has been french since 1600's. & a lot of buildings in the old part of town date from then. Also now a stop on the Eurostar train line between Paris Brussels & London.

Attractive place & easy to get around in. Two famous sons are Charles de Gaulle & Louis Pasteur.

From here did a tour of some WW1 battlefields we have an interest in.

Lille was the first city in the world to introduce automatic trains- i.e. no driver. We had to try that. They have a glass wall with doors on the edge of the platform which coincide with the train doors, so passengers have no access to the platform edge. Went quite fast too.

Move on to Bruges in Belgium tomorrow for a few days, before coming back here to catch Eurostar on saturday......J