Hanging out in Holland

Just spent a weekend in Holland. Love that country. So well-run.

It's only an hour flight from London.

Lexi had a softball tournament in The Hague on Friday and Saturday and Chris had meetings there the following week so the three of us joined up for a weekend together in Holland.

It was a weekend of memories as we had spent the summer of 2005 in The Hague when Chris worked there.

Went by our apartment from that summer. Here is a photo of the tram that Chris took to work each morning running in front of the apartment building:

Apartments from our summer of 2005

Trams run every few minutes to easily get you around the city.

Better yet, bicycles are the way to go! It's such a flat country and that makes for easy cycling.

Some of the many bikes parked

Bike paths are laid out so well along the streets that you feel very safe in your own lane. Kids grow up on bikes. When they start driving, they have a healthy respect for the bikers.

The order of precedence on the road is: bicycles, trams, pedestrians, cars.

Cars must yield to everyone else and cycles don't have to yield to anyone.

Special bikes let parent and children all ride together:

Cute, isn't it?

We rented bicycles from our hotel for the day and rode around. Such memories of 2005.

On our bike ride

We rode all over the city, got a little lost at one point, but found our way again.

I wondered why I wasn't more adventurous when we lived here to just go out exploring. The kids were 10 and 14 at that time and I remember being nervous about them out on the roads.

Or maybe it was just me not feeling brave enough. I think living four years abroad has made me more adventurous.

We stopped for hot chocolate in the town center plaza and soaked up the warming April sun.

These Eco Toilets that get set out on the weekends amaze me.

Males only please!

Back at the hotel, the lobby had modern decor, including this glass enclosed fire pit that caught my eye.

We are back in England now but the tulips Chris brought back help keep the memory of the weekend (and 2005) alive.

Nothing says Holland like tulips

Grace and Favour Apartments

Hampton Court Palace, where King Henry VIII lived in the 16th century, is a 15-minute drive from our house. It's a popular historic attraction for Americans who live around here to visit and to show to their visiting guests as well.

Hampton Court

My American Women's "English Experience" group recently took a field trip to Hampton Court, but this time we got to see areas of the palace that are not open to the public.

After 1737, when royalty stopped living in the palace, rooms were created from the large expanse to form "Grace and Favour" Apartments. These residences were offered rent-free to those who had given dedicated service to Crown or country. Usually, widows of servicemen were offered the apartments. The residents were generally of a notable status or ranking but who had fallen on hard times financially. So from about 1750 to 1950, portions of the palace were like an apartment block of housing. This is not something they tell you about on the regular tour of the grounds.

One of the Grace and Favour Apartment dwellers

We started our special tour with the Historic Royal Palaces curator by having tea, coffee, and cookies in one of the former apartment rooms. I like how our English Experience trips always start out in such a civil manner with refreshments.

While the refreshments were genteel, the apartments we saw were in disarray, almost in shambles. The rooms have sat empty and unused for years but you can still get an idea of what they were like. The apartments span different time periods, some had fireplaces in each room for warmth, some had light bulbs hanging down low from the ceiling in order to provide maximum light from the dim bulbs. One bathroom still contains a claw foot tub. You can see where wardrobes stood by the lack of paint on the wall when the rooms were painted around them. Ancient looking light switches were obviously added when electricity was installed.

We were allowed to take photos but were asked not to put them on social media sites since the apartments are not open to the public. I took a couple of pictures from general public areas. This one shows the stairs leading to some of the apartments. An iron gate keeps them private.

Private stairs to the apartments

This is a picture showing the progression of doorbells and nameplates through different time periods:

There is still a basket on a rope and pulley at the top of some of the stairwells. The elderly living on the top floors could have their groceries delivered in the basket on the ground floor and then they could draw the basket up to avoid using the stairs. The curator said one of the former grocery boys is still alive and remembers delivering to Hampton Court.

In 1838, just in the middle of the 200 years that residents were living in the Grace and Favour Apartments, the young Queen Victoria opened the palace to visits by "all her subjects without restriction". The residents complained of the visitors sticking their heads in their windows and gawking at them. I guess that's the price you pay for living rent-free in a historic royal palace.

The question is what to do with these former living spaces? It would be nice to restore them but to what time period? Visitors to the palace want to see authenticity so the curators must be careful not to change them too much. It is one of the challenges of presenting a landmark with 500 years of royal history.

To learn more, visit these websites:

http://www.hrp.org.uk/HamptonCourtPalace/anewcommunityandrestoration

http://www.hrp.org.uk/Resources/Grace and Favour - A handbook of who lived where in Hampton Court Palace 1750 to 1950.pdf

College-Hopping Spring Break

Miles travelled:  10,000+

Length of trip: 19 days

School days missed: 3

Cost of trip: $1,000's

Number of oceans crossed: 1

Number of flights: 8

States visited: 6

Cities stopped in: 9

Schools visited: 5

Malls shopped at: 2

Prom dresses purchased: 1

Prom dresses tried on: 18

White graduation dresses purchased: 1

White graduation dresses tried on: 12

American jeans purchased: 4

Number of hotels stayed in: 8

Number of rental cars: 2

Number of meals eaten out: 55

Daughter being able to choose which University to attend...   Priceless

Another American Abroad

Did you know that Benjamin Franklin lived in London for nearly 16 years? I didn't until I visited the lodging house where he stayed between 1757 and 1775.

36 Craven Street, London

During his time in London he was mediating the unrest between Britain and the American colonies. Obviously it didn't end well and he high-tailed it back to America just before the American Revolution.

The lodging house where he stayed is said to be the world's only remaining Benjamin Franklin residence. His wife Deborah never joined him in London while he lived here. She feared traveling across the Atlantic ocean. Sadly, she died in 1774 while Benjamin was in England.

Photo owned by "Benjamin Franklin House"

The house was rescued from dereliction and has been brought back to life with its original features restored. Historical tours are given by an actress in period costume portraying the landlady's daughter. "Polly" takes the tour group through various rooms of the house and re-enacts what might have taken place there, tea in the parlor, scientific experiments in another room, visiting around the fireplace. We climbed up and down the same narrow, well-worn, wooden staircase that Franklin would have walked on.

The house is situated near the Thames River and it is said that Franklin would go there for a swim.

An interesting side story is the discovery of the "Craven Street Bones". When the house was being renovated in 1998, human and animal bones were uncovered under the basement floor. The location would have been the garden in Franklin's day. It turns out the bones are remnants of the anatomy school run from the house by the son-in-law of Franklin's landlady. Some of the bones have dissection marks showing how they were used for teaching purposes.

I learned quite a bit about Benjamin Franklin from touring the house, particularly that he was an American living abroad in England... just like me!

Lunchtime Concert

There are plenty of touristy things to do in London. Sometimes it's nice to do a non-touristy activity that provides a glimpse of the typical local culture.

A lunchtime concert at a church in a nearby town showcased a very talented professional viola player. There was no entry fee and a light lunch was provided before the concert. How can I pass up free food and a free concert?

On offer were triangle-shaped sandwiches with what I think was pimiento cheese filling, ham sandwiches, cheese and crackers, fruit, welsh cakes, and orange juice. It's very common here to drink orange juice for lunch. Of course coffee and tea were provided as well. We ate on cute little plates and drank from stemmed glasses. The food was laid out in the back of the church and we sat in the pews to eat. There was a ledge on the back of the benches just wide enough to set your dishes on. It seemed strange to me to be eating in the 150-year-old church.

A lady came around with a tray offering jam-tops, homemade tea-bread, and apple-blackberry pie. These cute-sounding English sweets made the experience of being there feel so authentic.

It was an older crowd except for the young Rector who had recently transferred to the church. He was friendly and came by to talk to me, I think our mutual non-gray heads stood out in the crowd. He detected my American accent but I'm glad my Catholic religion didn't come up as we were in a Church of England congregation and I didn't want to risk losing my before-mentioned head. Okay, so the Catholic/Protestant dispute was centuries ago, but it's fresh in my mind as I have been learning about it in my English Experience history group.

Sitting in the church, I wanted to take pictures of the scene because this blog posting was already forming in my head. But it would have felt intrusive to do so. I didn't want to impose a touristy feel on what was an ordinary occasion for the locals.

I did find a website with some photos of the church:  Christ Church, Esher, Surrey

Photo by Jacqueline Banerjee

I enjoyed the concert and I did make a donation to the "retiring collection" as I left. I'm not entirely a mooching freeloader!

Lucky Day

Today I won a raffle prize, Chris won some meat, and he won a bet on a soccer match. Coincidentally, today was St. Patrick's Day. Could it be the luck of the Irish?

Fulham beat Tottenham so Chris's pub buddy must take us out to dinner.

While at the pub watching the game, Chris entered the pub's weekly Sunday meat raffle drawing. First number called was Chris's. He got to select his choice of meat that was laid out on a table. He chose some delicious pork steaks. It was a lucky thing too because I had nothing planned for dinner and was thinking of ordering pizza. Instead, Chris grilled the pork and made dinner, lucky me!

Chris got to draw the next number and as luck would have it, he drew the number of his pub buddy. Sounds rigged. Actually, the whole idea of a "meat raffle" sounds odd to me, but who's to say?

Meanwhile, I attended a FUNdraiser Concert at my church. As you can see, we lead a balanced lifestyle, one of us at the pub, one of us at church. Various types of music were performed by youngsters and not-so-youngsters of the parish. The money raised will help send some lucky youth parishioners on Lourdes pilgrimages and also support a local Hospice. A worthy cause, I thought, so I offered my support and tried my luck by buying some raffle tickets. I won a prize of wine, chocolate, gift wrappings, and a book of daily teachings:

My winnings

Some of the numbers performed at the church concert were Irish songs, appropriately, for St. Patrick's Day. It's a Catholic church so there are several Irish parishioners. I felt lucky to be able to hear Irish music on St. Patrick's Day performed by actual Irish people with the audience joining in the singing because they knew the songs.

I'm heading to bed now on this memorable St. Patrick's Day before my luck runs out.

Happy Saint Paddy's!

It Could Be Worse

Today in my English Experience lecture, we heard a talk on "Georgian & Regency Period Furniture". One thing I found interesting was the origin of the sofa table. We learned that sofa tables were invented when oil lamps started to be used. The table provided a handy place to put a lamp behind you while sitting on the sofa reading or doing needlework.

Modern day sofa table with lamp

Prior to the use of lamps, the only source of illumination at night was candlelight. Can you imagine trying to while away the evening hours with only candlelight? And no television or computer?

We complain in England about the short winter days when it gets dark at 4 p.m. It could be worse, at least we have electric lighting.

This got me thinking about other areas in our lives where we complain but it could be worse.

When we were in the Maldives on a tiny island in the middle of the Indian Ocean, we complained when the internet connection was slow. It could be worse, like no internet service at all.

Wah Wah, the internet is slow here!

We complain about the long flight times as we jet around the world and across the oceans. It could be worse, we could be on a ship for weeks instead of on an airplane for 12 hours.

We hear about the olden days of Ex-Pats when communication with loved ones back home wasn't instantaneous. Phone calls were expensive and low-quality. Email and texting were non-existent. News was transmitted via old fashioned snail-mail. So the next time our Skype connection with Ryan is slow, I'll just have to remember.... it could be worse.