Day 16 -- Travel from London to Normandie, Port-en-Bessin

Friday was an early departure for the Eurostar Station at St. Pancras. We had an 8:31 a.m. train to Paris to make.

The train ride was uneventful and we arrived at Gare du Nord without incident. Next task -- drive out of Paris! After several delays, included the unanticipated need for a booster seat of some kind, we made it into the nine passenger Volkswagen van and made our way out. It took longer than I expected to get out of the metro Paris, but we eventually did and got on our way on the A13 towards Caen.

The A13 roughly follows the Seine River valley out to the sea, before turning westward along parallel to the coast. The scenery was beautiful all the way along. I think someone might have thrown up at some point.

Eventually, we passed through Caen and turned off towards Bayeux and our eventual destination, the 18th century castle Château de Vaulaville in Tour-en-Bessin.

The first view of the castle was marvelous. I’m not entirely certain what technically qualifies it as a castle, but it does. It has a mote, an old chapel that once had an Altare Privilegiatum, a stone enclosure and a tree lined entrance.

More to come of Château de Vaulaville.

That night the owner of the Château, Marie, actually took us into town to help us find a place to eat.

After a couple of places that couldn't accommodate nine, we ended up eating at the delightful Le Bistrot d'à Côté. There was a entire play room upstairs for the kids, almost a furnished apartment. Jen finally got to practice her French a bit on someone who didn't know English well. And I believe this was hands down the best meal I had in Europe. A fish terrine appetizer, assiette de bulots (sea snails with a special mayonnaise), and tripe soup. All magical and wonderful. Wow.

Day 16 Reflection

In France, an appetizer really is an appetizer. It increases your appetite. The entrée is the entry into the meal, not the main dish. There is something to calling things by their proper name.

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Londoners: Volume II

Day 15 - London: St. Margaret's Church, The Courtauld Gallery, St. Paul’s Cathedral

On Thursday morning, we again split up for a variety of activities. I had Nora and Charis for the morning. Others went to the Imperial War Museum and Churchill War Rooms, with a rendezvous planned at St. Paul's Cathedral.

Nora, Charis and I began with the intention to return to Westminster Abbey. When we arrived, however, the abbey church itself was not yet open and the line was long, so we went into St. Margaret's Church, which has a fascinating historical connection to the Abbey itself. (Unfortunately, I didn't know until later that John Milton was buried there and I missed his grave site.)

No pictures were allowed inside either St. Margaret's or the Abbey, though I did feel compelled to snap a shot with my phone of one fading gravestone and the memorial to Sir Walter Raleigh. In the case of Raleigh, I was fascinated that this courtier who was executed by order of the king for treason would receive a burial in such a place of prominence.

The inscription on his plaque reads:

“Reader - Should you reflect upon his errors, remember his many virtues and that he was mortal.”

I also took down this line from a Tennyson epitaph on one of the plaques:

"Thy prayer was 'Light-more Light-while Time shall last!'"

From there we went to the Courtauld Gallery. In terms of scope this was a perfect gallery for me to appreciate in one visit.One frustration was consistently bad lighting on the paintings themselves. In some cases, it was almost impossible to get a view of the paintings that was not marred by glare. This is annoying anyway, but particularly so if you are hoping to capture some photographs of the works. But they did have some exceptional pieces and I could almost always find at least one decent angle.

The first painting I encountered was Lucas Cranach the Elder's "Adam and Eve." The detail is remarkable and a great example of what the Northern European painters preserved of the Medieval miniature tradition while the South was falling back in love with Greco-Roman statuary.

Next was Eduard Manet's "A Bar at the Folies-Bergère," the famous painting of a barmaid in front of a mirror. Again, bad glare, but it was great to be up close to some of the detail.

I also enjoyed Pual Cézanne’s “Man With a Pipe” and “The Montagne Sainte-Victoire,” Vincent Van Gogh’s “Peach Trees in Blossom,” and Paul Gauguin’s “Les Meules (the Haystacks).” The color and composition in the Gauguin picture are perfect for illustrating the Impressionist / Post-Impressionist use of a Japanese sense for perspective and a Medieval sense for dimension.

But the real illumination of this particular museum was Amedeo Modigliani’s c. 1916 female nude -- for one reason, the bellybutton. It is a perfect illustration of minimalist impressionistic brush technique. Four maybe five strokes accomplish the task. That’s it. Up close it looks like abstract art; but from a greater distance a perfectly executed bellybutton!

Of course, this got me looking for other impressionist approaches to bellybuttons and I was interested to compare Modigliani's to Gauguin’s in “Nevermore.” Gauguin’s is a little more carefully executed, but still the brushwork and color is very simple. 

"Nevermore" was Nora’s favorite in the museum and alludes to Poe’s “The Raven.”

From the Courtauld, Nora, Charis and I made our way to St. Paul’s Cathedral to wait for the others. We stopped and had drinks at the Starbucks near the cathedral and got a lot of people watching in while waiting for the others. (Londoners: Volume II coming soon).

Jen, Grams, and Dietrich joined us eventually with Anna, Emily and Gramps ascending The Monument and visiting the HMS Belfast.

St. Paul’s (again, no pictures allowed) was massive. I thought for sure it must be one of the largest interior church spaces in the world. But I found out later that it ranked only seventeenth. This really makes we want to go to Rome to see St. Peter’s (the largest). The churches ahead of St. Paul’s are also interestingly scattered about (Brazil, Italy, Germany, Belgium, the United States, Serbia, and several other locations.)

We toured the inside briefly. Jen was on the lookout for William Holman Hunt's life sized version of "Light of the World" and found it. At one point all the visitors were asked to be quiet for a time of prayer. Then we began our ascent to the top of the dome.

First we got to the interior walkway around the base of the dome - the Whispering Gallery. Slight whispers can be heard from across the dome and a clap produces four echoes. It is an interesting scientific phenomenon.

Then we ascended first went out to the larger exterior walk around the base of the dome called the Stone Gallery and finally ascended to the very small rim around the cupola called the Golden Gallery.

The view was incredible.

From St. Paul's we headed back to Camden Market. Everyone else headed into the warren to shop. I sat and had a cider and some top shelf barbecue from one of the vendors.

Then we rejoined the rest of the family at Westminster Abbey, again hoping to get in, but thwarted by a special service being held there. We walked down the street for one final dinner in London and ended up eating at a family dining chain called Garfunkel's.

Next stop, Normandie.

Day 15 Reflections

Reflection One: Some of my observations on the difference between French reserve and Anglo-American exuberance were confirmed by sitting near a French family while dining in Camden. I was probably seated for an hour and the entire time the young lady in the group, who was the only youth, probably 13 or 14, sat at the table, pleasant enough, somewhat disengaged. What struck me most was her stillness. She appeared neither angsty, jumpy, impatient or eager. Just … still. This would be confirmed later during our stay at Normandie. I would have loved to visit a school in session in each place and see what the hallways were like.

Reflection Two: Now a little more than halfway through the vacation, I understand in a new way how people sometimes lose themselves, perhaps even how "midlife crises" begin. 

We become at this point in our life so busy doing, doing, doing under the press of the careers and activities we have chosen that when we do stop to simply be -- on a vacation like this, a good road trip, or even a lingering night out with old friends -- it is possible to be overcome by a radical disconnect between those life giving experiences from all we have chosen to do. Where in all of our “doing” have we experienced this kind of “being?” And is not this what we were made for? Is not this higher and better? Is not this sense of well being what God created us for?

If we are not careful, then, we find ourselves trapped between two equally unattractive options.

This first is to simply return to the drudgery of doing with memories of leisure past and a hope of leisure to come, to concede our “being” to economic necessity. After all, a man must eat and he ought to feed his family while he’s at it. Nothing to be done about it. Goodbye being.

The second would be to leave the drudgery entirely. Strike out in a bold new way of being. Buy a new sports car on credit. Get out while you can. Leave your responsibilities and live life while you still have the energy to do so.

The first of these is profoundly depressing, the second profoundly dangerous and seriously disruptive to any well-ordered view of life.

But there is another way, a third alternative, and that is to use such an experience as this to recover a genuine sense of being in your doing. Try to remember the true calling in your work, the vocation in your career. Find the humane in the mundane. Discover what is wonderful in the ordinary. Infuse the world of doing with meaning and dignity through your own choice to see it as a world of splendor and mystery. Make a few simple commitments that will force you out of bad habits.

Cultivate jamais vu.

Go to the Mooreefoc.

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Day 14 - London: Kensington, the Canals and Camden

Wednesday in London was a bit of turning point in terms of both enjoyment and interest in the city.

It began with a visit to Kensington Palace and Gardens (of Peter Pan, Princess Di and William and Kate fame).

There were several striking things about the ‘palace’ itself.

First of all, it ain't much of a palace in the sense I was expecting! I still had Versailles and Buckingham in my recent memory and Kensington was very modest by either of those standards.

On a related note, I have no idea how security is maintained here. It doesn’t seem at all conducive to any royals actually living here, but this is where William and Kate brought baby George and where they will officially reside. I’m sure there are wheels within wheels that we are not privy to, but it sure didn’t seem like a place you would expect to find royals residing. There you go. Modest British sensibilities?

Don’t get me wrong. It is a beautiful house. It just  isn’t Windsor Castle. I suppose I was also surprised by the proximity and accessibility to the public Kensington Gardens.

Again, we split up with varying degrees of interest in the castle itself versus the grounds.  I knew I would probably be headed out to the grounds a little sooner, and Emily came with me. But we did tour an installation on royal fashion and a series of rooms on the life and sorrows of Queen Victoria.

The fashion didn’t do much for me, but I was intrigued to find out that Princess Margaret (something of tragic figure) was allowed much more latitude in fashion than her sister, Queen Elizabeth II, by virtue of their different status in British society. I did wonder how that went over behind closed doors.

Surprisingly, the installation on Queen Victoria was very moving, especially the following quote upon the death of Albert. She had been very happily married and was only in her early 30s:

"My life as a happy one has ended! The world is gone for me! I had hoped with such instinctive certainty that God never would part us and would let us grow old together.”

and then later …

“And for a woman alone to be head of so large a family and at the same time reigning Sovereign is I can assure you almost more than human strength can bear.”

For the second time on this vacation, I felt the strong desire to read the 800 page biography of a fascinating woman in history.

After touring these two sections of the palace, Emily and I went out and explored the grounds together while waiting for the rest to finish touring the inside of the palace.

Once we reunited, we ate lunch outside the Princess Diana Memorial Playground. After lunch, the younger kids went in to play in what really was a marvelous playground. This was my first exposure to something I would note several other times in Europe. The whole idea of suing over negligence either isn’t a reality or isn’t feared, because kids were doing all sorts of amazing, dangerous, life-threatening things on the ship in the middle of the playground and no one really seemed to care. It was very refreshing.

The kids had a great time in the park. I shot a few pictures of the strange Elifin Oak. When it was time to go, Charis cried. It was so much fun and so peaceful we seriously entertained the notion of returning another day. But alas …

From Kensington we headed to Little Venice for a canal boat tour. The origin of this idea was a dinner cruise I took in a canal boat when I was first in England almost 20 years ago for a mission trip. The mission was in Stoke-on-Trent, north of Birmingham, however, and I had no idea that those canals were actually connected to these London canals.

However, as we learned on the tour, the canals were no mere idle pastime. In the heyday of the industrial revolution the British inland waterways were the chief means for the transportation of good throughout the British Isles, with the UK being the first nation to have a systematic water transportation system throughout the nation. ‘Narrowboats’ pulled by horses along one side of the canal transported goods along a vast network of waterways. The rope marks dug into stone and iron are still present along the towpaths, which now serve as recreational paths.

It was a great trip from Little Venice to Camden Town, drifting along in the middle of the city of London through canals that could have been in the country, past backyards and row boats, through tunnels, beneath a row of multi-million dollar homes high above the canals, by the London Zoo and the old Lord’s Cricket Grounds.

And all along the canal we passed dozens of other narrowboats, either moored or moving. The vast majority, our guide told us, were permanently occupied residences. If I heard her correctly, I think she said that 15 to 20 thousand people live on the canals throughout Britain.

This was the second time on the trip I experienced what I would call a genuine sense of community. The narrowboat men and women all seemed to know each other, called out greetings, asked after particulars, etc.

We disembarked at Camden locks and had an unplanned adventure exploring the magical food court, bizarre and market. The sheer scale of the place was impressive -- a rabbit warren of handicraft vendors,  curiosity shops, international offerings stuffed to the gills with everything from nick-nacks to antique volumes of poetry. At one point I seriously wondered whether we would be able to find our way out.

Day 14 Reflection

This second experience of European urban community led me to wonder what sorts of things are capable of holding together a community in the modern urban world. It seems to me that in most situations the urban monoculture is not enough. A major modern city may have a particular identity. Each of the larger American cities I have spent considerable time in Los Angeles,  Washington D.C., Chicago, New Orleans even  Minneapolis and St. Paul each have their own ethos. There is something genuinely distinct about being from any one of these places. But whatever that is it is not enough to sustain genuine community. Nor is the geographic neighborhood able to fill that role in most cities anymore. The soup is just too thin.

But here you had something like a small town identity in the middle of one of the world's great metropolises.

I know I would probably have to live on the canals for a couple of years to get a real sense for the nature of the community there, but here are some observations.

First of all, the narrowboat dwellers have a common and distinctive pattern of life. There are things about this way of life known only to those who live it. That must provide a kind of instant bond and insider’s knowledge.

Secondly, they have an "off the grid" sensibility that must be similar to living in a small town, miles off the highway. There is a certain pride in being an outlier of sorts.

Third, whatever economic disparity exists (and some of it does appear to be significant), its impact is at least limited to the ways of life possible in a narrowboat. Approximately fifty feet or so by seven feet.

Finally, because I imagine that the  narrowboat is a consciously chosen way of life for most of these folks, there is also a counter-cultural element to the society.

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