Touring London by Tube and Foot

Here are some details concerning some sights I have enjoyed in London without any assistance other than an occasional walking tour guide. If you plan on traveling to London you might want to include these places in your itinerary.

British Library

The British Library remains a remarkable sight for anyone interested in rare manuscripts and it is open on Sundays.

Look at some of the priceless artifacts and manuscripts they have on display:

Magna Carta -- some "original" copies, including a burned version with an original signature in 1215 of King John.

Map of Great Britain by Matthew Paris -- one of four maps of the British Isles produced by Paris, a monk of St. Albans, around 1250. The earliest of maps to show such detail.

Codex Sinaiticus -- the earliest manuscript of the complete New Testament, written in Greek, 4th century.

Gutenburg Bible -- Mainz, Germany 1454. Fewer than 50 survived.

Shakespeare First Folio.

A fragment of Shakespeare's handwriting -- supposedly the only known to exist.

Jane Austen's writing desk and History of England (written when she was 16 and illustrated by her sister Cassandra).

Handel's Messiah -- original manuscript/score.

Beowulf 1025 manuscript in amazingly excellent condition.

Mallory's Morte de Arthur in his own hand.

Pope's Iliad. Sterne, Wordsworth, Bronte, Goethe's Faust -- all in their own hand.

Carroll's Alice in Wonderland original notebook with his own drawings. Opened page: "It is curiouser and curiouser . . . "

David Copperfield pamphlet.

Joyce notebook of Finnegans Wake.

Tolstoy handwriting of a story: "Kretserova Sonata."

Original scores of Bach, Handel, Beethoven (and his tuning fork), Shubert, Stravinsky, and Mozart's only English score, which he left to the British Museum during his childhood visit -- God is My Refuge.

Several Leonardo daVinci notebooks.

Beatles lyric notes in John and Paul's hand -- She Said, Hold Your Hand, Fool on a Hill, In My Life, Ticket to Ride, Here There and Everywhere, Hard Days Night.

Lord Nelson's last letter.

British Museum

British Museum has opened the Reading Room made famous by numerous famous authors making its acquaintance, Tolstoy among others. The huge vaulted ceiling, built in 1857, is magnificent and looks like it was created yesterday.

The ancient Egyptian and British material is staggering, which includes several mummies, ancient money, material from the Suton Hoo dig (a 7^th century British king's ship buried with bodies and shipping material found on the coast of England early 20^th century.) Two amazing sights: (1) cuneiform (which claims to be the most famous cuneiform in the world) of Gilgamesh, the Sumerian epic dating to 3000 B.C. passed on to the Babylonians. The little clay tablet with clear markings is one of many cuneiformed tablets: "Gilgamesh was king of Uruk, a city set between the Tigris and Euphrates in ancient Babylonia . . ." (2) Flint tools dated 325,000 B.C.

Restaurants and Pubs

Recommended restaurant and pub: Sea Shell restaurant, 49-51 Lisson Grove (Tube Edgeware) is famous for excellent fish and chips and is not too far from a fine pub, Chapel (48 Chapel, Tube Edgeware).

Bill Wyman's Sticky Fingers Restaurant at High Kensington and Philmore Gardens. Pick up a few pics and souvenirs between pints of bitter. Plenty of pictures and several gold records on the walls, including High Tide Green Grass. The highlight is a set of guitars in glass cases. One is a "hand-made" bass that, according to one of the punked-out waiters, is still played by Bill on occasion. The other is a gorgeous gold Les Paul played by "Brian Jones, 1966-67."

http://www.stickyfingers.co.uk/

From the Sticky Fingers Web site: This haven of great food and original rock memorabilia continues to provide an enviable environment for eating, drinking, and relaxing. The invaluable collection of Stones memorabilia is a real talking point for both Stones fans and anyone with taste for rock heritage.

Imperial War Museum

Imperial War Museum displays V1 and V2 rockets, Sopwith Camel, WWI and II tanks, and various other war machines. The museum includes a trench warfare display recounting WWI trench warfare. One of the displays a glider that was built by prisoners of war secretively and eventually was the focus of a recent documentary. The builders described how the glider was built and flew it after the war for the first time.

Walking Tours

There are numerous walking tours through London and Paris that give the tourist a close hand look at historical sites. The Marlebone Beatles tour includes: Boston street that runs aside the Marlebone station that is the opening scene of a Hard Day's Night in which George falls as fans take chase; Ringo's apartment that was lent to Jimi Hendrix (who painted the walls black in his pursuit of the black arts) and John's marijuana bust; the magistrate office where Paul and Ringo were married to Linda and Barbara; house of Dr. Asher where Paul lived with Jane and wrote Yesterday and Hold Your Hand; a restaurant in the Hard Day's Night movie; Abbey Road. Other Beatles tours include the site of the old Beatles clothing store The Fool and visits to the outside of the old Apple offices and site of the famous rooftop concert.

Sherlock Holmes tour describes the Baker St. area of the early 20^th century; 221 B Baker St. didn't exist when Doyle wrote of it; the fictional house of Watson and a variety of sites in the area including interesting "mews," the populated back streets that we might think of as glorified alleys. They take their name from the cries of falcons that were kept in the backs of houses by men who kept falcons for sport.

London's Secret Village tour (St. Paul Tube). Another great walking tour that includes Smithfield, a London open market for live animals dating from medieval times as well as a place of jousting tournaments. This is the site of executions including William "Braveheart" Wallace. The ancient St. Bartholomews Church, the church used in Four Weddings and a Funeral is just off the Smithfield square. The Charterhouse area of town is also described, a monastery in which monks from Chartreuse, France prayed for thousands of souls buried in the "plague pit" during the 14^th century black death plague. Eventually the area is called Charter House.

Westminster tour. Meet at Westminster beneath Big Ben (actually called St. Stephen's tower). The clock and all of parliament glow in brown and gold in the evening sun. This is one of the most impressive buildings in all of London, and it would figure that its exterior was designed by a Frenchman. The complex was started by Henry VIII between the Thames and the ancient Westminster Abbey and almost equally ancient Celebration House where kings and queens have celebrated since before Edward I. The parliament building was a place where fees and fines were paid during the early 19^th century. To keep a record a strip of wood was marked and split, one used as a receipt. During the 1830's officials decided to get rid of the strips of wood. Charles Dickens was reporting affairs of parliament for two papers at the time, this being well before he was famous for his novels. Dickens proposed the idea of giving the wood back to the public so they could use it to keep warm. This was too much for parliament to consider, so they burned the strips of wood all at once, which was too much for the furnace. The entire parliament burned down. Later, when the Nazis bombed parliament a statue of Richard the Lionhearted was slightly damaged, the king's sword was comically bent. Churchill used the metaphor to his benefit: we are bent but not broken. Westminster Abbey added in 1998 a set of ten statues of Christian martyrs - one of the statues is of M.L. King. In the area: T. E. Lawrence's house that he was lent to him when he wrote his biography Seven Pillars of Wisdom (he wrote it twice since he lost the original manuscript at a train station), some of the old and very few remaining gas lights, the house of the Nazi sympathizer Oswald Mosely (model for P.G. Wodehouse's character Roderick Spode, the blighter who was the bane of Bertie Wooster's existence), MI6, MI5, Old Scotland Yard site, Florence Nightengale's hospital.

Other recommended walking tours: Pubs Along the Thames and Jack the Ripper.

HMS Belfast

HMS Belfast is now kept as a floating museum on the Thames outside the Tower of London. This is a fantastic ship that was commissioned in 1938 and part of the Normandy invasion. Churchill was aboard on June 5 and watched the night bombing before the June 6, 1944 Normandy invasion. You can crawl throughout the entire ship, which is filled with life-like dummies and various displays about the history of the ship. This ship sunk another cruiser in 1942; the German cruiser had nearly 2,000 aboard, of which only 30 or so survived.

Tate Modern Museum

Tate Modern Museum is the extension of the old Tate Museum, famous for JW Turner paintings and a William Blake room. The Modern is in an old power plant on the South Bank, Sourthwark area. Several floors of modern art - both extremely famous (Picasso cubism, Pollock) to the extremely weird (map of U.S. in which all name places are removed except references to "Lost," e.g. Lost Park, Lost Dutchman's Mine . . . ).