Celebrating a decade of blogging (5410)

I chose five significant London places to visit to celebrate my ten years of blogging (5410). They were chosen to celebrate various ideas I have been exploring with my writing and creative work.

1. Covent Garden

Covent Garden is a vibrant and inspirational place. It features a handmade craft market, street entertainment and places to refresh yourself. It can be noisy and busy, but provides a rich and free London experience. 


2. Tate Modern



 

Tate Modern has been our favourite art gallery to visit over the past twenty years. It is superbly located by the Thames and the Millennium Bridge. Art and craft is very important to our lives and wellbeing. I particularly enjoy the surrealists.


3. Greenwich Observatory

 
Greenwich is quite a journey for us, so we don't go there very often. Even so we have seen some marvelous star shows in the observatory and also enjoy the time and space museum and the park and the river. It fits in well with our interest in stargazing, the planets and space therapy.


4. Kew Gardens

Me and my dad both worked in Kew Gardens and my dad's ashes are scattered here. It has featured in this blog on a number of occasions for a number of reasons and holds a special place in my heart.

5. Regent's Park





I have visited Regent's Park a number of times over the years, mostly to visit London Zoo. My daughter attended the Friendly Spider programme here in 2018 and we have since explored different areas of the park. There is a Japanese Garden in Regent's Park which is very handy for visualizations in our bed time meditations.

A tale of three cities

From a young age I was brought up on the idea that London, Paris and New York were the most glamourous, happening cities in the world. That's probably not true anymore, if it ever was, but I think they are still, all three, worth at least a brief visit. These are some further thoughts on these three great cities.

London

I've been living in London for over 50 years. There is something liberating about a city. You can quite easily feel lost and anonymous, but people, food and shelter never feel far away. These days I seek solitude and freedom in the middle of a city, amongst strangers. Some of my favourite places and things to do in London can be found by following my London links.

Paris

I have visited Paris about five times in my life, first in 1990 and lastly in 2015. Over those twenty-five years, much has stayed the same. Paris is romantic and edgy and everything in between. I have fond memories of it. To find out more about me and Paris, please follow my Paris links.



New York

Possibly the best week of my life was the week I spent in New York in 2017, just before I turned 50. It was quite a tiring time, I was out sight-seeing from 8.30 in the morning until 8.30 in the evening. I saw everything I wanted to see and feel I don't need to go back. You can find out more about my 5B450 and NYC adventures by using the search bar and the link.

5-4-5b450 (5455)

It occurred to me recently that in 2022, it would be 5 years since I completed my 5b450 project. To celebrate this anniversary I decided to reflect on 5 things I have achieved over the past few years which follow on from my 5b450 goals.

1. Visit Belfast 4 visit New York City

Visiting New York was the biggest and best part of 5b450. My travel plans have been much more modest since then. Even so it took one and a half years for me to get to Belfast because of the Covid19 lockdown. Belfast was the last of the UK capital cities I hadn't seen, I thought is was a very good city to visit and I'm glad I finally made it there in June 2021.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2. Paint garage 4 redecorate house

One thing that was easier to do in the lockdown of 2020 was paint the garage. I wasn't going anywhere much and I spent more time in the garden looking at the garage. It was looking quite shabby and I decided to paint it grey. It took me two weeks doing a bit everyday.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3. Do a reading challenge 4 join a book club

My time at the book club was short lived, possibly due to 2018 being a very difficult year. I began to set myself reading challenges in 2019. I have set myself a special 6 book challenge for the first half of 2022, it features books related to my original 5b450 project.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

4. Work on the Calm Book 4 a School of Life event

I very much enjoyed the face-to-face 'How to be serene' event in 2017. In 2020 we purchased the School of Life's 'Small Pleasures' cards to help us through lockdown. For Christmas 2021 I purchased 'The Calm Book' for Amy and I to work through in 2022.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 5. See another play 4 see a play at the Globe

After seeing 'Romeo and Juliet' in May 2017 we managed to see three more plays before the pandemic hit, the last one being The Twilight Zone at the Ambassadors Theatre in April 2019. I hope we will see another play in a theatre someday, but I don't know what or where or when.

The Last Flight?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This post celebrates my 33 years of air travel. As you can see, by many people’s standards, I haven’t travelled that much by plane, so all these visits are so much more vivid and special.

              1.      1988 – Athens, Greece

My Greek holiday was part of my European Grand tour, back in the late 1980s. I flew to Athens to embark on a Greek Island cruising holiday with Club 18-30. This was my plane and boat holiday, rather than my coach, bus or train holiday. I had an accident and got quite sick on this trip.

  

2.      1992- Egypt

In 1992 I travelled to Israel to stay on a kibbutz and from here my family had an interesting, culturally enlightening trip across the Sinai desert to Cairo.

 

3.      1993 – Paris, France

This was my second visit to Paris. We visited the Rodin museum, ate in the Iranian quarter and watched a French film.

 

4.      1996 – Prague, Czech Republic

Prague was the place on mainland Europe I hadn’t managed to visit on my grand tour. This was a lovely holiday and Prague was a beautiful city.

 

5.      1997 – Budapest, Hungary

My partner wanted to visit Budapest, so we did. It was quite hot.

 

6.      1999 – Israel

In 1999 I returned to the kibbutz in Israel to attend a wedding.

 

7.      2005 – The Dordogne, France

The noughties were a bit vague and messy, mainly because motherhood was very overwhelming for me. This holiday is a bit murky. I remember staying in a small French village and enjoying pleasant visits to the surrounding countryside.

 

8.      2017 – New York City, USA

We visited six foreign countries in the 2010s mainly via train and in particular Eurostar. I’m so glad I managed to fly to New York in 2017. It was one of the best weeks of my life.

 

            9.      2021 – Belfast, Northern Ireland 

It took one and a half years to finally visit Northern Ireland and Belfast, because of the pandemic. It was such a relief to get here, thirty-one years after visiting Southern Ireland and Dublin, which I travelled to via train and boat. The holiday didn’t disappoint, I really enjoyed our trip.

Water Therapy

When I was going through a very bad time in 2018 I had strong feelings that what I wanted to do most was to be by water; by rivers, the canal, by the sea, lakes and ponds. I just wanted to walk, sit or stand by water, to contemplate it and feel myself moving along with the flow of life. I still feel this way, I especially want to be by the sea, especially to live near it. We and the world are mostly water, so I guess this makes sense.

Belfast at last

 

I first thought of the idea of visiting Belfast in 2019. I booked our trip there and got Amy a new passport in Janurary 2020. Because of the pandemic it got cancelled in March 2020 and October 2020. We finally made it here in June 2021, two years since I first thought of having the holiday. I enjoyed the city, it was small and I felt it had a bit of a seventires and eighties feel about it. 

Visiting the three capital cities of Great Britain

I have loved cities for most of my life. One of my big life goals was to visit New York City. It was one of my 5B450s, I spent a week there in 2017, it was one of the best weeks in my life. I have visited Paris five times in my life, it is always lovely, vibrant and exciting. A newish life goal is to visit Belfast, the fourth UK capital city, but unfortunately this has been postponed because of the Covid19 Lockdown. Therefore this blog post celebrates the delights of the three Great British capital cities that I have been enjoying in the years 2010 to 2020. I hope to visit the fourth UK capital city sometime in the not too distant future.


London

I have lived in London for over fifty years and my relationship with it is always changing. When my dad was around and my daughter was little I made a point of visiting all the major attractions, although Madame Tussaud's really was the last straw. From 2015 to 2019 I made a point of visiting London's hidden gems in Secret London and London Interrupted. I now put wellbeing first and seek out the most therapeutic places. Kew Gardens is great for nature therapy as are the great London parks and London Zoo. Art galleries and museums are therapeutic in their own right, I particularly like the V&A and Tate Modern. The Tower of London is great for time therapy and the Greenwich Observatory for space therapy. I find walking along the Thames path is also very healing.

Edinburgh

Our one week in Edinburgh in 2012 was the last holiday I had with my dad before he died. He was born here, near Edinburgh castle, he grew up in the Portabello district. Edinburgh is a wonderfully Gothic city, the weather was quite miserable when we visited, which I think is quite normal. The Fringe Festival was going on, there was a lot of street entertainment and that made our time here even more special. One of the most memorable things for me was me, my mother and my daughter going on the Edinburgh ghost walk, it was the ideal time and place for a ghost walk and was notably spooky and quite disturbing.

Cardiff

Cardiff was our fist city break after my dad died. We spent just over a long weekend here and had to get used to being three rather than four. Despite these difficulties we had a great time. I think it is a tribute to Cardiff that I have such fond memories of this holiday, it is a very pretty city, very green and blue, with the beautiful castle and park area and the barage and bay area, by the sea. We did a lot of walking here, I think we were walking our troubles away. The BBC is a big presence here and every time I watch Torchwood I am reminded of our lovely 2013 trip.

Love Eat Pray holidays 2020 version 2

Despite the Covid19 Lockdown of Spring and Summer 2020 I am hoping to still go on my three love, eat, pray holidays later on this year; hopefully in August, September, October. Hopefully we will go on our holidays and have a reasonably good time on them.

Five decades of Travelling

When I was growing up a highlight of the year was my two week summer holiday with my parents. We travelled all over England, sometimes venturing into Scotland and Wales. I discovered foreign travel in the 1980s and spent the summers of 1986 to 1989 completing my own Grand European tour. I continued my travels in the 1990s, getting to southern Ireland, Glasgow, the Czech Republic, Egypt and Israel among other places. When my daughter was very young I didn't travel very much, but by the end of the noughties I was back holidaying again and we managed to get to Paris and EuroDisney in 2008. Our travels continued in the twenty-teens, highlights have been Edinburgh, Cornwall, Cardiff, Whitby, Brugges and my personal visit to New York City, USA, as part of my 5B450 project. The place I most wanted to visit to complete my travel bucket list has been Northern Ireland and particularly Belfast.

London Therapy Part Four

Kew Gardens has to be one of the most therapeutic places in London. The last time we went was on a lovely sunny summers day in June. Our outing was enhanced by the presence of a range of Dale Chihuly glass sculptures.

City Visions

I travelled all over Europe in my late teens and early twenties from Glasgow, Dublin and Amsterdam across to Stockholm, Helsinki and Moscow, down to Belgrade, Athens and Istanbul and West to Florence, Madrid and Lisbon. My play 'Another day, another place' takes in many of the countries I visited. Below are descriptions of five of my favourite European cities excluding London.

When I last visited Berlin I had to go through Checkpoint Charley to get from the West to the East of the city. I remember the shiny new buildings in the west, surrounding the bombed out cathedral, the subway station, the Recistag, Potsdamer Platz and the Berlin Wall and the grand old buildings in East Berlin. It must have changed so much since I visited in 1988, it would be fascinating to return and see how it is as a unified city once more.

One memorable highlight of my visit to Copenhagen was Christiania, the liberal hippie camp, which had many crafty market stalls, I remember buying a very rude t-shirt I had previously seen being worn by the dancer Michael Clark. I also enjoyed the Danish beer on offer and a walk by the sea to view the small statue of Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid. Wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen, indeed, it must be the Hygge.

Moscow was very different from any place I had been before, possibly more so in the late 1980s when I got to visit it. The subway was the most beautiful I've seen, shining underground halls and plush trains, I don't know if this is any different now. I also walked around red square which boasts the Kremlin and the multicoloured onion domes of St Basil's church. When I was there there was a queue to visit Lenin's tomb. The shops were also sophisticated and quite Westernised.

I have very fond memories of Prague which I visited in the mid-1990s with my husband. I remember sitting in a grand square full of tall pastel coloured buildings watching the ornate astronomical clock chime. It was a bit like being in a Miyasaki film. We enjoyed walking across the King Charles bridge to the castle. We also watched a small production of Faust, bought wooden toys for a future child and enjoyed a dish of Czech goulash.

I first visited Paris when I was twenty and have now visited it five times. The Eurostar has made the connection between London and Paris quick and easy. I have visited many touristy sites in Paris; Montmatre, Sacre Coer, Notre Dame, The Louvre, Champs Elysie, Arc de Triomphe, Eifel Tower; as well as the more unusual Museem D'Orsay, a transformed railway station, and Pere Lachaise Cemetery, where Jim Morrison is buried. On my last visit, in 2015, I enjoyed a walk along the Sane and a first hand view of the Euro Disney fireworks. On a future visit to the city I might venture into the catacombs.