England, part 2—From 2800 B.C. to the 21st Century

Part 2:  Shakespeare’s Globe, Cruising the Thames, Frolicking at Trafalgar Square, & Enjoying Wimbledon

We awoke on Tuesday to gray skies, but no rain.  Both couples had tea and toast for breakfast in their rooms, and then the four of us taxied to the South Bank to first tour the Globe Theatre.  (One of my guidebooks said that in groups of four taking a taxi was always less expensive than taking the Tube underground on individual tickets.)
The original Globe opened in 1599, just one year after England defeated the Spanish Armada.  It burned down in 1613, but this modern replica (built in 1997) created of oak timbers, 36,000 specially-made Tudor bricks, thatched roof (the first thatched roof constructed in London since they were outlawed following the Great Fire of 1666, which destroyed 13,200 homes and left 100,000 homeless), 600 oak pegs (not a screw or nail in this building), and plaster that contains goat hair, lime and sand, as it did in the ‘Wooden O’, comes close to giving the same feeling as the original.  The original held 2,200 seated theatre-goers and another 1,000 standing.  This one holds 800 seated, larger aisles, and 600 standing, but like the original, the center standing section is open to the sky, and there is no curtain on the stage.  Today’s performances have female as well as male actors, lights for night plays, and a concrete floor, unlike the original.
We’d have loved to have seen a performance here, but beginning in late April, the Globe was doing their 37 days/37 languages performances.  The day we were there we saw the Polish version of “Macbeth” in rehearsal, during our neat tour.  (Early June through mid-October is when the major performances are held in English.)  We so enjoyed our tour here, and I was able to purchase a few remembrances for my friend Lee, an English major, who took a couple of Shakespeare semester classes, plus other Elizabethan-era classes, as an undergraduate.  I think she must surely visit England!
By the time we finished touring The Globe we were hungry, and after walking a bit in the South Bank area, we found the The Wheatsheaf Pub, where we shared a meal of fish and chips (french fries).  We also noticed that we were seeing a bit of blue sky—our first since landing there.  Then we walked to the boarding area, just across the street from The Globe for our Thames cruise to Greenwich.  Unbeknownst to us when we bought the tickets, two of their six boats were out of commission that day, and we had first a half-hour wait, & then a nearly hour wait for the connecting boat; so, we arrived in Greenwich too late to see the Royal Observatory (located on the prime meridian, from which all time is measured) or tour the Maritime Museum (the world’s largest maritime museum housed in a magnificent neoclassical building and considered the best attraction in Greenwich).  And I had discovered in my guidebooks an old pub there (Trafalgar Tavern)

where Dickens had frequented and he used it for the setting for the wedding breakfast scene in Our Mutual Friend, plus prime ministers Gladstone and Disraeli used to dine on the pub’s famous whitebait, but there wasn’t time for that either, in order to catch the final boat of the day back to London, and we’d paid for a return cruise.  But the last of the old tea clippers, the Cutty Sark, built in 1869 in Scotland, was there in all its glory, and we had full sun during our cruise and when we landed at there—perfect weather, if not perfect timing, for a cruise on the Thames to Greenwich.
When we cruised back to London proper, we disembarked at St. Katherine’s dock opposite the South Bank and near the Tower of London.  Then we bussed to Trafalgar Square—what a hopping place!  Since it was after 5 p.m., the National Gallery was closed, but just experiencing the Square with all of the people activity was exciting.  And after taking a number of photos there, just 2 blocks away we found our way to Gordon’s Wine Bar, a 15th century wine cellar, which we’d seen featured on TV, and I had remembered the street (Villiers) it was on.  Unfortunately, since it was after 6 p.m., it was overflowing with nine-to-fivers (suits/ties), and we had to settle for the leafy back patio, where we enjoyed a platter of bread, cheeses and chutney (a sweet and sour relish of fruits and herbs), and of course, wine, since it was a wine bar.  Then we bussed back to our hotel for a good night’s sleep.
Wednesday dawned gray and a bit drizzly, but we’d decided that was our day to go to Wimbledon and Kew Gardens, and our friends wanted to view other sights; so, we’d decided to part ways for the day.  We were ready for a real breakfast, and just a couple of blocks from our hotel, we found Cote Cafe & Brassiere, a French place, where we had a nice breakfast.  They served their water in camel-colored ceramic bottles w/their Cote name on it, and I wanted to purchase one of those for our office manager, whose maiden name was Cote.  Our waitress said that others had wanted to purchase and were turned down, but that our request for a single bottle for an actual Cote person might convince her manager.  She said he’d be there by 9:30, so we drank more tea and waited, but 15 minutes past that, he still hadn’t arrived.  She came to our table and said that he must have had a problem with the trains, and that she would ask and that we should come back to learn his answer.  Unfortunately, we weren’t on that street again; so Suzanne had to settle for a only a card with her maiden name from that brassiere.
We hustled off to our station, and boarded the Tube for the Southfields station (west of London proper) and then took a local bus to near the famous tennis courts.  We figured that we’d just be there an hour or so, but there was more to see there than we’d bargained for.  We toured their new high-tech museum for a half an hour, and then it was time for Dave to take the 1-1/2 hr. grounds tour.  At that point, I went into the cafe there, read the London Times and then so enjoyed chatting with the tour leader of a group of high school students from Amsterdam, and then later enjoyed some of the students themselves.  Oh, what fun!
At some point, Dave arrived back from his grounds tour, and we left the cafe to tour the remainder of the museum.  Dave, an avid tennis player, absolutely loved that museum, its memorabilia giving the entire history of “lawn tennis,” and reliving some of tennis’ greatest matches, but finally at 2:30, I tugged his shirt sleeve and said, “We must leave very soon, if we are to tour Kew Gardens.”  Then I insisted that he must purchase something for himself from there, & he chose a short-sleeved, navy blue shirt w/a small, discreet Wimbledon logo on it.

We didn’t have unlimited time that day, since we needed to be at the theater for a 7:30 performance that evening.  I wondered if we were gonna have time to see any of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, holding the world’s largest plant collection of around 33,000 specimens on 300 acres, since the gardens were even further west of London than Wimbledon …