There be dragons here

Saturday--and I'm starting on very little sleep. Apparently jet lag was going to get me anyway; it just waited a bit longer. But we made it through the day in fine form, starting with a successful, not-getting-lost walk to the closest tube station--which is WAY closer to our lodging than we first knew. It's actually a five-minute walk rather than 20 minutes. I think both my Google and Apple maps are deliberately misguiding us just to make sure we do at least eight miles a day walking. (Yes, Judy Chovan, I know that's a fraction of what you're accustomed to, but give us time. By the end of this trip we'll be doubling that. 😎)

First stop: Barbican tube station, where we met up with a friend, Alice Crystal, who was a student in my 2009 TFF Student Symposium group (so glad she remembered the year; I certainly didn't).

We had a quick breakfast at Pret a Manger, the ubiquitous cafe that can be found in every London neighborhood--sort of like Starbucks, but with lots more food options and really good fresh pastries.

Then off to meet our tour guide back at the Barbican station to take in "hidden secrets of old London." To be sure, we saw quite a few, but there are SO MANY!! And many of them are stories of deaths and misdeeds--of course!

After starting with the Great Plague/Black Death (which kept returning in 20-30-year waves), we moved on to the Smithfield Meat Market , which has been in operation for about 150 years. It's another attractive Victorian building with quite a colorful history.

But first, here's an important detail of this building (which was rededicated by Queen Elizabeth and the Queen Mother back in the early 2000s): check out this dragon. The City of London, which is only one square mile in area but was traditionally the commercial headquarters for the entire greater London area, adopted this dragon as its own and it can be found everywhere. Watch for it here...

For instance, in addition to selling all kinds of meat, poultry, fish, et al, wives were sold there; it was apparently a good way to avoid trying to get a divorce from a wife you no longer wanted around. Some real bargains could be found there (and of course the traded wife probably had no say). It seems this fortunately is no longer the case.

On to one of the best sights of the tour--Priory Church of St. Bartholomew the Great, on Cloth Fair Lane. What an unusual church (at least on the outside;,we didn't have a chance to see the interior).

Surprisingly, its appeal for me lies not in its unique design ( the architect and stonemasons may have been on drugs), but in its association with public executions at the square in front of the church--and the pub across the street:

The Hand and Shear was so named because Cloth Fair Lane was where fabric makers sold their wares. But this pub was also the place that sold the "Last ales before Newgate Public Executions" (see sign). These Brits have always had their priorities straight.

And that leads me to perhaps the biggest revelation of this tour: in this one-square-mile City of London there are 191 pubs! We were told that calculates to one pub for every 40 residents of this area. It must be a heavy burden to bear, to keep those pubs solvent and working for so many centuries.

From our tour, Cindy, Alice, and I went on to ... yes, you guessed correctly. A pub! Not just any pub, but the Princess Louise.

The food and ambience were great, but the historic decor was absolutely stunning:

After lunch, we said farewell to Alice and headed off to the British Museum. You'd think that I, a former museum professional, would realize the folly of trying to squeeze in a visit to a museum that is as immense as this one. We had tickets for their special exhibition on China, which we did see and enjoy. But by the time we got out of that, we had almost no time to see anything else. After a mad dash to find the Rosetta Stone and run through the Medieval Gallery, we hopped in a taxi and made it to Westminster Abbey for Evensong. Whew!

But let's back up for a moment. I really got into the dragon theme yesterday, so I'll leave you for now with the dragons and some other fantastic creatures I found in our travels.

Exhibits on China are excellent resources for dragons.

And there you have it: our day with dragons, fish, and Old London secrets (that I'll never tell).

Westminster Abbey will have to wait for the next installment, as we must arise very early to catch a 7:00 train to York. There are a thousand more things to see and do right here in this amazing city, but we have miles to go...