SPRINGTIME IN LONDON: A Walk in Hyde Park

Cherry trees in bloom, Hyde Park, London.

Londoners know that it is spring when the lawns of Hyde Park suddenly turn green, daffodils and lupins emerge from the ground, and cherry trees burst into bloom. On our recent trip to London in late April, the weather was cool and sunny—a perfect time for a walk in the park, a short distance from our hotel in South Kensington.

Viburnum.

Narcissus.

We entered the park at the gate near the Serpentine Gallery and followed the walking path toward the Albert Memorial. The park is huge with separate paths for walkers, bikers, and horses. It was not hard to imagine one of the characters from the Forsyte Saga trotting by on horseback.

Sports lawn.

Large lawns and open spaces provide places for picnics, sports, and for dogs to romp. Benches are frequent and a place to rest and enjoy the view.

Cherry blossoms carpet the ground.

Everywhere we looked there were flowers in bloom. The pink blossoms of the cherry trees were at their peak--on the trees and carpeting the ground. In 2019 Japan sent 125 cherry trees to England as a gift symbolizing friendship and cultural ties.

Bluebells with bee.

I spotted a bee collecting nectar from the bluebells next to the path. The next day, on a trip to visit a friend who lives just outside London, we took a walk in the woods and saw hundreds of bluebells in broad patches on the forest floor.

Bluebells on the forest floor in the town of St. Albans.

Albert Memorial.

The Albert Memorial in Hyde Park is hard to miss with its golden spire reaching 176 feet into the sky. A statue of Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria, sits inside the pavilion. After Albert died in 1861 at the age of 42, Queen Victoria had the monument erected in his memory. She lived another forty years!

Corner sculpture of the Albert Memorial symbolizing Europe.

Every feature of the structure is significant. At the four corners around the pavilion are large allegorical sculptures representing the arts and sciences and continents.

Albert Hall.

And across the street from the Albert Memorial is Albert Hall, London’s premiere concert hall. It was officially opened by Queen Victoria in 1871.

Mexican Orange Blossom bush.

Our walk gave us just a small taste of what Hyde Park has to offer. We didn’t have the time or energy to do more--it was our first day in London after a very long plane ride from Los Angeles. On a future trip I’d like to see the Peter Pan statue, the Speaker’s Corner, and Serpentine Lake.

NEW FOREST AND HAMPSHIRE COUNTY SHOW, Guest Post by Susan Kean

Winning cow at the New Forest and Hampshire County Show, England

My friend Susan Kean, who has contributed to The Intrepid Tourist before, travels frequently to England to visit friends and family. On her recent trip she spent two days at the New Forest and Hampshire County Agricultural Show in southern England. I thank her for sharing her thoughts and photos.

Heifer on parade.

The first agricultural show was held in 1920 and was a celebration of the traditional agricultural lifestyle of the region. The earliest shows featured judging of cattle, pigs, goats, poultry, rabbits and vegetables. Following this were parades of cattle, horses and ponies and the day always ended with musical stalls and dancing. Today, the New Forest and Hampshire County Show is a three day event, held at the end of July. Show jumping is a major feature, with international classes held throughout the three days.

Lunch and show jumping.

Susan writes, “The highlight was a delicious lunch while watching show jumping."

Winning carrots and beets. 

She adds, "The vegetable and flower displays were also amazing”

Arrangement by the Alverstoke Floral Decoration Society.

All of these are real flowers!

Wild flower display.

The New Forest and Hampshire County Show promotes and encourages the development of agriculture, forestry, equestrianism and horticulture and encourages the improvement in the breeding of stock. It helps raise funds to support the New Forest Agricultural Show Society and other local and national charitable organizations. 

MANET AND MODERN BEAUTY at the Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA

Photo of French painter Edouard Manet (Frontispiece design by Eugene Grasset)

The late works of French painter, Edouard Manet (1832 - 1883), are currently on exhibit at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, California. Manet and Modern Beauty includes more than ninety works of art–paintings, drawings, pastels–providing a glimpse into the Manet’s incredible skill as a painter and to his life in his final years. I recently visited the exhibit. Some paintings were familiar, but many I had never seen before. In all, I was awed by his fluid brushstrokes, use of color, and ability to bring his subjects to life.

J. Paul Getty Museum, stairs to Manet Exhibit

As I climbed the stairs to the second floor of the exhibition building, I realized that the vertical portion of each step had been painted to create a giant image of Jeanne, the featured work of the exhibit and a recent acquisition by the Getty.

Jeanne (Spring) was exhibited at the 1882 Salon in Paris, along with Manet’s famous painting A Bar at the Folies-Bergere.

When Manet created the painting, also known as Spring, it was intended to be the first in a series depicting the seasons.The painting shows a beautiful young woman with a flowered bonnet and parasol surrounded by lush greenery. It is the essence of spring rather than a conventional depiction. The series was never completed. Autumn was the only other season Manet painted, and this painting was also in the exhibit--a figure against background inspired by a Japanese silk scarf decorated with a chrysanthemum motif--flowers that bloom in the fall.

Boating, 1881. This painting was begun after Manet began working with the Impressionists

The exhibit is divided into five sections. The first, La Vie Moderne, includes paintings that were first shown at a solo show in 1880 at a Parisian gallery that was connected to a new fashion and culture magazine called La Vie Moderne.

Plum Brandy, 1877

Many of those paintings depict portraits of women in bars and cabarets. Others were of friends and relations or members of Paris society, such as opera singer Emilie Ambre, who was Manet's neighbor in the summer and fall of 1880.

Portrait of Emilie Ambre as Carmen, 1990

The second section, Portraits of an Era includes various portraits, including an example of one he did in pastels. Between about 1878 and his death in 1883, the artist created nearly one hundred pastels, finding the process--which uses sticks of pure color--less demanding than painting.

Portrait of Madame Jules Guillemet, 1880, pastel on canvas

The third section of the exhibit, The Four Seasons, includes the picture of Jeanne, Autumn and others.
In Manet’s final years his health was failing. In 1880 he spent the summer at a spa in Bellevue getting treatments for the pain in his left leg.  The fourth section of the Getty exhibit, Manet at Bellevue, displays illustrated letters written to friends and colleagues from the spa.

Peaches, about 1880

The final section, Flowers, Fruit and Gardens, was one of my favorite parts of the exhibit. The paintings are small, but brilliantly executed, with the peaches in one seeming so real that you want to reach out and grab one to eat. Manet had many friends, and they often visited him, bringing flowers, which he then painted. His paintings of roses, lilacs and other flowers appear as fresh as the day they were picked. And the glass vases holding the flowers sparkle in the light.

Moss Roses in a Vase, about 1882

Manet has been called a “titan of modern art” by the director of the J. Paul Getty Museum. This exhibit is a showcase of his brilliance and mastery of the medium.

Plaza at J. Paul Getty Museum

Manet and Modern Beauty was co-organized by the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Art Institute of Chicago, and is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities. For more information about the exhibit and visiting the museum, click HERE.

GETTING TO KNOW GREENLAND - PART 1: NARSARSUAQ Guest Post by Caroline Hatton

From the plane: the Greenland Ice Sheet, glaciers, and lakes with clear blue to milky beige waters.

My friend and fellow children’s book author Caroline Hatton and her husband Bill visited Greenland in July 2019. She took all the photos in this post.

Ever since I first saw Greenland from the air, as a teen tourist flying with my parents from home in Paris to New York, I’ve dreamed of visiting this world of snow and ice and mountains with unknown names. Half a century later, I decided to go to Greenland before global warming makes it “all melt away.” Considering the headlines about the June 2019 Greenland IceSheet record melting spike, I hoped July 2019 wasn’t “two weeks too late…”

What should we see and do? We found no tour books. Old Iceland tour books had only a paragraph about Greenland. With insufficient info online, choosing destinations was too hard.

What does the landscape look like? Are there hiking trails or maps? How many days should we spend in each place? In the end, my husband picked a packaged tour, a sampler combining a Viking archeological site, icebergs, the midnight sun, history, culture, cuisine, and free time for hiking. The package included flights to three towns, “one with a name that starts with an N,” Bill said, “the capital, and one that starts with an I,” my first clue that Greenlandic is a challenge.

Flying from Reykjavik, Iceland, to Narsarsuaq, Greenland. Image courtesy of NASA, with red added.

We flew 2 h 20 min from Reykjavik, Iceland, to Narsarsuaq in South Greenland.

Greenlandic Bluebells (Campanula gieseckiana ssp. groenlandica)

I found Greenland phenomenal because of the enormous size and fluorescent blooms of its Greenlandic Bluebells (Campanula gieseckiana ssp. groenlandica), the myriad shapes and shades of blue of its waters in fjords and glacial lagoons and icecap meltwater lakes, and… the ferocity of its mosquitoes.

Former World War II movie theater. Marlene Dietrich sang there in person.

Narsarsuaq is a former World War II U.S. military airbase. It was needed as a refueling stop for planes headed for battle in Europe. American soldiers wounded in Europe received care at the base hospital on their way home. The Narsarsuaq Museum tells the story with roomfuls of photographs, news articles, documents, correspondence, military and medical paraphernalia, and every-day objects. The runway and some original buildings still exist.

This is Narsarsuaq: a runway, a hotel, a supermarket, a museum, a one-room school, four places to eat, and a tiny harbor (not in photo)... Across the fjord, the current sheep farming settlement, Qassiarsuq, and Erik the Red’s Viking ruins.

A 15-minute boat ride across the fjord is the Viking archeological site of Erik the Red’s farm, Brattahlíð, which is part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The most substantial Viking ruins at this site: the wall stones of a Christian church, inside a turf fence. Other stones are still aligned where house and barns once stood. Nearby replicas of a long house and of an earlier, minuscule church are open to visitors.

Erik the Red came from Iceland in 982 and later established a Norse colony in what he named Greenland to attract more settlers. South Greenland truly was and still is heavenly green.

After more than 400 years in Greenland, the Vikings abandoned their settlements, but not until after the Thule ancestors of modern Inuits had arrived. Then the area became uninhabited again for roughly 300 years, before sheep farming restarted and continued until now. This history is summarized by tour guides and at the Narsarsuaq Museum.

The only musk ox we saw was on an appetizer at the Hotel Narsarsuaq restaurant—dark, dried, and shredded atop raw scallops. Edible wildflowers were picked outside the hotel and kept fresh with crushed ice: a purple Greenlandic Bluebell (Campanula gieseckiana ssp. groenlandica), pink Dwarf Fireweed (Chamaenerion latifolium), and yellow Greenland Buttercups (Ranunculus auricomus).

Today, guides lead visitors on foot or by boat or helicopter, to the Inland Ice (Greenland Ice Sheet), glaciers, icebergs, viewpoints, nearby towns, villages, tiny settlements, or more Viking ruins. Seeing musk ox, a wild and woolly beast of the Arctic looking bovine but related to sheep, would have been cool. But we would have had to research where locals might have seen some, then hire a guide and a boat for a day… at a phenomenal cost.

Permanent nylon ropes helped us climb a rocky slope.

Instead, we took a photo of the trail map hanging in the hotel lobby and went hiking past the ruin of the World War II hospital, through Flower Valley, and up to one of several small lakes.

Kiattuut Sermiat, an average backyard glacier, as seen from the trail

We loved the exercise, the scenery, and our mosquito-net jackets and headwear. Taking each photo two or three times was enough to get one without mosquitoes parked on the camera lens, creating big blurry blotches.

At the Polar-Tut Café: imagine thumping music.

For dinner at the Polar-Tut Café, we ordered from the menu board, handwritten in English and Danish, the second language taught in school (because Greenland is a constituent country of the Kingdom of Denmark). Reje burger is Danish for shrimp burger, shrimp and fish being the top Greenlandic exports. Local Qajaq beer on tap came in three shades: Doppelbock, Pilsner, and Dunkel.

After three richly satisfying days in Narsarsuaq, we flew up the west coast to the capital, Nuuk (pronounced nuke). There are no roads between towns in Greenland, so people get around by boat or plane. Clear skies made flightseeing a highlight of our trip.

For more info

Extreme melting in Greenland is not the only problem due to climate change: huge Arctic wildfires burned there and in Siberia, Scandinavia, and Alaska.

A U.S. World War II veteran pilot’s dramatic personal account of flying through Narsarsuaq