Upcoming events

During the coming week, I will take my class to the Michael Faraday Museum at the Royal Institution. While this is not a huge museum in the basement of the Royal Institution building, it is a nice introduction to Faraday and his work.

Monday evening we go to see the play "One man, two Guvnors".

Friday through Sunday we head north to Edinburgh to explore the city a bit. We'll have a bus tour of the city on Friday afternoon to orient us and then on Saturday morning we'll have a tour of the Edinburgh Castle and on Sunday we tour Holyrood Palace.

A busy week coming. The following week we see the "Knight of the burning pestle" and Rigoletto at the English National Opera before we pause for spring break.

And for spring break we're off to Marrakech!

Portobello Road Market

The market at Portobello Road in Notting Hill is large, varied, and a fun place to shop and people-watch. On Saturday afternoon, we visited here, taking the bus from Kensal Green. We found, among many other things, a mushroom stand with all sorts of wild and exotic 'shrooms.

Kensal Green Cemetery

Another of the "seven sisters", the cemeteries built to ease the demand on existing cemeteries in London dying the 1830's, Kensal Green is a large facility filled with the great and ordinary. Like Highgate, there are amazing examples of cemetery art and the graves of interesting people.

Columbia Road Flower Market

Every Sunday, the flower vendors set up on Columbia Road, a narrow street near Shoreditch. It is a colorful and crowded event. This is where the flower vendors were moved when it was decided to move them out of Covent Garden (remember Elisa?)

Lots on people, lots of noise from the vendors hawking their supplies and musicians perfuming for donations.

Bunhill Fields Cemetery

The Bunhill Fields Cemetery is the final resting place for several notables, among them John Bunyan. I'm still looking for the grave site of his brother Paul.

Where the oxen ford the Thames

Friday was a long day. We were scheduled to take the train from Paddington Station to Oxford to have a guided tour of the city and university. Nature was not amused. The wind and rain made the direct route impossible. So we took the train from Paddington to Reading and changed for Oxford.

Some basic data

Just for grins, I've done a little checking on Google maps to get a feel for how far I am walking as I run around the city. Starting with the standard stuff, going to the office and back 4 days a week, I find that walking to and from the tube station at each end gets me 1.6 mi/day. This works out to just of 83 mi for the semester.

There there is the obligatory outing each day. Some require significant walking and some don't so let's say this is another 1.5 mi/day for those 4 days each week. This works out to be about 66 mi for the semester.

This gets me to a little shy of 150 miles. This is before I start doing the other things I want to do like Cambridge and Canterbury. Extra trips to Greenwich are not in there. The out-of-town trips to Oxford, Edinburgh, and Paris are omitted. Our spring break trip and our travel after the semester.

I'd say it is pretty easy that I'll top 300 miles this semester. Being the FMIR in London is certainly good exercise!