Planning a London/Paris museum hopping trip (1 Viewer)

[Francois Caron]

Back in london. Writing this message on my new phone, a nokia 6500 slide. Not easy. But the phone will work in canada.

 

[Francois Caron]

Ok, a quick update without trying to use the phone, and while using a REAL keyboard.

Went to Harrods yesterday. It's essentially a department store with a few oddball items like a £45,000 chandelier which was butt-ugly, and a +£4,000 suitcase made out of carbon fibre. And the Dodi/Diana shrine was a bit in bad taste.

I went to the Globe to see Timon of Athens. Stood up during the entire performance. All kinds of stuff were thrown at us such as chocolate coins, water, dirt, steam, food, a few unmentionables, and some performers.

I really love that place. The natural acoustics alone are simply fantastic!

Went to the National Portrait Gallery today. The place is occupied mostly by Chrtistian themed paintings, which I'm really starting to hate because there's so many of them, all the same style! Enough already! There were only two or three rooms with Monets, Van Goghs, Cezannes and a few more known artists, which made fore a museum with a highly skewed selection.

Now I'm REALLY getting homesick. I've been away from home for two weeks and it's definitely time for me to get back into my own home and into my own bed. I've already changed the sheets before leaving for my trip, so I'm all set!

In a couple of weeks, I'll post my trip report on Youtube where you'll all get a chance to share in my trip. Until then, this is me signing off on my last night in London!

 

[andrew markworthy]

I presume you mean the National Gallery? The National Portrait Gallery is a rather different beast (and in a completely different building).

As for the Christian-themed works, the overwhelming quantity of early art was Christian based. The only principal exceptions were portraits and from the late 15th century onwards, works based on Greek mythology and Roman history. That was just how it was. And these pictures do not instantly give up their secrets. Nearly all of them contain symbolism and hidden depths. They have to be studied. I strongly recommend you read Ernst Gombrich's The Story of Art which is the best introduction I know to the history of art and it explains clearly and concisely why and how the different approaches to art developed.

The reason why Monet et al (i.e. the impressionists and post-impressionists) only get three rooms is that this is a reflection of their worth in the balance of things. Far from being skewed, the National Gallery has arguably the world's most representative cross-section of Western art. But if you want to see more of the impressionists etc in London, there's always the Courtauld Gallery. Plus, if your tastes run to the relatively modern, there's the Tate Gallery (NOT the Tate Modern, which is for contemporary art).

 

[Francois Caron]

The Tate Modern? Ack! No thanks! I've had my fill of modern art for a while.

I did mean the National Gallery next to Trafalgar Square. I didn't realize there were two places called "national gallery".

The plane trip home was uneventful until we reached the Canadian coast where we had to land in Halifax due to a medical emergency. And it seemed like a really bad one. The woman they wheeled off the plane was unconscious, and they put a breathing tube down her throat. We arrived in Montreal almost three hours late, but we did arrive intact. No one dared complain about the delay.

Kudos to the British Airways crew for responding so quickly once they realized something was seriously wrong with her. No more than five minutes had passed between the moment when the cabin crew asked for a doctor on board, and when the flight crew asked for a member of the cabin staff to come immediately to the flight deck. When I heard that second announcement, I knew for certain we were diverting either to Halifax or Sydney. It was a very long forty-five minutes until we landed, and a very impatient wait until the jetway was finally connected up.

I didn't find any news on her condition anywhere up to now. I hope she'll be all right.

 

[andrew markworthy]

Medical emergencies and even deaths are surprisingly routine on long haul flights. If you think about it, it makes sense. On any long distance flight there's likely to be several older people, probably not in the best of health, who are on the way to see their grandchildren. All the excitement, breathing in air that's not exactly the healthiest in the world, cramped spaces, etc - it's an invitation for serious acute conditions. As it is, it's a fair bet that a tidy few of your fellow passengers, Francois, will succumb to bugs of one form or another over the next day or so.


I don't know if this is an urban legend, but I've seen a couple of sources claiming to be authoratative that state that some airlines now have dedicated storage space on their larger planes for a body if someone dies on board. Can anyone verify this?

 

[Francois Caron]

It's 5:30 in the morning and I'm wide awake. After four days, I'm still on London time dammit!

My sister received the package I've sent her. THIRTEEN keyrings from all the places I've visited! And one watch!

The watch has the Mona Lisa on it. For some strange reason, the Louvre didn't have any Mona Lisa keyrings. Only Napoleon keyrings.

Originally, she only wanted a keyring from the British Museum and the Louvre. Then I thought "Hmmm... What if I got her a keyring from ALL the places I've visited? That should be a surprise!"

She received the package at work yesterday. She and a colleague had fun unwrapping each and every one of them and trying to guess where they came from! Apparently, her friend was great at guessing the origin of most of them.

I'll probably post a vignette or two before I begin working on the full show. There's a lot of work ahead of me! I have about nine hours of material to sort through! Yikes!

 

[Cees Alons]

Since roughly six years, my wife and I regularly take a Caribbean cruise. We sort of "discovered" this was much more fun than we ever believed it to be.

Three times now we had a serious change of schedule - once when the airplane back home from Miami took off later because someone from the previous flight had te be removed feet first, another time when our ship couldn't enter a port because another ship with a similar situation needed to go in first, and during our last cruise we had to return from a port we just left to bring someone back ashore.

There are two groups over-represented on cruises and long flights (as they commonly say): newly wed and nearly dead.

Both to go and do something really exciting at a special occasion, or else at least once in their lives.


Cees

 

[Carlo_M]

That's...just...morbid...

 

[Francois Caron]

I've found a blog that discusses this very subject. Reduce Reuse Recycle: What happens when someone dies on a plane I've also read some interesting discussions elsewhere that one of the facilities that should be standard on all Airbus A380 planes is a medical clinic. With the number of passengers the plane is capable of carrying, it proportionately increases the likelihood that someone will fall ill or die on a flight. The only problem is that this will rob the plane of space for revenue generating passengers.

 

[Francois Caron]

Here's the final vignette.



Now I have to finish the full show which will probably last close to a full hour, and which will have to be uploaded on YouTube in multiple parts.

If I ever decide to do this again, I'll want some sponsors next time!

EDIT: Here's an alternate version of the vignette with the sound from the camcorder's microphone. The music track has been removed.

 

[Philip Hamm]

Makes me want to ride the subway.

 

[Francois Caron]

My travel show is now available on my YouTube channel. All eight parts.



Sorry for the delay. I was pretty busy, and editing nine hours of material down to just over an hour took longer than I expected.