The Globe

This post is about a pub. Although it really isn't.

Last month, we found ourselves on a Sunday afternoon in London with some downtime, so we headed to a pub on Marylebone Road called The Globe. This particular pub is located conveniently right across the road from the Baker Street tube station. The fact that we were at the Baker Street station was no accident. We picked The Globe deliberately, without really knowing anything at all about what we would find there.

We thought we got lucky that Sunday afternoon. We managed to walk in just at the beginning of the Watford v. Tottenham Hotspur football game and found some excellent English cask ale to sup (Timothy Taylor's Landlord Pale Ale, if you must know) while we watched our adopted favorite team the Spurs take on the Hornets at Watford just north of the city. 

I should perhaps mention I don't have a whole lot of luck with sports teams and this Sunday was no different. I've been a New York Jets fan for the last 39 years and I've been a Washington Wizards season ticket holder for the last 19. When we decided to head out to see some footy in person for the first time four years ago, we picked a Tottenham game, bought some swag and became fans. Our Spurs lost that day 3-0 to Liverpool. This year we couldn't make it to Wembley to see Harry Kane and Co. play due to timing so we opted to head to south London to see Crystal Palace at home v. Southampton. Again, we outfitted ourselves in the home team's colors and the home team lost again, this time 2-0.

The first half of the game we watched in The Globe that afternoon was a 0-0 deadlock; then 53 minutes in Spurs went up 1-0 and things looked up. It got worse from there, however. Watford scored twice and took the game. Told you I don't have a whole lot of luck with sports teams.

That's a lot of time spent writing about a football game watched on telly. Especially considering this post isn't about football any more than it's about a pub.

The complaint of every sports fan everywhere. Or at least the ones who are losing.

As I mentioned, our choice of drinking establishment that afternoon was deliberate. The reason we picked it was because Gerry Rafferty used to drink there. And that is what this post is about.

There might be some folks out there who think I am unnaturally focused on Gerry Rafferty. This blog is about my travels around the world and this is my 146th post on this blog. Three of those 146 are tagged with Gerry Rafferty's name. That's probably higher than it should be. Those folks might be right about my focus.

Can't quite place the name Gerry Rafferty? How about the song Baker Street? I wrote about my love for that song four years ago on this blog right after I wrote about my first in-person football game. Baker Street is my favorite song of all time by a long shot; I detailed why in that first blog post. If Rafferty had written no other song worth anything, he'd occupy a special place in my heart just for that one tune. That's not the case, however. Gerry has what I believe is a super underrated catalog of work and there are plenty of incredible compositions in his works. Just nothing as good as Baker Street.

The song Baker Street is about Gerry's time in London when he was involved in a lawsuit trying to extricate himself from an unscrupulous recording deal and make a solo record, the album that would end up being City To City, which included Baker Street. The legal proceedings drained him, and his distaste for London (Rafferty was from Scotland) is evident in the darkness in the lyrics. The song gets its name from Rafferty's lodging with a friend right on Baker Street. And when he needed a pint or some other drink, he drank at The Globe.

A pint in memory of Gerry Rafferty. Not sure if he'd appreciate that or tell me to stay off the stuff.

Usually there would be some sort of unbridled joy at doing something like this. I mean here I am doing what one of my idols would be doing about 40 years ago. I imagine if I'd walked into The Globe on a weeknight in 1977 or so (ignoring the fact that I was nine), I might have been sitting next to Rafferty at the bar or at an adjacent back table in what I am sure would have been a super smoky and beer smelling room. How cool would that have been? I got goosebumps standing in Paul McCartney's living room on this same trip but the feeling was little different sitting in The Globe remembering Rafferty.

This experience was a little bittersweet. Gerry Rafferty struggled with alcoholism during his life and ultimately died of liver failure. There have been times in my life where I drank way too much for too many days in a row although I can't pretend to know what Rafferty or anyone else who struggled or struggles with the drink went through during their own battles. Regardless of the fact that alcohol may have hastened Rafferty's death, I found it worthwhile to visit The Globe and spend some time thinking about the author of my favorite song in a very personal way. I'll continue to remember Gerry Rafferty any way I can for as long as I am on this planet.

Before we left The Globe, though, something amazing happened. About a minute into the five minute second half stoppage time of the Tottenham and Watford game, Stuck In The Middle With You, a song Rafferty wrote and recorded with Stealers Wheel in 1973, played over the sound system in the pub. I am not making this up. Is it possible that this was a sign from Gerry from beyond the grave that he appreciated me being there paying respect to his memory? You can take it however you wish but I that's how I'm taking it. I'll raise a glass to Gerry Rafferty anytime. May he continue to rest in peace and be remembered as fondly as I do.

That's all I got here. Back to writing about traveling. Thank you again, Gerry. For Baker Street and so much more.

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How We Did It
The Globe is located at 43-47 Marylebone Road. They are open from 10 am every morning until 11:30 pm on weeknights (Monday through Thursday) and midnight on Friday and Saturday nights. On Sunday, they close early at 10:30 pm. It's a good place to have a few pints on a Sunday afternoon. We didn't eat there so I can't vouch for the food. Need more information? Check their website. 

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Four Lads Who Shook The World

Between February 9, 1961 and August 3, 1963, The Beatles played The Cavern Club in Liverpool 292 times. When they first played there, they were a group of three teenagers (Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Pete Best) with a 20 year old John Lennon who had already spent months in Hamburg, Germany playing gigs at all hours of the night in the red light district and refining their craft. By the time they were done at The Cavern, they were an international sensation with a number one album (Please Please Me) and two number one singles ("From Me To You" and "She Loves You"). They had also replaced Pete Best with Richard Starkey. You might know him better as Ringo Starr.

The Cavern Club is still standing today. Sort of. The original Club opened on Liverpool's Mathew Street in 1957 and was closed in 1973 to make way for the Merseyrail underground railway. As it was below ground, it was not knocked down but instead filled in, which as it turned out was pretty fortunate. In the early 1980s, the original Cavern Club was excavated with the intent of restoring the Club to its original site. For the most part in spirit, this was accomplished, with funds raised from the sale of the original bricks which made up the Cavern's arched ceilings. It's not exactly where it used to stand but it does overlap the original site.

The block of Mathew Street where the new Cavern Club is located today is just a quick walk from the Liverpool docks and then a couple of flights down to an underground series of brick vaults with a stage at one end of the center vault. It's hot and stuffy and I imagine it's full of people all day and every day visiting just to say that they have stood where The Beatles started out. In early September of this year I found myself at corner table of the Cavern listening to Jonny Parry bang out Beatles hits for 45 minutes in the middle of the afternoon from the Cavern stage. 

The Club still operates today as a legit live music venue (I'm not knocking Jonny Parry but look, there wasn't even a cover) mostly trading on its reputation as the place where The Beatles started out. It's not all just free Beatles tributes to lure tourists in to buy drinks. Wait late enough and you'll have to pay. There are display cases containing framed and signed memorabilia from all sorts of group from Queen to Adele to the Arctic Monkeys to Paul McCartney and a pretty good sized souvenir shop with all sorts of Cavern Club swag. The beer is cold and good but man, was it stuffy and hot down there. 

Jonny Parry in the middle of "Here Comes The Sun" or some other Beatles cover. Essential stuff.

If you are a Beatles fan determined to visit sites that are instrumental to the group's history, you have to visit London and Liverpool. London for the obligatory posed picture in the zebra crossing outside the Abbey Road Studios where all the Beatles' songs were recorded and Liverpool for pretty much everything else. Four years ago, we made the pilgrimage to Abbey Road; this year we went to Liverpool. 

Before we cover our Liverpool experience let me just say that Abbey Road is a complete circus. The number of people in that crosswalk posing in what I am sure they feel is just like John, Paul, George and Ringo on the cover of the band's best album (my opinion) is both absurd and comical. And most of them don't come close to a reasonable facsimile of that famous picture whether they are alone or in a group of four or more. I will say, however, from my own efforts, that it's about impossible to pose in the perfect walking form demonstrated by The Beatles. I tried several times and failed. And I was alone and didn't have to coordinate with three other people in the exact same body position. And no, I will not be posting those pictures here or anywhere else. I look as ridiculous as every other person there.

For all the time that The Beatles spent in Liverpool, there are precious few real pilgrimage sites. You would think that in 20 plus years of time that there would be a slew of must sees but remember we are talking about people's childhoods in a city that had been bombed heavily during the Second World War. The place had enough issues just recovering life back to normalcy. Permanence likely had a little bit different meaning back then. People were busy just trying to survive and weren't keeping track of events that seemed meaningless at the time.

Eleanor Rigby. Bench. Me. 

Having said that, The Cavern Club should probably be on every Beatles fan's must see list. So should the statue of John Lennon pretty much right across from the entrance to the Club and the bench with Eleanor Rigby at the east end of Mathew Street if for no other reason than they are right there. Lennon's statue is pretty much life sized. By "pretty much" I mean my shoulders are mostly at the same height as Lennon's shoulders but my head is nowhere near the size of his (what I assume is a deliberately larger than life) melon. I don't know how many people get their picture taken with this statue but I wasn't going to let this opportunity pass me by. I'm a tourist after all.

Nor was I going to miss out on sitting on the total opposite end of the bench from Eleanor Rigby. I am deliberately not staring or engaging with Mrs. Rigby in any way in the photograph above. Far be it from me to be the one who invalidated the "all the lonely people" line from McCartney's lyrics. I appreciate the cabbie who moved on the bench so I could get this completely self absorbed tourist picture. 

Want more Beatles-related statues? Head back down to the docks from The Cavern Club and you'll find John, Paul, George and Ringo (not in that order) taking a stroll down towards the Mersey. This one is definitely larger than life-sized with each figure probably about seven feet tall. There will be tons of tourists in all likelihood around this statue also. Be patient and you can get a decent picture.

The graffitied brick ceiling of the current Cavern Club.

There are other Beatles worshipping spots you can get to in Liverpool. These include Penny Lane, which is an actual street in Liverpool, not a made up name just for the song or even a metaphor for something else. There's also Strawberry Field which was a Salvation Army boys' home and inspiration for the John Lennon tune "Strawberry Fields Forever" which was part of the double A side 1967 single along with McCartney's "Penny Lane". 

We skipped both. We were on a day trip from London (more than one person said we were crazy to take such a day trip but it worked) and neither site is exactly easy or quick to get to unless you take a taxi, which we elected not to do. And in the end, visiting both Strawberry Field and Penny Lane wouldn't enrich our Beatles trip other than I'd be able to post a picture of both signs on this blog. Beyond the signs, though, there's nothing there. It's not like I'd get a lot out of watching a banker in a motorcar who never wears a mac in the pouring rain or a pretty nurse selling poppies from a tray feeling like she's in a play even if these folks were to be seen anyway on the day we were there. Got all that? :)

And by the way we didn't go up and back to Liverpool in a single day just so we could call ourselves Day Trippers. Although I guess we weren't really. After all, we didn't have a one way ticket, yeah? 

So what can a Beatles fan do to get the most out of his or her A Day In The Life in Liverpool other than The Cavern Club? Well, based on our experience, I'd recommend you take a trip to the childhood homes of John Lennon and Paul McCartney. I'm sure there are lots of bus and van trips around the city which will take you by these places to get a look at the outside and tell you stories about the boyhood of the two primary Fab Four songwriters. I'd suggest you skip all those and find a way to get inside each property. And there's only one way to do that and that's with the National Trust.

On our way through the streets of Liverpool to Lennon's and McCartney's childhood homes.

We disembarked from the train from London at Liverpool's Lime Street station and faced with about a mile walk through a maze of streets in the rain and about 40 minutes to get there, we sprung for a cab to the Jurys Inn where we were set to get picked up for our half day Ticket To Ride to see where Lennon and McCartney started out. On the surface of things, this might not be a terribly exciting tour. I mean it's a bus trip to a semi-detached 1930s house in suburban Liverpool followed by a stop at a council house in a neighborhood that still looks pretty much exactly the same as when it was built in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Lennon's house, named Mendips, was the semi-detached house; McCartney's home, at 20 Forthlin Road, was the council house.

Maybe a primer on council houses is in order. These are typically local government-owned properties which are rented to tenants through an application process. Rules differ from council to council but there is usually some right to stay in the properties at the tenants' sole option and sometimes options to buy after minimum stays (of years). Some properties are desirable and are heavily sought after. Others can be habitual waystops for individuals, couples or families on their way to someplace they consider better. These are not publicly provided houses handed to people for free but instead a way to provide housing for people who cannot typically afford to purchase their own property.

Today both McCartney's former home and Mendips, which was owned by John Lennon's Auntie Mimi and Uncle George (John's mother Julia was unmarried and agreed that it was probably best for John to be raised by her sister and husband), are owned by the National Trust and that's the only way to get inside. They acquired 20 Forthlin Road in 1995 at the suggestion of John Birt, the Director-General of the BBC and a Liverpool-born contemporary of The Beatles who noticed the property was for sale. Seven years later, they added Mendips at 251 Menlove Avenue to their portfolio when Yoko Ono bought the house and donated to the Trust (the house, not a soap impression of his wife which he ate).

Mendips, 251 Menlove Avenue, Liverpool. John's bedroom is the small bay window at the second floor left.

The house tours are run by husband and wife team Colin and Sylvia. Colin takes visitors around Mendips and has been doing so for 15 years; Sylvia is over on Forthlin Road where she's been hosting for seven years. Both guides are fantastic and clearly devoted to their work. It shows in their knowledge and the care they take in explaining small details which might seem unimportant but which provide a vivid description of what life in the houses are like.

As works of architecture or buildings or whatever you want to call it, both properties are restored to about the condition they were in during the 1950s when Lennon and McCartney were living at home and attending school in Liverpool. There has been some restoration from photographs and some objects like the sink in the McCartney's kitchen were reinstalled when found in storage elsewhere on the property (which is really lucky I think). 

The most major reconstruction work done seemed to be the replacement of the front windows at Forthlin Road. The owners after the McCartneys had replaced the windows in the house to make the place more energy efficient. In a effort towards authenticity, the National Trust noted that other properties on the street had not been upgraded in this way and offered to swap out the more energy efficient windows at number 20 for the original set elsewhere in the neighborhood for free. Apparently the other people went for the free upgrade.

The furniture in the places is generally speaking not original. Both Lennon and McCartney bought new furniture for the places when they made it big and the old stuff was tossed. This makes sense, right? I mean it's not like Aunt Mimi or Paul's dad Jim were looking to hang on to the old tables and chairs in the event their houses one day became museums. Makes sense that this stuff is gone. Wth the exception of a couple of pieces of furniture Mimi hung on to and the reproduction of the kitchen clock at Mendips (Yoko still owns the original), you are looking at furniture in the style of what was there at the time. It's good enough.

The relatively nondescript 20 Forthlin Road with the red door. Paul's bedroom is right above the front door.

There's something about being in places where significant historical events have happened. This is the real value for me of visiting these two homes. At Mendips it was the notion that John Lennon and Paul McCartney had hung out in John's tiny second floor bedroom and worked on songs together while Aunt Mimi (Uncle George was dead at this point) stayed as far away as possible. Just standing in that small room and imagining Lennon and McCartney working on playing songs together and talking about rock and roll music was pretty amazing.

We were also told that the entire band (assuming pre-Ringo here) used to rehearse in the front room of the house. I swear there's not enough room for two people to rehearse on guitars in that room. They must have completely moved everything to the walls to get a drum set in the room. We were where it happened. Also pretty amazing.

But the goosebumps moment (and there didn't have to be one but there genuinely was) happened for me at Forthlin Road. First of all, I've never been an enormous John Lennon fan so I was inherently less interested in Mendips; I would put Lennon third on my "favorite Beatles list" after Harrison and McCartney (and yes, in that order). Second, the only tale of any song written at Mendips told by Colin was "Please Please Me". That song is OK and I understand the place it has in The Beatles' catalog but it's not in like my top 40 or 50 Beatles songs. Not close.

Forthlin Road had more magic. Sylvia told us what was written where. "I Lost My Little Girl"? Written in McCartney's bedroom in the front of the house after he moved out of the shared back room with brother Mike. "She Loves You"? Back room, ground floor. "I Saw Her Standing There"? Front room, ground floor. "When I'm 64"? Played on the piano by Paul before he moved out in the early 1960s (the song finally appeared on Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band in 1967). "I'll Follow The Sun"? Also front room, ground floor. 

That last one did it. Are you kidding me? "I'll Follow The Sun", one of my favorite Beatles songs of all time was written feet from where I was standing in early September? Wow! I'm not kidding here but this was the moment that I appreciated this tour. It seems silly. I mean all we are talking about here is a relatively simple, less than two minute long song but it's an incredible song. And I was standing right where it was created. Goosebumps! I'm telling you. Worth the price of admittance and indeed the whole trip to Liverpool just for that moment. You never know when this stuff is going to hit you and you have to travel to get these moments. You can't do this stuff remote.

So, John, who exactly was the walrus, again? And is Abbey Road or Sgt Pepper better?

Mendips and 20 Forthlin Road are about 1.3 miles apart by car. Cut across the fields between the two properties like McCartney and Lennon used to do and I'm sure you can shave off the 0.3 miles. I often think about how coincidence plays a part in greatness, particularly in songwriting because I love music so much. It's not like Lennon and McCartney are the only two kids in the history of rock and roll to live near to each other or meet by chance but it doesn't get really much better than these two, does it? 

I'm not trying to give The Beatles all the credit for transforming music history but honestly without these two where would music be? Would some other group have done what The Beatles did eventually or would we be somewhere completely different? Would we have figured out what Sgt Pepper or Abbey Road or Revolver or Rubber Soul achieved in the mid and late 1960s ever? Would we have something resembling "Hey Jude" or "Let It Be" or "Being For The Benefit of Mr. Kite!" or "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds" or "A Hard Day's Night" or "Yesterday" or "All You Need Is Love" or anything else like these two wrote? Would we have "I'll Follow The Sun"? I'm thinking no. And I'm thinking the world would be a poorer place. For all this and for the one mile as the bike rides between where these two lived, Liverpool was worth it. 

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How We Did It
Our day trip from London to Liverpool started early and got us back to London late. You don't have to do what we did but it can be done. Easily. Virgin Trains runs service that takes between two to two and a half hours. There are other ways to get there. You can Drive My Car (or your car) or Run For Your Life but the train worked for us. It's not like it's Across The Universe or anything.

We started our day with the National Trust tour of Mendips and 20 Forthlin Road. The Trust runs either three or four tours daily depending on the day starting at 10 am. Check their website for times and pickup locations. Most, but not all, tours depart from the Jurys Inn Hotel on the Liverpool docks. Tour size is limited to 15; I'd always advise booking as early as you can commit to tours like this. Delay at your own peril or remain flexible in your plans. There is an option to purchase guidebooks for each property with your ticket purchase; these guidebooks which are each 16 pages long were also available for purchase on our tour. I bought both; there are good and inexpensive souvenirs.

The Cavern Club is located at 10 Mathew Street is open at 9:30 am Monday through Thursday and 10 am Friday through Sunday. Closing time is midnight Sunday through Wednesday, 1:30 am on Thursday and 2 am Friday and Saturday. During the day, admission is free; check the website for details later in the day.

There are many many other Beatles experiences available in Liverpool. I can't comment on the value of those because we didn't participate. We valued places where The Beatles had actually been rather than seeking out general information about the band. That's not to say that those experiences are not valuable, just that in the interest of time in one day, we chose not to participate.

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Blue Plaques

I love walking around cities when I travel. Sure, it takes a little more effort, sometimes tires you out and it's not necessarily the fastest way to get from point A to point B, but moving around on foot allows you to get a great sense of where you are and what the place you are visiting is like. Taxis are quick and convenient and public transportation like buses and subways are cheap and available, but walking gets you closer to the fabric of where you are visiting better than any other mode of transportation. At least that's my take anyway. I always try to walk at least a little bit wherever I go no matter how little time I am spending wherever I happen to be.

In the last four years or so, I've spent a good amount of time walking around the city of London. It's definitely become one of my favorite cities in the world since I started writing this blog and my feet have taken me to a whole series of pubs, museums, parks, famous buildings, statues and maybe the odd ferris wheel or cathedral or two. Hoofing it while I'm in town in my various pairs of Rockports has allowed me to get a good feel of how the city first started and how it developed.

Walk long enough in London (and believe me, you can walk a long time in London) and you are bound to eventually notice one of over 900 circular blue signs scattered about the city on what seem to be random buildings. You may find just one on a street or there may be two or three on adjacent buildings on a city block. Get close enough to these things to read the words on them and you'll typically find that the signs commemorate a spot where someone more notable than I will ever be lived, stayed, visited, ate or died. You've just found one of London's famous Blue Plaques.

The first Blue Plaque was installed in 1867 on a house in Holles Street allegedly lived in by the poet Lord Byron. It is now gone along with the house it was attached to. Since that first plaque was installed (and it likely wasn't blue in color) by the Society of Arts, there have been markers installed all over the city to commemorate the fact that someone who did something notable did something on that spot or in the building attached to the Plaque. You likely have never heard of some of these folks like Luke Howard (he invented names for the clouds) or Frances Bush (lace manufacturer) or Alexander Parkes (metallurgist) but look long enough and you are bound to find Charles Dickens or Mahatma Gandhi or John F. Kennedy or maybe even someone who has deep personal meaning for you. Just don't look for anyone still alive (or recently deceased); you need to be gone 20 years to get one of these.

Despite the name used today, the first Plaques were not blue in color but a reddish-brown hue. The current blue design was rolled out in 1938 and has been used ever since. Over the years, the group responsible for the plaques has changed hands; today the English Heritage is the custodian of all of these in London. And yes, there are some elsewhere in the country but those are separate efforts unrelated to the London ones.

In my previous trips to London, I'd never really paid much attention to the Blue Plaques. This year I decided it might be interesting to seek out a few related to people who meant something to me. Who knows, I might feel something spiritual or find myself somewhere interesting that I'd never been before. I made a list of 30 or 40 then pared it down to about a dozen and ended up seeing just eight. And I didn't actually see one of the eight for reasons which will become obvious below. I'm listing them in reverse order of the birthdate of whom I went to spot.

Jimi Hendrix (1942-1970)
Every so often in the history of my appreciation of music, I've come across a song or piece of music that had me totally transfixed the first time I heard it. Pink Floyd's "Brain Damage/Eclipse" and Elton John's "Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding" come to mind here. A number of these experiences happened in the late 1980s when I was driving to some summer job in Connecticut in my parents' 1979 Buick Century station wagon. Such was the case with "Hey Joe". I was amazed at how powerful such a simple song like that could be. I had no idea who it was only that it was simply amazing. It was one of those "what the hell was that?" moments. Of course, it was Jimi Hendrix.

I'm not a big Jimi Hendrix fan in the sense that some people are Hendrix fans. By that I mean while I have all three Hendrix studio albums in addition to the compilation of blues songs put out during the unearthing of his catalog probably 20 or so years ago, I'm not super fanatical about Hendrix and ready to label him as the be all and end all of guitar players. I'd rather listen to Clapton or Stevie Ray Vaughan or Mark Knopfler. That's Stevie Ray doing Stevie Ray, not Stevie Ray doing Hendrix. But because of "Hey Joe" and Jimi's importance to the history of music in general, we made our way to 23 Brook Street in Mayfair to the white townhouse shown above.

Hendrix only lived here for one year and it wasn't actually Jimi's place; it was his girlfriend Kathy Etchingham's apartment. By the time he was in residence on Brook Street he had already recorded and released Are You Experienced, Axis: Bold As Love and Electric Ladyland and would headline Woodstock later in 1969. Before the end of 1970 and also in London, Hendrix was dead. I can imagine this neighborhood hasn't much changed since Jimi lived here. I can envision him emerging from the red door at whatever time it would be in the afternoon after long hours doing whatever the night before. I bet he looked wild in 1969 London.

Interestingly, about 200 years before Hendrix lived on Brook Street, the composer George Frideric Handel lived right next door to number 23. I'd like to believe Handel and Hendrix might have had something in common. Maybe.

John Lennon (1940-1980)
There is a gap in my music memory from about the fall of 1986 to maybe just after the middle of 1990. During those years I was an undergraduate at the University of Michigan and instead of being in synch with current music, I was going backwards. I started with the Moody Blues; moved on to Pink Floyd; explored all sort prog including Yes and Emerson, Lake and Palmer; dabbled in Bob Dylan (the full Dylan exploration would come in grad school) and Neil Young (thanks, Scott Richey); and spent a lot of time listening to late 1960's music from The Beatles. I firmly believe The Beatles redefined all of popular music; they moved the art forward decades in a few short years.

If you are heading on a Beatles pilgrimage to England, you have to hit Liverpool (where they started out) and London (where they all eventually moved to because they were recording at Abbey Road Studios). There is just one Beatles-related Blue Plaque in London and it's on Montagu Square, a long strip of a park just south of the Baker Street Underground stop. The plaque marks the spot where John Lennon lived in 1968.

1968 would be the year the group recorded and released The Beatles, better known as The White Album. It was probably the least collaborative album the group ever made. It was pretty much a collection of tracks recorded by each of the four members as solo tracks and just smushed together as a Beatles album. The year after Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, things were starting to come apart. In my opinion, this was not John's finest work. I'll give "Revolution 1", "Happiness Is A Warm Gun" and particularly "Sexy Sadie" high marks but I can leave the rest of Lennon's output on The White Album. I'm sure there are few out there who disagree with me here.

Lennon lived in the basement and first floor of 34 Montagu Square (which is the second unit in from the end in the photograph above) for just five months with Yoko Ono. Oddly enough, Jimi Hendrix also lived in the same unit before John did.

Charles Rolls (1877-1910)
Charles Rolls, along with Henry Royce, founded Rolls-Royce, Ltd. in the first decade of the twentieth century. You might know his firm as a luxury automobile manufacturer and probably the most famous English car maker in history. If you know a little more about the firm, you'll know that they were an early pioneer in the aviation industry and their successor firm still manufactures aero engines to this day.

I know little to nothing about how engines or any other sort of machinery works. I'm hopeless with that sort of stuff. But my dad isn't and he put his design talents to work at Rolls-Royce designing fan blades in jet engines for the better part of 20 years or so. We went to find this Blue Plaque on Conduit Street, which commemorates the spot of Rolls' office from 1905 to 1910, for my dad. My dad never knew Rolls; he was born 27 years after Rolls died in a flying tournament at Bournemouth on the south coast of England. But we went there just the same because of where my dad used to work.

I didn't know this at the time but Rolls was the sales guy and Royce was the engineer. While Rolls was a machine enthusiast (he broke the land speed record in an automobile several times and was the first man to pilot a plane solo non-stop across the English Channel and back) he apparently had nothing to do with the design of the product that made his company world famous. My dad, of course, did know this. His reaction when I told him we visited this spot was pretty much "Rolls was just the sales guy." No engineer, no respect from my dad. Oh well. At least I learned something.

Henry Morton Stanley (1841-1904)
I had no idea but Henry Morton Stanley had a hell of a rough start to life. And I mean that in about every sense of the word. He was born of uncertain parentage in Wales and was given the name John Rowlands, his last name being his presumed father who was not married to his mother and who passed away shortly after young John was born. He bounced around between relatives for five or so years before being deposited at the St. Asaph Union Workhouse for the Poor, where he was certainly abused and victimized by older boys and (according to some accounts) the headmaster.

He took the name Henry Morton Stanley after fleeing Britain for America when he was 18 years of age. While there seems to be some doubt to the story, Stanley claimed he was adopted by a man named Henry Hope Stanley after whom he renamed himself. After fighting for the Confederacy at Shiloh during the American Civil War, Stanley became a journalist, chronicling events in the American west and later in the Ottoman Empire and northern Africa. 

Stanley is perhaps less well known by his name than by his most famous quote: "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?" Stanley was recruited by the New York Herald to find the explorer, missionary and abolitionist David Livingstone, who had become lost to the western world and who we ran into (in statue form) at Victoria Falls near Livingstone, Zambia. Without knowing anything about Stanley's early life, this is the reason why I sought out his Blue Plaque in London. Anyone generally connected with Livingstone in a positive context is likely OK in my book.

Stanley's Plaque is barely visible in the left side of the photograph above at 2 Richmond Terrace. And yes, that was about as close as we could get. The building is now part of the New Scotland Yard; the two semi-automatic toting policemen we passed about five minutes before I took the picture made me not really want to spend too much time getting the best shot I could. Stanley's Plaque reads "Sir Henry Morton Stanley, 1841-1904, Explorer and Writer lived and died here".

Herman Melville (1819-1891)
Sitting on the shelf of my library at home are four cloth-bound hardcover books I bought a long, long time ago when the idea of having a library of classics was a fleeting thought in my head. I got as far as four: Lord Jim and Nostromo by Joseph Conrad, The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck and Moby Dick by Herman Melville. Conrad is one of my all time writer idols and I love Steinbeck (Sweet Tuesday is my personal favorite) but Moby Dick has to be one of the greatest stories of obsession, (attempted) revenge and destruction ever written. It's simply awesome. 

Melville lived at the end row house shown above on Craven Street near the Thames for just a few weeks two years before Moby Dick was published. Oddly enough, I felt more emotion on this spot than all the other Blue Plaques we visited. I just thought about how cool it would be to live in this townhouse today knowing that Melville, right before he churned out one of the all-time greatest novels in history, was hanging out there for a little while in the mid 1800s. In a totally sideways thought, if nothing else how much more does it make the end unit here worth. I can't imagine owning this place and sitting in the living room thinking about where Melville might have sat. I'm in awe.

Moby Dick, by the way, flopped when it was first published. Melville never recovered from its failure and became a New York Customs inspector. The irony. There will be more later in this post.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)
I have no picture of the plaque celebrating Samuel Taylor Coleridge's time in a building that no longer stands. Not because the Plaque got taken away with the Coleridge's former residence but because the current spot where it is mounted was buried behind the scaffolding surrounding the current building shown above. We just couldn't find it. It was the only one that we looked for that we didn't see. 

I hate poetry. Absolutely loathe it. But Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is an exception. I love love love this epic poem of damnation and continual attempted redemption as much for the dark and sinister subject as for the way it is written and reads. It's honestly the only poem I've ever been easily able to understand. For this, Coleridge seems worthy of some honor from me.

Coleridge, along with William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement of English poetry. He was also a lifelong opium addict stemming from his being treated with laudanum as a child for various illnesses. His life was pretty much as I would imagine a successful poet's life: spending time in idyllic landscapes writing verse and traveling while holding administrative posts appropriate to someone of his class. I can completely see Coleridge hanging around in London with Wordsworth or other contemporaries while discussing politics or poetry. The Plaque we didn't see at 71 Berners Street when we were in town is one of two celebrating Coleridge; the other is at 7 Addison Bridge Place.

This is not the first time The Rime of the Ancient Mariner has appeared in this blog. Two years ago, we visited the grave of Gustave Doré in Paris; Doré was an illustrator whose works brought the mariner's tale to life and complement the creepy tale by Coleridge perfectly.

William Wilberforce (1759-1833)
The reason why I've listed the folks whose Blue Plaques I visited this year in reverse order of their birth date is because I wanted to save William Wilberforce until last. I'm assuming most people reading this blog know who Lennon and/or Hendrix were and stand a good chance of recognizing the name of Herman Melville or Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Maybe you can put Rolls with Rolls-Royce and know Stanley if you ever studied explorers. But Wilberforce? He's probably the most obscure of the bunch.

William Wilberforce was a Member of Parliament in the House of Commons representing Kingston Upon Hull, Yorkshire. He secured his seat in the House by buying votes, a practice apparently customary back about 250 years ago. There were a lot of MPs back in the 1700s and a lot have been forgotten; Wilberforce is still known today because of his leading role in the abolition of the slave trade throughout the British Empire.

The Slave Trade Act of 1807 was passed after a 20 year campaign by Wilberforce and others. The Act, I am sure, did not do everything Wilberforce and his backers hoped it would do. It did not make slavery illegal (just trading in slaves) in Britain or elsewhere in the Empire. But it did start the practice of the Royal Navy punishing (albeit sometimes just through fines) those trading in slaves and did allow Britain to start to pressure other nations to follow suit. It was not an overnight international success story. David Livingstone (yes, the same guy found by Henry Morton Stanley) was still battling the slave trade in East Africa some fifty years later. But Wilberforce's efforts ultimately led to Britain pushing for and securing control of Zanzibar in 1890 with the express purpose of ending the slave trade off the east coast of Africa. Wilberforce moved the ball forward a lot, even if it didn't bring down the entire slave trade worldwide immediately.

This is not the first time we've sought out William Wilberforce in London. We were searching for his tomb in Westminster Abbey two years ago and had to ask for directions. We were led to his memorial by a lady who commented that nobody ever asks to find Wilberforce. On this trip we visited both the Holy Trinity Church on Clapham Common (shown above) where WIlberforce used to worship, along with the spot where he used to live in the Clapham neighborhood just to the west of the Church. Both were worth stopping at to understand his likely walk from home to services on Sunday mornings, although I guess there's some doubt as to the exact location of his house. The current Plaque (shown below) is mounted to a residence of more recent vintage. It's old enough to not be blue.

If you are interested in understanding a little more about Wilberforce, pick up a copy of the movie Amazing Grace. While I'm sure it condenses his 20 year effort to pass the Slave Trade Act and takes a good bit of artistic license, it's worth watching.

We visited these places so we could understand a little bit more about where some historical figures that I admire lived, worked, played and died. That alone was worth it. There are dozens more that could fill future trips but I'm not sure we are going to concentrate on seeking a whole series out on any one vacation after this one.

There was a side benefit in seeking out our eight Blue Plaques and it's the same benefit I often get by walking around cities: finding these landmarks got us walking through some parts of London we never would have been to otherwise. It got us close to 10 Downing Street (the Prime Minister's residence) which I'd never seen before in addition to having a pint or two of Fuller's London Pride at The Bank near Wilberforce's old neighborhood.

But the best thing we came across was a statue of William Tyndale in Whitehall Gardens on our way from Melville to Stanley. Tyndale was the first translator of the Old Testament into English (from Greek). If you had asked me to guess when this translation was first made, I would have taken a stab at somewhere around the turn of the second millennium A.D. and I would have been way wrong. Tyndale died in 1536 possibly while he was still working on the translation. That means that nobody in England had access to the Bible in English before the mid-1500s and honestly not many would have access right after that date either. I'm amazed. Sometimes walking gets you to some unexpected surprises. Ironically, Tyndale was convicted of heresy and executed by strangulation before his body was burned at the stake (I mean, what's the point?). I'll end with that cheery, but also completely medieval, thought.

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How We Did It
If you want to take your own Blue Plaques tour through London, I think you have to start with the English Heritage's Blue Plaques website. You can get a listing of all 900 plus Plaques in addition to searching by name or by Borough of London.

I started at the website and reviewed the entire list of all the Plaques and made a sizable list. Then I started to locate them on a map and decided some were so far flung (like Freddie Mercury) that there was no way I'd get to all or even most of the ones I'd picked out for people who I admired or had influenced or improved my life in some way. Here's when the search by Borough came in which helped me get down to about a dozen names which were close to other sites we intended to see on this trip. We ended up ultimately just making it to the eight above, although the Handel next to Hendrix was a nice bonus ninth one.

If you are not into that much planning, there's also a Blue Plaques app, which will use your location to pinpoint Plaques near to your current location. I downloaded, but did not use, the app. I can't imagine me standing in London and checking the app to see whose Blue Plaques I am near on a whim. That might work for other folks; just not for me.

You can spend a lot of time in London finding Blue Plaques. However you do it, make sure you appreciate what you see while you are walking from one to the next. And stop for pints frequently.

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All About The Magi

I went to Cologne to do two things: drink some kölsch and see the Cathedral. That's it. One day. In and out. The first one didn't work out so well. Despite sampling six different types of Cologne's endemic beer, I found the stuff mostly forgettable. The Cathedral, or Dom (in German), on the other hand was anything but. From the moment we stepped off the train from Düsseldorf to the second we stepped back inside the station on our way home, we barely lost sight of the Dom. And it was worth going to Cologne from the first sighting to our last goodbye early Sunday morning.

Cologne is an old city. The oldest in Germany actually. It was first settled along the west bank of the River Rhine by the Romans in the first century B.C. About 100 years later (around 40 A.D.) they got serious about building a real permanent type of town on the spot and about four decades after that, they brought water into the city by building an aqueduct. It grew from there, becoming a regional capital of the Gallic portion of the empire and eventually having a pretty good sized population of about 20,000 people. 

As the Roman empire started to crumble around its edges, the city of Cologne was sieged and sacked and reclaimed by Rome and then sieged and sacked by an entirely different group of people. After about 100 years of that sort of stuff in the year 455, it was claimed by the Salian Franks and enjoyed a little bit of peace for a few hundred years. That is, until the vikings burned the whole place to the ground in the late ninth century. 

The west face of the Dom at night.

The first cathedral in Cologne was built in the fourth century on a spot pretty much right where the Dom stands today. It was eventually replaced by a second cathedral before gothic cathedral fever started to sweep over Europe and Cologne decided it had to have one too. I'm sure the previous sentence is way understating the gravity of the decision to build a new cathedral in the middle ages. Cologne had been an important city in the church hierarchy for centuries and just after the turn of the new millennium they found (or maybe stole is a better word) a really good reason to start building themselves a swankier church. I do think there was a little gothic cathedral envy driving their decision though. It's a personal theory, I know.

The first foundation stone of the current Dom was laid on August 15, 1248. Like most gothic cathedrals around Europe, construction was not rapid. The eastern side of the cathedral was built first; that took 84 years. Not bad, actually, for gothic cathedrals. What they got for four score and four years was a functional church, courtesy of a temporary wall to enclose what was already built. 

They kept going, starting on the magnificent western front in the middle of the 14th century and getting as high as the belfry on the south tower before stopping in the year 1473. And boy can they stop work in Cologne. They left it that way, with the crane still atop the tower, for 400 years until the citizens of Cologne decided enough was enough and raised the funds to finish the building. Work recommenced in 1842 and in just 38 short years, construction was complete. 632 years for one cathedral!

The result is magnificent. Cologne Cathedral is by far the biggest building in the city. And if that statement is untrue (which it may very well be; I mean I didn't do any research here), it acts like it's the biggest and most important structure around. How does a building act that way, you might ask? It's just there. It's huge. It's as if it landed in the middle of the altstadt (or center city) like it was placed there from above. Everything around it is clearly less important. The Dom is the biggest, the widest, the most ornate thing in sight. It carries itself as if Cologne itself belongs to the Cathedral, not the other way around. It helps that it's black as night I guess. It's pretty freaking badass, if that's in any way appropriate to write about a house of worship.

Tallest building in the world 1880-1884.

Let's talk some stats, shall we? The nave of the Dom is 142 feet high, which is good for 11th tallest in the world. Not impressed by that? The highest (Beauvais which we visited just a couple of years ago) is just 14 feet taller. Not a lot in it. The towers on the west facade of the Cathedral though place better than the nave does. At 516 feet, the two spires were the tallest structure in the world from the time it was completed until it was surpassed four years later by the Washington Monument. On the list of tallest churches in the world, it still places fourth and it's only 14 feet shorter than the tallest. This thing's pretty big and it shows. Particularly on the exterior.

The black, by the way, is not dirt. It's caused by the reaction between the sandstone that the Cathedral is made out of and the acid (sulphuric) rain that falls on the city. It makes it look really...well, gothic.

Before we head inside, it should be noted that the south tower of the Dom is open for visitors and who could pass up climbing to close to the top of one of the tallest gothic cathedrals in the world? Well, not me certainly. After making it to the top of Notre-Dame de Paris and Chartres earlier in my cathedral climbing history and scaling both St. Paul's in London and the Duomo in Florence, there was no way I wasn't climbing Cologne Cathedral.

I'll say right now, it's a tough climb. The lower portion is all spiral staircase in a tight stone (and of course graffiti covered) circle. You might need to rest once or twice or maybe even three times. Make sure you climb on the inside of the stair, since it's about impossible to make folks coming down do that; let them have the outside. The initial climb takes you to the bells level. Two climbs further, including the second on a self supported stair in the center of the open tower, and you get to the top.

The view from St. Pauls is gorgeous. The view in Florence is magnificent. You can see the gargoyles up close at Notre-Dame and the French countryside from the top of Chartres. Cologne is not as good as any of these.

Looking up into the south tower of the Dom.

That's not to say that there's no value in climbing the Dom and that's not to say that Cologne is not a gorgeous city. You can still get some great views but the openings in the tower are really so small that your looks are really more like glimpses. That and the scaffolding on the north tower and the fencing preventing you from jumping off on the south tower either blocks the openings right in front of you or shrouds the sculptures on the adjacent tower.

You can look back over the entire Cathedral and see the rail bridge that connects the west side of the Rhine to the rest of Germany which for me was important because that's how we entered the city the night before. You can also get some very oblique looks at some of the angels carved in the other tower. Whoever made the angels obviously used a different kind of stone because they are not the same inky black as the rest of the tower. The bells of the Cathedral are pretty cool too, if you are into that sort of stuff.

From the south tower looking east.

Looking down from the south tower to the angels on the north.

But the real treasure of Cologne Cathedral is inside, and I mean treasure in every sense of the word. Apparently, and I'll address the plausibility of all this in a couple of paragraphs, the Cathedral has the remains of the three wise men (Gaspar, Balthasar and Melchior) who visited Jesus in Nazareth while he was swaddled and lying in a manger. That acquisition was, in fact, the entire reason why the folks in Cologne decided they needed a new house of worship. How did they get these precious relics, you might ask? Well the same way any self-respecting house of worship gets its relics: by stealing them.

Way back in 1164 the Archbishop of Cologne was handed a package by Frederick Barbarossa who at that time was the Holy Roman Emperor. The package was of course whatever was left of Gaspar and company. Where did the emperor get these remains? Apparently in northern Italy, from the Basilica of Sant'Eustorgio in Milan. And I assume they weren't gifted to him out of generosity, if only based on the fact that Cologne has since seen to it that some (but not all) of the remains have been returned.

There are so many questions here for me. First, how did all the remains of the magi end up in one spot? After the first one died, was he buried or were his remains somehow stored somewhere? And if they were stored, who kept them? Was it the two remaining wise men (assuming they were even together) or someone else? And who would keep the remains of a dead person hanging around? Granted...the importance of the bones (or whatever constitutes remains here) would be understood at the time of death I guess.

More questions. Was one person responsible for collecting the bones of all three men? What a gruesome assignment that would be if it was true. And did he (assuming it was a he) have permission to do so? Was the collection contested by the family? Or did someone go around collecting (i.e. exhuming) these things years later? And if so, how do we know he got the right remains? I mean, that's a question overall, right? How does anyone know these things are legit? I'm assuming there's no chain of custody documentation on these.

I don't think my questions are going to be answered and I guess they don't really need to be if I can suspend belief and just appreciate the imagery related to these three men all over the Dom. They occupy central positions in the stained glass windows on the south side of the building (shown above) and in carvings in the back of the altar (shown way above in the first pic of this post). They are also represented in a gold (and I mean real gold not just gold colored) box in the apse at the west end of the Cathedral. Of course, that box and the contents of it is the reason why this place is so important as a church for Christianity today. 

You can get relatively close to this box containing the relics, but rest assured, your views will be from the other side of a really high and really sturdy looking fence and what I am sure is a pretty heavy and thick plexiglass or maybe better box. There's no need to take chances with this kind of thing. I took the photograph below by sticking my hand through the railing and clicking the button with my finger. It's awesome that we have these devices to take these kinds of pictures that make it look like we are a glass case away from something this important.

The bones, or whatever they are, of the three wise men aren't why we went. I pledged to get to Cologne Cathedral a long time before I even realized the Dom had anything to do with the magi. For us, the predominance of the wise men in the building just ended up being a bonus. We found some other surprises along the way.

First, there are some incredible mosaic floors in this place. They run pretty much the entirety of the ambulatory at the west end of the Cathedral from the crossing on the north side to the same point on the south side. The tiles that make up the pictures on the floor are super-small in spots but also involve limited mortar. The result of that combination are some super crisp images made up in the floor, including a couple showing a model of the Cathedral and a plan (shown below). The whole image below is maybe six feet in diameter meaning the plan of the Cathedral which is super detailed is actually just about 18 inches to two feet high. It's not alone in its intricacy.

Mosaic floors in the Cologne Cathedral.

St. Sebastian, on the right, in pre-martyred status.

We also found some old friends in the stained glass, like at least two St. Georges (who we previously found most memorably at San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice) and St. Sebastian, who we ran into a lot around Rome, particularly in the catacombs bearing his name on the Via Appia Antica. St. Sebastian is one of those figures who keeps cropping up again and again and again in many places we've been over the past few years, usually in random art galleries. He's a lot easier to spot with a bunch of arrows sticking out of him which is how he was almost martyred (he survived the arrows but not the clubs later on in life). We needed the English language self-guided tour brochure to help us in the Dom as Sebastian is mercifully arrow free in their windows. I love it when reminders of past trips crop up on subsequent trips.

Cologne for us lasted about 36 hours. We didn't leave the altstadt except to come in from the airport and get out to the (different) airport. We came to drink beer and love it. We didn't. We also came to see the Cathedral and we ended up on some level I think loving it. Our visit to the Dom took probably about three hours but in many ways our entire visit was about the Cathedral. I don't think there was a single spot where we couldn't see just a little of it, usually one or both of the very distinctively vertical towers on the west front. We could see it from just outside our hotel, we could see it from the furthest point we went from the Alter Markt and we could even see it from inside the train station. This building's presence is like few others I've seen in any place. It was truly impressive.

I'm glad we went. We will probably never go back to Cologne. The list of places to see is just too long and the beer and the food were just not worth it. But we took a little piece of Cologne with us by picking up a green and blue pop art-like image of the Dom which now sits on our mantel at home. We also have a set of three wise men Christmas ornaments that we found in the Cathedral gift store. We couldn't resist. Those stylized likenesses of Gaspar, Balthasar and Melchior will remind us of that city each holiday season. Cologne and those three figures are forever linked for me.

The Dom at night from the west.

From the east looking at the rear at just before sunset.

One last look from Platform 10 at the Cologne Hauptbahnhof.

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How We Did It
The Dom is located slightly north of center of the altstadt or old city of Cologne on the west bank of the Rhine. However you make your way to the city, it's pretty much impossible to miss the Cathedral. 

Opening hours are 6 am to 7:30 pm in winter (that's November to April) and 6 am to 9 pm in Summer (which is the rest of the year) Monday through Saturday. Sunday tourist hours are shorter (1 pm to 4:30 pm). The Cathedral is closed or partially closed during services and services are not only on Sundays. There was one just starting as we were on our way but we were told (in English) that we were welcome to stay. The best thing to do is probably to check their website. 

Admission to the Cathedral is free. Guided tours are available, including in English, at 2:30 pm daily and additionally at 10:30 am Monday through Saturday at a cost of €8,00 per person. We skipped the guided tour in favor of the self-guided tour brochure that you can pick up near the front doors of the Cathedral for a mere €1,00 which we thought was awesome. I don't know what else the guided tour would have told us and it probably wouldn't have been at our own pace. 

If you decide you want to climb the south tower on the west front of the Dom, the climb up the tower will set you back €4,00 per adult and it's probably worth it. Far be it from me to discourage anyone from climbing a building.

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