Zoos and Shoes

We began our final day in London with something we've been meaning to do for a few weeks--grabbing a burger and a beer at Brewdog in Camden Town. Food and drink were both top-notch, and I got to add to my snarky vacation T-shirt collection.

This shirt is a woman's XL. I don't think they understand what sizing is.

After lunch, we went to the London Zoo. Zoos are a tricky concept. Part of me is like "OH MAN THERE'S A GIRAFFE RIGHT THERE WOW THEY ARE SO TALL AND THEIR TONGUES ARE SUPER WEIRD," but I'm also thinking, "The zebras don't look like they have a ton of space, is that enough room for them? That okapi sure is pacing a lot, don't animals in zoos pace when their mental health is deteriorating?" However, any decent zoo also does a ton of wildlife conservation, so there's that, and the London Zoo animals seemed happy enough.

Zoo highlights include the world's largest amphibian:

Chinese giant salamander! They grow up to 6 feet in length.
If you can look past the reflection of Jon taking the photo, you will see Professor Wu, the zoo's salamander. He's 4'3" from his snout to the tip of his tail.

Adorable otters:

We saw them at the beginning of the day, and they were all napping together in big pile in their darkened indoor habitat. We came back right before we left, and they were doing this!

We also saw brand new baby penguins:

They're too little to live in the exhibit.

And lemurs that you can hang out with in their enclosure!

Apparently they think humans are pretty chill. We saw one poop on somebody, but I don't think it was personal. I can't imagine an American zoo putting people in the same space as these guys; a kid would kick a lemur and then the lemur would bite the kid and then everyone would sue each other forever.

These guys are also out in the open in the rainforest exhibit, but I forget their name:

The zoo also welcomed a new baby lowland gorilla last December! She is still very tiny.

Her name is Alika! She was trying to learn how to climb. She was not very good at it.

We also learned that Calvin Coolidge had a pet pigmy hippo named William Johnson Hippopotamus. It tickles me to imagine such a stoic man nuzzling a tiny hippo.

After the zoo, we made our final stop of our vacation: the Victoria and Albert Museum.

It is a fabulous museum of art and design with a very eclectic collection. Exhibits vary from antiquities to landscape paintings to fashion.

Court mantua (back view), 1755-60
"The wide-hooped skirts of the mantua were already old fashioned in the 1750s, but women were required to wear this cumbersome style to royal assemblies and balls. It required skill to negotiate doorways and carriages while maintaining a graceful posture."
So requiring women to wear super inconvenient clothing in the name of formality is a tale as old as time.

Brass Compasses, Iran 1800-75
"The magnetic compass, a Chinese invention, had arrived in the Middle East by the 13th century. Originally employed in navigation, it was soon adapted for religious use to establish the direction of the Ka'bah in Mecca. These later examples have cases densely engraved with the coordinates for Mecca from various cities in the Islamic world."

We looked at an exhibition on the theme of luxury. My favorite item was a display of synthetic diamonds made respectively of gunpowder, roadkill, and a Superman III script. The artist (Shane Mecklenburger) made them and had them authenticated as commentary on "the relationship between value and authenticity."

One of the museum's current temporary exhibitions is Shoes: Pleasure and Pain. Shockingly, Jon was not as interested in this topic as I was, so he checked out the gift shops while I did some shoe gazing.

I actually don't think you have to be obsessed with shoes to enjoy this exhibit. A lot of the items explored cultural phenomenons through the lens of footwear or displayed interesting feats of engineering (I am so damn pleased with that pun I'm going to say it again: FEATS OF ENGINEERING!).

The exhibit included shoes worn by famous folks such as Marilyn Monroe and Queen Victoria (she had very narrow feet). There were also a few samples of collections that were borrowed from avid shoe collectors, such as Imelda Marcos (former Filipino first lady who owned over a thousand pairs of shoes) and a woman named Katie Porter who keeps her shoes displayed on bookshelves in her room and gives them all her own names.

There were no photos allowed in this exhibit, but many of the shoes (or at least the type of shoes) are also in the internet, so below are some of my favorites. If you are more of a Jon than a Hannah when it comes to shoes, you might want to just scroll down until you don't see shoes anymore.

Lovebird sandal, Jimmy Choo

Anemone shoes, Christian Louboutin

Cantiliever heels!

Iron ring pattens from the 1740s
These were worn over the shoe to elevate the wearer above mud and dirt.

Men's marbled oxfords, 1925, Coxton Shoe Co. Ltd
The description was pretty much "Nobody actually wore shoes that looked like this. They might have been marketed to Americans."

Padukas - often gifted to Indian brides.

Mojito shoes, Julian Hakes
This shoe was 3D printed! It's neat because it supports the ball of the foot and the heel but not the arch.

Manchu horse hoof shoes, Qing dynasty
They made women much taller and also required them to walk in very small steps.

Tail Light Sandals, Prada

Bath clogs from the Ottoman Empire
They protected feet from soapy dirty water in baths and made the wearer fabulously tall.

I also learned that the 1890s were known as the "naughty nineties," and one of the ways this manifested was that shoes started to be sexy things.

Before heading home to pack, we spent some time in the paintings exhibit.

Dulcinea del Toboso, Charles Robert Leslie, 1839
"This is a scene from Cervantes's comic novel Don Quixote (1605). The fanciful aristocratic name 'Dulcinea del Toboso' was given by Don Quixote to a pretty peasant women. The eccentric Don believed that he was her protector and she was a 'great lady or Princess.' She was unaware of his fantasies."

Life-Boat and Many Apparatus Going off to a Stranded Vessel Making Signal (Blue Lights) of Distress, JMW Turner, 1831
We were happy to find more Turner in the Landscapes exhibit!

The museum is quite large; we barely scratched the surface. We'll make a day of it next time!

For dinner tonight we ordered take-out from Holy Cow one last time. We're currently packing up all our stuff and watching That Mitchell and Webb Look, some excellent British sketch comedy. Our vacation's really winding down!

xo
Hannah

Paris

We had a successful Paris trip! In 32 hours we visited Notre Dame Cathedral, the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, Luxembourg Gardens, the Marmottan Monet Museum, the Champs-Élysées, the Arc de Triomphe, and Sacré-Cœur. We did not like Paris as much as we love London, but of course we've seen a lot more of London. The thing with going to the number one tourist destination in the world is that everyone else is doing the same stuff you want to do. Also, it did not feel like we were in a foreign country as much as we thought it would--the city caters to tourists so much that it felt almost like Disneyland. If we were to return to Paris, we'd definitely do more "off the beaten path" type things.

Our trip got off to a bumpy start. If detailed recounts of stressful travel logistics don't do it for you, skip ahead to after the photo.

We left out flat a few minutes later than we intended to, and then the Tube was absolutely swamped--there were significant delays on our line. Two trains jam-packed full of commuters stopped with no one getting off to make room before we decided to run back outside to try to get a cab. There's a mini-cab outpost next to our flat, but nobody was there. We tried a taxi hailing app, but it did not accept our credit card for some reason. We tried to get into a cab with an illuminated sign, but the cabbie was like "Oh just kidding lol I'm not actually driving people places right now." So we went back down to the platform and were finally able to muscle onto the second train that stopped, now about a half hour behind schedule. The uber frustrating part of all this was that in the majority of the trains that we were physically unable to get on, the folks near the doors were packed in like sardines, but the people standing in the center of the cars had plenty of elbow room and space for their bags. If you're not inadvertently getting to second base with a stranger when space on the train is in high demand, you're not doing your part.

So those are some things I miss about home: the abundance of cabs, bigger train cars, and New Yorkers' willingness to press up against each other when the commute gets tough.

Once we got to St. Pancras Station, we booked it to Eurostar, twenty minutes before the train was set to depart (you're supposed to get there forty-five minutes early). Our trip was no longer listed on the signs, but we asked some station employees about our train and they let us through ("Get here earlier next time," they said. "TEACH YOUR COUNTRYMEN HOW TO RIDE A DAMN TRAIN IN TIMES OF COMMUTER CRISIS," I kept to myself).

We got to security, confident that being able to sneak through check-in was the boost of luck we needed to make our train. Then the woman in front of me had to be taught how to walk through a metal detector. Finally, we got through security... And the passport check line was absurdly long. At this point we resigned ourselves to paying extra to take the next train and losing precious time in Paris, so we approach an employee to see how we go about doing that. He tells us in a hushed voice, "There's another passport line on the other side of that wall, just use that... You can still make it." So we hustle to the mystical magical secret line that is apparently reserved exclusively for stressed out Americans, and we make it through before our train even starts boarding. We decided not to question why there was one enormous line and one empty line, but we are very grateful for all of the help from the fine folks at St. Pancras!

On the train at last!

We arrived in Paris and took the Metro to our hotel. We found the Metro pretty easy to use. We also encountered multiple French people throughout our trip who volunteered their assistance because they sensed we were clueless Americans. Who says the French are rude?
Our Metro tickets were so tiny!

We got lunch before we could check into our hotel. We were excited to muddle our way through a French menu (hoping that our combined knowledge of Spanish and Farsi could somehow aid us), but we were brought an English menu. (Every restaurant that we visited had either a separate English menu or English translations in the regular menu.) Jon insisted on ordering snails, because France. When we ordered them, our waitress responded with a skeptical "Are you sure?" I don't see what the big deal about them is; they didn't taste like much besides the pesto that they were drowning in.

We checked into our hotel and took a nap before heading out again. We stopped by a pharmacy because Jon woke up with the sniffles. Here we ran into our first language barrier--not knowing the French word for "decongestant," we pointed to our noses and sniffed before the sales lady got the picture.

Notre Dame was a convenient ten minute walk from our hotel. It is really a stunning structure with a fascinating history. I had not realized before visiting it that it took 200 years to construct!

Entry was free, and you were allowed to take pictures inside. On the one hand, cool, we get to take pictures, but on the other hand that policy makes the whole experience congested and, well, touristy. I preferred the vibe in St. Paul's Cathedral and Westminister Abbey; they actually felt like houses of worship, while Notre Dame felt a little less special. It was still beautiful though:

St. Joan of Arc
"Born in Lorraine, burned alive in Rouen as a heretic and a witch. The decision to rehabilitate her reputation was made in this Cathedral."

Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament

We then walked from Notre Dame to the Louvre--another stunning example of architecture:

From inside the glass pyramid entrance.

It is ENORMOUS, and a bit overwhelming. It's difficult to navigate; we were constantly checking maps throughout our visit and frequently noticed many others putting a lot of effort into figuring out how to get around. It's also packed with people; Greek, Roman, and Egyptian antiquities as well as Italian paintings were especially hip and happening exhibits.

We saw some Very Famous Art:

The Great Sphinx

Venus de Milo
This is someone else's photo from the internet, because Jon took a photo but it disappeared. Who do I talk to at Google about that?

La Joconde!
"La Joconde" literally translates to "the jocund one," and it's a pun on the feminine form of the sitter's name, Giocondo.
Why isn't the English title a pun?

The Mona Lisa is pretty tiny, and she's on this huge wall all by herself.

There's a wooden railing around her, and then ropes provide even more distance between her and the crowd.

Here are a few more pieces we especially enjoyed:

The Winged Victory of Samothrace, 330-30 BC

Protective Statue nkisi nkondi, 18th-19th century
There's no specific artist name mentioned, so we're going to have to assume that French people just stole this religious idol from the Congo. WAY TO GO LOUVRE.

Le Pandemonium (Paradise Lost), John Martin, 1841

Here's our old friend JMW Turner again! He was a pleasant surprise.
Landscape with Distant River and Bay, c. 1840-50

We had a FABULOUS French dinner that night. We ate at a restaurant called Pirouette, and everything was delicious. Throughout our trip, we found that most Parisian waiters were very friendly, completely defying the snooty French waiter stereotype.

After dinner we went to go check out that Eiffel Tower everyone's always talking about. Jon jumped onto the Metro as the doors were closing, which is pretty standard in New York, but Parisian doors take their job much more seriously. He got very squished! Then he had no choice but to jump back off the train. Poor Jonadams. When we finally arrived at the Eiffel Tower stop, Jon went to use one of Paris's iconic free public toilets (in London they call them "super loos"). It's a germaphobe's dream; after each use, the toilet bowl is washed, dried, and disinfected, and the floor is washed as well. However, when Jon went to flush, the toilet started yelling at him in French. He was afraid he would start getting disinfected while he was still in it, so he exited sheepishly and then we had to flee the scene of the crime.
So, the Eiffel Tower! It's a pretty cool sight:

From underneath

And at midnight, it does this! (Apologies for the vertical video)

We were not expecting that; it was a happy surprise.

The next morning we went to a creperie for breakfast (amazing). Our next stop was Luxembourg Gardens:

We found an art!

Chillens can sail boats in the fountain!

After Luxembourg Gardens we took a trip to the Monet Museum, which was a hundred times more enjoyable than the Louvre. Unlike the Louvre, there is a sense of stillness and tranquility in the Monet Museum. You can actually stand in front of each piece and take it in without constant chatter and camera flashes distracting you.

The museum is the largest collection of Monet's work, and it also features pieces from several other Impressionists. The museum is inside a house (originally a hunting lodge for the Duke of Valmy), so walking through the exhibits is more like visiting a rich friend with a rad art collection. The basement, in contrast, was specially built to be more museum-y, and it is where Monet's works live.

His earlier work featured more people, and then later in life he decided he just wanted to sit in his flower garden at Giverny and paint that. His Water Lilies series consists of about 250 paintings from 1914-1919ish. He couldn't be bothered to name most of them more specifically than Water Lilies (or as the French say Nymphéas), so it can be hard to track down specific paintings. Here are some of our favorites that we managed to find on the internet later (no photos in the museum):

Impression, Sunrise, 1872

Water Lilies

Weeping Willow and Pond with Water Lilies

Water Lilies

We also learned about Berthe Morisot, who was the first woman impressionist painter. She was super talented, and she was BFFs with Manet, Monet, and Renoir, but most people have never heard of her because she's a lady. We got really into her during our short visit; Jon now calls her "Bertie."

Bergère couchée (Bergere Lying), 1891

Julie Manet et sa levrette laerte (Julie Manet and her Greyhound Laertes), 1893
Julie Manet was Morisot's daughter, and her favorite portrait subject.

Self-Portrait, 1885

Bois de Boulogne (there's Julie and Laertes again!)

Next on our agenda was the Champs-Élysées. This was the first thing we saw when we emerged from the Metro:

So we knew we were in for a high-culture, authentically French experience. We did visit some cute shops, and we had a lovely outdoor lunch. Then we realized the the Arc de Triomphe was right there...

...and so we decided to check it out.

Under the Arc

We returned to the hotel for our bag and decided to check out one more sight before catching our train--Sacré-Cœur. It's a basilica located at the summit of the butte Montmartre, the highest point in Paris. People like to visit it because its location provides a pretty cool view of the city.

The sun was in an inconvenient place.

Hi Paris!

After that, it was time to catch the train back to our home-away-from-home in London. All in all, we had a great time in Paris! The Monet Museum and the food were our favorite parts.

Today is our last day in London! How time flies.
xo

Hannah