Open House Weekend

Loyal readers will know how much I love Open House — the annual September weekend when more than 800 buildings are open to the public across the capital city. Each time I'm in London for Open House, I begin my preparation in the summer when I order the printed guide and pore over it, making index cards for the places I might want to see, sorting them by day and area, putting them in order and noting the transport routes from one to the next. 

Saturday was a glorious day — warm, sunny and blue skies all day. Armed with my camera and index cards, I was out the door a little past 10 a.m. to walk one street over for the first destination. The house at 1 Hugo Road is a Victorian terrace house, originally a two up two down, very similar to the one in which I'm staying, that was renovated throughout in 2017 with a fantastic kitchen extension into the back garden. There was already a queue outside when I arrived. Once inside, we were given access to the garden level and the first floor. They've really done a great job with the small footprint. I could live there happily. In my dreams.

Next destination was five minutes away — the Acland Burghley School, a brutalist Grade II listed building. I got there just after a tour group had set off through the building and another group was waiting in the auditorium for the next tour in 45 minutes. So I pushed on. 

I was headed to the farmers' market on Parliament Hill to pick up fruit, veg and bread. From the school, I zigged and zagged west and north, cutting through a housing estate until, to my delight, I popped out into Little Green Street, a place I knew. Roger and I visited several of the Georgian terrace cottages here during Open House several years. At that time, the street was under threat of nearby construction and the residents were keen to draw attention to this unique little street. It's been saved and is no longer an Open House venue, but it was so nice to see a familiar place. 

The farmers' market was bustling and I was pleased with my haul, which I stashed back at my gaff before hopping on the 390 bus for King's Cross, where I was hoping first to see the Aga Khan Centre, a Muslim cultural center that contains six gardens of the Muslim world. When I arrived, there was quite a queue with signs saying it was an hour long, so I moved along to the Coal Drops Yard. Another disappointment there, as I was too late for one tour and way too early for the next, but I had fun looking around the development. Last time I was there, these buildings were derelict and the gasometers had been removed to make way for the redevelopment. Well, it ain't derelict any more and the gasometers have been reinstalled, although all but one of them have flats built inside them. 

While around Granary Square, I also did the tour of the Coal Office (it had small trees growing out of the roof last time I saw it; now it's cleaned up and occupied by designer types). Next up was the nearby Victorian Waterpoint. Getting there was a bit tricky as I had to wait for two canal boats to go through the lock and then walk the narrow plank on top of the lock arms to the other side of the canal. Well worth the trouble and the somewhat-scary stairs to the top, where the views on this glorious day were grand. 

Opting not to double back to either of the places with the tours I had missed, I forget ahead to 2 Temple Place, a destination always described in superlatives but one that I'd never been able to see. It took no time to get to Holborn on the tube and to walk to the Strand and then into Temple Place. Imagine my surprise to see no queue, just a regular flow of people in and out the door. Let's just say it's pretty opulent and worth seeing. 

When I finished poking around there, I went over to Embankment Gardens for a sit down and a consultation of my Open House app, which informed me that the faux "Roman" bath/cistern two streets over was open for viewing. The bath is 17th century, not Roman, and David Copperfield bathed there, as did Charles Dickens himself, when working nearby in a blacking factory. It's another place that's been on my to-see list for yonks but I've never timed it right until now. 

Hard to believe that I still possessed any energy, but I was on a roll and hustled back to King's Cross for one more venue — Impact Hub King's Cross. Located in an old lead factory (Grade II listed), this collaborative workspace is the second of its kind and now one of over 100 collaborative spaces worldwide. There's a caff/performance space, meeting rooms, flexible office space, etc., for use on a short- or long-term basis. I rolled up for the last tour. What a day!

Dinner at my gaff, wine, sleep (many hours in a comfy bed), shower (hot and strong), and out the door a bit after 9 a.m. on Sunday morning for more of Open House. My first destination was the Golden Lane Estate (Grade I and II* listed) in the City of London near the Barbican. This was some of the first post-war housing built on a heavily bombed, former warehouse area in order to provide much-needed housing to people employed in the City. I had pre-booked for 11 a.m. entry to the roof top of Great Arthur House on the estate. As I was early for that and the first tour of the estate wasn't to be until 11:30, I signed in at Golden Lane and tried to find my way through the Bloody Barbican to see St Giles Cripplegate first. The BB confounds me. I can't figure out how to get in, and then once I'm in, I can't find my way out. I walked all around the perimeter till I found a way to the church from London Wall and Wood Street, only to find a service in session. I was waved off by an old lady, so beat a hasty retreat and groped my way out to Beech Street and back to the Golden Lane Estate. Reaching there just in time, our group went up to the roof terrace where Jen was stewarding. The threatened rain had held off, I brushed off my trepidation about heights, and the views were as great as advertised. 

Needing sustenance and a sit down, I nipped into a Tesco Metro for a deal meal (egg and cress on brown bread and a bottle of water) and into the churchyard of St Bartholomew the Great (you've seen it in Four Weddings and a Funeral) to sit on a bench and eat. As I sat there, the sound of hymns being sung and the smell of incense wafted out of the open door of the church. 

Skies were looking threatening and I forged on to Smithfield where I hoped for a tour of the new Museum of London space in the old General Market. Yes, this was another tour I missed, as they had already filled up. (Wait, was there something on the web about timed entry? I think not.) A nice member of staff did walk me to an entry where I could look into the space and see all the people on the tour with their hardhats. Oh, well. It opens in a few year's time and I'll see it then. 

My next destinations were to be in the East End and I was so happy to find that the best bus for me to take stopped right in back of Postman's Park. I got there as the 100 bus was stopped, waiting for a delay somewhere else on the route to clear, giving me just enough time to nip into Postman's Park, a place I "discovered" on my first trip to London in 1998. Twenty years on, it's still a favourite place. 

From St Botolph without Aldersgate (where Postman's Park is located) to St Botolph without Aldgate to make my way through Petticoat Market to Toynbee Hall and Toynbee Studios where I had timed it just right to do both tours. Whew! These were the highpoint of my 2019 Open House and ticked all the boxes for me: interesting architecture with a mix of old and new, social justice mission and history, community programming, education, arts, nice caff, good toilets. Stellar!

Too late to make it to the Sandy's Row Synagogue, I went to 1 Bishops Square (Foster and Partners, ho hum) for my last stop. It's a nice modern office building, without many wows. Good for those who like that sort of thing. And the skies were cloudy and drizzling when I got to the roof terrace. 

In for the evening now. Tomorrow is another full day. 

Stats for Saturday:
£12 or 13 at the Parliament Hill Farmers' Market
22,355 steps
9.44 miles

Stats for Sunday:
£35.10 for one-week travel card
£1.75 for lunch
£6.55 more groceries at Sainsbury's
22,512 steps
9.33 miles

Arrival Day: Tourist/Pack Mule

It was an odd and somewhat disorienting arrival day, unlike any other I've had in London. The night flight from Hartford is certainly more convenient than flying out of Boston, but the pre-dawn stop in Dublin means about two hours of sleep max in the way over. Dazed and stupid, I stumbled off the plane in Heathrow at about 8 in the morning. For some reason, I kept expecting my Fitbit to reset the time zone on its own, but it didn't and so I walked around all day looking at EST on the watch. (Much, much later I realized that the time setting happens through the app and, as I had no internet connectivity in flight, it couldn't happen. Note to self: Change the time zone via the app before take off next time.) 

On all my past journeys to London, I've gone straight to my accommodation — Roger's flat or my previous AirBnB — but my host in Tufnell Park was not expecting me until 5 pm. So, with my laptop/camera bag on my back and dragging my carryon wheelie bag behind me, I hopped on the Tube and headed into town with a plan to get some errands out of the way, see a few things and try to stay on my feet for the day. The best way to do this, I reckoned, was to stick to known places and avoid having to do too much critical thinking. It's been a full two years since I was last in London, and although so much is familiar that I don't feel the need to pre-rehearse my routes in my head, little things have changed and that knocks me for a loop a bit. I was sure I could change from the PIccadilly to the District line at Earl's Court via a steps-free route, but I took the wrong exit and faced a set of steps rather than the lift and then found myself on the platform, clueless as to which train I was waiting for. Thankfully I wasn't the only confused passenger and there was a nice member of staff who pointed me to the right train for Paddington, where I DID find the exit with the lift, which I knew would bring me up to the concourse level with some food options, a free toilet and a magic money machine.

Next stop was the fruit and veg shop where I was stashing my carryon for the day. I'd booked that through Stasher.com a month ago and chose a spot only four blocks from the station. With a giant leap of faith, I surrendered my bag and set out to get a UK sim card for my stupid phone. There are a couple of phone stores in Queensway and, sticking to the familiar, I went into the one I'd used two years ago. While the clerk was installing the card, I mentioned that my previous experience with getting a EE sim card was a bit frustrating as I discovered a block from the store that the internet didn't work and had to go back for some tweaking of the settings. This time, when the clerk assured me that she had the internet working, I executed another leap of faith, put the phone in my bag and headed to the Lancaster Gate entrance to Hyde Park, near the Italian Gardens.

And there I was, sat on a bench looking at the lovely fountains, when I pulled out my phone thinking I'd post something to Facebook, and discovered — you knew this was coming, didn't you? — that I had no internet connectivity. Bloody hell. I was going to need to go back to Queensway to get it fixed. Couldn't even look up the location of another EE store closer to where I was at the time. I took some snaps of the fountains and headed south to the Serpentine Gallery, where I had some lunch at this year's pavilion and collected my wits. 

Long story short, I got the phone fixed, picked up my bag at the Nisa Local in Craven Road, and headed to the bus stop on Praed Street. But Praed Street is all dug up and buses were on diversion. Made my way to the next stop down the road and hopped the 205 for Euston Station. From there, I walked across the Euston Road to the Wellcome Collection, a welcome sight indeed. Checked my bag in the cloak room (free), spent some time in the library in a comfy chair, looked at some of the exhibitions, used the loo, ate a snack in the caff, and generally started feeling more grounded and less like a tourist or a pack mule. 

The 390 bus took me up York Road towards Tufnell Park and my AirBnB, which is roomy, comfortable and will be a great base for the next two weeks. My friend Jen walked the 15 minutes down the hill from where she lives, met me at my gaff and walked me back to hers for a tasty and filling dinner, washed down with a bit too much wine. Feeling much more like a human being, I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow. I'm out the door now to do Open House — as a temporary Londoner, not a tourist or a pack mule. 

20,792 steps
Expenses (they were many):
3 Euros for tea on the plane (highway robbery!)
£6 to Stasher
55p for water at Paddington
£15 for sim card
£10 to top up my Oyster until I buy a travel card
£5.95 for sandwich at Serpentine Pavilion (more than a Deal Meal, but worth it)
£2.85 for banana bread at the Wellcome Collection caff
£11.20 for groceries and bottle of wine from Sainsbury's Local in Tufnell Park

Travel Tips: London on the Cheap

When I tell people that I'm going to London, the response I often get is "I'd love to go, but it's such an expensive city." Sure, I say, if your travel expectations are for luxury accommodation, West End theatre and lots of tourist attractions, but that doesn't suit my style or my wallet. Over the past 15 years, I've developed a shedload of ways to have as good — or, I'd argue, better and more authentic — London travel experiences on a budget. Here are a few of my tips. 

• Before I even left, I saved myself a bundle through my credit cards. I booked my plane ticket and AirBnB with my travel rewards card (and made the down payment on the crown I need on a tooth I just broke) and got back about $150 in rewards to offset the cost of the travel and accommodation. I had let the reward points accumulate on my other credit card since my trip to Ireland last year and I'll be able to transfer about $200 to my bank account, which I'll use for walking around money in the UK. When I ordered a new raincoat and a few other things I needed for the trip from Amazon, at checkout I saw a banner advert saying I could open an Amazon credit card and immediately get $100 off my purchase. So I did. This is all free money!
• Accommodation: AirBnB or Vrbo have some good values for money, but it helps to start your search early. Forget about zone 1 — look at areas in zone 2 with excellent transport links, preferably a tube station and a couple of convenient bus routes. Two years ago, I stayed a five minute walk from Queen's Park station for $62/night. On my upcoming trip, I'll be spitting distance from the Tufnell Park station with easy access to Camden Town, King's Cross/St Pancras and beyond for $52/night. I look for a room with a private bathroom, wifi, cooking facilities and use of the washing machine. 
• Transport: Once you've settled in and walked to the tube station or bus stop, what's the best way to pay for transport? Whether you're in town for a few days or a few weeks, you need to get an Oyster card, but the type of card and what you load onto it will be different depending on the length of your visit. For less than a week, you're fine with a visitor's Oyster, which can be purchased online and mailed to you before your travel or purchased at Heathrow. If you're staying a week or longer, wait until you're in town and purchase a regular Oyster from any tube station or hundreds of news agents. What's the difference? Visitor cards function only as PAYG, so you need to pay attention to your balance and top it up when you get low. Regular Oysters have the added advantage of enabling you to load travel cards, sold in one week or one month duration, onto them. I load my Oyster with some cash and one-week zone 1-2 travel card(s). The cash will cover journeys into the farther out zones (Heathrow is in zone 6, so I always need some dosh on my card to get to/from the airport because I'm too cheap to take the Heathrow Connect or Express). 
• Food: Dining out in London can be expensive, but food is actually cheap. I rarely eat in restaurants other than to go for an Indian or a pub meal. I scope out the nearest farmers' market, street market, bakery and grocery store options. Tea and a roll or a chunk of tasty bread is all I need in the morning. For lunch, I prefer to bring something with me in my day bag or grab a Tesco Express and Sainsbury's Local meal deal — a sandwich, beverage and crisps for about £3 — and sit on a bench in a park or a churchyard to eat. Cafes are a good alternative — the ones in church crypts often serve healthy and hearty food. I often stop for an afternoon treat at a bakery or caff and then end the day with dinner on the cheap — a veggie pie, soup, salad or something else I can heat up easily at my gaff washed down with a glass or two of wine.
• Free outdoor spaces: London is full of places to walk and explore, including some of the best parks you could imagine, often with an historic home in the park or nearby. Kenwood House on Hampstead Heath is lovely, full of art and free. And the cemeteries are to die for! Highgate Cemetery is the only one of the Magnificent Seven that has an entry fee, but it's quite reasonable. It's often said that London is an amalgamation of many villages, each with its own character. I love spending time rambling around and taking it all in. And it doesn't cost a thing.
• Museums and other attractions: Most of the big-name museums, including the National Gallery, Tate Britain, Tate Modern, the Victoria & Albert, the Museum of London and the Natural History Museum, have free entry. They do, however, charge for special exhibitions and those entry fees have gone up considerably over the past few years. Some of the other museums, including the Royal Academy and the Foundling Museum, do charge entry fees. If you know that you'll be museum hopping all over London (and beyond), while soaking up a lot of art and culture, an Art Pass is a great investment, particularly if they have a three-month "taster" Art Pass on offer for 15 quid. The card gets you in free to hundreds of venues that normally charge and also gives 50% off the cost of special exhibitions. Cards need to be ordered online and sent in the post to UK addresses. I asked my AirBnB host if I could use her postal address for my Art Pass and she was fine with it. NOTE: This is different to the London Pass, which in my estimation is a total ripoff. 
• Events and performances: I've never been to West End theatre, so I can't give advice on how to score cheap tickets to those plays.  Smaller theatres away from the West End, like the Almeida (Islington), Arcola (Dalston), Hampstead (Swiss Cottage) or Kiln (Kilburn), are reasonably priced. The Hampstead has reduced-price tickets on Mondays. There are also scads of cultural events, including performances, talks and walks, that are free. Some of the churches have free noontime music performances or you can sit in on a rehearsal. I'll be in London for two fantastic free events: Open House weekend (over 800 buildings of architectural interest all across the capital city open to the public) and Totally Thames Festival, a month-long celebration of the river with exhibitions, talks and walks. I also like to check out free or reasonably-priced talks at cultural institutions such as the British Library and the Bishopsgate Institute as well as the museums. 
• Promo codes and coupons: I get a bunch of weekly email newsletters from London websites and am always on the lookout for bargains. In the past, I've had coupons for pub meals and attractions. I recently downloaded the app for a new ride-hailing company called Kapten and used a promo code from SkintLondon to put £15 in credit on my account. 
• Views: Why pay £25 to look down on London from the dizzying heights of the Shard when you can get views just as good for free? There are viewing decks on the new extension to Tate Modern and on the One New Change shopping centre in back of St Paul's Cathedral. For something a bit higher up and enclosed, there's the Sky Garden on the Walkie Talkie building (timed entry, book online up to three weeks in advance) and the new garden at 120 Fenchurch Street (no need to book ahead). I've seen great views from Primrose Hill, Parliament Hill on Hampstead Heath, Greenwich Park, Richmond Park and several places in south London. On my upcoming trip, I'm looking forward to seeing the view from Dartmouth Park Hill, about a 10 minute walk from my AirBnB.

Two great sources of info about free and cheap things to see and do are the IanVisits website (sign up for his weekly newsletter of listings) and Londonist.

Watch this space for my chronicles of my journey, with scintillating details of where I went, what I saw and how much I spent. If you know of other tips, please pop them in the comments below. 

Heading home now

It was a bit lonely in the doss house last night, but I slept well thanks to the wine and Tylenol PM. Woke up around 1 am when the inmates in the next cell came in, but they weren't loud for long.

I got up early, showered, packed and was out the door at 9 for a walk around Griffith Park and up to the National Botanic Gardens. Both were lovely and quiet on this sunny Sunday.

We really lucked out with the weather this past week. Though it was grey and a bit chilly in Belfast, we only had rain one afternoon as we came back from our day's adventures. The past four days have been warm and bright ... and long, as we were here for the solstice and the sun has been setting around 10 pm.

I'm sitting at the gate at the airport now and we'll board soon.

Stats:
€2.50 banana bread at the Botanic Gardens caff

13,386 steps, 5.79 miles (so far)

A Flop House in Dublin

Friday (yesterday) we returned the rental car and got a morning bus from Belfast to Dublin, arriving at noon. It was an easy ten minute walk from the bus station to the hostel where we had reservations to stash our bags for the afternoon and then we were on our way to explore. The bag stash place is very close to the Dublin GPO, site of the rebel headquarters during the 1916 Easter Rising, so we stopped for a look around. Over 100 years on, the bullet holes are still evident on the portico and facade. Inside, it's a busy post office, nicely rebuilt after the interior burned during the fighting, with lots of wood and brass fittings. There's also a museum about the Easter Rising, but we skipped it as we needed to push on.

Next stop was the visitor info center where we bought our Leap visitor cards for the bus and tram and then made our way westward in search of food as we looked at this and that along the way -- a garden of remembrance for the dead of all Irish rebellions, the shiny brass plaque on the Sinn Fein national headquarters in Parnell Square, the bustling produce market, Jameson's Distillery, Victorian warehouses and worker housing, newly constructed office and housing blocks. We finally found sustenance in Smithfield Square at a trendy food market with lots of eat in/take out options including an excellent salad bar with Thai spice tuna salad, curry rice salad, and various combos of veg, feta, cous cous and quinoa.

On the itinerary for the afternoon was a guided walk about the Great Famine in Dublin, led by Fin Dwyer, the man behind the Irish History Podcast. Through sight and sound, he exposed us to the impact of the potato blight from 1846 to 1851 (which we usually think of as a rural calamity) on people living in urban Dublin. We learned that, throughout the years of the hunger, Ireland was exporting food to Britain and Europe. The blight may have sparked the famine, but it was the land tenancy system, along with British governmental policy and callous disregard for the suffering of the Irish people, that precipitated a food security catastrophe the likes of which has not been seen since. I'd highly recommend the walk to anyone coming to Dublin with an interest in Irish history.

After the walk, we popped into the Cobblestone to have a pint (Roger cider, me Guinness) and listen to some trad music, then reclaimed our bags and took the city bus north to the Drumcondra area to check in to our Airbnb. Drumcondra, like the Queen's Quarter where we stayed in Belfast, is an area of tree-lined streets of red brick Victorian terrace houses, populated by students, young families and senior citizens. Though we were feeling the good vibe of the neighborhood when we got off the bus, that disappeared when we opened the front door of the house where our Airbnb is. Turns out that the rather shabby house has been chopped up into ten tiny units. The dark hallway with worn carpet, steep stairway and hand-scrawled signs of instructions from our host awaited us inside. Our unit is small and dreary, but it's cheap, in a safe area and has good transport connections. We quickly dropped our stuff and headed out again.

In addition to booking these accommodations, Roger booked tickets for an a cappella showcase at a club near the Temple Bar area. We ate pizza, consumed wine and listened to music -- a nice way to wind down our day on the move. We wrapped it up with glasses of whiskey at Fagan's Pub (where Bertie Ahern took Bill Clinton for a drink in 1998) on our block in Drumcondra.

This morning we explored the Liberties, a very old part of Dublin between the massive Guinness factory on the west and Dublin Castle on the east. This doesn't seem to be an area that attracts tourists and I was happy to wander through a community garden with a pig located on wasteland, a tatty market and a Norman church without colliding with any teen tour groups. When we reached Dublin Castle, we spent a good amount of time seeing an exhibition called Coming Home: Art & the Great Hunger. It's a very powerful show, with a video intro, paintings and sculpture. Much of the works come from the collection of Quinnipiac University in Connecticut (who knew?) so local folks will get to see it when the art returns in 2019.

Roger then headed for the airport to go back to London, leaving me to travel solo until my flight on Sunday. I spent two hours at the Hugh Lane Gallery in Parnell Square. The permanent collection includes many impressionist and modern works by Irish artists. They also house the studio of Francis Bacon. It's his entire actual studio. After his death, the studio he had for over 30 years in a Kensington mews was dismantled and reconstructed, down to the piles of clutter and the smallest detail in this Dublin gallery. I'm not a fan of Bacon, but I thought the studio was so interesting -- it's rare to see the place where art is actually created.

I also walked along beautiful Georgian terrace streets, saw an iron bench being consumed by a tree at the King's Inn (a legal inn), visited Blessington Basin park (ducks, a swan, fairy houses and a sweet little lodge) and did my shopping for dinner. I'm back in the flop  house now. As soon as I finish writing this, I intend to sleep soundly and long.

Friday stats:
£3.50 final bus fare in Belfast
€19.50 for 72-hour bus pass in Dublin
€4.80 lunch
€17 famine walk
€3.40 pint of Guinness after the walk
€20 ticket to a cappella showcase
€12 pizza and wine

21,252 steps, 8.77 miles

Saturday stats:
€2.85 tuna & sweet corn sandwich from Tesco
€5.39 salad for dinner
€5.30 bread and wine

20,644 steps, 8.48 miles