Arrival in London, Sept 6-8

 

We had a 7:30 flight to London from Logan. Amazingly, everything was on time. The weather was calm which is reassuring to Barbara, a somewhat nervous flyer. Both of us slept a good deal of the way which was helpful. When we arrived in a hot and steamy London, we caught a bus to New Malden which took about an hour as it was rush hour traffic. Our dear friend, Maura, met us at the bus stop in New Malden and, together, we boarded another bus to get to her house. 

    After a bite to eat, we took nice long naps and later sat in her lovely garden. We had not seen the new extension on her home and were duly impressed by its comfort and new layout. We had a lovely evening meal including smoked salmon and Maura and Barbara took a walk to Cannon Hill Park. 

     The 7th, our first full day in London, was a very full day! And hot. We started with a good breakfast and took buses and subways into central London. We started with an iced coffee and then went to the Guildhall, a place we'd never visited. The Guildhall is the ceremonial and administrative center of the City of London, the center square mile. 

     

We perused the beautiful central hall with its paintings. Then, we went downstairs to see remains of the Roman amphitheater which was discovered in 1988. Outside the Guildhall, there is a black circle showing the dimensions of the arena.

   

   From there, we caught a subway to Zedel, a beautiful French restaurant where we had a delicious meal and celebrated our 42nd anniversary.

It is art deco in a 1930s building. The posters alone were worth seeing as well as the luxurious bathrooms! Luckily, we had reservations as the place filled up quickly. We all had selections from the prix fixe menu. Both of us started with a cold pea soup which was excellent, but rather filling. Barbara had a dal for her main dish and Mark had a steak hache, otherwise known as a fancy hamburger. We had an amusing French waiter who insisted that he was from Croydon. 

     After Zedel, we walked to the Harold Pinter Theatre and saw an amazing and memorable play, Dr. Semmelweis starring Mark Rylance. The production was done by the

National Theatre and included 4 musicians and 5 ballerinas who were onstage much of the time and represented ghosts of women who had died in childbirth. Mark Rylance played the Hungarian doctor who was

studying at Europe's largest obstetric hospital whch was in Vienna. He realized that the ward run by the midwives had a much lesser mortality rate than the ward staffed by doctors and set out to find out the reason. His conclusion was that it was because of dirty hands, especially of the doctors who performed autopsies. His insistence on hand washing was met with resistance and he went back to Budapest where he worked in small obstetric hospital which had a small mortality rate. He was urged back to Vienna where he tried to present his results, but again was met with derision which he did not handle diplomatically. He descended into madness and eventually died after a beating at an insane asylum, ironically of sepsis. It was a beautiful performance and, like all good theater, had intermittent doses of humor. The supporting cast was superb. The relevance to the recent pandemic with its emphasis on handwashing was clear as well as the resistance to science.

   What an amazing day! - Three terrific events. We all tumbled into bed around midnight.