Sugar, Slavery, the Thames and St Pauls

27 March 2008

Today Virginia was going to meet Christine to visit the Courtauld and I decided to go off to the new Docklands Museum. This is a new museum; a part of the Museum of London. It is in the new Canary Wharf area which is being developed at a fantastic rate. When I visited the area some years ago it looked as if it was going to be a very expensive disaster, but now it is a huge success. Probably one of the contributing factors was London's winning of the 2012 Olympic games which will take place in the general area.

The museum is very "hands-on," and there was a special exhibition of "Slaves, Sugar and London," which showed the history of the slave trade and how it impacted on the city of London. I was pleasantly surprised, too, when I noticed a small exhibit about the sinking of the Princess Alice. In fact, they had one of the original name plates from the ship.

Virginia, in the meantime, having finished at the Courtauld went on a sentimental journey with Christine to the Royal Courts of Justice and to the Temple Inner Court. Then a bus ride to the Tower of London and back to the West End and home.

Buying tickets to events in England, particularly for seniors, is very easy. Unlike Australia where you practically have to sign your life away to get a senior's rate, in the UK they just accept your word. It has always been an annoyance that in Sydney a Hobart (or Tasmanian) seniors card is simply not accepted for many things. This is probably because in the UK there is only the one level of government. Even so, you would think that Australia could develop a better system.
The big news today is that the new Terminal 5 is going to open at Heathrow. Well, it turned out to be a disaster. Almost a quarter of incoming and outcoming flights have been cancelled. They really need to take a lesson from Singapore where the opening of Terminal 3 apparently went ahead without any problems.

Back to London and later, in the afternoon, I went to St Pauls and walked around the area. The Church still remains one of the great treasures of England with its beautiful design by Wren. Just on the side of St Pauls is Temple Bar, the only surviving gateway into the city. It was erected in 1672 by King Charles II to replace a wooden gate which, although it had survived the Great Fire was in a state of disrepair.

When Virginia returned from her day with Christine Howard, we went to dinner and finished up at our local pub while doing our laundry for tomorrow's departure.