Butterfly, The Dead Zoo, V&A, and Adios London

Sadly, we had to leave London yesterday. But happily, we are in Brugge, Belgium tonight! Our last week in London was spent in several interesting ways. We had dinner with our friends, Anne-Lotte and Franco Ricotta at their lovely home. They have a marvelous property with lots of wild garden area, and some planter box gardens. There is enough mown grass for a soccer pitch! We had a great meal and enjoyed their company immensely. Ellie even made friends with their grandson, Kieren. Anne-Lotte is from South Africa, and she has an apartment in Cape Town, and we are going to plan a visit there as soon as we can manage it. Kat is very excited for the prospect of going on a photo safari and seeing all the wild animals. Her apartment has a veranda overlooking the ocean! Yikes, I'm excited. Franco is from Italy, and a sailing enthusiast, so we are hoping for a sailing lesson at some point.

We also went to the butterfly exhibit and saw all the beautiful butterflies. One landed on Chris' hair and on my knee..that was so cool. We spent about 10 minuets in the natural history museum. It was pretty hot that day, and the natural history museum isn't air conditioned, and there were crowds of people crushing in, and it was just too hot to stay.

The next day, I got a chance to go to the Victoria and Albert Museum. Who knew there was so much to see there! It is once again, supported by the British tax payer, and is free to the public. There is lots of research going on there. The cast court is amazing, with replicas of some pretty amazing sculpture and architectural treasures that are still being eroded by the elements, so these castings serve as a resource to measure the damage done to them, and it is a way of preserving them. There are galleries filled with artisan works from all over the world that will serve as a historical reserve for generations.

Our overall impression of England was very favorable. We loved it. We want to go back. Even though we tried to pack in a lot of things, we didn't get to half of them. We had an amazing time with our hosts, the Castle family..mostly Donna and Garry. Garry is a professional photographer and you can see his work at modopublishing.com. He's an wonderfully good man, and we had some deep discussions. He helped me understand the English view of Brexit. I read in the paper there that the average in migration to England for the past several years has averaged around 300,000 more in than out. I can't imagine how they have been absorbing that many people, and I can understand how they felt they had to stop that. You can see the effect on the streets. For instance, our ward in Ilford had only about 5% native Londoners, and 85% second generation Africans, and about 5% second generation Indians, and you could see similar trends on every street, except now they are first generation middle easterners. The newcomers have about 30% unemployment, and are really taxing the socialized medical system, the schools systems, and roads and transportation systems.

But, the cultural diversity is also very exciting to see as these cultures blend and learn from each other.

Here is a slide show of some of the highlights.