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Originally published November 18, 2008

By the south bank of the river Thames in London, close to the Globe Theater and just across the river from St Paul’s Cathedral, there is pretty house, painted a creamy white.

Above the door, the name Cardinal’s Wharf is written. And to the side of door on the front of the building is a plaque that reads –

Here lived Sir Christopher Wren during the building of St Paul’s Cathedral.

Here also, in 1502, Catherine Infanta of Castille and Aragon, afterwards first Queen of Henry VIII, took shelter on her first landing in London.

One can easily imagine Sir Christopher Wren getting up in the morning and looking out of one of the upper windows to see, across the river, his creation rising out of its foundations as the work progressed from the laying of the first stone in 1677 to the completion of the cathedral in 1708.

The St Paul’s Cathedral that Wren designed is the ‘new’ building that replaced the old St Paul’s that was gutted in the Great Fire of London in 1666.

Today, Wren would not have a clear view of St Paul’s because it is hemmed in by later buildings. But from the pedestrian bridge that spans the Thames the cathedral commands the skyline.

Originally published November 8, 2008

The village of Haworth is set in the Pennine Hills, overlooking the Worth valley, and it is in the parsonage that the Bronte sisters wrote their most famous works, including Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte and Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte.

Behind the Parsonage, which now houses the Bronte Museum, there is a field aptly named Parson’s Field.

It slopes gently uphill, and as approached we saw a ram and several ewes in the top corner by the dry stone wall.

As we approached, they looked up and the ram stood at the back, side-on to me, full-coated and magnificent. The ewes looked a little spooked and one of them pawed the ground like a bull, and pulled back her lips to tell us not to come any closer.

Originally published November 1, 2008

Walking around Paris, you come across inscriptions cut into the stonework of various buildings. This inscription is at about lower chest height and testifies to the flood that Paris suffered in January 1910. The sign reads cru de la Seine, which indicates the level the waters of the river Seine reached on January 25, 1910 when the river burst its banks.

The flood or inondation raised the waters of the river Seine over 25 feet (over 8 metres) above their normal level, and not only flooded the streets but also the then newly constructed Metro – the underground railway system that now covers most of Paris.

As a side note, the metro is built very close to ground level compared to the systems in other cities. Anyone who has travelled down the subway or underground escalators in Washington D.C. or London or Moscow or Lyon knows how long they are and how far down into the earth they travel.

Not so with the Paris metro, where the stations are often just a hop down down a couple of short flights of stairs.