London Weekend
Trip Start
Aug 11, 2009
1
21
23
Trip End
Dec 16, 2009
London, England, United Kingdom
Monday, November 23, 2009
It's been a while since my last entry, but I guess that's because I've had my head down doing some work. I've got several thousand words due at the end of semester (fast approaching) so I've been busy. This weekend I had a nice little break and spent two days in London. I caught the train after class on Friday and headed straight to the Tate Modern. The gallery is in this amazing building, it looks like a converted factory. I think someone told me it was an old power station. Anyway, it's a great building. The gallery is open til 10pm on Friday nights, so when I got there at about 6pm it was buzzing. Two of the floors contain free exhibitions and that is where I went. That was more than enough to keep me entertained for two hours. I really liked a series of rooms they set up which were dedicated to specific artists, eg the Andy Wahol room. They had everything there - lots of Picasso, Kandinsky, Jean Miro, Andy Warhol, those famous mobiles by someone I can't remeber...even a Monet or two.
Anyway, normally I'm not a huge huge fan of modern art, but it was a very impressive collection. I think my favourites were an installation called Venus of the Rags, which was a Venus sculpture faced with a giant pile of washing (google it if you're interested) and a room which conatined a huge fully painted sculpture of a fallen over palm tree. It sounds weird, but it worked really well. I was actually quite pleased with myself, because I started recognising a few artists without/before reading the plaques beside the works.
Possibly the weirdest thing I saw was a video of a naked woman covering herself in blood and then rolling around in white feathers. After the exhibitions I headed up to the top floor of the gallery to have dinner at the gallery restaurant, where I'd booked a table. The view was sensational! Two of the walls were entirely glass. One looked out over the river and directly on to the lit up dome of St Paul's Cathedral. On the other side, where I sat, I could see the London Eye, also lit up, from my seat. Definite wow factor. The bill had a bit of a wow factor to it too, but the food and the view made it worth it. Actually, the pasta I had was nice but nothing special but the sticky toffee pudding I had for dessert was delicious. Plus the service was incredibly slick and so fast! Plus the complimentary bread with olive oil and balsamic was a delicious rosemary foccacia type thing. Hmmm. I am thinking about right it now. I think if I went back I would just sit at the bar area, which had the best view of St Pauls. From there you can order tapas style snacks and great looking cocktails, which is definitely my style.
Anyway, in the morning I got up and walked to Regent's Park. It was a sunny Saturday morning and bustling with people. Lots of kids and people feeding the ducks and geese, which was cute. I then headed to a market on Marleybone St which I'd read was great. Sadly, I think I was there too early or on an off day, because it was pretty small and disappointing. I love markets (it's kind of been the cake shop and market tour of Europe for me), but this one was pretty average. Luckily, Marleybone street itself was awesome! I found a lovely chocolate shop (I can smell them a mile away) and then, of course, had to have morning tea at a great little french bakery. There I had one of the top three best vanilla slices I've ever eaten (the other two are in Victoria if anyone is interested). God it was good. Probably about 2.5 days worth of calories. That's what it tasted like, anyway.
After that I decided to work off a few calories by walking to the British Museum. It was a fair hike but probably a good idea as several lines were closed on the tube that weekend and it was mayhem down there! I had booked in for a Highlights Tour of the museum, because it is just so huge and you could never see everything in it in one visit. This turned out to be a good move. There were only five other people on the tour and it was excellent. It was led by this great, very English, middle aged, upper class man. He was such a character and so into all the artifacts there!
I met up with my friend Teresa at the Museum and we caught the train home, which was nice, becuse its a pretty dull trip home otherwise. It gets dark here at like 4:30pm so there's not much to see out the window. Plus we left from Kings Cross so we took the opportunity to take a few pics at the Harry Potter trolley at platform 9 and 3/4.
Today I slept in and then went with a few other people from my flat to watch Sam (from my flat) play American Football. Unfortunately, the weather was typically British, so we left Sam to finish the game after a bit of cheering by us and walked back to the flat. Never has a hot shower felt so good after standing on that windy wet playing feild!
That's it from me. There will be a few entries coming up soon because I'm heading to Lyon to visit my friend Lis on Tuesday and after that I'm doing a weekend trip to Bath with Teresa. Only a few more weeks left here, so I have to pack a lot in to them!
xox Hannah
