Goodbye London...

My last few days in London I concentrated on getting in the last of all the things I wanted to see as well as buying a few gifts here and there.  I went to Westminster Abbey, which I’m not sure why I didn’t do that the other day when I was over by Big Ben and Parliament (I guess Prince Charles and Camilla distracted me).  While I was there I saw the huge ferris wheel nearby.  Honestly, I really don’t get the fascination with this thing - it’s just a ferris wheel!  

Both days when I was over in the area outside Parliament, there was a huge protest of UK Tamils calling for a cease fire in Sri Lanka.  It was estimated there were about 500 protesting, and as I walked around, I saw that many of them were acting out the violence in Sri Lanka - they would wave fake wooden machine guns and act like they were beating other members in the crowd.  Many of them wore bandages with what was to look like blood on it around their heads and bodies.  I found it all really interesting to watch, and I couldn’t help but take some pictures.  Speaking of, look closely at the very first one and see if anyone/anything looks out of place.  Granted, I don't know much about what is going on in Sri Lanka, but it's like this guy stumbled into the wrong protest.  "One of these things is not like the other..."  

I also went to Buckingham Palace and watched the changing of the guard, which I had seen when I was 17 but didn’t have much recollection.  I had a pretty good spot in front of the gates.  The band played movie theme songs.  I found this so odd.  Indiana Jones.  Star Wars.  When they played Copacabana, though, I completely cracked up.

 

 

Later I walked around Green Park (I don’t know if Alyson C. or Kenny are reading this blog, but if so, do you remember going to Green Park on our “free day” - after going to the Hard Rock Cafe... it was so 1992!) right beside Buckingham Palace.  I went to Piccadilly Circus, which is kind-of a miniature Times Square, as well as back to Harrod’s and took pictures of the Food Halls.  My pictures don’t do them justice.  

Wednesday afternoon I left London to fly to Barcelona.  I loved London.  It’s definitely among my favorite cities, though I did remember how much I loved it from when I was here before.  It will be very interesting for me to note my impressions of all the different cities I visit and how they compare to each other, especially considering that I’m primarily visiting big cities on this trip, with the exception of my last month in Europe - Lake Como, Turin, Monaco and Cannes.  In case anyone is keeping score at home, London is in the lead - over Belfast, Dublin and Cork.

Modern Art, A Market and A Musical

The Tate Modern was on my agenda for Friday.  It was the third and final museum I planned to visit in London, and pretty certain it would be my favorite, I decided to save the best for last. I definitely made the right choice.  I loved the Tate Modern.  The museum consisted of modern and contemporary art and installations from 1900 forward - Magritte, Kandinsky, Picasso, Matisse, Rothko, Pollock, Warhol, etc. 

I spent Saturday morning and early afternoon at the Portobello Market in Notting Hill.  The market stretches along Portobello Road for about two miles and is divided into several distinct sections: antiques, fruits and vegetables (and cheese and baked goods and flowers and on and on), arts and crafts and fashion (both new and vintage).  The stalls sit in the road in front of all the shops along Portobello Road which were also open.  It was crowded - think Knoxville's Rossini Festival on crack.  I didn't buy anything other than food, though I was tempted by a pair of vintage red cowboy boots and a bouquet of peonies, neither of which I had any real use for, so I passed on both.

  

Towards the end of the Market, I veered off Portobello Road and went in a shop called Jane Bourvis.  At first it looked like a tiny shabby chic gift store - I was lured in by a pink ballet tutu in the window - but then I saw the vintage dresses in the back of the store. Wow.  They were actually corsets and skirts, and when I saw the corset and tulle skirt below the first thing I thought of was that it looked similar to the dress Carrie Bradshaw wore in the last episode of Sex and the City - where Big surprises her in Paris.  Sure enough, when I went to the Jane Bourvis website I saw that they had supplied that dress.  Yeah, I'm that good!  Obviously the dresses come with a hefty price tag - for this one, 495 for the corset and 495 for the skirt. In Pounds.  Which means in USD, roughly $1,500.  Yikes. 

    

On Saturday night I took the tube to Leicester Square where the theatres are concentrated.  I had bought a cheap ticket to Phantom of the Opera, which I hadn't seen since I was a teenager. Phantom is shown at Her Majesty's Theatre.  My cheap ticket equaled upper balcony, second to last row, but as long as I sat on the edge of my seat and leaned forward, I could see everything. Ha!  No matter, I could definitely hear, and the music was great, of course.  

About 10 pm, as I walked through Leicester Square on my way back to the tube, all I could think was how happy I am to be staying in the Knightsbridge area.  Not that I would have chosen Leicester Square anyway, but there are several hotels in that area and I couldn't imagine that being my home base for London.  Think McDonald's, KFC, Pizza Hut and Burger King crossed with tourists and drunk teenagers.  In fact, I saw a drunk teenager passed out on the ground while a tourist was took her picture and the teenagers yelled at the tourist for doing so. Yeah, I was ready to get out of Leicester Square. 

A London observation:  The Brits love their tea, but they don't understand iced tea.  Even at Starbucks they couldn't understand that I wanted ice - "Are you sure you want ice in your tea?" "How many ice cubes do you want?"  I'm all for hot tea, but sometimes I just want it iced.  So I've discovered that if I order hot tea and then a cup of ice, that works out pretty well.  The only problem is that the hot tea melts the ice quickly so I have to drink quick or I end up with lukewarm tea.  

Another London observation:  I keep looking the wrong way when I go to cross a one-way street.  For those tourists like me that apparently can't figure it out, the road has large white lettering that reads "Look right" or "Look left."  There is even an arrow pointing the direction to look in case you still can't figure it out.  I'm convinced it is only a matter of time before I end up like Natalie Portman in Closer, minus the unfortunate stripper bit.

A Royal Encounter

What happened on Tuesday deserves an entire blog all to itself!  I saw Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles!

It was yet another beautiful day, and I started out by taking the tube to Trafalgar Square, which was loaded down with student tour groups.  

The National Gallery overlooks the Square, so that was to be my next stop but instead I started walking with no idea where I was going.  (It was fate, I tell you!)  I saw Big Ben in the distance, so I headed that way.  Once I got closer I noticed a large group of people gathered outside the Parliament building.  I assumed they were just tourists taking pictures, so I joined them.  

Next thing I knew a group walked out of Parliament, and some people in the crowd with very professional looking cameras started taking pictures.  As soon as I saw a lady in a hat, I just knew it was Camilla.  It’s hard to see Prince Charles in the pictures, but in the first two, he’s to Camilla’s left, and in the third picture, he’s to Camilla’s right.  Then in the fourth picture, that’s Prince Charles in the backseat, and Camilla is getting in the car.

After coming down from my royal high - this was WAY better than running into P. Diddy on Rodeo Drive! - I walked back to the National Gallery that houses paintings dating from 1250 forward, including a large Impressionist wing.  Like the Victoria and Albert, the National Gallery is free admission.  

Something I found interesting was that in 1939, the National Gallery closed to begin evacuating paintings to Wales with the last of the paintings being transported the day before war was declared.  The National Gallery was struck by bombs on several occasions during World War II.  At one point, bombing on Wales where the paintings were being stored became a threat, and there was talk of transporting them to Canada, but Churchill rejected that idea saying that not one painting was to leave the U.K. 

The next day, Wednesday, I decided to take a Beatles walking tour.  Though the Beatles grew up and spent their early years as a band in Liverpool, once they had their first hit in 1963, they moved to London.  The guy giving the tour was a bit crazy, but we saw all the sites - Paul McCartney’s current office building, the art gallery where John Lennon and Yoko Ono first met, the studio where the Beatles recorded Hey Jude, the building where the Beatles played the rooftop concert - their last live performance before they split up, Abbey Road studio and of course, the famous crosswalk from the Abbey Road album cover. As you will see from the picture, I pulled a Paul McCartney and went barefoot across the road.  

Today, Thursday, was a shopping day except I didn't buy anything!  I went back to Harrod's and explored departments that I'd not been in yet.  (As big as Harrod's is, I would have to go back everyday I'm here to see all the departments.) I then took the tube to the Bond Street station.  I started out shopping on Oxford Street, and I went to Topshop.  Topshop is a British department store - kind-of like a British H&M. I had high hopes for Topshop, considering all the press and excitement that surrounded the first Topshop opening in the States a few weeks ago in New York.  Sad to say, I was disappointed.  Topshop is very British - as in very British fashion - as in 80s - as in neon colors.  I'll take H&M any day.  After Topshop, I went in Selfridge's, an upscale London department store but not near the caliber of Harrod's.  Think more like a Neiman Marcus.  I did find a pair of shoes I'm considering (unlike Harrod's, Selfridge's does have some affordable things), but I'm not sure - the heel is a bit chunkier than what I typically do.  For those of you who are interested in such things, a picture of the shoe is below - the brown pair.  The heel is MUCH higher (I would estimate 4") than it appears in the picture.  Opinions are welcome!  Then I walked down Bond Street, which consists of the most exclusive stores:  Louis Vuitton, Yves St. Laurent, Jimmy Choo, Cartier, Harry Winston, Tiffany, Chanel, etc.  It was fun to look in the windows, but I didn't go inside. 

Wow, I'm actually caught up on my blog!  Until tomorrow...

Forecast: Warm and Sunny, or Am I Really in London?

When I arrived in London on Saturday and walked from the tube station to the flat, one of my first impressions was how warm it was - sunny too.  Um, did I get on the wrong plane?  Isn't London supposed to be rainy and cloudy and yes, foggy?  Assuming I had just arrived in London on a really great day, I knew that I'd be lucky if I had any more days like that during my time here.

When I woke up on Sunday morning, the weather was much the same, warmer even.  Having done a bit of research the night before (the flat is full of guidebooks) on exactly what I want to see in London, I knew that one can't-miss activity for me was Speaker's Corner. Speaker's Corner is an area in the northeast corner of Hyde Park where on Sunday mornings people gather to speak or listen to (or heckle) speakers.  The topics of the speeches are widely varied, and the only rules are that the speakers can't use profanity and can't be obscene.  If anyone the movie Religulous,  you would have seen Bill Maher in Speaker's Corner facetiously speaking on the merits of Scientology.  Speaker's Corner goes back to the mid-1800s, and Marx, Lenin and George Orwell were participants. So I set off from the flat in search of Speaker's Corner.  Hyde Park is about a five minute walk, though it takes much longer to get to Speaker's Corner.  Along the way I saw the Calvary Memorial Parade that was marching to a ceremony being held in Hyde Park.

I finally found my way to Speaker's Corner.  It is a large area where several different speakers can be positioned so that all can be heard and crowds can gather in front of them.  As a new speakers would arrive to Speaker's Corner, he (or she, though it was mostly men) would start out being quite loud to attract a crowd, and I would watch the crowd in front of one speaker begin to dwindle to go listen to what another had to say.  I listened to one man speak on the merits of socialism and against capitalism.  The most entertaining speaker of the day, and the one who drew the biggest crowd, was a German guy (being heckled by a guy from Spain) who had argued that one of the biggest things wrong with our society was that women shouldn't be in positions of power, that they are too bossy, that families are forced to eat McDonald's and Burger King and that as a result, women should be back in the kitchen.  He was pretty funny about it, and all the women in the crowd, including myself, were laughing.

After about an hour or so, I set off to explore Hyde Park.  It's massive, and there was so much to see.  I stopped here and there to sit but for the most part I walked for three or four hours. The park was full of people enjoying the day - playing soccer, or rather, football, lounging in the grass, playing in the fountains, sitting at the outdoor cafes in the park.  I saw the Diana, Princess of Wales, Memorial Fountain and then I crossed over into Kensington Gardens and saw the Peter Pan statue and then walked around the outside of Kensington Palace where Prince Charles and Princess Di lived with William and Harry.  While you can tour parts of the Palace, you can't tour those quarters, so I opted against taking a tour.

On Tuesday I spent a good part of the afternoon at the Victoria and Albert Museum, which is close to the flat.  Nearly all the museums have free admission here, which I was psyched about.  The Victoria and Albert is described as the world's largest museum of decorative arts and design.  

The Victoria and Albert has 145 galleries from ceramics to textiles to medieval objects to paintings and drawings.  You could spend days there.  I concentrated my time in photography, fashion, theatre and performance, jewelry and sculpture.  My favorite was the fashion exhibit (surprise surprise) with the photography being a close second.  The fashion exhibit spanned the last four centuries and included both men's and women's fashions, including modern designers like Yves Saint Laurent, Vivienne Westwood, Christian Lacroix and even Chloe.  For those of you who saw my Martinis & Movies: "Studio 54" Gala dress this year, check out the dress on display as designed by Halston in 1976.  How authentic was I?!

Around dusk that night I took the tube to Tower Hill to walk across Tower Bridge and along the Thames River.