Well, I got in the day before, but I was SO dead tired so I reunited with my father, got some fish, and chips and went to bed. That was that.
Next day was the first official day in Jolly Ole England. It feels so good to be back in London, my favorite city in the world. So much has changed from when I was here a year ago, but at the same time, it’s still the same city. Everything feels a whole lot younger, a whole lot hipper, cleaner, and certainly hotter. This trip, I’m concentrating on all the things I didn’t do last time, and doing again some of the things I enjoyed so much the first time. I’ll spare no expense in giving you all the gory details on this one folks. London is a Calling (if you’ll pardon The Clash reference) that I simply can’t avoid telling.
Day one included some new stuff to fill my nerdy preoccupation with museums and art and all that. The newly opened Tate Modern art museum was the first stop, a separate compendium from the Tate Britain containing all the modern stuff from the late 1800’s till now. It was not quite as large as the building makes it out to be, but there is plenty packed in the space. It’s a fine museum, but lacks organization. You kind of gotta wade amongst the icky stuff (that idiot Mark Rothco) to find the gems. Some of my favorites were some very famous pieces by the Surrealist Joan Miro and pre-Cubism Picasso. Since I had learned all about this in my Spanish art class, it was pretty much a nerdorgasm. Oh wait, did I mention nerdorgasm? I totally had one when I realized that one of my idols/favorite artists of all time was kept within these hallowed walls. Wedged between a room filled with Russian WWI-era propaganda and more abstract Ukranian stuff is the Andy Warhol room. ZOMG. Andy Warhol! The godfather of Pop Art and one of my all-time biggest spiritual/artistic influences. They had one of his (many) reproductions of Marilyn Monroe and another extremely famous piece called “Gun” (yes, I know that he has about 100 pieces called “Gun,” but this one was the big one). Plus, the wallpaper of the damn exhibit was Warhol’s own “Cow” wallpaper. It’s so hip, so nonsensical, so popart. It’s delicious. Almost as delicious as Campbell’s Soup, really.
Moving on, that was about it for the Tate Modern. On to the next stop, which was the Globe Theater to purchase tickets for “As You Like It” for Thursday. Expect lots of details about that later. I’d already done the whole Globe tour thing, so no new developments there. Now, I’ve got to have a discourse about the food here. Yes, British food sucks. That’s the simple fact. Pork pies taste icky, and tomatoes for breakfast is just a bad idea. That aside, the food in London is spectacular because it is such a cosmopolitan city. We went into this one REALLY super chic, super cool hotel for lunch. I’ll show you some artistic pictures I took of it. It had the best tuna salad sandwich and chips I had tasted in a long while. Aaah, back in the saddle again with London cuisine, indeed. It’s good to be home. Post lunch, next stop on the nerdmobile was new for me: the Victoria and Albert Museum.
The Victorianalbert (that’s how it’s pronounced, really) is a big arts/crafts/ “wears” museum. It’s incredibly cool. The kind of stuff that it has ranges from Medieval stained glass and silver collections to Japanese cookware and houseware to Persian rugs to British Jewelry over the ages…And even a small collection of paintings by masters like Turner and Reynolds. The whole museum is incredibly overwhelming, it’s impossible to do the whole thing in a day, let alone a few hours. We triaged what we wanted to see (Japanese swords, British Catholic sacristies, and miniatures being high on the list) and were blown away by everything we saw. Particularly impressive was a collection of plaster casts of famous monuments and statues. Yes, you heard right. We’re not exactly sure HOW they did it, but back in the 1870’s, the museum started taking plaster casts of famous objects/facades/statues from around the world and bringing it to the Victorianalbert. For example, there is a 2-piece, completely life-sized plaster cast of Trajan’s column in Rome in this museum. AKA THAT’S FRIGGIN HUGE. It’s extremely impressive. And even a full façade of a church in Germany. It’s incredible. I wish I could have taken pictures, but if you even get the chance to go to London you MUST GO and see it for yourself.
We really honestly did get exhausted by the museum, so we got dinner at this really cool Italian restaurant called Villa Rosa (the waiter made fun of my Spanish accent when I was ordering) which had very good food for a good price. Then we went to bed. Great first day back in the city of the Brits.
You should see the columns here...they're really awesome and most of them are real/ in the place where they've been for millennia. You would love Crete/ Greece...but maybe Crete more than Athens because its a little more indie/less touristy. Oh, and today there was a legitimate "You don't eat meat? Alrihgt, I make you lamb" moment, except it had to do with red meat and their lasagna (Moussaka):
ReplyDelete"I don't eat red meat"
"Oh, well, have the Moussaka-there is veal in it instead of lamb."
"No, that's a red meat, too."
"Oh, well, then no Moussaka for you!"