We met at kings cross- Which is not a station I am familiar with unless you count repeatedly reading Harry Potter.
I come into London at St Pancras now, And when I lived in Oxfordshire/Wales it was always Paddington.
So, Discovery number 1 yesterday was that I have 0 phone reception in, near or around Kings cross! argh! I ended up standing at the exit for the tube station and staring at the crowds of people. The tactic paid off, but the londoners didn't like being stared at very much- and I only spotted my own mother because she was on Crutches.
After all that stress we went into St Pancras (It turns out that was where she'd meant in the first place..) to get coffee and cake from Payton and Byrne- Their Lemon drizzle cake is amazing (Thanks Sophie- you put me onto them ages ago, and I have to walk past their shop at the station for my train, I think 90% of return train journeys I am accompanied by a box with cake it it!). We decided to take the cake "to go" and head up to Tower hill to see the WW1 memorial at the Tower of London.
I've seen loads of pictures of this in the news papers and it looks impressive, but actually seeing it in person, and each tiny poppy being a persons life- It's very sobering. They will add poppies until remembrance sunday. To see all those lives lost and for that to not even be a complete representation of soldiers who died in the first world war is almost too much to properly comprehend.
It's beautiful, and it makes you consider fully the gravity of something which you've only ever covered briefly in History lessons, I also think it's very sad.
To allay our melancholy after seeing the poppies, we walked towards the river and found a bench to eat our cake on.
We took the river bus from tower hill to the Embankment for the Tate Modern. I've never used them before- I was impressed with how quick it is and you get discount if you already have a travel card- I think it's about 1/3 off.
We went past London Bridge, Tower Bridge and the HMS Belfast- we even saw the traitors gate for the tower!
If it had been less fantastically freezing I might have taken more photos.
At Embankment we had a touristy stare at The Globe- I've never seen a play there.. I wonder if I am patient enough to stand for a whole performance.
:S
My parents have been and really enjoyed the experience, I think they saw Hamlet.I'm not sure I know enough Shakespeare plays to pick a good one to go and see!
And on to the Tate.
We had fancy jasmine tea to warm up after the boat ride- As I'd been leaving the house , Traff had taken my Berlin 4 Euro coat off the back of the door and insisted that I take it because the forecast didn't look great.
I've never been more grateful to him!
It was really windy and spotted with rain all day in London- Some places even had their Air Con on still as It's August, so occasionally I also wore my coat inside.
We also managed to get a space on the balcony and see the view:
We were early for our timed entrance for the exhibition, so we had a look around the "dreams" gallery at the surrealist paintings.
The Cut outs were not quite what I had expected- I've only ever really seen the cut outs when Matisse had "refined" the technique- things like "The Sheaf" and "Oceana". It shocked me a bit to see how rudimentary the origins of the "cut outs" were- it started off as a way to look at potential compositions for paintings and as a model.
Then it turned into it's own "Thing".
I liked some of the paintings in the Jazz series- I liked "wolf" "toboggan" and "dragon". But there were others I really did not understand.
There were loads of people with sketch books drawing from the exhibition and even though there was a very strict and enforced "no phones, no cameras" policy there were plenty of sneaky photos being taken!
I liked the older work and I was surprised how much mixed media, ceramic and glass work he'd done- I never knew he'd worked with anything other than paint!
It was interesting.
I learned something.
I'm still not a massive Mattise fan, but he seems like an interesting and eccentric artist.
After the exhibition we went for Dim Sum at Dumplings Legend in China town. My mum had never had Dim sum before- So we took ages to order as she wanted to ask millions of questions.
She enjoyed it though so when Kirstie is Unavailable I do have a Dim Sum eating partner!
After china town, we decided to walk to Covent garden for a drink, but when we got there it was crazy!
We thought it would be quieter in Holborne so started walking that way-Somehow my mothers beer compass is wonky and we ended up back in Leicester square.
In the end we went to a cocktail bar just off the Strand called "The Nook"
Cocktails were £8 but as it was happy hour it was 2 for £12 which is a pretty fair price- and they were massive cocktails- served in jam jars!
After cocktails we realised it was pretty late- We headed for our respective national rail stations- I had to run the length of St Pancras (No cake this time) for my train as I got off the tube with 6 minutes to departure time.
I spent the whole ride home red and panting. Classy.
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