London - touristy things...

The British Museum: 

Just wow. I love the British Museum. It’s so big and there’s so much to see that it’s easy to get tired and overwhelmed, there is just so much to take in. One of the reasons I would love to live in London is so I could go to the museums and galleries all the time and spread the experience out. It’s impossible to see everything or even enjoy everything in a short amount of time. So we rushed through, trying to get the flavour of the place.

There’s a new building in the middle of the museum, (well, new to me, I think it was built in 2000) – excellent architecture. It’s called the Queen Elizabeth II Great Court (not the most imaginative name) and it’s made the Museum’s inner courtyard into a large covered public square. It is a two-acre space enclosed by a glass roof with the famous Reading Room at its centre.

Tate Modern:
There was some wonderful work here. I’m more a Renaissance person when it comes to art, and often Contemporary Art leaves me cold with it’s obscure, often difficult, self-referential navel gazing. But when it’s good, it’s very good. I did find the temporary exhibition much more interesting than the general collection though.

The National Gallery:
The best, best place to go in London. It has some of my all time favourite works. I also spent quite a bit of time photographing gilt frames which I think will become a new obsession of mine. This is a truly wonderful place.

Afternoon Tea at the Ritz:
A super touristy thing to do, I know. It was fun though. There was far more food than we could eat – I don’t know how other people do it. I’ve read that there are better places to go in London for afternoon tea, but I’d never been to the Ritz, so that’s where we went. To be fair to the whole of the UK though, everywhere we went served excellent tea and scones (I tried them absolutely everywhere we stopped for a snack). Maybe it’s one of those cultural things, where the local standard is so high, there is just no place for terrible tea and scones, a bit like being in Rome (where there is no decent tea at all) but the coffee and the pastries are fabulous practically anywhere.