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Finally took the opportunity to get some sight-seeing in, along with approximately 236 miles of walking this weekend. On Saturday, I spent a wonderful day at the Victoria & Albert Museum of art and design, which includes collections of jewelry, textile arts, ironworks, and at the moment the fashion history of The Supremes. Some of my favorite items:
This was part of a large display of historical biscuit tins:
This "chandelier" is hanging in the main entryway - it's composed of hundreds of black glass pieces suspended from the ceiling:
The giftshop may be the best museum shop I've ever seen, and they don't even force you to go through it in order to exit the building.
Sunday the weather was actually sunny(-ish) so I went to Regent's Park, which is a block from my hotel. It is more than 400 acres of the most beautiful public land I've ever seen. Seriously, it's HUGE:
There is a boating lake, athletic fields, an English garden, several small snack bars, multiple buildings, and more goose poo than you would ever believe. The flowers are the most amazing part to me:
There are even black swans on the small lake:
Lastly, I did my tourist duty and headed down to Picadilly Circus:
It was a real zoo, though, so I trekked further down to Trafalgar Square, where they'd set up a huge screen to watch the Olympics. I caught some women's field hockey - Great Britain vs. Germany:
In the square in front of the National Gallery, there were many artists (and their dogs) creating mostly amazing sidewalk chalk art:
More walking took me to the Royal Mews, where some guards and horses patiently put up with tourists and their cameras:
And then I went home. Whew.
After nearly a week, I finally got some time to put a post together. Kind of a "duh" statement but London is a really busy city. I arrived safe, sound and utterly exhausted at 6:50am last Thursday morning. Settled in at my home away from home. Worked for two days. Got a tour of the South Bank on Friday evening, including a lovely view of the London Eye:
It's bigger than it looks here - each car carries 20 people. And it's surrounded on the sidewalk by street performers, including about 25 different people painted like statues as well as this gentleman walking around with a bike balanced on his head:
Saturday, I took a stroll through the Portobello Road Market, three streets full of displays by seemingly every clothing 'recycler,' jewelry maker and hawker of second-hand stuff in all of London. It was incredibly crowded, no matter where you were in the sprawling stalls:
You could even buy a bike from a stall...though the van carrying the bikes to the market was a bit more interesting than the bikes themselves:
Interestingly, some of the original designers have created an online storefront for their wares as well.
On Sunday, my boss arrived for meetings this week and he decided we needed to 'see the sights.' So off we went to see, in no particular order, Shakespeare's Globe Theatre:
The Tower of London (and met the only female Beefeater, though I didn't get a picture):
And a pub on the Thames that was originally built in 1610 or something. I don't have a picture of the pub, but I do have a picture of my favorite part of it:
On the subject of food and drink, since my arrival, I've eaten pub food, Spanish, Lebanese, Moroccan and plain old sandwiches. My diet will probably get a bit more boring as soon as my boss leaves and I'm back on my own, though. And people aren't kidding when they say curry is the national dish here. You can get a bowl for next to nothing on just about every block.
Not that I post very often, but you'll see a blog slow-down in August because I'll be working a few thousand miles from home in London! Yay for cheap trains and planes, and yay for chocolate, beer and, um, more beer!
It's not often that I find a brand I've never heard of before. But Nau isn't a common brand in any sense.
