Day 6: London

Having a meager 2 days in London, which was never going to be enough time to see everything there was there, we embarked on a desperate whirlwind tour of London to try and catch as many of the sights as possible. Unfortunately, we lost our morning settling financial matters for our trip and visiting the various banks, so that cut our daylight hours even more. After grabbing some sandwiches in the town centre, we headed towards the Tower of London in hunt for a suitable eating location, ideally along the River Thames. Along the way, we caught sight of the Tower Bridge but could find no seats along the river to lunch.

In the end, we reached the Tower of London and decided to eat at the plaza there. I'm amazed at how many outdoor skating rinks have been built all around Europe for the winter holidays. And they're placed outside the tourist attractions so, for instance, imagine skating outside the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam... There was also a skating rink outside the Tower of London and I amassed a collection of pictures showing the outdoor skating rinks of Europe while on my trip =)

Anyway, so there we were, outside the Tower of London wondering which way to go... I mean, I had a sheet of paper detailing all the must-see attractions in London, but only had their addresses, not a map... Man, I wished my dad was there and I could just follow along behind him till he says "we're here, this is ____". So anyway, with the limited daylight we had left, I decided that investing in a map of London was the best thing to do to hit as many attractions as possible. And there we are on the Tower Bridge checking our route. Basically, from the Tower of London, we crossed the Tower Bridge.

Along the way to the London Dungeons, we crossed the Southwark Cathedral which was arrested our attention for awhile. I've seen some of the most renowned churches in the past month... The Duomo in Milan, the Notre Dame in Paris, St. Peter's Basilica which is the seat of the pope, and I've been awed most of the time. But I also loved how, walking down the street, you pass by these "everyday" churches in Europe which are beautiful architecturally and I'm amazed that people go to these places weekly for service. In Rome as well, we passed these huge monumental churches that were simply designated as a "normal" church on the map, but they were all so beautiful.

So we hit the London Dungeons, but didn't go in. Same old spiel, not enough time... And even if there was some time, I'd rather go to someplace like the Tate Galleries than to the London Dungeons.

Basically, the main reason why we crossed the Tower Bridge and went to the London Dungeons was so that we could cross the Millenium Bridge. It is one of the newest "attractions" in London after all. The Millenium Bridge had a great location across the River Thames; on one side was the Tate Modern and on the other was St. Paul's Cathedral, which was our next destination.

If you can't really see from the photograph above is that the side of St. Paul's Cathedral was under renovations. What they cleverly did though was that they drew what St. Paul's Cathedral should look like on the boards covering it up so that from afar and from pictures taken from afar, no one would be able to tell the difference unless you looked really closely. One of the joys of winter travel is that since it's "off-season", there're cheaper prices and much shorter queues into the attractions... In fact, less crowd in general. However, a problem is that because it's not tourist-season, a number of the attractions also take this opportunity to restore or renovate, which can get pretty annoying at time. The trick done here helped ease the blow of not being able to see St. Paul's Cathedral. It really was very well executed. Which is more than I can say for the Duomo in Milan... But that's another story.

Moving on, after St Paul's Cathedral, we headed over to Big Ben, the Houses of Parliment and Westminister Abbey. Along the way, we caught many glimpses of the London Eye.

Big Ben was pretty impressive, but to me, it's just a big clock really... I rather liked the houses of Parliment. As we went at dusk, the place was already beginning to light up and it was a magnificent view. Those few cars who were allowed to drive into the houses of parliment, I can imagine how those drivers must feel all important, having tons of tourists flanking your car, snapping pictures of the parliment houses but not being allowed in; and there you go, stop by the guard house and enter, and everyone thinks "I wonder who that was"...

So there's Big Ben and the London Eye from the Westminister Abbey grounds -

We proceeded to Trafalgar Square to see Nelson's column and to go to the National Gallery. By the time we reached, the sun was already on it's merry way down and with the foggy winter atmosphere, the sky was a red-purple hue which gave Nelson's Column a very surreal backdrop.


You can tell how quickly the sun set by the fact that though Nelson's Column sat right in front of the National Gallery, by the time we reached and entered the museum, it was already dark.

We only had two hours in the National Gallery and I can already hear my dad screaming in protest that that's not enough time to cover the gallery to my heart's content - which was true... Unfortunately, due to the short amount of time we had in London, sacrifices had to be made and two hours was all we could afford in the National Gallery. This meant one thing - strategy! In order to see the best paintings, I had to plan a proper route and grabbed the National Gallery brochure in order to cover all the highlights.

Unfortunately, photography isn't allowed in the National Gallery. Which is perfectly understandable actually. A lot of the other galleries I've been to - such as the Rijksmuseum, allow photography, just no flash in order to not damage the paintings. However, it's really hard to police all the visitors, and many idiots just use flash photography until they're "caught", with no real care for the paintings themselves, which is perfectly ludicrous. Most tourists are such idiots!

Anyway, ranting aside, some of the highlights of the National Gallery include Holbein's "The Ambassadors". I'm sure most of you would have heard of it, his play on perspectives was absolutely amazing... His is the painting that when viewed from the left, all you see is a distorted shape on the floor, but when viewed from the right, it suddenly becomes a skull. Google it. It sent chills up my spine...

Also saw two beautiful Da Vinci's - "The Virgin of the Rocks" and "The Virgin and child with Saint Anne and St John the Baptist". Rubens "The Massacre of the Innocents" was particularly poignant.

I was lucky that while I was there, a temporary exhibition was also taking place that was "Manet to Picasso" and I saw a ton of great paintings. Van Gogh's "Sunflowers", Seurat "Bathers at Asnieres", Monet's "Bathers at La Grenouillere", Pissarro's "Portrait of Felix Pissarro"... My favourite of that temporary exhibition was Van Gogh's "A Wheatfield with Cypresses".

But my personal darling of the National Gallery and my second transcendental moment of the trip (two in London! I know!) was seeing Gainsborough's "Mr and Mrs Andrews". I was basically moving gradually from room to room looking at the collection highlights following a chronological pattern when I looked at what the next painting on the list was and I saw - "Mr and Mrs Andrews" and I thought "oh my god! oh my god!". A great part of it's appeal was that this was the only painting I "studied" in University when taking a module on Cultural Landscapes so to actually see IT was completely MIND-BOGGLING!!! I rushed over to the room, looked hurriedly left and right to spot the painting and there it was... And I stood there in front of it. Stunned. Oh my god. I remember my hand was clutching my chest at that point and I thought "there it is"... I definitely said "wow". I saw several Gainsbroughs at the Ashmolean and some around the National Gallery and everytime I saw that name, I thought "Mr and Mrs Andrews" and never knew that it was in the National Gallery as well...

After the National Gallery, we had dinner and returned to the Hostel where we had a game of pool, our last in England for weeks, before calling it a night and prepared to greet Amsterdam the following day

silkstalkings waves =)