Today's blog is brought to you by the letter C. I just had one thing to add to G's blog regarding our flights. It turns out that even though we could barely touch the ground on the Singapore flight because the seats were so huge with a mountain of leg room, the kid sitting behind me could still manage the whole kick the seat in front game. Very clever really as we was half my height.
OK so now that is out of my system - to Monday and London! G booked us a fabulous hotel called St Ermin's right near St James Park. Brilliant location and pretty swanky hotel to boot. We were able to get in to our room on arrival Monday so dropped our bags, changed in to London attire (warmer clothes - well, I did) and headed out to the Tate Modern Art Gallery. The Gallery is housed in an old power station right on the southern banks of the Themes and it's worth a visit just to see this. The Gallery itself was on our must do list for this visit and it certainly didn't disappoint.
The first thing you can't help but notice through the main entrance is this incredible giant cement slab (sorry "giant cement entrance") that you walk down to get into the main part of the gallery. When we arrived there were two kids arriving with their Dad. The kids had come on their scooters and they were most disappointed when their father said "No you have to walk down the ramp." The Turbine Hall (pictured below) which once housed the electricity generators of the old power station, is five storeys tall with 3,400 square metres of floorspace. It is used to display large specially-commissioned works by contemporary artists.
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| Entrance to the Tate Modern - the Turbine Hall |
The Tate Modern has four out of its seven levels open to exhibitons which you can wander through at your leisure. The exhibition space is currently divided into five groups: Poetry & Dream, Structure & Clarity, Transformed Visions, Energy & Process and Setting the Scene. The collection of modern art is from 1900 to present. We wandered through the numerous rooms and really enjoyed the variety of works on display. I've added a few below to show you the types of art currently on display:
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| Picasso - Bust of a Woman 1944 |
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| Pino Pascali - Trap (all made from Steel Wool) |
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| Matisse sculpture |
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| Wadsworth - The Beached Margin |
After a bite to eat we wandered the streets of London then headed out to Covent Gardens where we stumbled across cheap tickets to the West End shows and grabbed 2 tickets to Billy Elliot. Back to the hotel for the inevitable crash after 1 1/2 day's travel.
After a leisurely start Tuesday we headed off to Churchill's War Rooms, which includes the Churchill Museum, one of G's must dos. Churchill War Rooms are the original Cabinet War Rooms - the wartime bunker that sheltered Churchill and his government during the Blitz and the duration of WWII. It was pretty amazing to see how Churchill and his team fought the War from these rooms and just how many people worked at this level. The majority of the rooms have been left as they were once the War ended in August 1945. All the clocks are stopped at just before 5pm. Its quite interesting to see how the British operations took place from underground. Below is a picture of Churchill's cabinet room
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| Churchill's cabinet room |
This picture below shows the amount on concrete placed above a number of the rooms which the British has determined to be soft spots (meaning in a bomb raid these areas would be damaged) solution.... fill them up with cement and reinforce with steel beams below.
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| Cement reinforcements |
After lunch we started to make our way to Westminster Abbey for a self-guided visit. Little did we know that a certain Margaret was also heading that way. (London has been just a little busier than usual due to the impending State funeral). We were about to cross the road to enter the Abbey when traffic was stopped and there she was passing by on her way to the very same place.
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| Maggie Thatcher's coffin coming to Westminster Abbey |
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| Maggie Thatcher's coffin |
After that interruption on we went for our own visit to the Abbey. Westminster's history goes back over 1,000 years with the current abbey built in the gothic style. For me, it seemed the be a church for the royals and other "significants" in England, but not exactly a church for the people. The number of tombs and memorials was a little overwhelming. The more important you were the larger the memorial really! Glad we did it though.
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| Westminster Abbey |
We headed back to the hotel (300 metres away!) for a bit of a rest before headed out for a quick meal then Billy Elliot. Getting to a West End show was a must for me and Billy was top of my list. Loved every minute of it - a great production with some timely opinion about Margaret Thatcher and the attitude towards her from the coal mining community.
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| Billy Elliot at the Victoria Palace Theatre |
Tomorrow's plan is to get out of the city and visit Kew Gardens as the streets of London look like they'll be packed for a funeral.