A Few Days In and Around London (kind of a "pre-VISA-art-tour")

(Quick photo dump of our visit to London, as we have to clean up our house exchange and "pop" over to the airport for our flights.)

(We learned that "pop" is a very British word to use over here!)

We arrived in our London flat (from Richmond, where we'd spent a couple of days in a traditional British Inn, attached to a very traditional British Pub) on Wednesday, and took a "down day" as we were both feeling a bit bagged.  The eclipse was on that evening, and lacking eclipse glasses (or even any way to see the sun as it was blocked by all the trees in our yard) we watched the eclipse via the shadows of the trees on our house.  Pretty cool actually!

Thursday we decided to visit the National Gallery, so in a roundabout kind of way we wandered over there via Buckingham Palace, St James's Park, Westminster Palace, Big Ben and Trafalgar Square.  We also enjoyed an ice cream in the park as we waited to go to the gallery (we had booked timed entry tickets).  (Which they never inspected by the way, we just waltzed in!)

At the "Canada Gate" to St James's Park:

More reflections for my collections:

Westminster Abbey (we didn't visit this trip, maybe next time):

Big Ben:

At The National Gallery, lots and lots of paintings (we did the full audio tour, about 4 hours) and then we finally came to the Monet room!!!  They had a great collection (although I have to say the best Monet aterlillies I've seen so far are in the MoMA in New York.)  (Next trip I'm going to visit this room first, and as early as I can get there, before all the crowds arrive!)

We tried to find a pub to grab a beer, but everything downtown was too crowded to we hopped the "tube" back to Brixton and found a small craft beer place for a pint.

Friday we started with breakfast at Ottolenghi Spitalfields (one of Sonya's quest destinations).  Then we did a walk along the Thames, past the Tower of London, Tower Bridge and then to St Paul's.  (We decided to book a tour of St Paul's for Saturday, since it features prominently in "London" (by Edward Rutherford) which we've both just read.  Then across the Millenium Bridge to the Tate Modern.

Outside the Tower of London (we didn't visit, maybe next time):

Tower Bridge (this is as close as we got):

St Paul's:

The Tate Modern is in a pretty cool building (an old factory I think).  And of course the highlight was the Rothko Room (although it featured mostly his "dark period" as I call it, which isn't my favourite):

During a break on Floor 4 we noticed the following installation.  It's a rough knock-off on "Comedian" I think:

We finished up our day with a tour of parliament - the Palace of Westminster.  Parts of the building (the wooden beams behind me here) are almost a thousand years old!  (Or maybe over a thousand years, I don't recall.)  This tour was very expensive but worth the price!

After our parliament tour we crossed the street to St Stephen's Tavern for a beer (we were expecting it to be too busy but were pleasantly surprised we could get a table.)

Saturday we started with our tour of St Pauls in the morning, climbing 528 steps to the top of the dome.

There are actually three levels you can climb to.  The first is the Whispering Gallery, where you are on a catwalk inside the dome.  No photos allowed unfortunately :-(  The second is the Stone Gallery, higher up and outside the dome:

To get to the top (the Golden Gallery) you climb up a metal staircase between the second and third layers of the dome.  (There are 3 layers - the "inside" dome, the "outside" dome, and the "middle" dome, which is structural and holds everything together.)  This is looking up which climbing to the Golden Gallery:

At the top, before you climb outside, you can look down through a window to the cathedral floor:

This is the view from the Golden Gallery, higher than the Eiffel Tower apparently.  I don't know why I do this, I'm terrified of heights:

Sonya however is very casual about the whole thing.

Henry Moore of course (a bit of a theme for this trip):

Views from under the dome, facing West and then East.  West - how the church was originally built/decorated:

 

East - how they had to "bling" it up for Queen Victoria:

After our tour we did a walk through crowded crowded Covent Garden and Soho, and then through the Seven Dials Market, looking for lunch.  We decided that this was the tourist epicentre of London, so we walked a bit further afield and found a nice restaurant called the Noble Rot Soho which was very nice and a bit more quieter.

We decided to then walk to the Borough Market however we crashed out and only made it to Waterloo Station and then grabbed a bus home.

Sunday we visited the Tate Britain (the only place we had to line up to get into, although the line moved pretty quickly) where we completed the "Neo-Post-Op Impressionism" trifecta (Claude Monet, Mark Rothko and Bridget Riley).

This is one of her early paintings, if you stand to close it freaks out your brain!

And this one is just completed last year (2025)!  Bridget Riley is in her 90's and still working.

Damien Hirst:

Peter Doig:

We went to Fallow Haymarket for a late lunch.  (Very good food but very busy, I think this is a popular spot to post on Instagram.)

Another reflection:

Banksy Statue:

We then walked to Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens - they were a bit disappointing as everything here is suffering from the summer of heat and drought.  We'll pay another visit next year when we're back!

A Black Swan event at Hyde Park:

The state of the lawns in most parks.  This is Kensington Gardens:

Overall we found London to be very "cool" but also very expensive.  We found the Marks and Spenser (and other grocery/convenience stores) were a good source of cheap meals (sandwiches and salads) so we could afford to eat in restaurants once in awhile.  It was very easy and convenient to get around via transit (bus, tube, train) and you mostly just tap your credit card.

Leeds, York and on to London

We are now (Wed Aug 12) in our second home exchange in London.  (Actually a bit south of London, south of Brixton near Tulse Hill and Dulwich.  It's about an hour or so by train or transit to downtown London.)  Since my last post we spent a few days in and around Leeds and then took a train to Richmond (west of London) where we stayed for a couple of days.

We walked York Gate Garden, which is a lovely garden near Leeds - once privately owned and now part of a trust (or something, I don't know all the details but they have a few gardens they maintain).  They also had a nice cafe where we had lunch.

On the way to/from the garden we walked through the Scottish Woods, which we saw an aqueduct and the remains of an old mill from the 1800's.  (You get used to running into this kind of stuff in this part of the world.)  (We were planning to take a bus to the garden but it was delayed so we decided to walk instead!)

We did a day trip from Leeds to York, where they have most of the remains of their old city wall.  Which you can walk around.  So here we are.

This is Clifford's Tower, which we didn't go up because you had to pay!

Of course we visited a few gardens during our walk around town!

One of the coolest sights in York - the remains of St Mary's Abbey.  (I don't know any of the history of this abbey, sorry!)

In a park near the York Minster, a bug hotel!  (It's hard to read the little sign but it has reviews from AirBugAndBug :-P)

We did the York Minster tour including of course the 275 step climb to the top of the tower.

We did the full audio tour of the Minster, which was fascinating!  We could have probably spent the whole day here.

We also visited a couple (!!!) of pubs in York - the Whippit Inn and the Slip Inn (these Yorkians are clever!) - which punctuated our walk around town.  Here are the famous York Gates which was passed on the way out of town.

On Saturday we did a long walk from Leeds to nearby Woodlesford, along the canal.

I call this "Leedshenge", but it's just a pagan worship site built in the 1990's.  Pretty cool anyways to just run into this random site along the canal.

On our final day in Leeds we visited the Leeds Art Gallery.  This is either a contemporary sculpture, or Leeds roadworks is getting out of hand!

An interactive exhibit you could walk into!

In the adjoining Henry Moore Institute (Henry Moore was an honrary graduate of Leeds University) an exhibition of modern sculpture - "Phantasmagoria: Folkloric Sculpture for the Digital Age".  It was very "cool" and a lot of the exhibits were interactive.

We also saw a display of Mongolian Warrior skills at the Armoury, also very "cool"!!!

Inside the Armoury, lots of guns and swords, and of course an elephant.

Monday we took a train to London (Leeds to London King's Cross) and then muddled our way to Richmond via the "tube", where we'd booked a couple of days at the Duke's Head Inn.  (A fine traditional English inn!  Came with a hearty English breakfast every morning and we made time for a pint every afternoon :-D)

We of course made a visit to Kew Gardens (the largest botanical gardens in the world according to Sonya).  I was interested because they were having a Henry Moore exhibit and had dozens of his statues littered about the garden.

Also this giant "beehive" that you could enter and stand in!

More Moore.

There were also a bunch of plants and flowers according to Sonya.

Next day we did a long walk along the Thames River from Richmond to Hampton Court Palace.  Along the way we saw the obelisk that marks the limits where the Thames River is tidal (much further upstream than I expected1).

At Hampton Court (we didn't go in because we were too cheap).

We took a riverboat back to Richmond!  Along the way we went through a lock (which we never did on our canal boat adventure).

Here is our boat after dropping us off in Richmond.  (It continued all the way into London.)

Final stop in Richmond - the Ottolenghi shop.  Sonya has all of his recipe books and we cook his recipes all the time.  He has another location in London where we're booked for breakfast on Friday, yum!

Today (Wednesday) we've moved into our home exchange, and we're having a "down day" because we're both feeling a bit under the weather.  More news to follow in the days ahead!