London part 1

After my four weeks of rural Ireland I decided to give myself extreme culture shock by going from the Burren, a place of ecological balance and preservation, to London, a place of posh fashion and preservation of Art.

I primarily kept to the museums and the shows held there, seeing the sights and walking, walking, walking. I refused to take public transport primarily out of fear of missing something interesting! Because of this outlook I stumbled upon more things than I can possibly list. From accidentally walking to Saint Paul's Cathedral in time to hear the noon bell, to accidentally making it to Bucking ham palace to see the changing of the guards and accidentally making it to parliament in time to hear Big Ben chime the noon bell as well!

London has an amazing collection of architecture, from the modern skyscrapers, to Saint Paul's Cathedral that took thirty-five years to complete, to the Romanesque sculptures on buildings and of course the multiple palaces in London.

To even begin describing my single week in London feels almost like a verbal impossibility to me. It was wonderful, it was busy, it was expensive, exhilarating and educating. After having seen such a clean city, where you can see the sky consistently, with large parks and green spaces everywhere has replaced my usual abhorrence for cities with the idea that I may be able to survive and operate in a city. A complete flip flop from my usual attitude of getting stressed out by large cities.

During my time there I visited more museums in a week that I usually do in an entire year, be it the same museum repeatedly or different museums.

Anyway, I started out by making my way towards Saint Paul's Cathedral, primarily because I had no plan, no map, and it dominated the skyline pretty well.

There were a bunch of creepy Cherub Heads all over the cathedral.

 

 

Which happened to be across the Thames from the Tate modern, so I scurried over the millenium bridge to go see Daimen Hirsts exhibition and to to try to understand modern art like minimalism. Suffice to say, even after looking at minimalism and such... I still don't quite grasp why people do it, Damien Hirst's exhibition was good for a creepy laugh, with animals in formaldehyde, butterfly wing collages, and a cow head being eaten by flies. He's dark, but he's also dancing the line of cutting edge and satire I think.

The Tate Modern

I saw that ridiculous diamond encrusted skull. Photos were not allowed.

Bruce Nauman Violent Incident 1986

Guiseppe Penone Tree of 12 Metres 1980-2

Cy Twombly untitled (Bacchus)

Georges Braque Mandora 1909-10

From the Tate I wandered along the embankment coming across Shakespeares Globe Theatre, some lovely views of Saint Paul's, Tower Bridge, and Southwark Cathedral.

 

The next Day I found myself at the British Museum, which was literally two blocks from the hostel I was staying at, Smart Russell Square. A decent hostel, but the wifi was not free and you had to pay for storage lockers, there's some false adverting! But it was located in a nice part of the city away from the night-scene and traffic and had a lovely little square near it.The British Museum was enourmous, part of me feels like I missed a wing, but I saw so many things that I cannot be sure. I saw Viking weapons, stuffed exotic birds, Roman and Grecian sculptures, Grecian red and black figure vases, mummies, Chinese relics, Mexican and Aztec art, Chinese paintings and line drawings by Picasso. Overwhelming.

 

 

Turtle pot!

 London is also filled with little architectural nuances that caught my eye everywhere. It seemed like everything was made of marble, the buildings had a very stately, proper, historical feel to them. and the streets were easily walkable, if you don't mind crowds and lemming mentality!

 

Black Friars Bridge

 That is the end of part one of my trip to London, I decided to split it into sections because of how many photo files are associated with each place. I filled just short of 12 GB worth of memory sticks while I was away, so it is difficult to sift through the photo-wreckage and dust off the gems, especially when I am definitely not a photographer. Check back in two or three days for part two of the London saga.