Thursday Walkabout
Museums and London at night.
Today was my last full day to just walk around. I got
up early, but didn't manage to get out of the house for a while. I had to go
down to Rough Trade quickly, and then I headed up to the Natural History Museum
- the quickest way being by double decker
bus.
The Natural History Museum is in South Kensington. The Science Museum is next door to the north and the Victoria and Albert Museum is across the street on the east. You could easily spend almost an entire week at that one intersection.
Outside the Natural History Museum was the travel exhibition of the Earth From The Air photographs.
If it comes by your town it's worth seeing. The book is good, but the photos are much more impressive when they're all big and in your face.
The inside of the Natural History Museum is equally impressive. This is the entrance to the Earth Sciences section. The escalator goes up two floors through a giant metal globe.
It's a very impressive and imposing entrance to the galleries. They have a section about earthquakes that includes a simulator of the Kobe earthquake of a few years ago. I don't think it carries quite the terrifying quality of a real earthquake, but it was interesting nonetheless.
I walked across the street to the Victoria and Albert Museum where they have a bunch of Buddhist Monks making a sand mandala in one of the galleries.
They hold cone-shaped instruments that are filled with coloured sand, have a tiny opening in the end, and ridges on the outside. The rub the outside with a metal rod and the sand slowly comes out the opening. The entire picture, of which only about half is complete at this point, is made up of sand poured out in this manner. Quite beautiful.
The Victoria and Albert is YAAM (yet another amazing museum). I can't really describe it well because I am, frankly, getting a bit museum-ed out at this point. There is only so much you can take in, and while I've paced myself well so far, I've also been to a lot of big, impressive museums over the past week. Just go to the V&A - trust me.
There was one museum I was still determined to see - the Imperial War Museum.
I wanted to go there as much to be inside the building as anything else. It's housed in what was previously the Bethlehem Hospital - also known more commonly as "Bedlam." As Tom pointed out, there is something starkly ironic about having the war museum housed in the previous home of the most notorious mental hospital in the world.
I only got to see a small part of the museum. I stopped briefly in the children's gift shop on the way out.
I understand the reality of it all, but there was just something inescapably disturbing about seeing all those images of war, inhumanity, destruction, and death, and then walking out past a place with cuddly teddy bears in bomber jackets and inflatable fighter jets.
After leaving the war museum, I hopped on the underground and headed up to Hoxton to meet Jerry for dinner. Hoxton is just a bit north and east of the city of London. Perhaps a very brief geography lesson would help here.
The area of London that I think of as downtown - starting at Trafalgar and radiating outwards from there - is actually the City of Westminster. On it's eastern edge, about where the Waterloo bridge hits the north shore, is the City of London. The City of London is actually very small, but it includes the Lloyds of London building, The Monument, Saint Paul's Cathedral, all the financial stuff, and quite a lot of other stuff. It is, if I'm remembering correctly, the original roman site for the city of London. A real "city within a city" kind of thing at this point.
So Hoxton is just above this. Jerry and I had dinner in a vietnamese restaurant (it was utterly indistinguishable from a Canadian Vietnamese restaurant) and then started walking. We walked through Hoxton, which has a noticeably rougher quality than Westminster.
We walked through the City of London, including the Barbican Centre. The Barbican is an arts centre that combines a number of buildings with elevated walkways, plazas, and pools of water. It's absolutely classic 70's architecture. In one long pool there was a small series of gardens sent into the water.
We then walked down, past Saint Paul's and across the Millenium Bridge. The Millenium Bridge connects the Saint Paul's area of London with the south bank at the Tate Modern. It's a beautiful footbridge with stunning views up and down the river. Unfortunately, the design of it caused it to bounce and sway wildly when lots of people walk on it. It was closed within a couple of days of opening so that they could put motion dampers on it. It is now affectionately and universally known as "The Wobbly Bridge."
Here's Jerry on the Wobbly Bridge.
London has some extraordinary bridges. Many cities claim to be "the city of bridges" (including Saskatoon, Saskatchewan - I kid you not), but few compare to the quality of London's bridges.
We took our time walking back along the river, crossing to the north side at the Waterloo Bridge, back to the south said at the New Hungerford Bridge, and then back north again at the Westminster Bridge.
This Saint Paul's, the gherkin, and the OXO Tower with the Waterloo Bridge in the foreground.
Here is Charing Cross Station and the Embankment.
And of course the ubiquitous London Eye, with Parliament in the background.
And this may be the best picture I've taken on this trip. It's the New Hungerford Bridge, looking north from the Royal Festival Hall end.
The Natural History Museum is in South Kensington. The Science Museum is next door to the north and the Victoria and Albert Museum is across the street on the east. You could easily spend almost an entire week at that one intersection.
Outside the Natural History Museum was the travel exhibition of the Earth From The Air photographs.
If it comes by your town it's worth seeing. The book is good, but the photos are much more impressive when they're all big and in your face.
The inside of the Natural History Museum is equally impressive. This is the entrance to the Earth Sciences section. The escalator goes up two floors through a giant metal globe.
It's a very impressive and imposing entrance to the galleries. They have a section about earthquakes that includes a simulator of the Kobe earthquake of a few years ago. I don't think it carries quite the terrifying quality of a real earthquake, but it was interesting nonetheless.
I walked across the street to the Victoria and Albert Museum where they have a bunch of Buddhist Monks making a sand mandala in one of the galleries.
They hold cone-shaped instruments that are filled with coloured sand, have a tiny opening in the end, and ridges on the outside. The rub the outside with a metal rod and the sand slowly comes out the opening. The entire picture, of which only about half is complete at this point, is made up of sand poured out in this manner. Quite beautiful.
The Victoria and Albert is YAAM (yet another amazing museum). I can't really describe it well because I am, frankly, getting a bit museum-ed out at this point. There is only so much you can take in, and while I've paced myself well so far, I've also been to a lot of big, impressive museums over the past week. Just go to the V&A - trust me.
There was one museum I was still determined to see - the Imperial War Museum.
I wanted to go there as much to be inside the building as anything else. It's housed in what was previously the Bethlehem Hospital - also known more commonly as "Bedlam." As Tom pointed out, there is something starkly ironic about having the war museum housed in the previous home of the most notorious mental hospital in the world.
I only got to see a small part of the museum. I stopped briefly in the children's gift shop on the way out.
I understand the reality of it all, but there was just something inescapably disturbing about seeing all those images of war, inhumanity, destruction, and death, and then walking out past a place with cuddly teddy bears in bomber jackets and inflatable fighter jets.
After leaving the war museum, I hopped on the underground and headed up to Hoxton to meet Jerry for dinner. Hoxton is just a bit north and east of the city of London. Perhaps a very brief geography lesson would help here.
The area of London that I think of as downtown - starting at Trafalgar and radiating outwards from there - is actually the City of Westminster. On it's eastern edge, about where the Waterloo bridge hits the north shore, is the City of London. The City of London is actually very small, but it includes the Lloyds of London building, The Monument, Saint Paul's Cathedral, all the financial stuff, and quite a lot of other stuff. It is, if I'm remembering correctly, the original roman site for the city of London. A real "city within a city" kind of thing at this point.
So Hoxton is just above this. Jerry and I had dinner in a vietnamese restaurant (it was utterly indistinguishable from a Canadian Vietnamese restaurant) and then started walking. We walked through Hoxton, which has a noticeably rougher quality than Westminster.
We walked through the City of London, including the Barbican Centre. The Barbican is an arts centre that combines a number of buildings with elevated walkways, plazas, and pools of water. It's absolutely classic 70's architecture. In one long pool there was a small series of gardens sent into the water.
We then walked down, past Saint Paul's and across the Millenium Bridge. The Millenium Bridge connects the Saint Paul's area of London with the south bank at the Tate Modern. It's a beautiful footbridge with stunning views up and down the river. Unfortunately, the design of it caused it to bounce and sway wildly when lots of people walk on it. It was closed within a couple of days of opening so that they could put motion dampers on it. It is now affectionately and universally known as "The Wobbly Bridge."
Here's Jerry on the Wobbly Bridge.
London has some extraordinary bridges. Many cities claim to be "the city of bridges" (including Saskatoon, Saskatchewan - I kid you not), but few compare to the quality of London's bridges.
We took our time walking back along the river, crossing to the north side at the Waterloo Bridge, back to the south said at the New Hungerford Bridge, and then back north again at the Westminster Bridge.
This Saint Paul's, the gherkin, and the OXO Tower with the Waterloo Bridge in the foreground.
Here is Charing Cross Station and the Embankment.
And of course the ubiquitous London Eye, with Parliament in the background.
And this may be the best picture I've taken on this trip. It's the New Hungerford Bridge, looking north from the Royal Festival Hall end.
Posted: Thu - June 19, 2003 at 02:40 PM Meltdown Out and About Email Comments
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Published On: Jul 02, 2003 09:07 AM
Total entries in this category: 17
Published On: Jul 02, 2003 09:07 AM