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Published: July 17th 2008
Botticelli, Venus and Mars
housed in the national gallery, LondonThe last couple of days have been interesting and fun.
Tuesday afternoon Clara and I went to ‘afternoon tea’, which is quite the works of cakes and sandwiches, couple with tea of course. Clara doesn’t much like tea, but I sure do. It was fun, but Clara came ill whilst we were out and about, so we had to cut our tea break, and thusly our night, short. We had planned to see Wicked that night (the musical) though that has no been bumped to tonight (I have the tickets here). She is feeling much better, I might add, though yesterday she stayed in as well.
On Wednesday I spent the entire morning and part of the afternoon in the National Gallery. No photography is allowed inside, of course, but I’ll include a couple of pictures I got from the web. It was really fantastic to see some of the works of art you read about or see in movies or in books. My favorite painter of all time is Sandro Botticelli, who some of you may know is the creator of ‘The Birth of Venus’. The National Gallery houses 10~ of his pieces, so it was quite amazing
Dome of St. Pauls'
Christopher Wren built this great piece of work to see them. As a stroke of luck, it happens to hold my favorite of all his pieces - the Venus and Mars, which I’ve included a picture of.
This painting is so amazing; I cannot express how it feels to stand in front of it. Luckily they have a bench in front of it - so I spent about 30 minutes sitting there, going over the painting.
I returned back to campus to pick up James and Elizabeth (She was one of the others who lost her luggage via the airlines, so we’ve been buds ever since. She liked to call us ASDA fashion models, because we had to buy clothes from ASDA for the first few days .) We went to see Monty Python’s Spamalot, the musical. It was really good, very funny. Not at all what I expected, but that is because I’ve seen the movie. If you go with no pretense whatsoever, it is quite the laugh.
Today I spent the better part of the morning at St. Paul’s Cathedral. The beauty and splendor of this place far outweigh any church or cathedral we’ve seen yet, though Westminster rivals it. Of course, no
Golden Priest and Dome
Just a neat shot from the side pictures inside, though we were allowed to walk up to the whisper gallery, the stone gallery (outside), and the golden gallery (also outside), and thusly in the two outdoors portions I took some pictures of the amazing view. I also got my exercise in for the MONTH! They had lots of signs up - narrow staircases, spiral stairs, one way only, no turning back, 192 stairs to the whispering gallery, 245 to the stone gallery, 176 to the golden gallery! It was a workout totaling 530 steps or so from the ground to the golden gallery. Then of course I had to go back down
See here:
http://www.stpauls.co.uk/page.aspx?theLang=001lngdef&pointerID=26860QFKSv07X4ap3dTTDoGLBaIYdHaE
Anyway, tonight we are seeing Wicked, and then getting some good sleep. We meet in the lobby for Paris at 6 am. I’ll be into Paris by tomorrow at noon (London time), and will be there till around 10:30 Sunday night (also London time), at which time I will be back in London.
Cheers and Love,
-Ry
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SarahS
non-member comment
Awesome. Just awesome. Sorry, don't have anything else to add, really.