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If anyone had ever told me that I would go sightseeing in London wearing shorts I would have laughed at them. However, this morning dressed in shorts, we caught the train to South Kensington so that we could visit the Victoria and Albert Museum. As with most museums in London the V&A has a vast collection and it is not really possible to do it justice in only a couple of hours! We really only skimmed the surface with a fairly quick stroll through Europe 1600 - 1800, China and the Islamic Middle East, Sculpture, Medieval 300 - 1500, Japan, Fashion, some more Sculpture, Ironwork and the Cast Courts.
Of everything that we saw we found the Cast Courts the most interesting. The Victorians used to make plaster casts of all the great European sculptures for educational purposes. The V&A now houses copies that in many instances are better than the originals that have been lost, destroyed or simply deteriorated over time in their original settings!!
After our very superficial visit to the V&A we enjoyed lunch in the John Madejski Garden courtyard before proceeding to the Natural History Museum. Oh dear, another vast collection and only a limited
amount of time to view it. We actually found that we were more impressed with the building that houses the collection than the collection itself. Of course we only viewed a portion of the collection so we may have missed the best bits??
We went through the dinosaur exhibition and the mammal rooms. We suspect that the museum does not have air conditioning as it was rather warm and stuffy, especially in the mammal rooms! The specimens are rather aged as it is no longer politically correct to collect new specimens and stuff them!!! All the furry exhibits seem to have faded to a uniform shade of grey!
From the ground floor we did venture up to the primate gallery, the section depicting our place in evolution and the rather impressive cross section of a 1300+ year old Sequoia. The Sequoia was harvested in the 1800s so that it could be displayed at a World Exhibition. Of course chopping down one of these magnificent trees is no longer politically correct either!!
We skipped the Science Museum and headed along Exhibition Road towards the Royal Albert Hall and the Albert Monument. I think we have been to the
Royal Albert Hall before, but Bernie insists that we haven’t!! We have $1 riding on it until we arrive home and can check the photo album and diary to see if it can confirm it one way or the other?!
We headed into Hyde Park next and walked along Rotten Row where horses may still be exercised. We didn’t see any horses being exercised, but we did see a couple of guys jogging along the track despite the heat! At the end of the Serpentine we took a couple more photos. As we walked through the park we were amazed at the lengths Londoners go to, to get a tan if/when the sun actually shines. There was one woman who was just about nude sunbathing right in the middle of London. She was certainly topless, but appeared to be wearing a thong. I couldn’t really say as I was trying to hustle Bernie along before he strained his eyesight trying to decide if she was wearing anything at all!!!
From Hyde Park we used the pedestrian underpass to access Piccadilly Street. We walked along to the recently refurbished Burlington Arcade. The arcade is a lovely, traditional old arcade
with some seriously exclusive shops along it. To go into many of them you have to ring the door bell to be buzzed in. You certainly don’t just stroll in to browse!
After our browse around the posh end of town we wandered towards St James Park via St James Square. In St James Square we bought some ice-creams and then photographed the London Eye and Buckingham Palace from the bridge that crosses the lake. Next we walked around to the front of Westminster Abbey and then to the Westminster Bridge for a couple more photo opportunities before heading into the underground and catching the train from Westminster station. A quick change at Bakers Street and we were back in Pinner for roast chicken dinner!
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