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Published: December 23rd 2006
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Actually, that should really say we're not in the NZ summer anymore, Toto. Its absolutely freezing here!! I don't know if I've ever been somewhere so cold before. Its usually between 1-2 degrees in the morning, gets up to around 4 during the day and drops to god knows what in the night. I'm slowly getting used to it, but I think its going to take a while. I still wear about 20 layers of clothing every day and by the time I get home my hands are stiff (despite wearing nice leather gloves) and my nose is numb.
But enough whinging, I've been doing some pretty cool things in the last few days. On Thursday Clare was off to Sheffield for a meeting and wouldn't be home till 8. So I was left with the house keys and a whole day to amuse myself. In the morning I caught a train to the South Bank of the Thames to visit the Tate Modern. This was a bit of a mission to find, and I walked for about 15 minutes through the backstreets behind the Thames to get to the entrance. It was totally worth the effort though, the entire
Shakespears Globe Theatre
This reconstruction of the Globe is next to the Tate Modern, but I decided not to take a tour that day. gallery is amazing, including the building itself. It is some kind of old brick industrial building, I think it was a power station. It is very large, square and a quite understated from the outside. Inside, there are about 6 floors of high ceilinged gallery space on a very impressive scale. The highlight would have to be the big slide's by Carsten Höller which come from almost every floor down to the ground floor through the 'Turbine Room', a huge atrium space at the back of the building which is 6 floors high. I managed to get onto a slide from the 4th floor (its free, but you have to book a time slot and it's very popular.) A bit scary, and I kinda hurt one elbow on the side but heaps of fun.
I also took in two floors of the gallery's permanent collection which included a few works by Andy Warhol, a Marcel Duchamp 'Fountain' (urinal) and a room full of Barnett Newman and Jackson Pollock just to name a few! Any one who took the 20th Century art history paper in first year would have found a work by almost every artist we covered and it
was quite an experience to see it all in the flesh. After all that I needed a coffee, and decided to brave the gallery cafe. Thankfully, the standard of coffee was a bit better than in the National Gallery, although it was quite watery. I didn't want to see much more as I had reached art saturation point and wouldn't have appreciated any of it, so I plan to head back later.
Walking across the Millenium bridge was a good chance to see the Thames river, and all I can report is that its brown, with quite a bit of litter in it and a couple of ferries buzzing around. Not that exciting. What was nice was the that the bridge started right outside the Tate Modern and ended outside St Pauls Cathedral. St Pauls is very beautiful and I took a few photo's outside, but when I went into see the church, it had an 8 pound entrance fee! Something just doesn't feel right about charging to see a church so I decided to come back a bit later on, if I wanted to pay. I ended the day with a big walk down from St Pauls to
Trafalgar Square through Fleet Street. It was a nice way to feel the buzz of the inner city.
Chris also came home on Thursday night, and it was really nice to see him. I cooked Clare and Chris my vegetarian moussaka for dinner and I'm pleased to say I managed to stay up to 10:30 without getting too tired.
On Friday, Clare had work in the morning so Chris and I went off to the British Museum, where we looked at some mummies, heaps of old Egyptian, Greek and Roman sculpture and some really beautiful Assyrian wall reliefs. We also checked out the British Museums reading room, which is possible the coolest thing I have seen so far. It is a huge circular room with bookshelves covering every space on the wall up three stories, underneath a beautiful gold and glass domed ceiling. I've always liked the idea of library's and this was a really wicked one. I decided I want one just like it in my house!
The rest of the day was fairly uneventful, Chris and I stopped off at the Convent Garden markets on the way home, and he had a Cornish Pastie -
which I couldn't quite bring myself to try. It all looked a bit too pie like for me! We attempted a Christmas shop with Clare at the local Tesco's, which took an hour and a half and was absolute mayhem. We were all a bit exhausted after that so spent the evening watching DVDs and eating dinner.
Today, we're off to meet Anna and Ben for a pub lunch and maybe some shopping later!!
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