Trying to catch up....

A first effort to try and catch you up on our jam-packed last several days.

Before having our yummy Tex-Mex dinner and attending the concert at St. Martin's in the Fields, we took in several London landmarks. I managed to get my guests to the V&A first. Even Henry, who had protested. But he found plenty of interest once inside. And—surprise, surprise—there were galleries I hadn't seen on my previous visit. Like the Cast Courts, which is where the picture on the left was taken. A huge collection (as are all of the V&A's collections) of plaster casts of famous sculpture, it sounds weird, and it is, I guess, but also very impressive.

Joan and I also wandered through vast halls of tapestries, a whole room of amazing lacework, enormous rooms of other crafts like ivory carvings and ornate furniture. Our goal was the fabulous jewelry collection that I remembered from my earlier visit and we eventually made it there. (Although I still haven't found the musical instruments room.) But not without a major detour when we saw a hall that must have been a mile long filled with silver trinkets such as the monstrance pictured here. Too bad there was nothing beside it to prove its scale, but, believe me, it was three feet high if it was an inch. And the whole hall is full of stuff like this. Truly amazing stuff.

We made the mistake of deciding to take in Harrod's next, which was a mistake because it was Saturday and it was packed. I didn't enjoy it at all, when I had before. Possibly because the previous visit had exhausted all its charms. Or maybe it was just the crowds. At any rate, we didn't stay long. After buying some yummy baked goods for a picnic we split.

More park rambles followed. We wandered around through Belgravia to get to Green Park, where we saw the quite lovely and interestingly-designed Canadian Monument pictured here. Those are sculpted maple leaves on the surface of the monument under a thin stream of water, augmented by some real leaves from nearby trees. (Fall is really here now and the trees' color, while not in the same league with Maine's, is still quite nice.)

We also made it to the National Portrait Gallery, next door to the National Art Gallery we visited the day before. It was pretty interesting, and, of course, enormous. I cut my viewing time down to a manageable size by searching out the women's pictures. Of which there are precious few. However, the final room made the visit worthwhile because I saw a picture of my hero Vera Brittain, one that she refers to sitting for in The Testament of Experience, her World War II memoir. I was thrilled! In fact, the room she was in, the 20th century room, proved to be the most interesting, which is not what I'd expected upon entry to the Museum. I suppose that's the mark of a good museum, when you find something unexpected?

After such a busy day we were happy to relax with the beautful music elsewhere described.

I need to grade a few more papers before hitting the sack tonight, but will try to continue catching you up tomorrow. I leave you with a new shot I got of the ubiquitous London Eye this day, here with the back of the Horse Guards building, on the edge of St. James' Park, in the foreground.