Portobello Road

I'm coming to an end of my reminiscing about London.  On our last day we went up to Notting Hill and walked Portobello Road.  I wished I had spent more time here....just like Saint-Ouen in Paris....I found so many things that I loved.  The dilemma is first.... affording them and second...how do you get bigger items back home.

You take the tube everywhere. Something that is really foreign to me since I grew up on a farm and live in a city without a subway system.  At one point the farm girl in me came out... and I remember thinking..."How cool is this....I'm riding the tube in London!!!"  I felt so worldly...LOL.

 

Pretty house.

Pretty street

Hats!!

Alice's.  They had the most amazing things inside their shop but they didn't allow photography. I did buy a small box...not new...but cute.  It's the one in the lower left hand corner of the picture.  It says "Alice's Portobello Road" on the front and on the side "Art and Other Junk"

 

The Queen was everywhere.



And food!!  This was a sugar addicts dream!!

Yum!!

Lots of people from different countries.  All week long we heard so many different languages.

Vintage clothes.

Ribbons

This store sold clothes.  The had vintage sewing machines all over the place.

Street performers were all over London too.

 

London.....I think I love you.  Now that I know how to navigate around the city.....I need to go back!!!



You give me gum gum....dum dum

Going to the British Museum is something I've always wanted to do.  They have an amazing collection of Egyptian and Middle Eastern artifacts.  Probably the biggest attraction is the Rosetta Stone.  And I don't have any good pictures of it because it was behind glass.  But I did get a tea towel with the image on it...LOL.

I could have spent days here looking at all the artifacts. The Great Court below has a glass and steel roof covering 2 acres.  There are more than 3,000 panes of glass and no two are the same.

A quartet of Sekmet.  Sekmet's name means "she who has power".  Another translation is "she who mauls"...I kinda like that one.


Hieroglyphs.  In amazing condition.  There were quite a few tablets, doors, walls that had glyphs on them.


Assyrian winged bull...one of my favorites.  They had six of these.


 
Hieroglyphs on the side of a sarcophagus.


Assyrian stone tablets.  They had so many of these and they were in beautiful condition.


One side of a Anatolian stone mold.  Loved this. You can see the pour channels on the side.


Mummified cow.  This one made me laugh.  It looks like a bad Halloween costume.


Easter Island Statue.  I took one look at this and all I heard is ...."Hey, Dum-Dum...You give me gum-gum".


And who said museums aren't fun!!

Soho

We wore ourselves out after the first few days in London.  We laid back one day and hung around the apartment to rest up.  We had a really great garden apartment with french doors in the living room and the bedroom.

The flat was actual down a small flight of stairs from street level.

The living room

The view out the bedroom doors to the garden

In the evening we went down to Soho to see the Jersey Boys.  Lou really wanted to see this.  I had no idea what to expect.  It was fantastic.  It is about the life of Frankie Valli and the music is everything that we grew up with.

Before the show we ran into some locals....

After the show we wondered around Soho.  Its a mix of bars, restaurants, gays, straights, sex shops, ice cream shops, coffee houses....

I took this for my brother, Ed. 

Such a happy boy!!

This was an ice cream store.  Loved the lighting.

 

 

 

 

Sorry Mr. President.

 

Tower of London



When we were leaving London, our greeter asked if I did a lot of shopping.  I laughed....there was no time.  We spent the week going to museums and historical sites and still didn't see it all.  Maybe next time I'll shop.

The Tower of London...something I've read about and heard about and seen in movies.  Hard to grasp that this dates back to 1066. 

One of the outside walls.  The moat was drained and replaced with grass.

Sculpture by Kendra Haste.  Surprisingly, The Tower housed some exotic animals that were given as gifts to various kings.  Lions, tigers, bears, and such.
 

The Byward Tower

Traitor's Gate...people sent to the Tower were rowed up the Thames and entered through this gate.  It was chilling to stand here and realize that Anne Boleyn was brought through this gate to be imprisoned before her beheading.



The White Tower

There is a large collection of armor in the White Tower

I couldn't help thinking about all the forging that it took to make all this armor.

Waterloo Block where the crown jewels are kept. 

 

The amount of gold and jewels and crowns was mind-numbing.  I just kept saying...Oh My God.

 

 What cracked me up was there were donation boxes where you could drop in spare change and bills to help fund the exhibit.  I understand that the Tower of London gets no financial support from the government or the crown...but really....probably best not to put a donation box just outside the room that has millions and millions of dollars worth of gold and gemstones.

Guard outside the crown jewels

Tower Bridge.  Such a sight!!

More on London....

The National Gallery is located at Trafalgar Square.  It's been open since 1838 and houses over 2300 European paintings from the 13th to the 19th century.  I wanted to go mostly to see the collection of Impressionists but there were a number of other masterpieces that we sought out....Bottecelli, Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Holbein.

Unfortunately they did not allow photography...which I found baffling.  And they are very serious about that.  I saw a guard yelling at someone trying to snap a quick pic.

Which made me really nervous when Lou and I started admiring one of the Rembrandt's.  Lou was pointing at the picture and I kept telling him to stop pointing.  He was getting too close to the painting and most of these museums have electric eyes that set off an alarm if you get close.  But Lou kept gesturing and I kept telling him to stop. 

We went back and forth like this until Lou said..."Gail, Gail, (and then in a hushed tone) Gail...shut the fuck up". 

Well if you know me...my mouth fell open and my hand went up on my hip and I said..."What did you say to me".  Lou looked a little sheepish and kind of mumbled something. 

I told him...."In 25 years together, you have never said anything like that to me".  Still looking a little sheepish he said...."Oh I've said it...this is just the first time you've heard it".

At which point we both cracked up laughing.  He is soooo lucky I have a good sense of humor.

More pictures of the sights around Westminster.  I love the architecture.


A look back to Big Ben from Trafalgar Square.


We finished the day by walking to Buckingham Palace. Below is Admiralty Arch.  It is at one end of The Mall and the Palace is at the other end. I read that this used to house government offices but has recently been leased to a developer to make it into a luxury hotel.



Buckingham Palace.  This was the balcony where we watched Charles and Diana kiss and more recently where William and Kate kissed.





This was only our second day in London and we walked our feet off.