Today we started out by renting bikes from a Barclay’s bike stand. Note to future self: These are bikes those you rent on the street with a credit card and then pull out of a little stall. Then you ride them to another stall elsewhere in the city and park them. It is very convenient when you don’t want to backtrack or keep up with your bike.
First we peddled to Hyde Park and rode through a bit of it to get to a little café. By the time we got there it was near 12:00 or 12:30 so we went ahead and grabbed some food to eat. After that we walked through a bit of the park including along the Serpentine and part of the rose garden then we hopped on a bus for a short bit. Once we got off (on Picadilly?) we walked through a market where we’d been the previous day and bought some macaroons at Ladurée. The shop was cool. It was pretty tiny and looked like a cave made of gold. And the macaroons, which I had never had, were delicious. I had vanilla and coffee.
Then we picked up more bikes. We went through Leadenhall Market and then proceeded to bike through So-Ho, the business district, and London City. I had never heard of London City as a separate entity from greater London so I got some neat info there. We then returned the bikes at a spot near St. Paul’s Cathedral and walked across the Millennium Bridge to Tate Modern Museum. We started by heading straight to the top to get some caffeine and snacks in their café. We sat by a window that overlooked a huge section of the Thames. We had an excellent view of the Millennium Bridge, Tower Bridge, St. Paul’s, the Gherkin and several other buildings. I had some chocolate cake and while we ate Aunt Jill and Uncle Tim continued the architecture lesson that we’d begun on the bike ride. I got an overview of Art-Deco, Brutalism, and Modernist as well as the older styles seen around London.
At Tate Modern Aunt Jill began my education in modern art, which I knew little about. We went through cubism, surrealism, pop art, and impressionism. I saw works by Matisse, Andy Warhol, Picasso, and about a bajillion others. I learned quite a bit, I hope I can remember it all.
Afterward we biked a bit more and found our way to South Bank. (An area with several theatres along the river. We went to the roof of one theatre and had drinks with Guido. Then we proceeded below to do watch a show with three female dancers/movers/gymnasts/lifters. Basically they walked around making faces and climbing on each others’ bodies. Some things were cool, but most were okay. As we were leaving Aunt Jill and I ran into this fountain that was basically a four-square court made with watery walls that turn off and on. We ran in while one wall was off and then changed squares as different walls went down before we finally hopped out. We were only a little wet. ‘Twas fun.
After that we walked across the river and took the Tube to South Kensington where we exited for Lates, a late night all adult thing at the Science Museum. They had a ton of cool events and shows and things, but most of them were too crowded to do. The one activity we did was watch a show called Punk Science where two guys bantered with the audience and occasionally described theories about the end of the universe. I thought it was a bit worthless as they only actually told us about 3 facts in the entire 40 min show. We then did a few experimenty game type things before calling it a night.
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