London, Saturday, 7 June 2015
We started our day by training to the Beatles Shop on Baker
Street, next to the Sherlock Holmes games shop and across the road from the
Rock and Roll shop. We received a pleasant surprise to see the value of Mary’s
collection of original Beatles’ albums and enjoyed purchasing various items.
On
our return we stopped in front of a display at the Baker Street Underground Lost
Property office.
This is an advertisement for an upcoming exhibition of the
strangest items left behind on trains over the past decades, including: a
Coffin, movie cameras from the 1930’s, prosthetic arms and legs, false teeth,
clothing irons from the 1930’s, etc…
We headed to Trafalgar Square and made our way through a
crowd watching a concert in celebration of Indonesia to the National Gallery.
There is always something going on.
It was a joy to see so many well-known masterpieces from 1400
to 1900 so well presented and easily accessible for everyone. I was surprised
by the: size of the Van Gogh chair painting, infinite array of exquisite microscopic
details and range of colours in the pre-Renaissance paintings, gently beguiling
Leonardo Da Vinci paintings (& preparatory cartoon/drawing), soft oil
pastel scenes by Degas.
Then we made our way through the National Portrait Gallery
where our enjoyment was magnified when we transferred our attention from the
cavalcade of perfectly painted powerful, rich, ruthless, brutal royal twits and
their political cronies to the depictions of individuals from the 1920’s
onwards. Especially those involved in the Arts and of whom we had more than
some passing knowledge.
And again all for FREE!
On the way home we stopped for a bite at, “The Real Greek”
which was very nice and could be a good idea for a franchise. We were served by an Italian waiter whose T -shirt had the Hippocrates quote on it. Apparently the
national dish in England is no longer Indian Chicken Tikka but Italian pizza. We went Greek.
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