London, Take One: the fun trip

I am returned from a lovely jaunt to London to meet up with Hannah, who was swinging back west after a family trip to Amsterdam and had time to stop over and see some theatre and have a wander with me. We had an awesome time being non-obnoxious tourists, walking to and fro around central London, drinking coffee, and generally catching up.

London behaved itself in terms of weather, and as we walked we saw the telltale signs of everyone gearing up for the Paralympics, which is pretty cool.

New logo for Tower Bridge!

We went to the Tate Modern and and the Victoria and Albert Museum, the latter of which is officially my favourite museum ever because they have everything from historical costume to Islamic art to ironwork and other decorative arts, and basically it's everything I want in a museum all at once. Also, this time around they had a bunch of chairs in the entrance and out in the courtyard, which bore a very specific design element--they had conical bases!

(Not shown: much giddy laughter and trying to balance upside down while making silly noises.)

We ended up just hanging out in the V&A's garden for a couple of hours, just because the chairs were, in addition to being extremely fun to faff about in, extremely comfortable. It was a good time.

In addition, we went and saw a spectacular production of Sweeney Todd, and a fun production of Singin' in the Rain, which prompted me to watch the movie as soon as I got home. But more than anything, we just walked around, seeing stuff. We hit Baker Street, Fleet Street, Downing Street, saw Buckingham Palace and a very unhappy changing of the guard that started in sunshine and finished in the rain, and wandered around Hyde Park for quite a while. We also walked a good deal of the south bank of the Thames, which neither of us had seen, which was quite lovely.

Most importantly, however, we hit my personal favourite road, which is of course:

Land of the spectacular tailoring. We drooled at many suits in the windows, and were thoroughly intimidated by the people inside the shops who looked so at home amidst so much mahogany and chalked fabric. Ah, the magic of bespoke. 

Anyway, it was a lovely time! I think I finally have a better sense of the overall geography of London, which is definitely something that has eluded me for a long while. So hopefully when I go back on Monday for my intellectual history program I won't get lost.