My ears hurt.

I just went for my first night bike ride in London.
why did i wait that long.
Nobody knows. But you know that funny pain inside your ears when you've been exercising outside in the chill? I've got that. It's not a bad feeling. It goes with a particular sort of warm fuzzy tiredness. A winter tired.

Also, there is nothing quite like doubledecker breath down your back when you're pedaling along. They have a personality, the buses here. I don't have a name for it yet.

I think I'll tell you about the Wallace Collection briefly. Oh, and Alfie's. Alfie's is funny.

The Wallace Collection is an art collection, an enormous one. It is in an 18th century hunting lodge, which is now smack in the middle of the shopping mecca around Bond Street. It's basically next to Selfridges.

The collection was left to the British public by the collector's (the 4th Marquis of I-don't-know-what)French wife under the condition that it never be added to or subtracted from.
The building itself is extremely opulent. I always get this funny sensation in places like that: simultaneously delighted and out of place. I was early, so I was wandering about, admiring, when I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I had dressed a cut above my normal jeans-sneakers-hoodie equation, and as a result, I didn't look out of place. It was very strange, feeling awkward and realizing that I didn't look it.

This place was rococo to the max. There were more swirlies around than atoms, practically. Unfortunately, I did not get any wondrous photos, just some mediocre ones. The rate at which my wonderful professor whisks us through these places makes me not exercise on the days we have class. It would be too much.
If you ever get the chance, go to this place. It's free. Great word, free.

Completely random thing: The only place I can really, truly say I haven't found in London is the equivalent of Hard Times Cafe. I miss that spot. It will be one of the first places I go when I get back to Minneapolis.

I've realized something about traveling. I have to live in the moment. I can't worry about home, it'll take care of itself. Further yet, I can't try to have it all. When I'm here, though I know for a fact I could live very happily here, I get little twinges of missing Minnesota and/or Wisconsin. But when I'm home, all the souls of the places I'm visiting now are whispering across the miles and the oceans, saying "come find us!". So, obvious though it sounds, you can't have le cake and eat it too. I simply count myself lucky that I ended up in a career guaranteed to let me discover lots of those sneaky whispering voices. Catch 'em. Catch 'em all. :)

Then there's Alfie's. Alfie's is an antiques emporium. The vintage jewellery made me drool on the cases. Four stories of historical ghosties. Yum. If and when you get to London, it's on Church Street. There's a dece little market on that street too.

but then it's London, you can't walk a mile without bumbling into a market.

Here's the Wallace Collection photos.

The ornate containers are snuffboxes, none of them bigger than 5 in across. The painting, which might be familiar, was actually very sexually suggestive, but the proper Victorian ladies later on thought the girl in pink was so pretty that they cropped all the men out and put her on chocolate boxes.

yeah.
das all.
-Lu

much blogging.

There is so much to catch up on i don't even know where to start......since i last blogged....Tate Britain, worldwide squees, Museum of London, Lucie finds the Tardis, Regent's Park, Camden Town, night so late it's early, and as previously stated, sore muscles.

Well. Eat an elephant one bite at a time. Let us first betake ourselves to the beautiful Tate Britain.
It is on the banks of the Thames, and there are charming benches set on brick pilings so you can see the water as you sit, and not just a brick wall. Being me, I climbed onto the wall instead of the bench. Here's me not falling in the Thames.

yes yes ok.

now the inside. This is all British artsies. I tell you, the London, it has the stellar museums. stellar I say.

I believe this was called "Athlete Wrestling with a Serpent"

And this piece of art will forever remind me of Anne of Green Gables, and the fateful reenactment of Ophelia's death, wherein people nearly drown. So, I giggled when we got to this one, because it's a hilarious part in the book, and everybody looked at me funny.....smatter, people, didn't you have a childhood.....

for some reason, when i looked at this one, it seemed the most perfect pictorial representation of the word "pride" i had ever seen.

And some Bacon. Weird stuff.

Ah, this one. By John Singer Sargent. It was in a lovely book I had as a kid, no idea where it went. Regardless, I spent hours poring happily over that book, and immediately on seeing this it brought childhood and security and happily amusing myself for hours back. And it's pretty.

aha then there was an area where you could make a drawing and hang it up. An unknown stranger contributed the beautiful man-in-hat piece, and I did the little mermaid gem. And yes, I hung them up.

This one really struck me to the point that if I were filthy rich, I would have tried to buy it. It's basically The Thinker, threatened by the bayonets of fascism. Painted around WWII, I believe.

And to end, I think this chandelier was my favorite. Skinny Bunny Rabbit was cool too.

the gallery with the portraits.

They don't actually let you take pictures in the National Portrait Gallery. But I found several interesting portraits, which I shall now tell ye about.
This was, I think, my favorite museum so far. I love people, and this was a place entirely about people, about their times and their cultures, and their similarities, and their differences, and personalities, and responsibilities, and the makers of the portraits who captured all this. Before we even got to the first gallery (well, besides the one with the Rolling Stones, next to the bathrooms), our tutor pointed out that as you come up the long escalator to the upstairs galleries, there is nothing on the walls. Everywhere else, there is something on the walls. And you turn and look at all the people coming up the escalator, and they are a portrait. They are a living portrait.
I don't know if they intended that, but I thought it was cool.
There was a gallery where the portraits are hung on glass, so that you can see the other person on the other side looking at the portrait on the other side. My favorite thing in that gallery was the work of a man named Ronald Searle. Here are some of his cartoons. They're a stitch.

I also loved the modern galleries. A couple really striking ones were the video portrait of a sleeping David Beckham, and a self-portrait by Marc Quinn, made of his own frozen blood in a mold.

And then I went and had lunch with Nelson and the pigeons and a lots of other people in Trafalgar Square.

It's fall. I found this monster of a leaf today.

that is my computer, for scale. Night kids.
-Lu