T and S: Londonton Abbey

In case you missed it:

Monday we went to the National Gallery to see the Impressionism paintings. It was a very typical British type day with drizzling on and off the whole time.

Impressionism is my favorite kind of art and considering T isn't really into art and the museum is giant we just hit that one area. My very favorite painting there was Van Gogh's "Wheatfield with Cypress Trees." (image from here)

Like I've said before I just LOVE the impasto in Van Gogh's work. Really, a poster of a Van Gogh is a waste because the impasto makes the painting and that just doesn't show up on a poster. I guess someday I'll just have to own an original Van Gogh.

The National Gallery is directly behind Trafalgar Square. There is an Olympic Countdown in the square. It was 107 days until the Olympics. At first we were very confused, because it should have only been 65 days, but then we realized that this side of the countdown is for the PARAlympics. So 107 days was accurate.

Then we went to the post office to buy postcard stamps. The post office is confusing! Like four different lines for different things plus self serve kiosks that were hard to follow. But as usual, someone (a worker bee) was very nice and essentially did the self serve kiosk for us and we were out within two minutes. It seemed like almost everyone in London was SO nice and helpful. Though I think the accent definitely helped this illusion along for us. I suppose that some of them could have been rude to us and we just thought they were charming due to the accent. I choose to believe that even if they didn't have accents, Londoners are nice.

Next we visited the Imperial War Museum. Here's some... war stuff...

A German V2 rocket.

A Sherman tank from WWII. It was pretty impressive to see these things in real life.

There were so many obnoxious teenagers (mostly in giant school groups from all kinds of countries) everywhere in London museums. I know that we used to be obnoxious teenagers, but I really don't think we were that disrespectful in museums. They were seriously shouting and shoving each other about all the time. Giant eye roll to all of them.

Here's a missile and a bunch of anti-aircraft guns.

We skipped the Holocaust and Crimes Against Humanity exhibitions. There was a warning sign (and we read online) that some of the videos are really graphic and not for the faint of heart. And I just didn't feel up to viewing those kinds of things.

A Sopwith Camel from WWI.

My favorite part was the Victoria Cross exhibit (aka the Lord Ashcroft Gallery). As I understand it, the Victoria Cross is like our Purple Heart. The Victoria Cross exhibit had individual artifacts and stories describing how that particular Victoria Cross was earned. So basically really awesome, short, accessible stories about incredibly brave people in impossible situations. The stories weren't arranged chronologically (I actually enjoyed it this way) so there were stories from the Crimean War next to stories from the War in Iraq.

The P-51 Mustang from WWII and Korea.

There was a re-creation of a WWI trench (that we didn't take photos of) and it smelled terrible. We couldn't decide if that was an intentional part of the re-creation or just a byproduct of a dark, musty, enclosed space. Regardless, it was interesting to walk down the trench and look through the periscopes across the recreation of no man's land.

The Sopwith Camel from above.

Me and the Mustang.

We ate lunch at the train station where I had a bagel sandwich and T ate at Burger King where you can have it your way, unless you are in the UK. T wanted a double hamburger ketchup only and they wouldn't order it for him. So he tried to order it as a double cheeseburger, no cheese and ketchup only and they said they couldn't do it that way. So he ended up ordering a plain hamburger. Except then they put everything on it instead of leaving it plain. Sigh. No surprise that the food in London continued to be a disappointment.

Our whole time in London we had been searching for an awesome London / UK Christmas ornament and weren't having much luck. So we looked online and found a Christmas store. We totally went out of our way to get there and the store was a total bust. Earlier, we had seen an ornament that we liked, but weren't sold on, at the Royal Mews.

We were going to take another double decker bus back to the hotel (because the double decker bus really was one of my favorite things in London!), but instead decided to try to make it across town on the tube back to the Royal Mews before they closed to get the ornament. We made it in time before they closed, but then they were sold out of the ornament! It was really surprising that there was a serious lack of good souvenirs throughout London. I mean, London is a major city AND it is the year of the Queen's Jubilee AND the Olympics and still no good souvenirs?!?!

So we headed to the hotel still completely souvenir-less for the whole trip (minus the ornament for baby - more on that in the next post). We ate dinner from the Tesco again - really it's so much cheaper and better tasting than eating out. Sad and true.