London: Part Three

Ta Londinium!

Friday morning was my last day in The Big Smoke. I had a plan to go straight to the National Gallery and dump off the backpack at the baggage check so that I was free from it for the day. Normally I would have just left it at the hostel, but check out time was 10:00am and my train wasn't departing until 9:00pm.

I arrived in Leicester Square and walked the quarter kilometre to Trafalgar, where the gallery is located. When I entered the building I was met by a security guard who informed me that my bag was too big to take into the gallery. I thought I had him fooled when I told him I wanted to check it. Unfortunately the joke was on me as they didn't have the facilities to check a bag of that size. So it was off to Charing Cross Station around the corner to pay the £6 to check it there. Oh well. It was still better than lugging it around all day.

I made a stop at Canada House (whence I posted the previous blog entry) to see the new gallery exhibition there. It featured the work of Ed Pien, a Chinese-Canadian artist who does amazing work with cut paper and tarpaulin. After leaving there I stopped in at a pub for some fish and chips (yeah, typical tourist thing to do in London I know). Then I walked back up to the National Gallery, grabbed a floor plan and headed off into the Sixteenth Century. The first room had a couple of Da Vinci's, namely the controversial and famous Virgin of the Rocks, which features prominently in The Da Vinci Code.

I took my time browsing through the various rooms, moving forward through the Seventeeth, Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, taking in as many paintings as I could. Many were artists that I was familiar with, though there weren't as many recognisable paintings as I was expecting. There was a large collection of Titians, Peter Paul Rubens and Rembrandts. In the basement of the Sainsbury Wing was the Manet to Picasso collection, featuring works by among others Manet, Monet, Degas, Seurat, Van Gogh and a single Picasso.

It's really great being there on a weekday because you see all of the school groups coming through and the gallery guides explaining things to them. I listened in on a couple sessions. When I came into the Eighteenth Century British room I discovered not only a painting I had been wanting to see, but a guide giving an analysis to a group. It was Joseph Wright of Derby's An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump. This was the one painitng of Wright's that was not in the collection at the Derby Art Gallery.

I made a brief visit to the National Potrait Gallery, in the same building complex, and then worked my way toward the Tate Modern, which is open until 10:00pm on Fridays and Saturdays. On the way I stopped in at a little food shop for a quick snack and ended up with a heaping curried rice with mushrooms, chick peas, and chicken for an incredibly low cost of £2. It was actually quite good.

At the Tate I paid the £1 again for the interactive guide, and picked up where I left off. There was so much to see there. I would make another trip to London just to spend more time there. It's not like most galleries, with a guard in each room and ropes around the works. It is quite accessible. I saw some films there, a great Surrealism exhibition (part of the permanent collection) and some beautifully grotesque Giacometti sculptures.

My hopes of seeing the whole Tate were dashed by the clock unfortunately. At 7:15pm I left the gallery and headed for Blackfriars Station to catch the Tube back to Charing Cross. I had one hour and forty-five minutes to get on the train at St. Pancras Station. When I got to St. Pancras, I found that my 21:00 train was now a 20:55 train, so if I had been any later getting there, I would have missed it.

Two hours later I was back in Nottingham, faced with a full day at work the next day. Saturday, as always was a busy day at the restaurant, but it was to pay off with a free trip to Manchester on Monday. More on that later.

Cheers.