Travel: London

Last month I bailed out on my class work and my work work in order to go an visit my pal, Kirsty, in London. Save for a 3+ hour delay at the airport (thanks Easyjet!) and a very late arrival in London, we had a fantastic time. I was there for four days, ran into my lecturer on my flight (awks), filmed an interview, and didn't visit the universities I was supposed to be visiting. 

I spent my first day alone, since poor Kirsty had to go and suffer through an 8 hour day at work on only 3 hours of sleep. Setting off from Mornington Crescent (aka a tiny bottle green tiled haven of an Underground station) I headed to the Wellcome Collection, a science and technology museum. From there I headed towards Regent's Park, where, initially, there were signs prohibiting dogs which seems like a crime against humanity. 10 minutes later I saw sense in their madness - when I did get to the areas that allowed dogs there were so. many. dogs. A much higher dog yield per square foot. 

I later met Kirsty for dinner and a mosey around the V&A, which was open late into the evening. Though large sections of the museum are still closed for refurbishment and overhaul, it was a pleasant experience with a bar, DJ and a small classical group performing in the reading room. 

The rest of our time in London was organised around less tourist sites and more around exploring our surroundings. We headed towards Shoreditch for a morning walk, roamed around Carnaby Street and hung around outside Liberty, where I got some footage for a short interview/film about fashion merchandising and photography (none of which I ended up using - but it was fun to do regardless). We also headed to the Barbican Centre, which had very little on at the time. Instead we took advantage of the nice weather and sat out in the courtyard, taking in the canals and Brutalist architecture.

Brutalist architecture at the Barbican

In the evenings, we walked alongside the river via Covent Garden and Trafalgar Square, the latter mainly so I could view the fourth plinth (which Kirsty had never heard of....). We also headed to the Tate Modern for the day. Newly expanded, with a viewing tower, new cafe and several new galleries, it took us a good while to get around even half of it. There was a decent bit of comedy where we tried to take on the lifts to the viewing platform from the third floor where every single one was full by the time it got to us - so maybe walk downstairs to the ground floor to get the lift up. The artist room for Louise Bourgeois and Between Object and Architecture were especially worth a look.

Sunday evening found us in St James' Park to do my interview about fashion advertising. Though I thought we were in a quiet enough location, the selfie-taking tourists, passersby and the grey squirrel that tried to climb up my back begged to differ. 

On my final day in London I was abandoned once again. I only had the morning to myself, so I bought breakfast and headed for a walk down the canals where I encountered even more dogs and a number of charming houseboats. Street art was also in abundance. Following that, I went for a walk around Camden Town to take in the bustle of people and laugh at the tourists (a suitcase in Camden Market? no...). 

And with that I had to jet off home, much too soon for my liking and much too far away from moving to London in September to make me anything but sad to go.