blakspring

Thanks to Dene’s last comment, I decided to finally properly go through my London photos and do a little recap.  Since this was my 4th time in London (and the third since 2006), I thought I’d pretty much seen it all, but instead I discovered a London I never knew.  Rather than focusing on the castles and abbeys and government buildings, my five days in London were all about art and pop culture and energy.

The one place that I ended up in quite accidentally was the Tate Modern.  I had been walking along the Thames when I realized that I was passing by the Modern.  On a whim I popped inside for what I figured would be an hour tops, and ended up going floor by floor for almost three hours.  There was so much inspiring and exciting art to see.  Cubism, Surrealism, animation, pop art, old Bolshevik propaganda posters.  I felt like Alice in Wonderland.  I even managed to sneak in a few photos, including this cool installation by Jeff Koons:

Art was literally everywhere, from this awesome display of photos from Bob Dylan’s 1966 tour:

to the British Library which had an amazing exhibit of 19th century photos from around the world, as well actual cameras from the 1800s:

Other things I’d never seen on my past visits were the reconstructed Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre:

the home of Sherlock Holmes:

and The Clink Prison Museum, which was the original “clink”:

I made sure to walk around my favorite neighborhood, Camden Town, which is like NYC’s East Village.  Ultra and I had stayed with friends in Camden Town back in 1997 and were in love with all the tattoo parlors, squatter kids, and Dr. Martens stores.  As with the East Village, Camden Town has cleaned up and become super-commercial, with way more stores and vendors than ever.  But it will always have a special place in my heart:

I’d never been to London in the winter.  Luckily for me it wasn’t too bloody cold, but the sun did set at 4:00 P.M.  The downside is that I don’t much care for walking around in the dark and my camera doesn’t take the best night shots.  But the upside was that the city was lit up and gorgeous.  Everything made me smile, from this marquee of Priscilla Queen Of The Desert:

to decorated buildings on trendy Oxford Street:

But my favorite night spot was hands-down the London Eye:

It shone against the dark sky so beautifully and reminded me why it is I love to travel so much.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 13th, 2009 at 11:15 pm and is filed under pictures, travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.