Another week in London

Monday
Rainy and grey early, but rapidly improving to 16 and blue.

Finally getting rid of the damned car.  It ran well but was a responsibility we didn't want when we weren't travelling. So off to Kensington Olympia Europcar at 9.15  and by now we have enough of a handle on the GPS and the local streets not to have any issues. Then the tube quickly to South Kensington, and along the tunnel to the Natural History Museum.

Fantastic informative fun in a great environment.

Joseph Banks' herbarium specimen page for Tristania suavolens, collected in Endeavour Bay in 1770

 The current exhibition was Britain: One Million Years of Human History. Excellent info and presentation, but these archeologists keep putting more and more detail into the gaps in what I think I know! It's hard to keep up.

Once again we were about the first in the door, and could take our time without moving obstructions to diminish our enjoyment. 

Bone needles. Can't recall the date of these, but we've been making them for 60,000 years

Bev considers Neanderthal man, compared to the current crop

After lunch, dinosaurs et al. The Attenborough TV show NHM Alive was fresh in our minds and we could animate the fossils from memory. Great stuff.

Bev reading about another great woman

Bev found some jewellery she liked in the shop, and bought an amethyst necklace for Liz.

Worn out by 3.30, so surrendered and took a quick tube home.

Tuesday
Rainy to start

A morning off, washing and grocery shopping. Then back to the NHM for sabre-tooth, mammals display etc, including gigantic blue whale, and more jewellery.

Mammoth at front left, blue whale behind. That's a big one!

Wednesday
Brilliant blue day.
Today, at Liz's suggestion, we start with Sir John Soane's house/museum, a 3D maze filled with ancient relics. (No photography allowed)

Soane was an early 19th C architecture professor and antiquarian who collected Greek, Roman and Egyptian relics for use in his teaching. He purchased three adjacent 3-storey houses and lived there while gutting and rebuilding them, filling them with his collections. Unfortunately, his two sons hated him, so he gave it all to the state. An unexpected bonbon for us was a display about 3D printing. I found that a beautiful gilded three-legged funeral reliquary I'd admired in a previous room had only just come into existence, based on a detail in a Piranesi etching from the 1820's.

Lunch in Lincolns Inn Field, just opposite, then a wander through the Inns of Court, reliving Sansom's Tudor history stories of the Dissolution era, the 1530's.

Then we sought out the Temple Church (see Da Vinci Code) and happened upon an organ concert. Bach's BWV552 was the feature for me; it ends with three melody lines interweaving; mind-blowing.

The church is well-maintained, financed by the Inns as a result of a 16th C deal - the King gave them all the land between the Church and the river and they took on looking after the church.

Home in time to cook a spag bol to my usual recipe, but dissapointing lack of zing. The olives here are poor, tomato paste hard to find and expensive.

Thursday
Another Brilliant blue day.
London Eye
All you'd expect, but we wish it went on for longer.

River cruise

Walk north along the river bank

past Blackfriars Bridge to Borough Market, nestled adjacent to the Shard and above the new London Bridge Tube Station

Over the river to St Pauls, to collect brochures for May. Bev discovered there was a concert this evening at St Martin in the Fields, so we walked a very long way (St Pauls to Trafalgar Square) to buy tickets. There we discovered that the performance was by a favourite group, the Belmont Ensemble, who I'd heard here twice  before. After all the trudging, we settled in the Crypt Cafe, coffeed, dined, booked tomorrow night as well, and waited for the evening.

Wonderful music. The second movement of their Spring was rapturous.

Friday
Another Brilliant blue day. Took the day off. Bev had a long sleep (controlling a treatening migraine), Russell caught up on the blog. In the evening, back to St Martin's for another great concert. Bach, Mozart, Vivaldi, Pachelbel. Only low note was a Purcell piece that paled in the company. Group varied from 4 to 8 with the work.

The Pachelbel Canon and Gigue was excellent, so clear with only 4 instruments, and the evening finished with Vivaldi's Concerto for Two Violins in A minor. The principals were recalled three times by the applause. The Festive Orchestra of London. Worth hearing.

As Liz was away staying with friends, we took our time winding up the day. A short stroll up to Piccadilly Circus; memories recalled of the kids' amazement when we walked out of the tube station there in 1998.

Saturday

Sitting in bed with the strains of Pachelbel's Canon wafting in from the street. Magical. But the magic waned over the next three hours as the musician in yellow (below) continued sawing on his fiddle, accompanied by the magic box at his feet, fed by an iPod nano.

Portobello Market is in full swing below Liz's balcony.

More writing filled the day while Bev battled an incipient migraine. Adam and Liz finally spurred us to arrange a dinner meeting, 5.30 at Grangers, with Adam and Meron. Reasonable tucker and great company. We're on a promise from Meron next visit to be taken to an Eritrean restaurant.