7.20.09 London

We shall first start of with our steezy car of the day; today however, is cars. Parked on our street here in South Kensington were these three black beauties all in a row. Mini's are cool, fast and beautiful and epitomize London. I want one.


Ok, today...was a long day. Great, but long. Could be because we havent had a free day in a week, or because we just go, go go all the time. We saw a lot of stuff today though, and it was very eventful. We began the day by heading to the V & A Museum, one of London's largest and best museums.


It was cool because there wasn't just art there; they had sculptures, furniture, clothes, jewelery, items from different time periods, places and cultures. My favorite section, and no surprise, was the 20th Century exhibit, featuring "modern" design. There were all these original pieces from architects and designers that I have learned about and seen pictures of their work in textbooks, right in front of me. Its was cool. There was also a lot of random, everyday things from the 70's, 80's and 90's; stuff I remember from when I was little, and that was cool to see again.

Pantons 'Stacking Chair'

And original Walkman, in the original case. Priceless.

From the V & A we headed over to the Tate Modern art museum. We crossed town then cam upon Tower Bridge, one of London's most famous landmarks.

We got great views of the city from the bridge, and I got all excited when I spotted this little gem.

This is the London town hall, design by Normal Foster. Its design was made so there was less surface area, making it more economical. Every single panel on the building is slightly differnt, varying in color and texture, each one having been laser cut. In the basement is a little cafe and patio, called Londons Livingroom.


However, before we went out on the patio we spotted the meditation room, and felt the need calm and balance our Chi's.

After some prayer rugs and folded legs, our aura's were cleansed.

The town hall turned out to be a great experience and is an incredible piece of architecture.

Angle of the town hall

From there we snagged some great views of the city skyline and headed along the Thames to the Tate.

London skyline. The building that looks like a bullet was also designed by
Norman Foster and is the Swiss Bank building.

The building looks like Willey Wonka's factory from the new movie.

The Tate was an interesting experience, one that stirred emotions for sure. Its filled with pieces similar to the Pompidou and MOMA, all being very new and modern. Which I like. The building like I said looks like a HUGE factory, but is very open on the inside with a very small gallery space.

Just to get a sense of scale, that black dot down on the floor to the left is a person sitting down. Its massive.

I love it, and would gladly hang it in my home. But I would probably just attempt to paint it myself first.

This room was so cool! What the humongous dining set! Who would have thought to build it and put it in an art museum? Good thing someone did cause it was fun for us to walk under.

After we got our fill at the Tate and all the moderness there we got to cross the Millenium Bridge, the only walking bridge in all of London. That is to say the only one where there is strickly walking. You can walk accross the other bridges in the city too. Not all of them, but most.

The Millenium Bridge

Completely spent from the miles of museum walking, we hopped on the tube to head to the grocery store and...

I was out. How kind of them to capture the moment.

After making it to the grocery store and 90 something pounds later (pounds as in currency, not weight) we were done shopping for the next week for the five of us and we headed home and unpacked our food. This is when the incident began. We all decided that the best way to spend the evening would be to go see Harry Potter, a dream of mine to do in London.


There is a square by Trafalgar Square called Leicester Square with three huge movie theatres where all the premieres happen. Two of the three are Odeon theatres and they have big banners outside showing their main feature. So, I got online to book our tickets throught the Odeon website. When it asked for which theatre, it brough up a list of all the ones in England, so I selected Leicester, and we used Ashlee's card to buy our five tickets. There was a whole bunch from our group going and they said they would save us seats in case we got there after them. After buying some sweets at the convienience store we made out way over to the theater.

Four HP scars later, we got some weirded out stares on the Tube.

Outside the theater, before our dreams were momentarily crushed... keep reading.

The lines were huge, so we went to a kiosk to pick up your already purchased tickets, however after swiping her card it said we didnt have a reservation. We hopped in the line and waited, then had the lady try, again it didnt pull up out tickets. Its at this point I start looking around noticing all the Empire Theatre signs and paraphonelia. Then it hit me, we werent in an Odeon theater. Realizing my mistake I told the lady that we had come to the wrong theatre in the square and would go to the other Odeon it was playing at. She then informed me the Empire was the only one Harry Potter was being shown at. A smug grin came accross her face as she then asked if I had selected Leicester, or Leicester Square when I bought the tickets. Doom inside me. Come to find out there are two Leicester's, the one I seleceted isnt anywhere near London, and our tickets were awaiting us at another theatre about 20 minutes away. How nice. Frustrated and confused we went to the other Odeon to see if we could get a refund, and on the way ran into two girls from our group that were separeted from the group and about to get tickets at the Empire. The Odeon gave us a number to call for a refund and back we ran to try and get any remaining tickets at the Empire. Originally the lady told us there were only a few left and the 7 of us couldnt sit together, but after she made some calls on the walkie talkie, she got us seven seats together, dead center towards the front in the biggest theatre I have even seen. SO BIG! We are talking 1,330 seats in this theater. I know, because I looked it up online. Its massive and amazing. If the movie wasnt incredible enough just being Harry Potter, it was a whole culmination of almost not making it, having scars on our heads, being in this huge theater with a whole lot of Brits and eating some tasty sweets with some great friends. Bliss. Pure bliss. It all worked out, cause if our ticket problem hadnt happened we wouldnt have gone outside to the other theater and found the two lost lambs from our group who were determined to get us into the show. In the end, this man outside the theater really summed up how we all felt by the end of the night...

Thank you mystery optomisitic man, we really
appreaciated your sentiment