I was covered in sweat in the morning and it was exceptionally hot in the room. The weather report for the day was cooler (think 80s instead of 90s) but the originally reported thunderstorms were no longer forecasted. After breakfast, I took a long walk by Buckingham Palace and the Westminster Cathedral to the Tate Museum, which was nice. Some of the rooms even had air conditioning. In each of the museums, something like 1 in 3 or 4 rooms has climate control, the rest are quite warm. Of course, I was waltzing around in shorts with no bag to carry and just a fan, so I was as adapted for the weather as I could be. The Tate didn’t exclusively feature British artists, but the overwhelming impression was that it was a museum of British art.
Existing the Tate, I followed the Thames north 15 minutes to the Palace of Westminster, i.e. the Houses of Parliament, and spent an hour checking off all the touristy things–Westminster Abbey…check, Big Ben…check, Eye of London…check, Scotland Yard…check, 10 Downing Street…check, Trafalgar Square…check. Fortunately, I had been inside Westminster Abbey before, because I did not like the look of the queue or the 20-something pound ticket price. Parlaiment, especially Big Ben was mostly boarded up for major renovation work, though the clock face of Big Ben was not covered. Leave and Remain camps were literally camped out in front of Parliament and color coded blue and red. At the security gate on Downing Street, one could see the press gaggle waiting for a statement from Boris Johnson.
Oh yes, Boris had won the conservatory party leadership contest the night before and was officially taking over as Prime Minister that day. For all I knew, he was standing down the road saying some rubbish to the press.
I hit two more museums in the afternoon–the National Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery, which are adjacent buildings on the north side of Trafalgar Square. The National Gallery was maybe a little too heavy on the medieval, Rennaisance and Dutch Masters for my taste, but it was a popular and comprehensive art museum. When I started flagging two-thirds of the way through the museum, I popped down to the espresso cafe for a quick coffee and cake. I feel the exorborant prices of the cafe make up for my lack of dumping money in the collection bins. Many of these museums advertise themselves as free, but they employ some high pressure tactics to get you to cough up some dough. There are donation bins at the entrance, the exit and regularly spaced around the museums. Employees at the entrance greet you with daggers in their smiles, telling you entrance is free while gesturing sharply at box.
The Portrait Gallery is really cool because there is a brief bio for every person (notable figures in British history from the 1500s to today) on display. I couldn’t find any pictures of any Blackadders, but I otherwise appreciated stopping to read some of the signs for a light refresher of English history. It would be great to live in London and hit one museum a week on average, eventually getting to know each museum intimately through repeated visits.
I was meeting F for dinner later, and after quitting the third museum of the day, I took a stroll through Soho and the high streets to reach Marble Arch. London has a ton of theaters and its hard not to appreciate the scene, but I swear at least half of the ongoing shows are adaptations of movies. Whatever criticism one can lob at Hollywood for lacking originality and sticking to extant IP can equally apply to the stage. The shopping streets were full of the regular luxury brands and bespoke tailors and whatnot.
When F finished his work for the day, I waited at the taxi stand outside his hotel for his Uber (black) to swing by and pick me up. We went to a little Iranian place that was literally only 3 blocks away. Ah, the joys of having an expense account! Though I was expecting his company to pick up the check at dinner, the shop only took cash, which meant I had to pay. The restaurant was really good though, a recommendation from his sister who had lived in London for a time. Marble Arch, by the way, is an especially international area of London, with some shop signs exclusively in an Arabic font.
I walked F back to his hotel after dinner and walked the thirty minutes back to my hostel to be pleasantly surprised by functioning A/C in my room. Since it was an early night, I sat on my computer for a bit, but couldn’t muster the energy to do anything productive.
| Espresso and chocolate cake | 7.25 |
| Diet 7up | 1.16 |
| Iranian BBQ | 33.5* (-38.71 USD) |
| Total: | 41.91 GBP (152 RMB) (USD 22.10) |