The long-awaited post on London is finally here!
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| Time to go to London! |
On Thursday Adam and I set out from Goring to London, where Mick had gone to the previous day so as to attend an open day at a college she was interested in. We set out just after peak-hour, and there was meant to be a 9:12am train that would get to London by 10am - perfect! Or so it seemed, but National Rails had other plans for our morning.
The train we were expecting to catch was cancelled, as were many other trains that day. So we had to catch the next train to Reading and then change trains there to hop onto one headed to London Paddington. We were lucky enough to find such a train, as were hundreds of other people who were caught-up in the train cancellations. This meant that our ±30min train-ride in to London would be standing up. Thankfully for us though, it was a non-stop train and so we made the trip easily enough.
We finally got to London and utilised our next form of public transport - the London Underground! This was a much easier experience and also takes a lot less time. We finally made it to Westminster Station by about 11am; a fait bit later than what we were hoping for but no train-wreck (see what i did there!) either.
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| Houses of Parliament, from the bridge |
As last time, we were greeted by the huge face that is Big Ben. It is always such a sight to behold, especially after the confines of our commute, and i don't think that I will ever get over how awe-inspiring, grand and yet intricate the Houses of Parliament really are! You can't help but to look up and stare, and I'm sure I will be compelled into stopping and taking a photo every time we walk past it...
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| London Eye, from the bridge |
In keeping with our general theme, we decided to walk across Westminster bridge and start our day walking along the Thames, although this walk by the river is quite different from the ones we have done in Goring. Our walk started by the London Eye - a huge ferris-wheel that sits on the banks of the river and offers what I'm sure are great views of London. It is a work of engineering genius and at first may seem out of place amongst the Classic buildings surrounding it, but this huge circle has definitely become an icon of the London skyline.
We then continued down the boardwalk, past the various performers and entertainers that work there, trying to make a living off of all the tourists around! There are literally thousands of tourists around here, and it seems that the majority of them are kids on school tours! It's weird how you can be in England and yet not hear any of the people around you speaking English...
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| This is LONDOOOON! |
Our next stop was the Southbank Centre, which had put up a whole variety of different things on exhibition in/on/around it. These included flags, beach huts and beach sand, a giant sculpture of a fox made of straw and a roof garden. It was great to see how they utilise this public space and how they attract people to the building by providing such exhibitions... My personal favourite was a bright orange and yellow facade that had been made up of wooden crates, applied to the facade of an Indian restaurant. There was also a part under the building, right on the boardwalk, that had been allocated for use by skaters and graffiti artists. It was really cool to see this semi-hidden space where people were allowed to do what is not allowed in most other areas, and I'm sure that it helps them prevent illegal skating and graffiti. The graffiti was really colourful and and plentiful, and provided a cool backdrop for the skaters. We walked around there for a while, before the weather started acting up and the rain started pouring down.
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| SouthBank Centre |
Not to worry though, as there was a bridge we could wait under, which had the handy feature of also sheltering a book seller, who had placed a large collection of old,used books out in rows. We waited for the rain to pass, and then took some photos outside the National Theatre, which has a giant living room set covered in astroturf!
Further down the boardwalk, we stopped at a pier and watched a man sitting on the sand banks of the Thames below, building sand sculptures with the hope that passers-by above will look down and throw him some coins. Its great to see so much variety in architecture and experiences in such a confined space, and even as you stand and look out over the Thames into the other side of London, it's hard not to notice how well they have managed to balance Old and New, Public and Private in everything they do - you are as likely to walk across an old bridge and end up at a new high-rise development as you are to walk across a modern pedestrian bridge and end up in a park with a small chapel or memorial in it...
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| View of London from the boardwalk pier. OXO building on the left |
Perhaps a good example of this is our next stop - the OXO2 building. Its a group of old buildings that have been repurposed into retail and restaurants on the ground floor, offices and galleries on the next few floors above, and then apartments above that. In the courtyard space between the buildings there was sculptures on display and seating, while the old brick-face facades had been retained on the one side - accentuated my interesting halogen light fightings and a series of paintings naming and describing the Ancient Greek muses. The opposite facade had been refurbished, with glass and steel making up the bulk of it. The building is in a prime location and yet is accessible to all, either on foot or by car. This example shows what I mean about successful integration of various (often opposing) aspects of urban life into a single space that results in useable, intelligent and interesting design.
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| OXO2 Courtyard with artwork |
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| OXO2 Courtyard wall, with the muses on the wall |
We carried on with our walk, heading towards the Tate Modern. On the way, we walked past a series of new apartment blocks currently being built. They were massive and rather brute in their appearance, although they did look nicer from the facade facing the Tate Modern. But again, they were surrounded by a variety of other buildings (including the Tate) that were all built at different scales and periods and yet had been allowed to co-exist, something that you don't get to see in SA.
The Tate Modern - the old power station that lies on the banks of the River Thames. Its facade is bleak, with millions of bricks and solid squares, without many windows to allow light, or glimpses, in. The tower rises high above the rest of the building, which is none the less huge and imposing. This sense of an industrial building is continued on the inside, with the cavernous inner space being softly lit by the slit of windows on the two far ends of the long space. There really isn't much in here besides space, with the huge ramp at the bottom being surrounded by the grey and black inside of the building. This huge space is used to house some giant installations, although now there wasn't such installation, only some black and white vinyl patterns on the floor creating some kind of optical illusion.
The rest of the interior on the ground levels house huge museum shops, filled with thousands of cool books and magazines on art (and architecture), as well as posters,t-shirts and all other sort of paraphenalia related to the museum and its exhibitions. The current exhibition is on the work of Spanish artist, Miro. We went up the escalators and into the galleries, which house all different kind of Modern artworks, including Surrealism, Dadaism, Abstract Expressionism, Conceptual Art and so much more by so many of the greatest artists of each movements' time. The galleries themselves are simple and white, often with a bench in the middle of each room. This all just makes the artworks themselves that much more focal. One cool feature architecturally, was a thin window - running from floor to ceiling - that lined up directly with the site of the Millenium Bridge and up to the roof of St Paul's Cathedral.
My personal favourite artworks were a series of Mark Rothko's paintings, which were placed in a very dimly-lit room. These huge canvases depicted nothing more than a series of squares and rectangles, and yet they all manage to appear to be floating and shimmering, and it really is hard to explain how they come to life...
After we had spent a considerable amount of time admiring the Tate Modern and all the treasures it possess within, we made our way to the Millenium Bridge - a pedestrian bridge designed by Sir Norman Foster. This bridge again proves to a link between old and new; in this case a more literal bridge between the Tate Modern and St Paul's Cathedral. It affords great views of the buildings that lie on the edges of the river, as well as of the boats that pass beneath the bridge. We were, however, on the verge of passing out from hunger at this point and so made our way to a Pret store nearby, where the sandwiches were amazing! After eating in the silence that usually accompanies great hunger, we made our way back to St Paul's Cathedral, but not before checking out some of the surrounding modern buildings, such as the glass-clad YMCA building and an angular, black and yellow info centre. We also took some time to stop and take some comical photos of myself and Adam in various poses for Mickaela...
We then made our way across the road, into the Cathedral grounds. It is without doubt a grand building, and the interior really does impose itself on you as being a House of God! We took some photos of the grand building, with its columns at the entrance and huge domed roof, as well as some of the surrounding statues and buildings.
Across the road we found a square with shops and restaurants that had a cool sundial on its facade that indicted the time of year it was by means of a shadow that would line up with various markings indicating the month. It also had a cool metal sculpture.
The weather was getting gloomy again, so we walked into a sports shop so Mickaela could get herself a rain- and windproof jacket - a vital item of clothing in England! Without a solid idea of what to do next, we just continued walking up Fleet Street, which is a busy road lined with many different shops and offices. We spotted some cool glass bridges amongst the buildings, as well as a tiny but tall chapel built in the middle of an alley between two other buildings. We eventually found a tube station and decided to rest our feet for a bit by taking the tube to Piccadilly Circus.
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| Bottom of Fleet street |
Once we got out here, we were again greeted by a huge amount of tourists. This 'circus' is actually a huge round-about, where various streets meet. In the centre is the famous fountain, and surrounding it are the various buildings and stores, as well as the famous advertising boards and a new Ripley's museum! We went into the Lillywhite's store - a huge sports store, before heading to the fountain at the centre for some photos. We also checked out the entrance of the Ripley's museum, and I really hope that one day we get ourselves some tickets to check it out! We then walked up some of the roads, which led us across the asian shops and restaurants with Peking ducks hanging in their windows in Chinatown, to Soho and the West End, famous for its many theaters... We were tired from the many miles we had walked that day, so we took a deserved stop at a Costa's coffee shop where we had a little rest and some caffeine to keep us going.
We then decided to head back to our starting point - Westminster - so that Mickaela could go back to the hotel she had stayed at and fetch her luggage. However, by this time the working day had come to an end as so the tubes were packed full of people using public transport to make their ways home. Not wanting to stand around and wait for a tube, we made our way to a station not far from Westminster, and walked on the edge of the Thames once again. This time we were on the opposite side from which we had started, and we had grand old buildings, with various statues and memorials on our one side, with the river and the site of the London Eye on the other. It had become nice and sunny now, so we enjoyed our walk back up towards Big Ben, which was now in front of us, above the trees. We finally made it up to the Parliament buildings - which were mad as usual, and had the added site of a long line of people, dressed in their suits, waiting to walk in. Once again, the sites on offer here were so appealing I had to stop and take some photos... We then walked past here, up towards Mickaela's hotel. It was late in the day by now and so we decided we would catch the tube at Westminster and head straight to London Paddington station so that we could catch our train home from there.
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| London Eye from across the Thames. |
We got to London Paddington, which is a huge station, and after a short wait for our train made our way to the platform (which was on the furthest part of the station!) and found our train home waiting for us. After a long and exciting day, we were happy to find some seats and just sit and wait on the train until we left the station, and although this train was making stops at every station on its way to Goring, we didn't mind as it was a nice warm place to just sit and relax, read and look out at London disappearing into the distance as we headed back up the Thames...
THE END! (for now)
