My Last Days in London (For Now!) (Pt. 3)

My final weekend in London: it came a lot faster than I could have imagined. While I certainly was wishing I could stay in Vienna for a lot longer than I did simply because of the magic of being in Europe for the first time, the great travels I had from there, and the majesty of Vienna itself, four months was a good time for me to be away. It is actually one of my critiques of Lawrence's London Centre that, while mirroring Lawrence's 10 week trimester schedule makes sense, 2.5 months just isn't long enough to integrate into an abroad experience. I'm jealous of the one student who did two trimesters there!! Anyway, the beginning of my final weekend was at Kensington Gardens, which I toured around taking tons of pictures before heading into the museum in the Palace itself.

While Kensington gardens basically had me already with the skeletal trees and the autumnal colors (even though it was December by this point), one of the things I particularly loved about it was the freedom and openness it conveyed. Of course it's not supposed to be an ornamental garden and closed off in that way, but even comparing it to a park, the gently rolling landscaping combined with the wonderful old trees (which have to some extent been left to their own devices, as seen above) just created a magical feeling that particularly captured the season during which I was there. I'm sure it offers a unique atmosphere for every season. I inched up to the lake (or should it be called a reflecting pond? I would've needed calmer weather to know!) in front of Kensington Palace, taking pictures all the while. It must have been quite a wonder to live in the Palace with these grounds in front.

I photographed Napoleon III's crib in Vienna
I had to photograph Victoria's in London!

Probably the room
in which Victoria was born

The Palace is particularly notable as the residence of the young (not-yet-)Queen Victoria, Charles and Diana, and recently on-and-off William and Kate (and George!).  A lot of the history in the State Rooms, which are the portion accessible to the public and which contain the museum, focuses on these occupants. They had some strange event going on for the holiday season and apparently the museum does a lot of this work. I honestly have to say I wish they would put that energy into revamping and improving the museum itself. I didn't think that its organization or style was particularly well devised and found it hard to get information quickly and easily about the pieces on display. The order of the rooms also felt disjointed and didn't make a lot of sense to me. That said, the palace itself was a lot of fun to be in and some of the historical artifacts were stunning. Particularly interesting were the artifacts that defined Victoria, Albert, and Victoria's relationship with Albert and her mourning after his untimely death.


I loved, for instance, seeing all of Albert's clothes; he was definitely the consummately well-dressed gentleman, with finery not only for his person but also great canes, other accessories, and a very well-fashioned set of toiletries for traveling. Victoria had many of the same accoutrements, as well, but I was focused on Albert since, though perhaps a bit late (I'm more Regency-focused than Victorian-focused), he still embodies the kind of fashion I wish we still had in the world today (for men, at least). Victoria and Albert both shared other interests of mine, as well. For instance, both had training in music and artifacts in this household can attest to that, like the gilded piano and book of music seen here. Amateur music making was on the rise throughout the 19th century and it definitely was no different in the very upper class.



As I mentioned earlier, Victoria's great love, wedding, and mourning are all very fascinating. This has been portrayed recently in popular films, but there's nothing quite like being as close to the artifacts as possible. There was something uncannily moving about seeing her wedding dress displayed in the same (very large) household as the black clothing she wore for the rest of her life in mourning just rooms apart. Indeed, living in the Romantic period of artistry, Victoria embodied many of the romantic tropes with which we identify today, popularizing the white wedding dress, taking the black of mourning to an extreme, and demonstrating what undying fidelity even to a non-undying love can be.

Victoria was not the only royal whose garments remain in Kensington Palace. Since the Palace was also the residence of Diana, many of the clothes she popularized as a symbol of fashion (and possibly other things) in the 80s and 90s were on display. The dresses here demonstrate the fashion concept of a drop waist. It's not on I particularly appreciate, but it's certainly interesting to see and somewhat amazing to think that these were her garments (although perhaps those of Victoria give that feeling to a greater extent). It brings back a lot of memories from my childhood, as I really was aware of her death, despite being about six. The exhibit also includes a variety of other clothes and objects relating to the childhoods of various inhabitants, relatives, children, etc. for the more famous residents like Victoria and Diana, as well as some more artistic exhibits trying to demonstrate what life might have been like and recreating some of the environments either that the inhabitants might have experienced or showing development in the design of households, particularly in Victoria's period. This coronation robe was perhaps one of the longest in history (I forget) and stood out the most of the non-Victoria/Diana pieces.

One last view of Kensington Palace in its glory

Stepping out of Kensington Palace after purchasing the perfect London Christmas ornaments, in keeping with the family tradition of buying an ornament for the "family tree" from every place we visit, I was back in Kensington Gardens. The shot to the left is part of the actual ornamental garden for the Palace. It's not possible to walk down there, but it was sure a beautifully symmetrical shot and a great kind of last image of the Kensington experience before I continued my wanderings into Hyde Park.

Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens are kind of enmeshed together and I knew there were a variety of other things that I really needed to see. One group was Marble Arch and Speakers Corner but they were up in the northeast corner of the park and I was down toward the southwest. Closer to me was the Diana Memorial Fountain. It was interesting talking to my Dad who noted that, of course, it's a recent development and so it's one notable monument that he couldn't have seen when he was there. It's easy to read about it online so I won't bother with a huge description but I really did feel that the playfulness of the fountains, the way the water changed speeds as it went infinitely around, and the open nature of the monument really represented Diana, a modern woman interested in modern things (represented by modern architecture) who liked to enjoy life, bring people together, and provide happy upbringings for her children (a playful, accessible fountain). There have been safety concerns and I'm sure some people find it to be too modern or too abstract, but I thought it was superbly well done and really adds to the cluster of monuments in the area. One thing that was wonderful while leaving this area was that I was really starving at this point because I'd gotten up early and gotten out there without eating breakfast. I rarely want a hot dog, especially since I don't put anything on them so they're somewhat uninteresting meals for me. For whatever reason I was really craving a hot dog at this time, though. Magically, a hot dog stand nestled by a road cutting through Hyde Park materialized out of nowhere and I received the gift of a hot dog and some crisps to wolf down before I headed on my way!

If the Diana Memorial Fountain is an invasion of modernity and a non-standard design for a monument, the ostentatious Albert Memorial is anything but. It takes the conservative, traditional monument style to an extreme, with its enormous gilded statue of Albert encased in the large altar-like structure that reaches up several stories. It is truly an overwhelming monument in the traditional style, but fitting for the monumental story that I had just witnessed again firsthand in Kensington Palace. It definitely represents Victoria's feelings about Albert (both while he was alive and after he died). It's amusing writing this now after having watched the most recent season of Downton Abbey in which a character is told to look for the Albert Memorial and he asks whether he'll be able to recognize it and they just chuckle at him. Right across the street (outside of Hyde Park because the Albert Memorial is on the edge), I saw Royal Albert Hall in the daylight from a good vantage for the first time. I'd seen the outside multiple times at night and actually been inside for Britten's War Requiem on Remembrance Day, but I was glad to see it this way, even if it was the back instead of the front.

The V&A's Courtyard - a design masterpiece in its own right

After my tour through Albertopolis proper I headed down through the Imperial College to the V&A Museum (still technically part of Albertopolis), the last major museum in the area that I had yet to visit. The V&A Museum focuses primarily on design and its history. I won't go into too much detail here because the museum was just overwhelming. I tend to be the sort of person who wants to look at every item with some focus and to read as much as possible of every placard in a museum. Now, in a lot of museums that goal is just unrealistic anyway, although possible if you have the time to only go for two hours per visit, really focus, and return. But in the V&A it was particularly impossible. I really enjoyed how they broke things down by technique and material and then chronologically elsewhere, but in any given exhibit focusing on a particular material, say, the number of individual items was simply overwhelming. An entire case full of silver-worked items or wood items simply can't be taken in. I think I needed more of a guide as to what to really look at. Still, some of the casts and actual pieces of multiple story architecture from antiquity were overwhelmingly impressive and the Ardabil Persian carpet, the largest in the world and of great historical importance, lit only on rotation for preservation reasons, just exuded the atmosphere of a treasure. I stopped and looked at as much as I could, but I did want to walk the museum's entire footprint, so I kind of drifted through like a leaf in a stream.

As evening was setting I went up to the Marble Arch Tube stop (a bit of navigation I had never before done) to see the Arch itself and also to see Speaker's Corner. It wasn't a time when anyone would be speaking in Speaker's Corner, though, so there wasn't much to see there since, fundamentally, it's still just a corner of Hyde Park. There was also an enormous throng of people because Winter Wonderland was set up in Hyde Park, an amusement park focusing on the idea of winter. What was wonderful, was the joy of the holiday season that permeated the foot traffic in this area and that sense of just being in London. Though I had to wait quite some time to get the shot, the picture of Winter Wonderland's ferris wheel through Marble Arch, with iconic cabs surrounding it and the crescent moon above, felt like capturing such a magical, spiritual moment that was also quintessentially of London.

From Marble Arch the famed Selfridges (Selfridge & Co, Ltd., more officially!) is just a few quick blocks away on foot. The crowds throughout the entire area were stifling, but a large part of this was that Selfridges, already an impressive building, had its Christmas windows up. I don't know the history of that tradition, but I know it's a big thing in many places; I first experienced it with Nordstrom in Portland, though of course that's not where it started. I know some famous U.S. department stores (and of the department store was an import from the U.S. to England that began with Selfridges) do this (and probably originated it). But Selfridges definitely can lay claim to part of the tradition, now. Yes, doubtlessly they have become quite commercialized, as the photo to the right of Beats by Dre headphones suggests (a brand I almost bought recently but decided didn't fit my image!). It's definitely come a long way from the Selfridges depicted on the now popular TV show. Still, some of the windows, even the highly commercialized ones, were quite clever and even touching. It was really fun to be dazzled by each new window, like a little Christmas gift. I did walk through the store too, and that was fun and overwhelming. It's better organized than Harrods but there is still so much there!

A gallery of the Selfridges Christmas windows:

Sorry guys, I bought a Nikon instead... (and took this picture with it!)

No Christmas display is complete without a gingerbread house!

Hmm...

My personal favorite - snowmen being invaded by playful Play-Dohmen!

The Tate Modern and the Millennium Bridge
sure make an amazing vantage point!

Eventually, though, the time came for my final, rather late-night, cultural excursion, to the Tate Modern. I wasn't sure if I was going to have the stamina for the outing after everything else I had done in this final weekend, but I'd heard great things about it. Also, I used to be one of those types who liked traditional Art (of all kinds - hence the uppercase "A") up to about 1900 and rejected modernism. I've since tried very hard to challenge myself to be interested in all artistic movements, even more avant-garde ones in the 20th and 21st centuries. I don't always love the end products of those movements in the sense that I don't find them pleasing or even necessarily meaningful to me personally, but I always learn something about artistic temperament, art history, and history more generally. For obvious reasons photos are not permitted within the Tate Modern. There are a few shots of the building elsewhere on this blog, though. It's not the most beautiful right now, but they're building a new wing and it's fascinating how part of the building is just a massive hangar-type area but how they're going to completely revamp it once the new structure is complete. While I was at the museum I got to see monumental works by modern greats like Rothko and Pollack, and Richter, transitional greats like Picasso, Dalí, and Braque, and somewhat older masters like Monet, Turner, Ernst, and Rivera. Some folks I didn't love (and knew this going in), like Kandinsky, while others, such as Mitchell and Twombly, I became familiar with going through the exhibit and for whom I gained appreciation. Some art went beyond traditional mediums, such as Dan Flavin's high-powered florescent light arrangements or Fontana's Spatial Concept - Waiting - a brown canvas with a single slash in it that he meditated on before making. Comparing these with the more traditional but still avant-garde movements of Cubism, Constructionism, and Minimalism. Among the lesser known works, those by Fontana and Flavin already mentioned and Richard Serra's Trip Hammer, two massive sheets of metal set perpendicular, as though waiting to fall, were my favorite.

After finishing up my wonderful visit to the Tate Modern I was exhausted. I was definitely glad I pushed through the weekend (and that day in particular) to get all this done. Afterward I walked back across the Millennium Bridge and took great photos of St. Paul's Cathedral; much better than those I could take being up close to it before. It was great to capture it with the Christmas tree in front of it and the Christmas lights on the surrounding trees. It also helped me feel like I was truly in London, as I've mentioned in a few other places. I made the hike over to Blackfriars Station, a station with which I was not familiar, and was about to duck inside when I thought, "I should go stand on the bank of the Thames one more time." I was glad I did. It was a splendid night; chill but not cold, and fairly calm. I just stood there looking out at London for a while, with the Shard lit up and the London Eye in the distance, and marveled at it; at its lights, its vibrancy, the mix of old with the Tower Bridge in the distance, and new, with illuminated modern bridges all along the way. Then I took these pictures and went down the rabbit hole into the Tube system one last time. My final journey was on a "District Line train to Wimbledon" (although I actually got off at South Kensington Station, because that was "my station").

Goodbye for now (sometimes) trusty Tube!

Unfortunately, that long night wasn't over. I went home and I packed my three(ish) suitcases late into the night before finishing up a final exam for my theatre class, which we were told we only had a limited time to complete so it was actually like a take-home exam rather than a formal essay. This was good; otherwise I probably would never have been able to get everything done. Nonetheless, I was up pretty much all night after having gotten up quite early and been on my feet all day to fit in all the sightseeing I had planned. I'm not complaining; every second was worth it, but it was a push to the finish, for sure. When the sun rose though, shining through the small room in my wonderful, though naturally small, South Kensington room, it was a radiant, glorious, beautiful morning. It wasn't typical London weather for the season, at all, but it was an amazing morning. Not only was the morning sun playing across the mottled tapestry of clouds and blue sky in a beautiful way, but the temperature outside was perfect (I'm not sure exactly what "perfect means" but that's how it was).

My residence just off the King's Road

I jumped outside to make one last stop at the local Starbucks (there weren't really any good shops for local coffee or similar things in the area that were open and offered beverages to go, so don't scold me for my choice of institution!!). It was great to walk the King's Road one last time on such a beautiful day. I took pictures looking up and down the road from where I was living (below) and also a picture of the 49 bus, the one I took often to class or to South Kensington Station, my access to the arteries of London transportation. After the bracing walk and the photo shoot I gathered my luggage and grabbed a cab to Heathrow airport, preparing for my journey back to D.C. Having a cab driver who was originally from Iraq but had lived for a time in Scandinavia really brought home one more time the city's multiculturalism.

The 49 bus - unlike the tube, terribly unreliable for me - I would alway arrive just as it was pulling away!

Arriving at Heathrow was of course a bittersweet experience. It was great to anticipate going home, seeing my parents, seeing Mallory (the dog), and having a great time with extended family coming in for the holidays, but 2.5 months just wasn't long enough in London, one of the most diverse and exciting cities on earth! At the airport though, I was greeted both by the whimsical advertisements so quintessential of London and another view, out over the tarmac from the terminal, of that beautiful morning. Those moments so spiritually encapsulated the wonder of my second experience living in Europe, so different from the first and yet also so wonderful. There are several places in Europe I have told myself I must revisit: Nürnberg because I only glossed the surface, Salzburg because I love it, Paris because it's magical, Vienna because it's close to my heart... Whether all those aspirations will become a reality I cannot say. I do know that I had an amazing two and a half months in London and it is a city I will revisit some day in the future. In this modern, global world, its magnetism is too strong not to draw me back, and I will be excited when the time comes.

As I began this series of three posts, so shall I end it:
with this wonderful view of some of London's most recognizable, yet definitively modern buildings