London - Day 2

 A long full day! - and I think I need to pace tomorrow carefully, with a day of travelling ahead....

Turner's Snow-Storm - Steamboat off a Harbour's Mouth

I worked out the bus route, and had a wonderful morning at the Tate Britain. I spent quite a lot of it in the JMW Turner exhibition – I’m not big into his sea-battles and allegorical things, but I actually love a  lot of his unfinished stuff – very impressionist – and the gouache-on-paper sketches.  In the middle of the many Turner rooms, there was one of Constable, and that was one in which to linger – the Suffolk paintings are favourites.

Moore - King & Queen

Then I headed for the more contemporary rooms (some of which were pretty weird), and got grabbed by the Henry Moore collection – another area to linger.

Looking upstream from Millbank 

But there comes a point at which I’ve had too much art, and I walked down Millbank to the pier with the plan of taking a riverboat. And we waited...and waited...  The electronic board kept saying that there would be a boat in 12 minutes... 8 minutes...  3 minutes... and then it would change again.  I finally worked out that there was one of those City of London waterboat races going on downstream, and they’d cleared most of the powered traffic till it was done.

Looking up at Shakespeare's Globe

The sky was looking a little more hopeful when the boat finally arrived, and I decided to go all the way to Greenwich. The Thames Clippers are catamarans, and all closed in, so getting photos from the river was not the easiest thing.

The Cutty Sark

In Greenwich I pottered around a bit – thought about doing the Cutty Sark tour but decided there were too many kids on board, so I went to find a bite of lunch at the Greenwich Market, which was fun to explore. From there, I went over to the Old Naval College which is now Greenwich University. It was obviously graduation day, and the place was swarming with caps-and-gowns, and proud family supporters, and there was a lot of cheering going on from inside one of the halls.  

Old Royal Naval College

Queen's House, and the Observatory behind on the hill

I'd planned a walk up to the Observatory, but there were some ominous clouds looming, and I’d not brought my raincoat – I decided that staying where there was cover was more sensible. So I headed back to do some wandering nearer the shops, and spent a short thunderstorm having a lovely cuppa in a Waterstones bookstore!

Somehow these little barges clean the river...

The Shard and Tower Bridge

Watching my time, I finally headed back to the quay, and ended up taking one of the open tourist boats back. Clouds were still thick over Greenwich, but the river ride was clear, and it’s interesting to see the variety of housing along the river – much of it built of former warehousing, but some really nice newer buildings.  Must be an interesting place to live...! There’s been a lot done in the last few years to bring life back to the river after years of neglect, and the fish stocks have been returning, and seals are often seen at Canary Wharf.

The Tower, from the river

St Thomas's Tower & Traitor's Gate

I got off at Tower Bridge, and walked around the Tower exterior before heading uphill to St Paul’s for another Evensong sung by the Texas choir – Sumsion in A and Bruce Neswick’s “Let the People Praise You, O God” – before retracing my steps and then over Tower Bridge to the south bank. I had a very nice dinner in an Italian restaurant, and then went to the Bridge Theatre for a wonderful performance of “Guys and Dolls”. The Bridge is a theatre in the round – steep galleries on all four sides, and extensive floor space into which the people who wanted immersive theatre could gather. I couldn’t see how it would work until the show started and the floor-blocks started rising in different combinations; the stage hands (dressed as cops) had the job of moving folks out of the way before the next set changed, and there was a constant flow of movement.  Really well done, and an excellent performance from all.

Pre-performance

and mid-show...

Tube would have been faster to get back afterwards, but I ended up taking the bus and seeing London at night on the way home to a much-needed bedtime.