Since the weekend was already a week ago, better wrap this London thing up with a few photos.
Our friend Douglas works hard for the money, and on a Friday night, he likes to nip around the corner to the local for a beer or two and have a bite to eat. We joined him. After dinner, the ladies bid so long, so the two of us ordered a couple more, then a couple more. Sometime toward the end of our evening we got talking to the people at the next table, who were laughing a lot and taking photos of each other One asked if we’d like to have our photo taken. Sure! Just don’t put it up on some website or some BLOG. So they took our picture. Then I asked if I could do the same.
I told them that I have a blog, and that I was going to publish it. They were OK with that, so I gave them this address. Hey guys, I hope the rest of the night was fun.
(Guaranteed not photoshopped.)
If you’ve got time in London to do some touring, but not much, at least check out the Tower of London. Sure it will cost you five times more than what Ryanair claims their tickets cost to get in, but once there, you could spend the whole day poking through crannies and getting lost in corners. We took the tour, offered free once you’re in. Hang around the entrance, and if you spy this guy, make sure you take a tour from him. Name’s Kevin, and he’s an absolute scream.
Douglas lives at the London studios where Alfred Hitchcock shot many of his earlier movies. It’s been recently converted to residential and offices, but the great director’s legacy lives on. This sculpture dominates the central courtyard. Not sure what the watch symbolises, but then again, I may just be exposing some cinematic / cultural illiteracy or complete laziness to go looking on Google for the umpteenth time today. Sometimes, I just like to keep a little mystery in life.
We dropped by St Pancras station, the new terminus for the Eurostar train via Channel Tunnel from Paris. It’s stunning, and even on a Saturday, swarming with people. I’d love to have seen it when it was dirty and gritty.
Canadian readers will get a kick out of this one. We all knew the guy was a crook, and now he’s finally in prison. But why did they waste all that time with a trial? He already came with a warning label, and you can find it within a shout of Buckingham Palace at the Canadian war memorial there, just inside Canada gate.
The Millenium Bridge is one of my favourite spots in London. I know, not very original, but there’s something about the way what looks from afar like an almost impossibly flimsy thread of steel has become such an important link between two of the most iconic sites in the whole city: St Paul’s on the one side, the rejuvenated Tate Modern on the other.
The Tate Modern’s turbine hall is stunning even when it’s empty. Right now it mostly is, save for a crack running the entire length of the floor. It apparently took weeks to install, and it’s interesting to look at up close, but I don’t know. It left me rather cold.
I’m putting in a shot of the same space a year ago. I tell you, whizzing down those slides was one hell of a lot more fun.
Our lives are intertwined with Hong Kong. It’s where I met my wife and where my daugher was born. It’s also where I met Douglas, who began as a colleague and remains a friend. We gravitated to Chinatown, not because we were hungry for barbecue duck or pork, but to re-live in some small way the atmosphere of what to us is so familiar. It also reminds me of Vancouver, because the sights and smells are to be found there too.
Actually, I lie. I would kill for a place in Hamburg to get decent barbecue pork. We bought a box of it and ate it like candy on the way home.
Saved the best for last. I don’t post photos of my wife or daughter, but the swirls of colour on this one somehow work. Happy accident.
© 2008 lettershometoyou
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London is a great place.. and I spent enough years there to know. Although China Town can be a bit dodgy at the best of times although it doesn’t seem like it on the surface.
Looks like you had a great weekend.
All the best from Berlin.
great pictures, especially the swirly one. and I really like the crack.
Happy to see you met a good cross-section of the locals. I hate myself for being curmudgeonly, but I slightly dislike the new St. Pancras. It was wonderful before (and still is from outside)… though of course I’m happy with the technical development and it being able to welcome cleverly high-speed trains from France.
London is my spiritual home and though I no longer live there, I am there monthly. It is great to see your pictures, a few of which I am not familiar. I really need to get out of Soho more often!
Hi BB - You get to go there once a month? Sounds perfect. Which photo can’t you place?
Hello Pleite - tell the truth, I didn’t know the old St. Pancras, so maybe I’m lucky I have nothing to compare with.
Nurse - the swirly one was also taken through a window, which might have increased the blur effect.
Hi Paul - Chinatown the afternoon we were there was crammed with people, so full we couldn’t get in the stores. This weekend is Chinese New Year - if it’s anything like the way they have a blow-out in Vancouver’s Chinatown, it should be quite a spectacle.
wonderful pictures, i swear i nearly passed out laughing at the first one. i bet those guys had a great rest of the night.
looks like you had a lovely stay in london, wish i could have been there. it’s been almost a year now and i feel this yearning for london starting to build again. and i would have chosen the duck over the pork. i’m not religious about it, but i feel too closely related to pigs to eat them.
Great pics.
I think that ‘crack in the floor’ is actually an ‘art installation’ …
Also, worth a visit, just for the river trip/crossing alone, is Greenwich …
Puts TIME in a very interesting perspective. London is such a FABULOUS place.
And what about that old ‘debate’ - are you a London or a Paris man ????
Cheers, c
Hi canadada,
Yes, it is an installation called Shibboleths and there is a link to it in the post, plus another to the Tate itself. I just found it uninspiring, but then again, maybe it’s the kind of thing you have to visit again.
Good question - London or Paris? I’m leaning toward London, but we’re going to Paris in May just the two of us, so it might tip back the other direction!
Traditionally it’s been said that London is a ‘man’s town’, and Paris is more for the ‘ladies’.
I think this thought is more of a ‘zeitgeist feeling’ refective of landscape & architecture, than a gender specific idea, though, the ‘observation’ itself implies resonance with a few of the essentials. Personally I prefer London during the day, and Paris at night … sooooooo …..
That’s for the follow up re that ‘art seen’ … It is astounding to me how HARD these larger art museums work to throw patrons off their equilibriums … ie. a chasm-like crack in the floor. It reminds me more of ‘romper room’ then ‘art’. And yes, I know, expand, discover, startle and shock - but geez, a hole in the floor? Not buying.
Canadada - If anything, London is a young person’s town. You see hardly any old people, no kids - most are in their early thirties, and in a hurry to get somewhere.
I suppose the difference between the two is disappearing with the Starbuckisation of the planet. Everywhere you turn in London you see one, and they’re creeping their way across Germany now, too. I hear the Left Bank’s old atmosphere is going fast, though we hope to make it to some personal old haunts as we both know Paris from our student days.
Gee, a ‘young person’s town’? Early thirties hurrying everywhere? No OLD people? The Queen (and her entourage) still live there and she’s well into her eighties !! Perhaps it’s true though, overall, that ‘youth’ - alone - is rushing the city. I haven’t been there in ages, and most ‘my’ age have moved out to the burbs or countryside …
When at university in Edinburgh way back there somewhere, I did a lot of inter-isle travel at the time. Spent a LOT of time in core London. Loved it. I would have been in my early twenties. There is SO much to see, and do: it’s never-ending. I returned after college, and after living in Spain for several months: I would have been in my early thirties by that point, and still loved it. Last time I was there was my early 40’s after several months of architectural research in/around Greece/Italy. Toured/stayed/explored London AGAIN with OPEN EYES. Loved it. It’s such a historically DENSE city. As for Paris, there is so much there too - even if it is superficially a tad more ‘frivolous’ & ‘baroque’. (The excess of ‘Versailles’ always hovers in the background, even though it’s miles away …
As for the Starbuckification of Paris and Europe, I agree it’s not a ‘pretty’ sight, but, the franchises are obviously ‘making a profit’ or people wouldn’t be opening them, no? … Ca va dire, plus ca change.
‘Authenticity’ - past, present and future. It’s an on-going question/query …
I’ll keep an eye out for your ‘Paris Report’.
Well, of course there’s the Queen, long to reign over us… but it just struck me, compared to Hamburg, how much less of a mix of generations there was rushing hither and thither above and below ground. It’s multi-culti, but all of an 18 - 40 group. I’m nearly 48, so am really starting to notice these things…
Paris will be a while yet - not ’til May.
Excellent report, great pictures (that Beefeater!) and a marvellous site, Ian. You remind me (as if I didn’t know) of just how lucky we are to have London on our doorstep.
I love Tate Modern’s crack, but as a geologist there’s long been a fault line through my soul.
Those are some amazing photos. I especially like the buddha head with the trees; very creative sculpture. and of course the crack in the ground — that should be here in California!!
Roads, you little devil, soooo poetic …. ie. ‘fault line through my soul’ … ’tis a keeper word weaver … Hey Ian, have I missed that Paris report somewhere’s around here????
I’ve discovered a place I REALLY wanna go see in the Happy Isles … Port Meirion (might be one word…), north shore of Wales … ’set’/site for that odd/engaging series ‘The Prisoner’ with Patrick McGoogan (might have his name wrong, but I’m close…
ANYWAY, some eccentric laird back there decided he liked Portofino in Italy so he whipped up a bit of that sizzling Med-like atmosphere on the North Sea …(!).. As far as I understand, and from the web photos I’ve seen, it looks like an ENCHANTING little seaside village … perfect for ‘get-a-away’ or ‘writers/artists retreat’ with lots of adjunct roaming around the district …AND on the sea. I loved Wales back then, and knowing Wales, it can’t have changed THAT much. Full of charm and vistas. Not as NOISY as the ‘hot spots’ but for EXACTly that reason, for me, a ‘must see’ …
Ever been?
ANYONE every been?
If so, please let me know if it matches anywhere close to my ‘dream’, or has it become ’spoilt’ and/or vastly ‘overpriced’… cuz of people like me RAVING about it … hmmmm?
Canadada - we must be on some parallel wavelength, because within minutes of you posting this comment, I posted one of my write-ups on Paris, city of women! You’re welcome to go check it out.
About Port Merion - how old is your memory of that place? If it’s more than 20 years, you’d probably not recognise it…