London

London is a zoo!  Hordes of people everywhere!  Down every street, in every park!  Tourists!  Ugh!

We did a walking tour today, ate lunch in Trafalger Square, took a gander round the National Museum (not enough time!) and walked Charing Cross road for it's bookshops.  (One of the photos is Regent Park, which we discovered yesterday evening).

The national museum was amazing.  Like I said - not enough time.  There was one wing I didn't even see.  I kept coming back to a VanGogh I don't think I've ever seen before, an unfinished one, by the title of "Farms near Auvers."  I just adore it.  I spent some time sketching it since photos aren't allowed.  VanGoghs work is just so dynamic!  Also saw a Monet that I'm sure I owned a print of at one point - the one with the bridge over the lilypad pad, all quite green.  Also saw "The Ambassadors" by Holbein.  I was walking down a gallery looking for Meredith and glimpsed it across three galleries and through two doors.  Many of the paintings are much softer than what I expected (perhaps I am too used to the impressionists).  I am always looking for brushstrokes & some betrayal of technique, they are so utterly well blended!  And so precise!

It's quite a challenge to navigate the streets here because the maps we have don't show them all, and their intersections are not the same as ours.  Streets coincide at strange angles, sometimes six at once - they are not predictable or familiar in their structure.  That and feeling like you're always in a gully (buildings are all 4ish stories high) - it all feels quite overwhelming.

At Charing Cross road I bought a couple books.  Meredith always has one, and I've been regreting not bringing one for the inbetween times.  Nearly all the Agatha Christie books had horrendous, awful covers.  I went with the least offensive one- one by the title of "Peril at End House."