A Grand Day Out

The dress on the right reminded me of something out of Gigi.

Yesterday, as part of my new schedule for myself, I went into town (London) and did fun things which I will now do every Wednesday. Anna and I went to the National Portrait Gallery and to the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Getting there was a bit of an adventure. It was my first time on the train/tube on my own. I have to say, people here are so nice when you have a stroller with you. I almost never had to go up or down stairs on my own. Someone would always ask if I needed help and grab the front wheels for me. Once, the guy didn't even ask, he just grabbed the wheels! As much as I was tempted to say I was fine and could do it on my own (I can be like that), I gratefully accepted their help.

When I first got to the Portrait Gallery, I had a bit of museum choice remorse. It occurred to me that it was a whole gallery of heads of people I mostly didn't know and what was I thinking? I persevered though and did enjoy it after all. It was still mostly people I didn't know but I just zoomed through and only stopped at the people I was familiar with. So, some of the people I saw: William Shakespeare (it was pretty dark), Henry VIII (although it was only a drawing, I'm sure they had an actual painting of him but I didn't see it), several of his wives and his son, Victoria and Albert (of the museum, probably the only reason I cared about them), Alexander Flemming, the Bronte sisters, Dickens, Winston Churchill, Queen Elizabeth I (three of them at different times in her life), the current royals, Princess Margaret (several at different stages of her life), Paul McCartney, E.M. Forester, Virginia Wolf, Margaret Thatcher, Florence Nightingale, David Beckham (a video of him sleeping, it was strange) and many more.

As with pretty much all of the museums we have been to so far, the building itself was pretty cool. The problem with this one was there were a lot of stairs which didn't go to well with my stroller. They did have an elevator but I couldn't shake the feeling that I was missing things. There were a number of people that I thought I would see but didn't such as Jane Austen.

From there, we went to the V&A (Victoria and Albert as it is called). This is a museum of primarily decorative arts. We had been there between the sessions of conference (one big plus of where the chapel is located). That was handy because then we had a map and I could plan out in advance what I wanted to see. This place is huge and it made it possible to just see what I was looking for. Plus, I was able to glance at the things I saw on the way to what I had decided on.

So I saw: Fashion (we saw half of it during conference, this time I could see them all at my own pace), jewelry, tapestries (at least the oldest medieval ones), metalware and musical instruments. It was all a lot of fun.

Wiggly babies in your arms make for blurry pictures. This is the last one I could take.

The jewelry room was interesting because it had a long room with a staircase in the middle (and an elevator) with another room on the next floor up. While I was in the jewelry, I took a few pictures and after I had been almost through the whole room, a guard told me that photography wasn't allowed. Oops. After that, I was wary of taking pictures of anything. Anna was getting kind of antsy after the jewelry so when I looked at the tapestries, I put her on the floor in the middle of the room and let her crawl a bit while I looked at them. Fortunately, the room was almost empty of people.

Looking down from above, my contraband picture.

They had a special exhibit on the Supremes and I was tempted to go but was too cheap to pay to see it. The musical instrument room was above it though and at one end, you could kind of see into it. There was also a screen playing a performance. I had the song Diana Ross was singing in my head for the rest of the day. I was feeling like a rebel and took some pictures of the costumes from above. Once I saw the guard that was there, I was more careful with my camera.

Although it was very tiring, it was a fun day. I was really brave too and actually asked people for directions (I am more likely to wander looking for what I want), help (I had a guard watch the stroller for me while I looked at the instruments, the only way in and out was through a half dozen stairs) and information (they were putting up stands in Trafalgar Square and I asked what was going on). The day even ended with Indian food with Jason and a girl in his class.