London: Day 2

For our second day in London, Jen and I did quite a bit more walking in order to do and see some new things.

We started by going to the Tate Modern museum. My favorite was a gorgeous water lily painting by Monet and a fascinating Picasso painting that was one of the first he gave away. Jen liked the color and texture of the paintings by Gerhard Richter dedicated to the American composer John Cage. We both reaffirmed that modern art is not our cup of tea!

To get there we walked across the Millenium Bridge and enjoyed a lovely view of St. Paul's Cathedral. We also got to revisit Shakespeare's Globe Theater.

I actually had to use some of my rusty rock climbing skills to get up and down this beast, but it was worth it for a picture with Aslan!

From there we traveled to Leicester Square where we bought some half price tickets for a Shakespeare performance in the outdoor theater at Regent's Park that night. To wet our appetites for the Arts, we stopped in at St. Martin-in-the-Fields lunchtime concert series. They had junior performers that were awesome. A flutist played In Ireland by Hamilton Harty and Sonative by Dutilleux. Then we had Mozart's Piano Quartet K 478, which was beautiful. Jen and I both got tired, but it was still utterly enjoyable with incredible accoustics.

After that, I headed to the Royal Mews (know for the falcons that used to molt or "mew" there originally) to see a few horses and some of the royal carriages. This is the gold coronation coach. It weighs 4 tons and takes 30 ft. to stop. They also have to take the wall and window out of the room to take it out.

That night we got our fish and chips from The Plaice of Rock and Sole and enjoyed "A Comedy of Errors" by Shakespeare. What a great end to our London days!