Four days in London

Blogging and touristing don't mix.  I want to spend my time doing things, not writing about them. But now that I am back in rainy Germany (having left rainy England), I'll catch you all up on what we did. TL;DR version: we saw lots of classic tourist stuff and some plays.

This was my first visit to both the Victoria and Albert Museum and the British Museum.  I thought the former was an ¨attic¨ -- a hodgepodge of items (though very nice items)  -- until I saw the latter. My word, the Brits were/are collectors, and they got there first and collected the really good stuff. The most intact statues, sarcophagi, etc.  I have ever seen.  But definitely arranged to give you a sense of quantity as much as quality.

Here is the entrance to the British Museum.  Note the hint of sunshine in the background (but also note the wet ground)

From the British Museum, I've captured a picture of a Grecian urn. My friend Jeff and I taught a course in statistics at CHI years ago, where we did some examples involving drawing black and white marbles from an urn to demonstrate probability.  We so wanted a real Grecian urn to put our marbles in, since that's what all the classic examples talk about, but we never found one.  I found the perfect urn, Jeff.  Shall we teach that class again?

I also have to point to this perfectly relevant xkcd cartoon that appeared today.

At the Victoria and Albert, we went to an exhibit on how wedding dresses have changed over the years, starting in 1750ish.  It was fascinating.  I actually thought that some of the simple gowns of the 18th century (made of muslin) were the most intriguing, but to be fair, they seemed to pick some pretty extreme items for the more modern gowns (see Gwen Stefani's wedding gown below).  I highly recommend it if you are in London in the next couple months.  Jay went mostly to be a good sport and ended up finding it enjoyable too.

We tried to walk around as much as the weather would cooperate.  We wandered through Hyde Park and came across the Queen Elizabeth gate (created to honor Elizabeth II's mother)














We had tea in Kensington Gardens (what a civilized custom, though I don't know how many Brits actually take tea these days).

We also visited the Tate Britain museum, so Jay could see the Turner galleries (he is a big Turner fan) and just ducked into the National Gallery (to get out of the rain) with enough time to see the Turners there and the Impressionists.

And of course, we ate well.  We had dinner at Gauthier Soho, a  very nice ¨modern French¨ restaurant.  FYI, I don't recommend the tasting menu (which we didn't have).  It's a lot of food, as the folks at the next table found out.  They came before us, and as we left, they thought they had 3 courses to go.  The service was impeccable, and the 3 course menu (I had the duck with the foie gras -- mmmm) was just right.

More about the plays we saw and the visit to Hampton Court in later posts