Wandering in London...

Yesterday evening, my hosts, the med-student flatmates, took me to a pub. Jonny insisted that I drink a Gin & T to help me recover from my jet lag. The pub closed around 11PM...I told them how upset college students in Gainesville are that the bars close at 3AM and they looked perplexed.

This morning I dragged my luggage through the tube again (this time not during rush hour) and dropped the big bags off at the hotel in Earl's Court. I spent the rest of the afternoon (about four hours) wandering around the Kensington, Chelsea and Brompton. I stopped for lunch at a Bangladeshi restaurant that served the most amazing aromatic rice, then walked through a Victorian cemetery in Brompton. Eventually, I wandered back to the hotel. My traveling companions, Emily and Amelia, had just arrived. We took the tube down to Trafalgar Square, where everyone was still hyped up from the announcement that London had won the bid to host the 2012 Olympics. Emily and I went to the Portrait Museum and made the holy pilgramage to a tiny sketch of Jane Austen drawn by her sister, Jane. We also saw all the amazing Tudor portraits that featured so prominently in Dr. Sommerville's lectures.

After the Portrait Museum closed, we went to British Museum and explored some of the modern pieces. I saw some amazing Renoirs, Cezannes , Seurats, Monets, Pisarros and Van Goghs, including the famous Sunflowers painting. It is a very different experience looking at the real thing vs. looking at a print. The texture is something that just isn't captured in reproductions.

After the museums, we wandered around and eventually ate dinner in Chinatown before returning home.

As wonderful as the museums were, I think that I enjoyed walking around Kensington and getting slightly lost the most...so much for itineraries.