Today is Saturday and we have to check out a few things regarding Sunday and Tuesday. First on Tuesday we are taking a shuttle bus from the hotel next door, but we need to check out times etc. On our way to the National Gallery we also located the pickup place for our tour on Sunday.
The National Gallery is an art gallery on Trafalgar Square. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. Since the collection is deemed to be owned by all citizens of the United Kingdom, there is no entry fee. I will not attempt to describe all the paintings that we saw on our tour but will just put some samples of the 4 major categories housed in the more than 50 rooms. I should point out that the paintings here are from the internet since cameras are not permited in the gallery. What I did was select 4 paintings from each category that I then looked up on the internet to add to the blog.
The first grouping (category) is the 13th to 15th Century Paintings with works by duccio, Uccelo, van Eyck, Lippi, Mantegna, Botticelli, Durer, Memling, and Bellini.
The second grouping was the 16th Century Paintings with works by Leonardo, Cranach, michelangelo, Raphael, Holbein, Bruegel, Bronzino, Titian and Veronese.
The third grouping was 17th Century Paintings with works by Caravaggio, Ruebens, Poussin, Van Dyke, Velazquez, Claude, Rembrandt, Cuyp and Vermeer.
The third grouping was 18th to Early 20th Century Paintings with works by Canaletto, goya, Turner, constable, ingres, Degas, Cezanne, Monet and Van Gogh.
It took us about 2 ½ hours to just work our way through the collections and I am sure we missed a bit as well. However, by the time we finished the four groups it was getting mid afternoon, so we stepped back outside to sit on the steps of Traflgar Square to eat our late lunch. As we sat there we noticed that a platform/stage was being set up and realized that there was going to be a rally of some sort. Just as we finished in marched a large number of teenagers.
This is going to be a Christian Youth Rally complete with music, dancing and encouragements for the Christains and potentials. We listened to a couple of songs (actually very well done) but headed back into the National Gallery to check out the temporary exhibits in the lower level. However we had to get to the theatre for our tickets by 2:30 so we only have about 15 minutes in these exhibits.
We headed off to find the theatre for the Jersey Boys presentation which was only about 10 minute walk from Trafalgar Square. The musical play started at 3 and kept us entertained for 2 ½ hours. Although we knew of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons we really did not know much of the history behind the band and the men. I am not sure how close to reality the play was written, but it did create a very compelling biographical story. I suspect they have stayed very close to reality within common sense.
We stayed downtown in the SOHO district (the noted gay area) for dinner. After dinner we walked around the streets which were getting very crowded. Apparently Saturday nights are the big party nights down here and may of the parties do not start until 11 or later but last until 5 am or later. We obviously did not plan on staying out that late but after walking around for a bit we did stop at a pub for a drink just to soak in the atmosphere. We got home at a reasonable hour. Tomorrow we get up early to do the tour.
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