This was our last day in London and tomorrow we are winging our way home. So we had checked the weather and noted that it was going to be a sunny and hot day, so we decided a trip to Oxford might be in order. After all, if we went to Oxford we could check out the university and visit the dining room used in the Harry Potter films. However, when we learned that the cost to get there return was going to be 72 pounds we scrapped that entire plan and headed back into London.
We took the metro to the Covent Gardens and looked for the Royal Opera House which from the outside was not all that impressive. From there we decided to walk through the market square around the corner. It really felt like a flea market with lots of ‘used’ jewellery and other silver/brass items for sale. I am sure they were basically antique valued but since all we were interested in was walking through nothing interested us enough to buy.
We then headed off to St. Paul’s metro stop to head over to the Millenium Bridge. When we first arrived from the metro station it took us a bit of time to walk around to get our bearings. We knew where we wanted to go, but it took a bit of time to sort out which direction to start out.
The Millennium Bridge, officially known as the London Millennium Footbridge, is a steel suspension bridge for pedestrians crossing the River Thames in London linking Bankside with the City. When crossing the bridge you get a fantastic view of St Paul’s dome framed between two buildings with the causeway opened between. Construction of the bridge began in 1998, with the opening on 10 June 2000.
Londoners nicknamed the bridge the "Wobbly Bridge" after participants in a charity walk on behalf of Save the Children to open the bridge felt an unexpected, and, for some, uncomfortable, swaying motion on the first two days after the bridge opened. The bridge was closed later that day, and after two days of limited access the bridge was closed for almost two years while modifications were made to eliminate the wobble entirely. It was reopened in 2002. The southern end of the bridge is near Globe Theatre, the Bankside Gallery and Tate Modern Gallery, which is where we were heading.
Our first stop was to head to the Globe Theatre. The Globe Theatre was a theatre in London associated with William Shakespeare and is sometimes called Shakespeare’s Theatre. The original was built in 1599 by Shakespeare's playing company, the Lord Chamberlain's Men, and was destroyed by fire on 29 June 1613. A second Globe Theatre was built on the same site by June 1614 and closed in 1642 and was demolished by 1644. A modern reconstruction of the Globe, named "Shakespeare's Globe", opened in 1997 approximately 230 metres (750 ft) from the site of the original theatre using the closest original construction methods and designed as close as possible to what is believed to be the original design. What was really interesting was the thatched roof since it is the only thatched roof in London (after the great fire in London in the 1600’s thatched roofs was banned in London.)
We headed into the museum first while we waited for the tour to start. The museum had models of the buildings, biographies of Shakespeare and lots of exhibits pertaining to the staging of plays during the Elizabethan era. This included costumes, stage props and tools/instruments used during the production.
When we got the call to join the tour we headed to explore the inside of the theatre itself. We had a tour guide who gave us the history of the building, explained the different areas of the stage and seating area. Since the plays that are put on here are following the style of Elizabethan theatre with an open center which provides all the lights. We learned about the staging, the trap door and the ceiling door where devils and angels enter and leave. After we finished exploring the theatre itself and completed the tour we returned to the museum to finish out explorations there.
After completing our time at the Globe Theatre we headed over to the Tate Modern Gallery which is next door.
Tate Modern is a modern art gallery located in London. It is Britain's national gallery of international modern art and forms part of the Tate group. It is the most-visited modern art gallery in the world, with around 4.7 million visitors per year. It is based in the former Bankside Power Station, in the Bankside area of Central London. The Bankside Power Station is a former oil-fired power station. It generated electricity from 1952 to 1981.
When the gallery opened in 2000, the collections were not displayed in chronological order but were rather arranged thematically into four broad groups: 'History/Memory/Society'; 'Nude/Action/Body'; 'Landscape/Matter/Environment'; and 'Still Life/Object/Real Life'. We started by heading to the first level 3 which has the Collection Displays Material Gestures (This focuses on abstraction, expressionism and abstract expressionism, featuring work by Claude Monet, Anish Kapoor, Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, Henri Matisse and Tacita Dean) and Poetry and Dream (This features a large central room dedicated to Surrealism while the surrounding rooms feature works by artists influenced by Surrealism and its methods).
From the level 3 we headed up to Level 5. On this level we studied the collections categories of Energy and Process (This focuses on Arte Povera, with work by artists such as Alighiero Boetti, Jannis Kounellis, Kasimir Malevich, Ana Mendieta, Mario Merz and Jenny Holzer.) and States of Flux (This focuses on Cubism, Futurism, Vorticism and Pop Art, containing work by artists such as Pablo Picasso, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol and the photographer Eugène Atget.)
Once again I am not going to try to describe all the exhibits we saw but since it is mostly modern abstract art I am comfortable in saying – I did not get most of it. There were two that really caught out attention – the cone shaped pile of sunflower seeds. This was a large pile in the middle of the floor and it looked like a large pile of seeds. What was amazing was to read that it really was life sized seeds made individually from ceramic and individually painted making each one unique.
The second exhibit that impressed us was the suspended floor from the ceiling so we are looking up to the underside of the floor. There is a stairwell that drops down to a lower floor (still well above our heads). The exhibit is made from light weight red nylon stretched over stainless steel rods. The detail included each step but also the electrical box for the light switches on the ‘wall of the stairwell’.
Having said those that impressed us, there were many that we really did not manage to make any sense from and were not sure of the “message in the art” but really it was not our preferred art presentation. By the way, the artwork covered many different artists and eras including some Monet’s.
We left the Tate Modern Gallery to head for home since we both are feeling tired. We had talked about going over to the Tower Bridge to walk across the top which would have been nice. However, we are both tired and know that the views from the upper level would not give us anything new or better than we got from the London Eye. We skipped this and headed back to the hotel.
Tomorrow morning we are up very early to ensure we get to the airport on time to catch our flight homeward. It will be a long day and we will be dealing with jet lag when we get home due to the change of time zones, but it has to be done.
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