London, Day One - Ice, Snow, More Samosas, and a constant search for the restroom.

Today was my first full day in London, and despite the less pleasant attributes listed above, I LOVE IT.

 

for more about my adventures with these fierce and formidable toy pirates, read on!

I spent the whole day today sort of wandering around aimlessly and seeing what kind of fun I could find. For any of you travelling to large cities, I highly recommend the city walks card series. Each deck of heavyweight cardstock card comes in an easy to carry box (which I shoved int eh bottom of my backpack) and it provides you with lots of interesting walks around all parts of the city.

Today I walked mostly in the Bond - Baker Street area, up and down Marleybourne and Regency streets> I poked in and out of many a fancy boutique, as well as some of the more well known stores, like H&M and Topshop. I also went to Libetry and Co, a really famous department store housed in a lovely old building with wooden floors and wood beam ceilings. At one point they were very famous for the fabric they manufactured, you may recognize the term "Liberty Print".

Two other really interesting boutiques I stopped in were "The Lomography Gallery Store" an awesome camera boutique that sold all sorts of interesting analog/lomography cameras and camera attachments that you can use for all sorts of interesting effects with your photography. All of their walls were lined with photos, which looked awesome - you can also check out the most popular customer lomo photos at their website www.lomography.com - scroll down to the bottom of the page for the most popular photos. Also, check out this AWESOME 8 frames/shot camera, and then buy it for me. thanks. 

http://uk.shop.lomography.com/cameras/lomographic-cameras/oktomat

Oh oktomat, how I love thee.

A bit further down the street was a fabulous clothing boutique,Beyond the Valley, which was full of indie designer clothes that were really amazing - there were great pieces with alot of detailed or unique construction, as well as alot of really nice, one of kind fabric used. My favorite was either the necklaces made of yards of gathered chiffon

http://www.beyondthevalleystore.com/item10025998.aspx  (this is a similar one)

or the silk smoking blazer with smoking cigarettes embroidered on it. 

http://www.beyondthevalleystore.com/item10008419.aspx (it also comes in magenta, and it is totally the type of thing I will wear later in life when I powerwalk around the neighborhood, grumbling under my breath)

The final shop stop of the day, and definately the best is last, was my visit to Hamleys, the world famous 5 or 6 story (I lost track after a while) toy store. Here are just a few of the amazing things the shop has to offer:

- a hair and nail salon on the all pink girls floor

-a full fledged candy shop with jelly beans, fudge, and every type of gummi you can think of

-an ice cream parlour

- an Ollivanders wand shop with beautiful boxes of wands (each unique) stacked on shelves - SO COOL! (please lizzy, can we have one? pretty please!)

- a full paid staff of floor pirated gooning around outside the store. Seriously. they are toy piratesm they are wearing pirate clothes, and talking in pirate speech and they were playing cherades until I asked them for a picture...which the photographer pirate said was "mighty fine, and worthy to be postin' on ye old facebook" I will add the picture later, this internet wont download pics from my camera. boo.

and...

- ZERO working toilets. of course, they did have 10 broken ones, but that doesnt do me much good after 3 cups of coffee and cocoa, now does it?

and then...

Throughly worn out from so much shoping i retreated back to my hostel, only to remember that the national portrait gallery is open late tonight, so off i went again out into the maddening crowd. Totally worth it though, the national portrait gallery is awesome. you can literally walk through 6 centuries of history as view portraits of Britains most loved and famous figures. I love just walking down the halls and watching time pass through the changes in clothing and in painting styles. So wonderful. I could have spent the whole day there - they have tons of really interesting information about all of the portrait subjects, so you can learn alot as you wander around. My favorite was a self portrait designed by the artist Julian Opie, (who created the blur album cover in a similar syle of illustration, also on display) his portrait was a video/lcd screen of his animated portrait played on a loop, so when you pass by it looks like you are just looking at a cartoony self portrait but then the portrait blinks, or shrugs his shoulders, and totally freaks you out, and it is the coolest thing ever.

Runner up (and not for those who are squemish) is one artist, Marc Quinn's self portrait that is a bust of his head made completely out of his own frozen blood (gross, but interesting, becasue he creates a new one every five years to track his own body changes and ageing) This creeped me out at first, but after reading about his body of work as an artist, which focuses alot of people and their bodies and abnormalities in bodies, it seemed pretty interesting. I just told myself it was cherry jello. you can read more about the bust, titled "self" via this link:

http://www.npg.org.uk/about/press/marc-quinn-press.php

and on that bizarre note,
goodnight!

HK

Comments

[Stephanie]

the marleybourne/baker street area is where my cousin was living. awesome isn't it? we stayed with her and we loved it! aside from the teeeeeeny apartment size.

[Emma]

That blood sculpture sounds really cool. Gross, but cool all together!