Nancy's Fancies: A day in London


My Tate British Picasso bag

On Saturday, I spent the morning touring London on a big, red double-decker bus. We drove around Kensington Gardens, the Marble Arch, 10 Downing St., the hospital where Princess Diana had her babies, churches, abbeys, Tower of London, lots of bridges across the Thames, museums, Trafalgar Square. The architecture was astounding, I love ornate stuff like that. I didn't take pictures because it was lightly raining but I wish I had now. After a couple of hours, I got off the bus across the street from Westminster Abbey and walked a few blocks to the Tate Britian, where I had a timed ticket to the Picasso and Modern British Art exhibit. The exhibit was kind of small and had maybe 3 of Picasso's really good works and facsimiles of others. Anyway, my favorite part was Picasso's sketches of costumes that he designed for a London ballet company, just because I remember loving these as a teenager, teaching myself art history with a series of books that my parents had. When I saw canvas bags in the gift shop with these drawings, I had to have it! I used this bag for the rest of my trip and I love it. The rest of the museum was closed for renovations except for two galleries. What a disappointment! I was hoping at this point that the other museums that I planned to visit would be better.

I got back on the bus and got off in front of Harrod's department store. I went right into the food court because I had heard that it was pretty amazing. It was! Talk about sensory overload. The walls, ceilings, floors were beautifully tiled, mosaic-ed and painted. The food stalls were works of art. And then I found the biscuit tins. I kept picking up one and then finding something I liked better as I moved down the aisles. Finally I settled on three that I liked. One was a teddybear soldier which I gave to my grandson Sammy, the other two are pictured below. The one with four sides is artwork by a famous art deco artist named Alphonse Mucha. He was prominently studied in last semester's history of graphic design class. The green one is just pretty. I bought some cartons of take-away food for my dinner and rode the tour bus home.