London, England, United Kingdom
After two days of exceeding 20,000 steps wandering the
streets of London, we decided today would be a quiet day of leisure in
anticipation of the official Insight Vacations Britain and Ireland Explorer
Tour beginning tomorrow. We did not set
the alarm, and woke naturally for a leisurely breakfast in the hotel. The plan for the day was to visit the Tate
Modern Museum, London’s foremost modern art museum. We both love modern art museums, they have
such a mixture of talent and creativity.
Sometimes the artwork is amazing, sometimes it just falls flat, but
modern art museums will always have something you’ve never seen before!
The Tate Modern is free, and is only about 2.1 miles away,
but fortunately most of the distance is only a few stops away on the
“Tube”. Now that we have mastered travel
on the “Tube”, today we even figured out how to pay using our Apple
Watches. Cindy would be so proud! After getting off at the Blackfriars
terminal, and navigating the Blackfriars crossing, it was only a few minutes
until we were at our destination with 10 minutes to spare. The crowd wasn’t very large, but the children
began to arrive in droves. Evidently,
the Tate Modern is a favorite field trip stop for the London youth.
The children didn’t really disrupt anything other that it
being a little noisier, so we tried to avoid the larger crowds whenever
possible. It’s a very large museum, so
it wasn’t difficult to minimize their impact.
While the bulk of the museum is free, the special exhibits do charge
admission, from 10-22 pounds each. Today
there were three: The Expressionists – Kandinsky, Munter, and the Blue Rider,
Zanele Muhole, and Yoko Ono. There was a
fourth: Anthony McCall-Solid Light that looked interesting, but it doesn’t open
until next week. We decided that there
was enough to see on the free part, that we didn’t need to bother with the
special exhibitions.
The museum was great!
The building is huge which gave lots of room for some of the larger
pieces with plenty of room between pieces so it never seemed crowded. The collections included some of the more
well known artists like Matisse, Picasso, Cezanne, Max Ernst, and Jackson
Pollock. There were also many others
that were famous to Jody, since she’s much more familiar with the art
world. There were also many new artists
of the 20th century, and many still young today! It was easy to take
pictures of any of the artwork we liked.
Over the last few years since the invention of the smartphone, we’ve
noticed that museums have given up preventing visitors from taking
non-commercial pictures. It was only a
few years ago that the guards would stop you from taking pictures, now it is
completely normal.
I have attached some of the more interesting artwork we saw,
in some cases the picture cannot due justice to the sheer size of the
display. There were also several short
films, usually making a social statement that were always interesting.
One of Jody’s favorites in particular was the
Guerrilla Girls, an ultra-feminist group working for both equal representation
and pay in the artistic community. Their
posters were great! We tried to get Jody
a Guerrilla Girls tshirt, but they were all out of her size.
We finished up at the Tate Modern at about 1:30PM, and were
thinking of visiting St-Paul’s Cathedral at the suggestion of Jody’s mom – it
was right in front of us, but in the end decided to head back to the hotel for
an afternoon nap.
We weren’t particularly hungry after a late lunch at
Pret-A-Manger – they are everywhere! So
for dinner, we decided another we would just have fish ‘n chips again, but this
time at a different pub. This time we
picked The Duke of York, right next door to the Victoria Palace Theatre. The interior was much nicer than the
Shakespeare we had visited the other day, but the atmosphere was still great. This pub advertised itself as a Digital Detox
Zone, and had signs that laptops and cell phones were not allowed.
I’m sure it’s mostly tongue-in-cheek, but I
didn’t see anyone talking on their phone at dinner!
I do like the pub atmosphere, you just walk in, pick a
table, sit down and look at the menu.
When you figure out what you want, you walk up to the bar, order your
food and drinks, tell them your table number, pay for it, and the bartender
gives you your drinks and you go back to your table. When your food is ready, they deliver it to
your table, and when you’re done, you leave.
It’s as simple as that!
In the morning our actual tour begins. We’re so glad that the baggage drama is
over. I contacted our travel agent,
about the delayed baggage, and they sent me a link for the travel insurance
company. It turns out that we are
covered for $500 worth of clothing and incidentals. We didn’t spend that much and I did save the
receipts. I just need to file a claim
when we get back.
We meet our tour guide, Cam Wilson at breakfast in the
morning, they pick up our luggage from our rooms and load it on the bus leaving
at 7:30AM for Stratford upon Avon and York.
I will be sure to verify our luggage makes it on the bus!
2025-05-23