London: Day Five

On April 24th it was no longer my birthday, but we were still determined to have a great day. Dave had to leave because he had booked seperate flights, but Jim and I were out to explore stuff. We headed out around 10:00 AM and went to the National Gallery. Before going there we took some busses around town and saw some of the city we hadn't before. We bought tickets to the special exhibit at the National Gallery, which featured the late works of the artist Caravaggio, who was an Italian painter from the early 1600's who produced probably some of the most amazing realistic works you've ever seen. Of course I didn't take pictures, but it was really incredible. Look his stuff up.

Vauxhall Station, pretty cool spot

Cool new stuff by Vauxhall Station

Say thanks to the Veterans campaign


Texas Embassy


Trafalgar Square

After this we headed to a place called Covenent Square Gardens, which had a cool market. We ate at PRET, which is a really great sandwich place that Jim and I are going to emulate when we open a restaurant in College Station. After this we went to the Brittish Musuem, which also ROCKED. We saw a bunch of ancient Sumerian stuff which was really cool, I had never seen cuneiform at its real scale before, it's really tiny! We then went to the Japanese Sword exhibit, which was really really neat.

The Brittish Museum


The center of the Brittish Museum

Egyptian artifacts in the Brittish Museum

Jim dejected that we didn't make it to the V&A Museum

After this we rushed to the Victoria and Albert Museum, which was supposed to be really cool. We didn't get there in time, it was closed. From here we took busses all over town and went to see Lloyd's of London (which is ugly, looks like a missile silo) and the "cucumber building" which is interesting, a significant London Landmark which happens to have been copied in Barcelona. Wierd how that works.

A monument at Hyde Park Corner

Liverpool Street with the Cucumber building visable


The entrance to Lloyds


Lloyd's of London (The Missile Silo)

We took busses all over town that evening and got to see all kinds of stuff from the top of the big double deckers. It was really neat. At about 9PM we went down to Matt's appartment to get our stuff and say goodbye. We visited for about an hour, then headed to the river to photograph stuff. We got some amazing pictures.

Big Ben and Embankment Bridge


The National Theater


St. Paul's across Millenium Bridge

We caught the last tube to Stratford and had to wait until 1AM to catch a bus out to the Airport. I made some phone calls during the wait. Getting on the bus at 1AM we fell sound asleep, concluding the main part of our trip and ending London: Day Five