National Gallery, Drunk Brazilians, and Studio Work

Studio work has kept me from doing quite as much sight seeing as I’ve been doing the past few weeks but I’m trying to find time to get out for a bit each day. On Friday, we slept late and I managed to make it to the free lunchtime concert at St. Martin-in-the-Fields on Trafalgar Square – this day it was string students from the Guildhall School of Music who played Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Shostakovich. It was a very well presented programme – sitting in such a famous performance space, I felt very fortunate to have the opportunity to go to great things like this. I ate my sandwich on Trafalgar Square amidst dive-bombing pigeons and spent the rest of the afternoon leisurely wandering through the National Gallery. It was amazing to see the paintings I’ve studied in my art history classes: Titian, Holbein, Caravaggio, Van Eyck, Turner, Seurat, and Monet. I caught evensong at Southwark Cathedral and discovered that the New English Hymnal doesn’t have any notes in it! I spent most of the evening with a cappuccino at Café Nero engrossed in a book after calling my dad for some company. I’ve become addicted to Anita Shreve’s books while over here – my favorite thus far is Light on Snow. To top off my day, I walked across Tower Bridge after dark and stood looking at the lights of London all the way down the Thames. London is beautiful at night with all of the bridges, the Eye, and the Houses of Parliament lit up.

On Saturday, Sandy and I went to the RIBA (the British equivalent of the AIA) to check out their incredible bookstore and spent some time walking around Oxford Circus and Regent’s Street, which on a Saturday is chock full of people and interesting shopping. We’ve found a Mexican restaurant within walking distance of home so we treated ourselves to burritos and enchiladas there on Saturday night. Pricey, but oh so worth it.

We were awoken at 3:55am by our neighbors across the hall arriving home from the bars. There must have been at least twenty people yelling and screaming in the small hallway outside our room speaking a language we later figured out was Portuguese as the people are Brazilian. Angrily opening the door (several of them fell into the room when we opened it) and yelling at them to go away did no good so we were awake until they finally passed out around 6. I cannot believe how inconsiderate international travelers are; noisy drunk people seem to be a regular occurrence here. The living situation here really is not good and I grow to dislike hostel life more and more each day, especially now that we have no hot showers anymore and there were bodily excretions floating in several toilets on Sunday morning. (It is a far cry from the clean, spacious QUIET apartment I left in the States, that’s for sure, and I think we will all appreciate the luxuries we have as Americans more after this trip – my rent will be a bargain after paying close to $900/month to live in a tiny room with three other people and a sink, see photo at left.)

Quite appropriately, it was cold and raining on Sunday which kept us all inside either catching up on sleep or studio work. This is the first rain we’ve had since we arrived 2 ½ weeks ago; that’s pretty good for London in the winter. It has become a tradition with our group to go out for a hot meal on Sunday nights, something that I believe comes from all of our days as youngins in the dorms since no Sunday dinner is served at UNL. This week it was Bella Italia and a steaming hot bowl of penne pomodoro hit the spot for just under 6 GBP.

On Monday, we had a visit from Hiko Takeda who used to be the London architect associated with this program before Steve Reinke at Woods Bagot. We presented some of our design ideas for the Windsor Atheneum (things are still pretty loose, mostly sketches on bum wad and observational drawings in sketchbooks) and we are preparing to present some schematics for the same project to the folks Woods Bagot on Thursday afternoon. We’ve got a lot of balls in the air right now with various assignments and it’s tough to buckle down and do work with London beckoning. I took a break in the afternoon to head back to IKEA, this time the one in Tottenham Hale which is far easier to get to (!), in search of a duvet and sheets. I’m hoping I will sleep better if I know where my bedding has been and as is usually the case at IKEA, I got a pretty good deal. I had to change subway lines at King’s Cross-St. Pancras around 5:30 and with a large bag of purchases, it was rather chaotic. There must be about 6 lines of the Underground that all come through this station and you feel a bit like a red blood cell sometimes in those little artery-like corridors, being pushed along with the other people. After 2 ½ weeks, I am a savvy tube traveler and am really a fan of public transportation. It’s so easy here! I’m preparing for our 9-day break which begins next Saturday – I’m headed to Scotland for some peace, quiet, and hopefully some hiking in the Highlands. (Alicia & Camille, I’ll try to make it to Aberdeen!)

Happy Valentine’s Day, Chris! :-x