Couple of asides before we get to today adventures:
1. Forgot to describe our bizarro hotel. Westminster Bridge Park Plaza hotel, where Farley's conference is being held. The conference block consisted of twin rooms, but we asked for a king at check in. The only one left had an interior view -- but that's ok, that's what the twin rooms had too, and it was a
handicapped room -- no problem. But we got to the room to discover it had a bay window with curtains (and big ledge/shelf under it). When you open the curtains the window view was --- frosted glass only, no view at all, except on one side of the bay, if you lean over the huge shelf you can actually see Big Ben. It is a dark cave of a room. And has some weird, weird, weird lighting scheme going on. Feels like a disco. It's clean and modern and a good location but one of the oddest rooms I've ever been in.
2. I subscribe to "Architecture Richmond" emails and yesterday it was all about our sister city Richmond-on-the-Thames. I don't know how that fact escaped me all these years. We went right by there (actually stopped there) yesterday on the boat. Wish I'd gotten off and grabbed a mug or a magnet or something!! Or gone to the top of Richmond Hill. That view inspired Wm Byrd to name our fair city "Richmond". Dang, opportunity missed. This is Arch. Richmond's pic BTW.
Alright, today is Thursday. We overslept, still getting used to the time change. While Farley trotted off to his conference, I decided to change my plans. The train ticket to Brighton Beach was a bit more than I expected so I nixed that
trip and instead headed to the Victoria & Albert museum specifically to view the special Wedding Gown exhibit (oh, warning, this was truly a "girls day"). No pics were allowed, sorry, but the gowns from years 1775 - 2014 were enchanting. However, pics were allowed in the regular Fashion exhibit, so I
snapped photos of a couple things I really liked.
It is an incredible museum. The sculpture lobby is impressive all by itself, but it's also neat to see all the artists there sketching the works of art. The museum encourages this -- even provides stools for them.
Oh, as an aside, someone left their bag/oversized purse on a bench in the middle of the 2nd floor of the gown exhibit. I was there as the guard began to announce "is this anyone's bag?" No one responded in the affirmative, so we were all evacuated from the exhibit until the owner was found. This crazy world we live in.....
From the museum, I headed down to Harrod's. So amazing. Photo of the
famous Egyptian escalator attached. Also the gourmet food areas are incredible. Here is a pic of an amazing purple cake. It can be yours for 65 pounds, which I guess is about $100. But by far the most impressive area is
"shoe heaven" It's set up like a mall -- each designer has their own little separate entrance into their individual space. Prada, Jimmy Choo, Dior, Stuart Weitzman, Gucci -- everybody was there. I didn't pick up a single shoe priced at less than 395 pounds -- and I was picking up the simple flat styles.
Needless to say, I left Harrod's new-shoe-less, and cake-less for that matter. Back to hotel for a brief rest, then a quick drink with Farley before he went to conference social hour. Upon his return we headed out for a bit and found a lovely restaurant/bar overlooking the Thames.
And so ends another day in London Towne!
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Gown exhibit sounds great. It all does, really:-)
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