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London Pt. 1: Everything, Everywhere, Out of Order

Upon descent into the greater London area, I sat up from lying horizontal in my empty row and opened my window shade to see rows of clouds and a slice of rainbow in the sky above.

I was staying in Marylebone, a neighborhood I chose mainly for its proximity to the park, various transit stations, several points of interest, and the fact that it looks like this on pretty much every side street.

Though everyone told me what a good time to visit I’d chosen, I was trying not to be anxious about the weather. I had accepted that it would probably rain a little bit every day. It was not so. The skies were mainly clear during my visit and the temperatures increasingly warmed each day. There were times I actually started giggling out loud because of how beautiful the weather was, in this notoriously gray place. No wellies or brollies needed to make an appearance this time.

Meanwhile, in New York, it was thunderstorming.

All of London’s window boxes looked very vibrant and well-maintained. This is cineraria, displaying one of the most VIVID shades of purple I’ve ever seen.

During my visit, I went to The Wallace Collection (see following entry), The National Gallery (pictured here), Sir John Soane’s Museum, The Museum of the Home, the Tate Modern, and the V&A. That is a lot of museum-going in four days. Some spoke to me more than others, but I couldn’t beat the gratis price of all that culture.

The Carlo Crivelli gallery came highly recommended, and I’m glad I was able to spend some time here.

I ambled over to Sir John Soane’s after having lunch in the Cafe in the Crypt. I first found out about this place because it was listed as a “Sympathetic Institution” on The Museum of Jurassic Technology’s website. As longtime readers are well aware, I will travel to the ends of the earth just to spend one hour wandering within the nooks and the perilously narrow crannies of a house-sized wunderkammer.

I also touched something in this museum that I wasn’t supposed to. Oops.

Back out in the world, I went to Cecil Court and made conversation with the eccentric proprietor of an Alice-in-Wonderland-themed shop about Aubrey Beardsley and Oscar Wilde.

He asked where I was from. “New York.” “Oh, yes, we call that ‘the other city.”

Next door was a metaphysical bookshop with a Thoth-patterned carpet.