On Friday, we tubed & walked to Buckingham Palace, and looked at it from the outside with masses of other tourists. I really think all the English people are gone for the 4-day Bank Holiday, leaving the city to us foreigners. We had to do some finagling to get the Arsenal tix delivered, because the office of Apartment Services, Ltd., the agency that we got our rental through, was closing for the holiday.
We walked through Hyde Park in the rain, and finally wended our way to the Victoria & Albert Museum – we tried to take a detour to avoid construction, and almost lost ourselves in the winding streets again.
Sara Impey, Family Circle, © 2006, 112 x 109 cm This quilt won QUILT 2006 at the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham 2006. Congratulations Sara!
I had us pay up extra for the Quilt Show at the V&A, Quilts: 1700 – 2010, a well put together show (although more shuffling with the tourists) where the curators interspersed modern quilts with historical. I liked Sara Impey’s stitched letter quilts the best – picture above and links to more.
After the V&A, we once again tubed back, dried out, cleaned up, and went to tea at Fortnum and Mason. I was a little disappointed in the tea – the sandwiches were kind of indifferent, the egg salad on a little Brioche football shaped bun not all that flavorful, the cress in the cucumber gritted on my teeth, the chicken wasn’t all that tender; and all the pastries had little things not quite right – the madelines were too dark on the bottom, the jam cookies had seedy raspberry jam. The scones and clotted cream and the tea itself were the best parts.
We had about half an hour to cruise through the National Portrait Gallery – so not worth it to cough up the admission for Irving Penn, and we were after the last admission time anyhow, so we stuck to the free stuff. I liked the Tom Phillips corner: Iris Murdoch, Brian Eno, Phillips himself the best, but there was a lot to look at in a few minutes.
We only had half an hour for the Portrait Gallery because we were going to hear a Mozart Requiem at St Martin in the Fields. It was quite nice, good singers and the lady beside me fell asleep more than I did.
