We had a mean time....

...in Greenwich! Yes, I went there. You know you love a good pun! 

Yesterday Katie and I took a mini-expedition to Greenwich, which despite feeling like a quaint and distant village is in fact part of London. We went out on the very nice Docklands Light Railway, getting off at the Island Gardens stop just across the Thames from Greenwich. Here are the Royal Naval College buildings as seen from there:

Then, we took a really cool foot-tunnel under the river. It felt like the X-Files:

We emerged on the other side at the newly-refurbished Cutty Sark!:

The view from right there (as you can see it was a lovely day):

Then we went and poked around a bit at the Royal Naval College. I'm just going to paste from Wikipedia here, it's late over here and I can't think of a witty or amusing version! 

"The Old Royal Naval College is Sir Christopher Wren's domed masterpiece at the centre of the heritage site. The site is administered by the Greenwich Foundation and several of the buildings are let to the University of Greenwich and one, the King Charles block, to Trinity College of Music. Within the complex is the former college dining room, the Painted Hall, this was painted by James Thornhill, and the Chapel of St Peter and St Paul, with an interior designed by James 'Athenian' Stuart. The Naval College had a training reactor, the JASON reactor, within the King William building that was operational between 1962 and 1996. The reactor was decommissioned and removed in 1999."

Here are some photos, including the Painted Hall set up for a fancy schmancy wedding complete with candelabra and the like!

I am retiring for the evening, more to come tomorrow including my standing simultaneously in two hemispheres and a hipster party that reminded me of dearest Brooklyn.  A thousand times good night!

WTF Olympics

I am thankful on a daily basis that we will be departing fair London before the insanity of the Olympics begins. But Olympics fever is already everywhere, and in combination with the Jubilee has led to a generalized English pride all over the place. No comment.

One of the things I least understand is the design of the Olympic logos. Here is the official logo:

Ok, so I took the picture with an iPhone zooming in across the street, but you get the idea. It is supposedly a very stylized "2012," which I only realized a few days ago while talking to Katie. I thought maybe it was an abstract version of the British isles. It's also been likened to a sex act, but I'll let you do the googling if you want to find that yourself (though it can never be unseen once it has been seen). At any rate, it is ugly.

Not as ugly as the mascot, though:

Crazy Building

I walk by this building a lot, despite my best efforts haven't figured out what it is. But it looks crazy old, and as if it might collapse at any moment.

España

Also, I went to Spain last week! Finished up some research in the National Library, lugged back 22 (yes, 22!) books and DVDs  - and in a carry-on to boot - and celebrated my friend Erika's birthday with her. AND saw the sun and experienced temperatures over 70 degrees for the first time in a while.

Dinner with Erika;  hopefully an optical illusion that my head is twice as large as hers.

Headless statue at the end of a sunny hallway near the Sala Barbieri in the National Library

Erika's sister Lorena on their beautiful terrace shows off her various Cookie Monster accessories

Below: Took a very hot stroll through the new Madrid Río Park with an old friend from when I lived in France. The park is kind of an attempt at green space/beach space (sorta) that also expanded the Manzanares River from its former status as a trickle. I'm not sure how ideal it is in scorching sunlight - could use more shade - but it's beautiful and there were people swimming and sunbathing. I was not one of them.

bridge over the Manzanares

house murals next to the bridge

the newly expanded river with sunbathers and swimmers in the pools

That same day I headed over to the Reina Sofía museum to meet another old friend. I arrived early and checked out the temporary exhibits - one of them, "Castles in the Air" by Hans Haacke, was really phenomenal. It was a retrospective of his career featuring a new piece that was very critical of the current state of things in Spain - photos and video art of a half-built suburban housing complex that lies largely empty following the real estate bubble's implosion. 

Some photos of the newish expansion courtyard, from above and from below:

And views from the new roof terrace:

And what better way to end a post on Spain than with a relic of the Franco dictatorship, on the door of my friend María's apartment building (and many others):

The plaque just indicates that the building complies with a 1954 law, but prominently features the Falange's symbol of the yoke and arrows. 

Twelfth Night

Appropriately, since I had twelve nights remaining in England (but who's counting) last night Katie and I went to see the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of Twelfth Night. It was hands down one of the best theater performances I've ever seen, ever. Great cast, great design (sort of like an 80s beach resort hotel), and there was a little pool of water under the stage that the actors came up out of when they were shipwrecked. Very cool. Photo is ©RSC, not my own.

 (Viola emerging from the wreck)

 Just your average walk to the movies

Last Monday I went down to the British Film Institute to see The Kid with a Bike (highly recommended). The walk over is quite lovely:

And the theater itself is not too shabby!

The walk home was even more beautiful, but harder to capture with an iPhone camera, so you have to kind of squint your eyes at this one to replicate the effect of what it actually looked like:

Chez Freud/Hampstead Heath

Two weekends ago (blog's been a bit behind since I finally started writing the chapter in earnest and was traveling) I went with my friend Elena up to Hampstead to see the Freud Museum and famous Heath.

Freud and the fam moved there to escape the Nazis in 1938, and he died a year later, so it was actually much more Anna Freud's house than Sigmund's, though of course the museum is more dedicated to papa Freud (Anna gets a room, though). The house was pretty beautiful, and we got to see Freud's extensive collection of Orientalist knickknacks.

Then we wandered around Hampstead Heath and enjoyed one of the first really beautiful - albeit blustery and not so warm - days we've had here.

Baby swan family!!!

Landscape doesn't get much more English than this. You sort of expect Heathcliff or Mr. Rochester to come riding over on a steed, don't you? Or is that just me?