On the way, I passed by Trafalgar Square to see the National Gallery's art exhibition on forgeries and frauds! The exhibit used scientific technology like infared and uv imaging, x-rays, and mass spectrometry to find the stories behind 40 paintings in their collection. Some turned out to be fakes - copies given away by of the absence of any sketching underneath the paint or the use of color pigments from the wrong era. Another turned out to be a Raphael. Incredible!
Everything here is labeled!
Then headed over to the Temple Area
In the Twinings Tea shop you can smell about 150 different flavors of tea.
It was perfect timing to walk past the Church of St. Clement's at noon when the bells happened to be ringing... (Like the old nursery rhyme "Oranges and Lemons" say the bells of St. Clement's.) It's possible Christopher Wren designed the steeple because he rebuilt over 50 after the great fire. It would be fun to go on a walk to find them all. Next time.
You can't really hear the bells well in the video... but you can see the gorgeous interior!
My wish for you is to be able to stand here and just smell the air.
If only there was a way for cameras to capture scent.
Around this time, I realized I was headed in the wrong direction to meet the girls (both my housemates in France) at Oxford Circus. This is not a smart place to locate a person. It's like saying, just go to Tokyo and look for me there. Rule of thumb: Whilst traveling, never arrange to meet your friends at a place with "Circus" in its name. Be forewarned.
We ate a yummy lunch in a pub hooked onto Liberty. I ordered Bubble and Squeak (turns out to be 2 eggs over easy and vegetables). Then, we battled the crowds down Oxford Street. Imagine giant department stores that still are 40% too small teeming with bustling capitalist frenzy.
The thing about crowded streets in London is that there is NO consensus on which side to walk on... Londoners think left, while foreigners not from the Commonwealth think right. Chaos reigns, and so it's the law of the jungle instead of the order of the empire. We actually heard a vicious fight break out in one store. When the security guard went over to the girls, he ended up watching instead of breaking it up.
After that kerfuffle, we collapsed in Hyde Park until it was time to go Caroline's house for dinner. Her mom cooked us an English Roast Dinner. Fascinating meal. You form a multi-layered pile of food on your plate and then douse the whole thing in gravy. It's like the Thanksgiving they eat every Sunday without turkey or sweet potatoes and with something called Yorkshire Pudding (which is not pudding but a kind of savory bread cooked in the roast pan). Mmmm.
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