8th day / 21st Jan: Victoria & Albert Museum, Harrod's, Hyde Park

[ pictures of today: http://picasaweb.google.com/110144623598348247797/20110121?authkey=Gv1sRgCNnOsaaLyfrAsgE# ]

Woke up feeling properly sick this morning. Runny nose and the whole business. Got a free breakfast. Same as the first hostel, since they're run by the same people.

I decided to see some museums today hoping that would be less exhausting and let me get over the cold.

The Victoria & Albert Museum is just one block away and free. So I headed there. From what I had read it sounded like I might enjoy this museum. I did. I think this is the best museum I've ever seen. They started off with stone statues, sculptures and ornaments from sort of rennaissance Mediterranean Europe, in a Roman kind of style. This was great enough, but from there it continued. This museum is packed with all the good stuff. I took quite a few pictures, but later felt tired and that there was just so much awesome stuff that it was pointless to try and capture it all.

Renaissance sculptures and ornaments.

The colours in these seemed so great that I thought they must be recreations. But they are original. Amazing.

A huge wooden spiral staircase!

The beginning of a section showing lots of ironwork.

Plastor casts. Of some of Michaelangelos sculptures, I think.

'David'. It was pretty good.

This is huge. For scale reference some people are kindly sitting down in front of it.

More sculptures, and the realisation that this museum goes on for a long way.

Big courtyard in the centre of the museum. The building alone has great detail.

 

A whole lot of silver stuff.

They had a little gallery.

They had, I think, 8 by John Constable, and an about an equal amount by William Turner.

There was a huge room filled with various jewellery from different periods of time. I snapped this shot of the oldest section (1500BC - 700AD) and the next photo before the security man told me there was no photography. Nicely planned.

Nice looking spiral staircase.

A picture by Beatrix Potter when she was a student.

An interactive thing about the design of theatre sets. Moving the blocks, and twisting the crystal-like things at the front, modifies the image on the screen behind to reflect what you've done.

A big wooden house facade. This is next to the wooden staircase.

A big column thing from Rome or Italy somewhere. It is some famous structure but I forgot what it is.

A drawing showing Picadilly Circus underground station.

I could have stayed in the museum all day. However I was getting tired, hungry and I had an epic runny nose. I went outside and ate bread. Then walked across the road to Harrod's.

I'm not that interested in shopping, so I'm not that familiar with what this place is meant to be. I just know it's supposed to be a kind of fancy shopping store or building. When I went in, the man at the door told some others and myself that we had to take off our large bags and hold them by our sides. The store has some interesting architectural things, but besides that I think it is almost like a regular department store. But I didn't investigate it very much, so I might have missed something.

At the top of the "egyptian escalator".

Looking down at the escalator.

The outside of Harrod's.

After that I decided to check out Hyde Park for a bit. I had a crisis due to the lack of public toilets anywhere, with the park toilets closing at 4pm. So I had to cut short that trip. But it seems pleasant enough.

I left the park, racing back toward the hostel. On the way I saw the Prince Albert Memorial. Took a few quick snaps. Once home I was feeling pretty terrible. This day I had felt more sick than any of the previous days. I couldn't really speak properly due to a sore throat, so to the others in my room I must have sounded like I had the plague. I had a very early night that night.

Albert Memorial, I think.

Royal Albert Hall. Across the road from the Albert Memorial.