2/3 of the unusually strong cohort reunite, take London by storm

Last weekend, I had originally planned on hitting a couple of the smaller museums on Saturday and meeting up with my friend (and fellow 1/3 of the unusually strong cohort - yep, we modestly gave our three person cohort this name years ago) Jason, who has just moved to London after accepting a tenure track position at Imperial College(!). Instead, I ended up going to a couple of the smaller museums, meeting up with Jason, AND walking around major London landmarks for several hours. It was great!

I started out by visiting the Hunterian museum at the Royal College of Surgeons - it's a great collection of pathological human and nonhuman bone and tissue specimens, wax teaching models, bits of animals in jars, etc, assembled by numerous surgeons and anatomists but initially springing out of the personal teaching collection of John Hunter in the 18th century. They don't allow photographs because of the human remains on display, but the main room, known as the Crystal Gallery, is quite visually striking, consisting of a two-floor high open square space of brightly light glass display classes. As online reviews state, it's not for those made squeamish by innards, but I thought it was great.

Charlie D, National Portrait Gallery

Next I ambled over to the Covent Garden market area to check out the shops and ended up having some lunch from a pop-up food place serving paella out of two HUGE skillets (i.e., 3 feet in diameter). The market was a nice area to walk through but mainly consists of formal shops, and to me it doesn't have the fun vibe of Old Spitalfields or Borough market.

I continued walking and made it to Trafalgar Square and visited the National Portrait Gallery, where I saw many famous portraits, such as the only authenticated drawing of Jane Austen, done by her sister (it's tiny! basically a 4x6), the long-scraggly bearded Darwin painting, Byron in his corsair turban, a middle-aged Shakespeare, a larger than life Henry VIII, and lots of other famous Brits.

After the gallery I headed over to the Natural History Museum part of town to meet up with Jason. The Imperial London campus where he will be teaching is located directly behind the NHM, so we decided to walk over and check it out. It's a nice looking campus, but we were not too impressed with the faculty building, aka the Blue Cube. We decided to get the tube and head across the city to Brick Lane, aka Curry Row, for some tasty Indian food after taking a small detour through Hyde Park to see the Serpentine. Well, our small detour basically turned into a London highlights walking marathon, as we followed Hyde Park past the Albert memorial and Serpentine Gallery, walked along the Serpentine itself as we had some ice cream, continued on down to Buckingham Palace where I climbed on part of the Victoria Monument, and finally through St. James Park to Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament, and Westminster! You can find an outline of our adventures in picture form below.

Prince Albert Memorial, under a blue and cloudy sky

Jason on (in?) an art-y structure outside the Serpentine Gallery

Jason for some reason really wanted to pick up one of these molting birds. He was not successful, despite chasing one along the side of the Serpentine.

Sun setting behind Buckingham Palace

I climbed out on this ledge of the Victoria Monument

 - it was 

high!

Obligatory palace guard pic

Victoria Monument in front of Buckingham Palace

 

Obligatory red phone booth pic

Westminster Abbey, dusk

We eventually made it over to Brick Lane, where restaurant hosts line the street and offer you menu deals to get you inside. As Jason pointed out, it's probably the only place in London where you haggle for your meal. After one host agreed to two free drinks each plus 25% off the entire bill, we headed in for what was - all hyperbole aside - definitely some of the best Indian food I have ever had. It. was. delicious.

After a fun and busy day, I headed back for my last night in my digs in Dalston/Hackney. On Sunday, I packed up all of my belongings and headed to a place in the South Kensington area where I spent the week with my parents and sister, who came to visit me (and London)! Our touristy adventures to Canterbury, Stonehenge, and Bath will be the subject of my next blog - stay tuned!