London Day / Arriving in Istanbul

After our smooth trip to our friend's neighbourhood the day before, we were looking forward to (a) getting some sleep, then (b) seeing as much as we could of London in one short day. The sleep happened after some nearby Thai food (a cuisine we were soon to find is slowly taking over the city - more on that later) and a stroll down to Little Venice, the canal where the river boats sit, all colourful and painted with names (and sometimes eyes, a la the Yangtze river). My first European sleep was restless, but we both woke up at 8 a.m. nevertheless, ready to make our way out on the town.

A few tube stops later we were re-entering the sunlight at Picadilly Circus and trying to orient ourselves towards the river. Navigating London ended up being surprisingly easy and we managed to walk down by Big Ben, across the bridge, down the river bank to the Tate Modern, around the Tate, back across the Millenium footbridge, up by St. Paul's (with a stop at Costa Coffee for a refresher), then somehow all the way over to Tower Bridge. On the circuitous route to the Tower Bridge, Max paid twenty pence to relieve himself in one of the new public washrooms. You'll have to ask him what the experience was like, but he seemed to enjoy himself.

Taking a step back before I move on with our whirlwind tour of London, I must write about finally getting to explore the Tate Modern. I can probably get across the glory of the gallery in a few words: Matisse, Miro, Picasso, Kandinsky, Man Ray...the list goes on. Apart from seeing some art book refugees right there on the wall, the overall experience of the Tate was fantastic. Walking into the soaring space of the turbine hall (the Tate is located in a former power plant) was ample preparation for room upon room of artwork that gave a pretty good sense of the history of modern art. We walked through surrealism, realism, expressionism, a number of other interesting isms that were all well laid-out.

My top pick from this quick visit was a room of nine massive mural-paintings by Mark Rothko. The paintings are done in ominous reds and browns, each one containing simple brushstroke designs that hover over the dried-blood background. In the blurb beside the room of paintings there was an explanation of their setup in a slightly dim, cramped-for-the-side-of-the-works section of the gallery, cut off from the rest of the art. The dim room accentuated the presence of the paintings, letting their moody, brooding character come through and making standing in the middle of that room a simultanously calming and unsettling.

Apart from the Rothko room, I also fell in love with the room of Russian propaganda street-art (posters) from around 1917 to World War II. The saturated colours and beautiful illustrations made me not want to leave for hours, there were so many to look at.

After we left the Tate and made our way back across the Thames, we began a circuitous route to the Tower Bridge. When we finally arrived, I was surprised by how colourful the bridge was - light blue and red paint adorned the metal, and it looked as if the towers had just been cleaned. We walked back across the river over the Tower Bridge and strolled back towards the National Theatre along the riverside promenade to meet my friend Matt. In between arriving at the Theatre and meeting Matt we spent some time recuperating from all the walking by sitting on a bench by the river and judging the passers-by. Overall Londoners seem to be stylish, but there were a few duds (who may have just been tourists, it's hard to say).

Around dinnertime we met up with Matt and started a frustrating quest for some 'real' British pub food. Now, you'd think it'd be easy to find some quality fish & chips in downtown London, but we discovered that, while curry may be England's national food, Thai food is conquering the pubs. We went into at least three pubs that appeared stereotypically British on the outside (wooden bar, people sipping pints, shining taps) but served nothing but Thai cuisine. Having just had Thai the night before we walked from pub to pub, slowly losing hope that we'd find our greasy, unhealthy dream. We eventually did discover The Waterloo, which served us some fine fish & chips and a spicy bloody mary, so it all worked out in the end.

The next morning at 4:30 a.m., bleary-eyed and sleep-deprived, we somehow made our way to Heathrow's new terminal (the dreaded FIVE). Catching our flight to Istanbul was thankfully hassle-free (I don't deal well with stress that early in the morning) and before we knew it we were flying over the Mediterranean, about to land.

Check back later (probably tomorrow) for the second part of today (meeting Josh, getting from the airport to his place) and most likely my first impressions of Istanbul. Now I'm off to get some kebabs (or similar Turkish traditional food).