My annual day in London catching up with friends and visiting new places, which are getting increasingly hard to find. On a sunny day though it is a pleasure just to walk the streets and enjoy the wonderful architecture.
I started at the quite magnificent V&A, which recently opened a new courtyard opening onto Exhibition Road, a good excuse for yet another cafe housed in a funky glass and metal box.
My main reason for visiting though was the Pink Floyd Exhibition : Their Mortal Remains. It was everything you’d expect / want from an exhibition of this kind, filled with artefacts (guitars, giant inflatables, album artwork) and short videos covering every aspect of the band (flying pigs, Live at Pompeii, Syd Barrett), and culminated in their truly spine tingling performance of Comfortably Numb at Live 8 in full surround sound, quite incredible.
I then walked toward Kensington, passing a distinctive if near obsolute phone box, and so many lovely red brick buildings, including the Royal Albert Hall, very London.
I stopped to eat my lunch outside the rather large and lovely St Mary Abbots Church, which I’d never come across before.
Further along Kensington High Street, at the entrance of Holland Park, is the new (as of a year ago) home of the Design Museum, which I’ll post about separately, but here’s a sneak peak of this stunning place.
I caught the tube over to Soho for a catch up, before walking up to Warren Street, where the BT Tower was prominent.
Final wander for the day was up the road past the truly enormous St Pancras, and onto King’s Cross, which had completely changed since I was last there. A once pretty grotty area is now an open plaza, which was filled with people on a warm Friday summer evening, while inside the station has a funky roofed area.
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