I Think You Gave Up Just In Time

Our posh dinner was at a joint called Christopher's American Bar & Grill!
We started off with drinks in the bar...and Brandy and I opted for the Wild Berry Royale.
This yummy little champagne number goes something like this: "fresh blueberries & blackberries muddled and shaken with creme de cassis & mure and charged with Perrier Jouet".

The menu was equally swank and we decided to go whole hog.

Brandy Lou got the lobster and burger dinner...it was like a surf & turf deal...
She seemed happy with her selection!


I had a couple of dreamy crab cakes and then this mean piece of salmon with a jambalaya risotto.
Holy crap!

The desert, though, was the coup de grace in our gluttonous endeavors!

Brandy had some coconut ice cream...

The gentleman across from me had a peach melba, I believe...

Chocolate tart!

Sticky Toffee Pudding.
Now, this stuff is lethal...wonderful...undeniable.
They have this at almost every restaurant and if you go to London and you don't eat sticky toffee pudding...you've missed something so absolutely heavenly.
I'd never lead you astray.

And me, I finished off several glasses of wine, shot the shit with Brandy, and ate as much as I could of this maple pecan tart.
Brandy Lou helped me finish it off though...she's got a sweet tooth!

After dinner, Brandy hitched a ride back to her home-stay...and mom and I hit the hay...
I was headed to the Tate Britain the following day!

And the day! Oh!
It was sunny.
Sun was shining insistent through the clouds and I reveled in it!

Yeah, the Eye sort of dominates the view.

I walked along the Thames in the other direction...equally lovely!




Westminster Abbey.

This area was super kegged up with tons of politicians and business folk.
There was all kinds of activity and I just wandered around gawking.

Coincidentally, I was in the area when Leila Deen threw toxic green custard at a Lord.
It was a protest against the potential expansion of Heathrow.
Initially, the woman wasn't arrested...which shocked me...
In the States, if someone throws toxic green custard on Arlen Specter...SOMEONE is getting arrested.






London is really tourist friendly, I have to say.

At every street corner there are arrows pointing to potential areas of interest for tourists.

If you just follow the arrows...You'll get to all the notable places in the city.






The Tate Britain.

Again, I wasn't able to capture any photographs, but that doesn't mean that I wasn't intrinsically moved by entering into this beautiful building.

The Tate Britain displays art from 1500-2009 and the collection is so comprehensive that you literally have to sit down intermittently and take in how vast and important a collection it is.

The painting I was most looking forward to seeing was 'Ophelia' by John Everrett Millais. This painting has haunted me since I had the opportunity to become acquainted with it in an intro art class in college.
I could go on for days and days about the power of the painting, but I'll briefly say to become intimately involved with the subject matter of the painting and the skill of the artist...you HAVE to see it in person.
I stood in front of it, and...corny or not, I'll say it...I teared up.
It was powerful and moving and significant and art has never had that effect on me!
Then two guttural Germans came over and ruined the moment by rudely pushing me out of the way.

The Pre-Raphaelites also have a notable place in the Tate Britain...and because they are my favorite painters, I took much time in staring at their beautiful contributions to a legacy of English artists.

There was also a Tate Triennial going on called ALTERMODERN...and I was there, so I bought a ticket and checked it out.
And although I was unimpressed with a lot of the output of the artists featured...there was one artist that blew my mind.
Lindsay Seers had a piece called 'Extramission 6 (Black Maria)'.

Adrian Searle of the Guardian reviews Seers' piece in the following excerpt:

"Which brings me to Lindsay Seers's Extramission 6 (Black Maria), one of the real finds of this exhibition. Seers shows a semi-autobiographical, quasi-documentary film about her life, screened in a mock-up shed whose design is a copy of Thomas Edison's Black Maria, his New Jersey film studio. The story is implausible, troubling, and beautifully told by different narrators.

As a child, Seers is so overwhelmed by visual stimulus that she cannot speak. As soon as she sees a photograph, she decides she wants to be a camera. She uses her mouth as the camera, and goes about with a black bag over her head. As she grows up, Seers stops being a camera, and wants instead to be a projector. She wears a model of Edison's studio on her head, projecting the movies in her mind. She struggles to illuminate the world.

The whole story is both dreamlike and moving. How much of it is true? There are interviews with Seers's mother and with a psychologist. Are they really who we think they are? As I staggered out, someone muttered "What is she on?"

After the Tate Britain, I was starved...and I decided to catch a cab to Harrod's like a proper tourist and explore that cavernous hub of excess!

Actually, I got really overwhelmed by all the expensive stuff, all the assholes pushing and shoving and being rude, and all the pretension.

So, I hit the Harrod's Cafe, had some cream tea, cream of potato and stilton soup, and relished a moment of comfort.

I had dessert too!
I also picked up a few gifts...I had to, it was Harrod's!


But I had to get back to the hotel because Brandy Lou and I had a date with The Bronx and F*cked Up!