London Baby - Day One

Today we got up and got ready and then went to Starbucks. They don't have Starbucks in Holland and my Aunt craves her Chai tea from there, so whenever she goes to London she is constantly in Starbucks. So, even though I don't get Starbucks much in the States we went for a Starbucks run at least twice a day this weekend.

After getting our fill of coffe, tea and hot chocolate (mainly for me it was a huge amount of whipped cream), we headed over to the Globe Theater to get tickets to see a Shakespeare play. I was really bummed to find out that they were sold out. The Globe theater was built near the site of the original globe theater that Shakespeare used during his day (it burned down....TWICE!) I was really thinking it would be cool to see Shakespeare there.

We went to the Tate Modern museum next and looked at all the modern art stuff. I really don't think that all of the stuff hanging in there can be called "art". Like a big canvas with a big red dot on it and I'm supposed to be impressed?? There were some WEIRD things in there. There were two tubes with bubbles coming out of them (like a fountain of bubbles or something). And, there was a really weird display that was in a room....you could only have 8 people in the room at a time, and there were birds in a cage (live birds) and sand on the floor, and thatched huts all around and when you went in the hut there was some weird TV playing that made no sense at all.

However, there were also some cool pieces of art in the museum. We saw some of the pieces that started the modern art ara, like Picasso and the impressionist movement. And, there were some paintings that I thought were cool. They had some comic stuff that I liked.

We got a snack at the museum cafe (I was HUNGRY). Then we walked across the Millennium bridge. It was built (can you guess) for the millennium (that would be the year 2000), and it is a pretty cool looking bridge.

By the time we left there it was getting pretty late actually, so we went back to Tanya's house where we were staying and met up with her. She took us on a walking tour and showed me some Banksy's that are still around. Banksy is a tag artist that is amazingly good at what he does. He goes all over the world and has never been caught, most of his work has a political meaning to it even if its not completely obvious. My Aunt first introduced me to Banksy's art a year ago or so and got me some pieces that are in my room back in California. I really like his work and really wanted to find original pieces around the city, so it was so cool to be able to go and see it on the walls around London.

The first one we saw was an ATM that had a robotick arm coming out of the money slot and it was picking up a littel girl.

The next ones we saw were a boy with a paint brush and a paint can that had just painted a heart on the wall. Then, right next to it, we saw a new one (the others have been published in books or have had prints made out of them, so you know that they have been around for a while, but this one, I had never seen before). It had a monkey with a sign on him that said "I'm With Stupid ->" and Mr. Bush was next to it. The last one we saw was a thug rolling a blunt...but I couldn't get a good photo of it because by then it was almost dark and the painting was under a bridge so it was impossible to get a photo. It was my favorite part of the day.

Finally my Aunt decided we might need to eat (how can she keep forgetting about food??) For dinner we headed to a pub and I got a hamburger and a Guinness beer. My Aunt didn't think I would like Guinness, because she thought it would be too heavy, but I liked it just fine.

So, all in all, a pretty full day for our first day in London. I was really excited to see the Banksy, but pretty disappointed to miss out on Shakespeare. Now, I'm just exhausted from all the walking and ready to sleep!