Wednesday, August 21, 2013

Back in good old London Town ...

It was not a bad thing to leave London for three weeks and then return for just two nights. It enabled us to distil what it was that we really wanted to see. Saturday afternoon we (and half of London) went to see the tower and of course the Crown Jewels. We queued for about 25 minutes, and inside took another 10 to 15 minutes to get to see them. The collection is breathtaking - and unreal. So much concentrated wealth in the precious stones, many of which are huge and taken off, or given by, someone else. Also, it's good to know that the royals have been into recycling for many centuries, as each successive King or Queen takes some of the more impressive stones and has them refashioned into a more "modern" crown or tiara. Some of the stones are so big that they have them recut as well.

The next morning we visited the Victoria and Albert Museum where Milton looked at their extensive jewellery collection which traced the making of jewellery from Roman times (and earlier) right up to 2010. Judith visited a special exhibition called "From nightclub to catwalk" focussing on clothing fashion in the eighties. She thought she must have slept through the eighties as she never had any clothes resembling these. Or it might have been that she never went to a nightclub or strutted the catwalk.

She did really enjoy the permanent collection which showed fashions from the 18th to the 21st century.

In the afternoon Milton visited the London Design Museum near the tower bridge. This was OK but perhaps a little underwhelming. Judith took the tube to Coventry Garden and spent a few hours there.

On Monday morning we took the Euro-star to Paris for the last five days of our trip.

 

No comments: