Skip to main content

St. James’s Piccadilly, Royal Academy, Piccadilly Street Bookstores (Part !)

 I slept about 11 hours last night! Fell asleep at 7:10 pm, woke up a bit at midnight when R was roaming around the room but put my eye mask on and promptly went back to sleep until 7 am. It was actually too warm in the room but can’t complain—better than being too cold? And the bathroom was so toasty warm that taking a shower was a pleasure.

We went back and forth about what to do but the pouring rain outside made our choices easier—it was going to be one of the art galleries. R had his heart set on going to the Royal Academy of Arts on Piccadilly so, after a sandwich at Pret A Manger for breakfast, we took the Tube and walked down Piccadilly to the Academy. As we walked along Piccadilly, we noticed the beautiful small Wren church, St. James’s, so we stopped there for a quick prayer.

We just looked at the regular Collection, which is smallish but that was fine, the building is so beautiful and the bookshops inside the Academy are fun. We sat in the Cafe there for awhile, it’s quite lovely too.





After leaving the Academy, we stopped at Fortnum and Mason’s to admire their Christmas decorations and goggle at the throngs of people lined up inside. We spoke to the concierge, he said that it had actually been busier the day before and they’d had to limit people coming in. Considering it was only 11:30 and things got busier as the day went on, I think they probably did so again.







Richard was in heaven in Hatchards Bookshop, which is only a couple of doors down from Fortnum’s. He spent a good half hour swooning over all of the Architecture and Art books. We didn’t buy any books in the end; still several days to go and we have enough to read. However, we may well return before the end of our stay in London. The photos below are only of the fourth floor! After Hatchard’s we went to yet another bookstore, Waterstone’s and had a nice lunch on the 5th floor there. By this time the rain had stopped, blue skies were out and we headed off to St. Paul’s, hoping to catch the Carol concert there. Continued in Part 2.





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

January 2024 and blogging

  I haven't posted on my blog for a long time. Partly that was due to not knowing what to write about and partly it was wondering if I wanted to put myself "out there" anymore. And in what way. I subscribe to a few blogs on Substack, which is a subscription-based blog. You can pay to have your own blog, you can pay for someone else's blog, and that means you get to write and post and get comments back from a whole lot of people. You can comment on other people's blogs--if you pay--or else you can just read the blog and not pay. Of course you might miss some of the "pay only" content--much like modern news media has teaser stuff but to read the whole article, you have to pay for a subscription. The Substack blogs cover all kinds of topics and there are a few "professional" writers--meaning they're journalists and writers who have published and been paid larger bucks than the $5 a month they get per subscription on Substack--but I think most
12 comments
Read more

It’s just another day

  Yesterday was the final day of my 8-day assignment in a 4th grade class; I’ve written something about that assignment in a previous post, “Revolt of the Guinea Pig,” It’s been a challenging 8 days which, as Dickens might have said, brought out the best in me and probably the worst in me as well. But yesterday morning I had that experience that every teacher dreads—shelter in place, also known as possible shooter situation. I had arrived at the school at 7:20 thinking how wonderful it was that our heat had broken a bit. The skies were overcast, we’d had rain the day before, there was a cool breeze. As I walked to my classroom (photos below of what the buildings look like), I waved to the students already gathered on the other side of the gate, who were waiting to rush in, some to the cafeteria for their breakfast, some to the playground to run and hopefully get some of that energy out before the bell rang at 7:55. I unlocked the outside door to our building, walked down the corridor t
2 comments
Read more

And now for something a little different from the substitute teaching lens

  I subbed for my daughter yesterday. I wasn’t sure how I’d cope as I am still somewhat jet lagged but she has a very well behaved fifth grade class: they’re respectful, good humored (most of the time) and willing to learn (most of the time). She warned me the night before that there had been some “issues” this week—kids fighting on the playground, some backtalk in class from a boy who’s normally a very hard worker. With that in mind, I started off my day in the classroom addressing this up front. “I hear it’s been a tough week,” I said and then waited for a response. Some shifting in the chair, some rolling of the eyes, a couple of “Yeah, it really has” emanated from the kiddos. I then sat on the corner of my desk and talked about how I remembered being their age, the emotions, how things seem so very important, so very “raw” in the moment. I shared with them how my own teachers reacted to misbehaviors, after-school detention (Wow, Mrs A, AFTER school? They could DO that?) But then I
1 comment
Read more