{"id":1457,"date":"2013-10-15T12:04:10","date_gmt":"2013-10-15T11:04:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/merrington.net\/?p=1457"},"modified":"2013-10-15T12:06:10","modified_gmt":"2013-10-15T11:06:10","slug":"london-our-top-five-things-to-do-so-far","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/merrington.net\/?p=1457","title":{"rendered":"London \u2013 our top five things to do, so far"},"content":{"rendered":"

We know we are lucky, not the least because our friends our travelers too.\u00a0 This gives us great insight on what to see when visiting different places that they have visited, lived in or live nearby.<\/p>\n

\"Blue<\/a>
Blue Sky London<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

1)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 So far, our best evening was spent with Monica Earl.\u00a0 Nothing one can see in London, is as great as seeing a good friend from home.\u00a0 It was great to hear about the work she is doing and life in London.<\/p>\n

\"Monica,<\/a>
Monica, James and Gaila in London<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We had a quiet evening with a quick stroll around Canary Wharf, we saw the Temple Lounge, in West India Quay.\u00a0 This is a Sheesha Garden, where people meet to smoke exotic scented tobaccos with water pipes and have drinks and socialize. We decided not to eat there but go to a nearby caf\u00e9.\u00a0 We wouldn\u2019t have even understood what a Sheesha Garden was except for Monica\u2019s insider knowledge.<\/p>\n

2)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Pam Lofthouse is studying in the UK and had given us two tips, both excellent. The first was to see Warhorse, which we were lucky enough to get to see. Excellent production, the horses are puppets but lifelike at the same time. Great theatre, highly enjoyable for both of us.*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

3)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Pam\u2019s better tip was to visit the Sir John Soane\u2019s Museum in Lincoln Inn Fields.\u00a0 Even with a description and a quick look on the internet, nothing prepared us for the home of this great English architect and his \u2018house-museum\u2019.\u00a0 Imagine a terrace house, but with ceilings 25 ft high and every available inch covered in art and antiquities.\u00a0 Mirrors were strategically placed to capture light and during Soane\u2019s lifetime, his home was lit with whale\u2019s oil which must have been a wonderful illuminant for these dark rooms. There is a Venetian room, filled with paintings of Venice by Canaletto.\u00a0 He also has a series of paintings by Hogarth, including one series called An Election, which illustrates that politicians may change but politics doesn\u2019t.\u00a0 They are as wickedly funny now as in 1754. \u00a0Soane\u2019s museum is superb and well worth a visit.*<\/p>\n

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\"British<\/a>
British Museum<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

4)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 This trip to London was hastily devised not planned, so the only meeting we were going to get with Libby Chapman was a phone call to the Isle of Wight. Libby told us about the Wallace Collection.\u00a0 We weren\u2019t even sure if we could fit it in because we were going to the British Museum on Sunday.\u00a0 Sunday was stormy and raining, so half of London was at the British Museum, we managed an hour before we decided that the Wallace Collection may be more hospitable.\u00a0 The Wallace Collection is also a house-museum.\u00a0 It is an incredibly large and diverse assembly of fine art, decorative art and armory.\u00a0\u00a0 There are so many Pre – French Revolution paintings of royalty and 19th<\/sup> French paintings there in the Collection, that we heard more French than English.\u00a0 In the armory area in the basement, even 14 year old males were engaged; as they could try on the armour, helmets and leather jerkins, then try to stand upright.*<\/p>\n

5)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Shopping \u2013 enough said.<\/p>\n

*No photos allowed in these venues<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We know we are lucky, not the least because our friends our travelers too.\u00a0 This gives us great insight on what to see when visiting different places that they have visited, lived in or live nearby.   1)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 So far, our best evening was spent with Monica Earl.\u00a0 Nothing one can see in London, is … Continue reading London \u2013 our top five things to do, so far<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adventures-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3VxXq-nv","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/merrington.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/merrington.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/merrington.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merrington.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merrington.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1457"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/merrington.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1457\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1464,"href":"https:\/\/merrington.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1457\/revisions\/1464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/merrington.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merrington.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merrington.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}