London day 3: Albertopolis

Tuesday

Today's destination was the area identified on Dan's map as Albertopolis. There one finds the Victoria and Albert Musum, Royal Albert Hall, Victoria's memorial to Albert, and more wonderful sites (though not named Albert) than one could shake a scepter at. We'll have to leave the Science Museum and the Museum of Natural History for another day.

On the short walk from the tube, we passed a really good bubblemeister:

The V&A Musum is huge and has collections of all kinds of things. I won't even try describe it. We studied the map, then went to areas we were interested in (which were pleasantly free from crowds; perhaps we have arcane tastes). For example, from the Renaissance, here's a salt cellar based on a nautilus shell:

We also looked at a bunch of Elizabethan stuff and an exhibit on the museum's current expansion project, which involves both historic restoration and creation of new gallery space. 

One room was apparently originally a library; its walls were ceiling-high shelves with books on architecture in (at least) English, French, Italian, and German. But the exhibit was about design after 1945, and I couldn't resist making a collection of chairs.

 

You get the idea. One beautiful sofa gave us a nice rest.

We had lunch in the V&A's nice cafe, then went back to the street, headed for the Royal Albert Hall.

As big fans of the Concert For George, we really hoped to see the concert hall, but unfortunately tours were not available.

So we went across the street to the Royal College of Music to see their small museum. All of the displays were behind glass and my photos are marred by glare, so i'll save the slide trumpet and its inventor Thomas Harper for a smaller audience. For clarinet fans, however, here's a good one:

We ended the day at Scolt Head, a pub in the neighborhood of our lodgings, which served much more than fish and chips. I think the English know how to pronounce quinoa; in any case, the salad was very good.