A TEXAS GIRL'S RAMBLINGS OF TRAVELING IN LONDON AND SO FORTH...

Saturday, July 31, 2010

Tube Engineering Works, Buses Only-Clapham Junction





Loved the old cameras and ceramics!

A teeny tiny sewing mahcine and foot pedal?




So this weekend, the tube is closed for engineering works. This means that if I want to go anywhere, I have to walk or use the buses. The buses are confusing, but I know a few routes, so I took one to Clapham Junction to walk down Northcote St. which seemed to have some cute shops (from my view on the bus). I found some cool antique shops, but nothing that really appealed to me. As the rain was holding off, I decided to walk the 45 minutes back to Bob's through Clapham Common, only stopping a few times to watch thedirection the G1 bus was taking back to the Common.

Friday, July 30, 2010

A Day of Books!

One of my favorite bookstores!

Sotheran's



Picadilly Street

Fortnum & Mason-I don't know much about this store because it is so expensive. I don't think they would have even let me in in my tank top and jeans, so I didn't chance it. They definitely would have frowned upon me taking photos for the blog.

Haven't shown a picture of tube stops recently! Not sure what happened at Charing Cross back in medieval times, but the images are actually pretty brutal!


So as you may or may not have gathered by now, I love books. Not necessarily just to read, but also the way they look (preferably hardback). I buy a many a book with no intention to read it, just because I love the cover and binding. So when I watched Finding Neverland on Thursday night (one of the last dvds of mine that I brought that I haven't watched), I decided to go out on a hunt for a nice antique copy of Peter Pan. So I googled some antiquarium bookstores and set out! I started my search at New Bond Street at Marlborough Rare Books. It was not a store front, but rather marked on the street with a little A-Frame sign. I had to buzz myself into a building (luckily someone was there trying to do this first), and take a lift (if I was anymore claustrophobic, I would not have been able to take this 4x4 box) up to the fourth floor. They had a beautiful selection of books which looked 100's and 100's of years old. Too bad they were mainly medical, law, and arts books (I was proud for not even browsing the art books-they looked VERY expensive). The shop owner was very nice and pointed me to another store a few blocks away in between Regent's Street and Picadilly whihc might have what I was looking for-Sotheran's.
At first when I walked in, no one offered to help. But after I asked, they were extremely nice! The store was GREAT! Each section-Travel, Literature, Children's, Art & Architecture-all had a different person in charge who specialized in those type of rare books. I went straight to the children's section, and looked for Peter Pan. The only one I found was in a case-this meant $$$. It was an illustrated Peter Pan book from the early 1900's with gold leaf pages priced at 450 pounds! Needless to say, I didn't buy it. But I did find a book called Poster Journeys that had Abrams Undergroud art posters for 10 pounds! For a receipt, they typed out an invoice with my name and address, really making me feel like I had bought something special (it was neither rare, nor antique). I decided that working in a bookstore like this would go under the column of one of my dream jobs!
I had thoroughly gotten lost trying to find Sotheran's (for the first time I actually resorted to carrying my map out in front of my face as I walked and looked at street names), so when I came out of the store, I had NO idea where I was. Turns out, I was right around the corner from another bookstore-Hatchard's and the famous non-bookstore Fortnum & Mason. I went into Hatchard's 5 story building (it may have been more, but I only went up 5 stories). It was not a rare or antiquariun bookstore, but more like Daunt. Around since 1797, the building had great architecture and tons of unique books. I figured after this, I might as well visit my original bookstore-Daunt-and make it a book day. So I took the tube to Baker Street, and had a look around. On my way back to Bob's, I went to Leicester Square to return my Greece travel book at yet another bookstore and bought some Underground posters from the Transport Museum. It was a great day without much of a purpose but finding cool old bookstores-Perfect!

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

A Touristy Day Indeed!

Start the day out with the London Eye!


County Hall and the Eye

I like lamps.

And tube signs. or really, just any signs!

Big Ben-check out the scaffolding behind it. Scaffolding ruins everything!

Protestrors protesting the war in front of Parliament

The sign says it all! (I think that's St. Margaret's Church there too)


Parliament

It's a rather large place...

Back of Westminster Abbey-I think?

Flying butresses!

Parliament again-with a lightpost!


Still Parliament...

One last shot of Ben

I believe this is Westminster Abbey. I've confused myself now though with St. Margaret's Church...It's like 1 a.m. here. I'm sleepy!

Definitely Westminster Abbey

I like the contrast of the old and new

Neat little clock-not quite as tall as Big Ben though

I want to see this play!

Kind of reminds me of an armadillo. no?

Not sure what this is, but in the middle of all of the ultra-modern glass curtain wall skyscrapers, it seemed not to fit-I like that.

Loved the look of this cute pub! Right in the middle of these super tall office buildings!

Victoria Station-good to know what it looks like. Might have to take a train from here one of these days!

I like street signs...

Lower Sloane Street-the whole street is lined with these red flats
So this day started out strange indeed. A very traumatic event happened when I was walking on my way to the tube station, but I won't write about it because it tends to tug at the heart strings a bit. So I made my way to Waterloo tube station because I had seen in the paper the day before that Anne Hathaway was filming a scene outside of Waterloo Station for a new movie. Well, they didn't seem to be filming anymore (always a day late-first Jennifer Aniston, now Anne Hathaway!), but then again, the train station (it also has a large national rail station attached) was huge, and for me to walk around to all parts of it would probably have been very difficult. From Waterloo, I walked to the London Eye. There seemed to be a lot more street perfomers there than I remembered (and tons more people). I saw another Jack Sparrow impersonator which may or may not have been the same one I saw at Covent Garden and a bad Michael Jackson impersonator (he looked nothing like MJ and I think everyone though it was in poor taste as he had no one around him). From the Lonodn Eye, I walked across Westminster Bridge to Parliament, Big Ben, and eventually Westminster Abbey.
I ended up on Victoria Street and mom and dad had told me of a travel agency just off of Victoria St. that I should visit to discuss our trip. It was quite a ways down, but I finally found it, and she gave some great advice-like going to Greece in October is not a good idea.
From here, I was still going strong, and decided to walk to Sloane Square. Once I finally got there, I actually felt pretty tired, and decided to get the 137 bus back to Bob's. Unfortunately, there was some malfunction on the bus, and it instead of dropping us off at Bob's Street (well not us-not everyone woudl have gotten off there), it terminated at Clapham Common Station. So I decided to finish off my day by doing the 30 minute walk to Bob's, and stopping in Tesco's to get some dinner. Is it sad that the express checker guy now knows me?haha

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Covent Garden

He looks so much like Johnny Depp!




Not sure what these GINORMOUS skillets were full of, but it grossed me out based on size alone.

More street performers

This market had some strange items-mainly touristy clothes and things. One stall had some cool posters of London done by some artist. Yes, I realize that was really not informative at all, but I can't remember anything about them except where they are located in the market.


This little guy was pushing this ball around the open area for entertainment. There were tons of street performers, but for some reason, this kept me watching longest.lol

London Transport Museum-want to go back here and go into the actual museum, not just the gift shop.

Imogen Belfield-Found a great and unique jewelry store in Covent Garden (no idea where exactly), but it was selling some of this type of raw metal jewelry which I love!


London Transport Museum-moquette fabric they use on the tubes

Yes, tube fabric is this retro


So, the weather the past few days has not been great, but I had to get out of the house today. I decided to go to a travel book store and get some books on Barcelona and Greece to help us decide exactly what to do on our trip. The store I went to was in between Leicester Square and Covent Garden, so when I was done, I decided to walk to Covent Garden Market which I haven't been to yet on this trip. While getting lost int he giant market, I ran into the London Transport Museum and the tube-inspried fabric covering the furniture in the window kind of drew me into the gift shop!