The National Gallery & some wandering

Today we had tickets for the National Gallery (it is free to enter, but we had to book a few days ahead to get a ticket). The building is architecturally glorious, the art is breath taking and the staff made us feel like we were old friends coming home, rather than tourists walking through the door for the first time (they all showed me photos of their dogs). We will definitely be getting tickets to go back. 

Yesterday we were going to go to the National Portrait Gallery, but discovered that the bus we were on wasn’t going there anymore, thanks to the St Patricks Day parade and festival. We decided to skip the National Portrait Gallery that day (not wanting to walk around with 50,000 drunk people) & wandered a bit where our bus terminated - the John Lewis Department Store. They had an amazing display of yarn for knitting and crochet & we spent a lovely afternoon in the cafe, just soaking in the atmosphere and I did some sketching. On the way out the door we discovered their “cheese room” and had great joy in picking out some cheese to have for dinner.

I’m not a massive fan of Van Gogh, but we both loved this painting a lot. There is so much light and movement in the brushstrokes. 

This was painted by Monet when he was 76 - there is still hope for me yet :)

S especially loved this painting by Tie Polo and that it didn’t have a rectangular frame. It was really striking on the wall.

We both REALLY loved this painting by Akseli Gallen-Kallela. From a distance it looked like a photo, but up close it was amazing in the simple brushstrokes. 

I loved this painting by Cezanne.

Turner is a master with light, I just loved the texture in the sky brush strokes.

This is a gorgeous sunset by Turner.

We took this photo for H, who loves Artemesia Gentileschi (this is a self portrait).

If you zoom in you can see they haven’t patched the walls where they have had previous pictures hanging. So much art history here, even in the holes in the walls. 

The architecture was breath taking.

Even the floors have beautiful details.

Even the grates for the heating is beautiful

The Lions of Trafalgar Square. We first took a selfie here in 1991, although it technically wasn’t a selfie because we had to get a stranger walking by to take the photo on our film camera :)

Looking down towards Westminster, you can see Big Ben - we were struck with how much it looked like the Lego one we saw the other night!

John Lewis Cheese Shop - we were in heaven

I’m not very good at sketching in a cafe, but it was fun

We have been taking a LOT of public transport, and Skye has been amazing in navigating these very loooooong escalators. Defence Community Dogs trained her so well - they started training her for this very trip 2 & 1/2 years ago!!