Today I decided to head over to the National Gallery to see the Rembrandt exhibit. I stepped into the The National Portrait Gallery first pretty much by accident, which I wasn’t too moved with what was mostly portaits of old English dudes. All of which I’m sure are really important figures in history, but not being a British history buff, it’s much like looking at portraits of my neighbors family tree. Not that interesting.

Then I stumbled upon the Princes Diane Exhibit. It’s very interesting to see how more relaxed and natural the photos were after their divorce. I guess they were trying to give her a better public image, which they obviously did. It’s really sad she died at such a young age.

Okay this is super strange, I’m writing this in the hostel and there is a couple down stairs in the computer area chanting and doing some weird hippy crap! You just don’t get this slice of life outside hostel living. Well maybe in Golden Gate Park, some of the other people are leaving the room. Too funny…

Anyway… Next was the National Gallery. Again trying to keep to my 1.5 hour museum limit I picked up a map and went to only the pieces I thought would have been interesting. Of course the Rembrandt Exhibit was first, then to Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Monet, Van Gogh. Now we’ve seen a ton of this stuff in books, but seeing the actual work is pretty neat. What really sets you back is some of these paintings are close to being 800 years old. I’m not kidding. The quality of these are truly amazing.

Okay now I know nothing about art. But I can tell when I like something. Actually I have heard someone a week back utter the words, “You know, I think Van Gogh was a phony”. Now I may not go that far, but I sort of agree with her that his work “Sunflowers” doesn’t seem to stand up to the likes of “Searport with the Embarkation of Saint Ursula”, by Claude. I believe I spent over 15 minutes alone trying to absorb the whole work.  See update:

After the Gallery I did some more wandering and happened upon the House of Guards, where they have some of the nicest looking horses doing miserable work. I don’t think the guard is very happy either, but they chose this gig. I’m guessing if you are late to work you get stuck out on the sidewalk like this as a punishment.

I stopped in St James Park to cop a squat and to listen to an hour of some local symphonic orchestra playing a free show. Good stuff, brings back wonderful memories of playing in my High School Band.

Tonight I decided to do dinner right, and stopped into an Italian Restaurant in South Kingston. Started it off with marinated olives and a glass of the house red. For the main course, Tagliatelle di Ragu Bolognese and another glass of the house red. The pasta was excelent, which is too bad because I didn’t save enough room for a piece of tarimsu. Anyway, all of that for only 16.80lbs. Nice huh? Yeah unless of course if you convert that to US dollars which is ~$40. But, I gave up on that about 3 days ago, and now everything feels cheap to me.

Update: I got the wrong guy, “Van Gogh is in now way a phony” it was “Picasso is a fake“. With that said, I still think Claude has some sick stuff…

Today I decided to forgo my typical breakfast, and went for just coffee and a croissant. Oh if you get your food ‘take away’ they charge you less money, about 5-10p (cents) per item from what I can tell. Which is what I typically do with something like this anyway…

With coffee in hand I took the tube to The Tate Museum. A lot of good things to see and some not so much, but I guess it’s tend to be in the eye of the beholder. Ones that stood out:

• Francesca Woodman – A photographer who does mainly self portraits of her self nude in everyday situations, in an artful way… I think she was one of the photographers which was pointed out to me during my B&W photography class a couple years back.
• Claude Monet
• Pierre Bonnard – Coffee
• Steve McQueen – I didn’t realize he was an artist as well. (It’s not the one from Bullit)

Kept my time under 1.5 hours and it seems to be working. I was ready for lunch, but not at all exhausted. After sitting down for a sandwich and crisps (potato chips), I finish up my River Thames walk. Starting where I left off: The London Eye, The Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abby, Buckingham Palace.

Which led me directly to Green Park, it was 3PM and my feet were tired so off with my shoes and on with the iPod to listening to my first Spanish lesson.

Pardon, Senorita. ¿Tienes usted Inglés? No?! Hablo Español un poco.

Ohh yeah… Let’s see if I make it to Spain to use this high powered lingo!

Anyway, after the half hour of that I read a little and watched the worst attempt at a cricket game I can imagine. These guys looked as if they didn’t have an athletic bone in their body. Pure comedy.

What did I eat tonight?! How about Indian curry and a beer. Better, but not as good as Indian Clay Oven in the Lower Haight, starting to miss San Francisco cuisine!

Check out some more photos…

So I decide to get an early start and went to the first place I saw for my eggs and toast breakfast. I ordered two eggs scrambled, wheat toast and coffee. The waiter asked me brown toast? So I said yeah, wheat toast. Well what came out wasn’t wheat toast, but instead burnt white bread. Also I’m not sure, but I think they made me 5 scrambled eggs or it was two ostrich eggs because the whole plate was covered. I didn’t eat much because it tasted rather nasty, which I think pissed off the waiter, he gave me a “what you don’t like” look. From this point out coffee and a croissant is going to be plenty for me.

Today was such a nice day I decided that walking the River Thames was a good idea. I started at Tower Bridge and planned going all the way to Buckingham Palace. I snapped a ton of cool pictures, but only made it to The Houses of Parliament before my camera battery gave out on me.

So here’s a quick list of what I saw:

• Tower Bridge – The coolest bridge in London
• Tower of London – I didn’t actually go inside the line was HUGE and it was £16. Which is more than $32. Call me cheap, although it’s probably worth the money…
• Borough Market – Apparently London’s oldest food market. I got a killer sandwich and coffee for only £3.50
• St Paul’s Cathedral – Again didn’t go all the way inside because the line was super long, but I did get a couple decent shots…
• Royal National Theatre – I tried to get a ticket to one of the shows, but it was only running two more days and it was already sold out.
• And a bunch of hacks who probably get a better wage on Pier 39

By this time it was almost 7PM, so a quick trip back to the hostel on the tube to drop my stuff off in the room then off to the pub for dinner and a beer. Which again the beer was probably the only part of the meal worth the money.

We found spending 2.5 hours wandering around a gallery really puts a toll on ones mind and body. I was both physically and mental spent by lunch time. I’m plan on limiting myself to 1.5 hours in a single gallery or museum from this point out.

Some how I didn’t take any photos of myself an Gillian. A huge thanks goes out to her for putting up with me for the past 8 days! G. you ROCK!

Next stop London!

So Chad, why do you need cable at all if everything is publicly available?

Good question! Unfortunately we are unable to receive NBC’s signal in the City. The station is all the way down in San Jose and they don’t feel it’s worth the money to fix the problem. At this moment I’m addicted to Scrubs, Heroes, and now My Name is Earl (Thanks Dale!) which are all on NBC. Thus the need for a cable feed, and limited basic should do the trick.

Anyway, when I told the operator what I waned to do she responded with:

No problem, we can downgrade your account. We’ll need to send out a Comcast employee to put a filter on your line to limit the channels you receive. This will be a $10.99 service charge to you.

My reply:

Umm, wait minute. You want to charge me $11 to put a filter on my line? Don’t you think it’s a bit odd that I have to pay a fee for you to limit my channels? This has no benefit to me only to Comcast. Why should I have to pay for this?

Of course she side steeped the question and asked me if I wanted to see if they could come up a special deal which wouldn’t require me to downgrade to limited basic. At that point, I stated:

Look, if you are unable to drop that charge then lets just cancel cable all together. I’ll just watch DVDs from Netflix.

And there you have it, a classic West move. When you are not happy with something silly like an $11 charge, go to the extreme and tell ‘em off! Funny thing is, this didn’t phase her in the least. I’m guessing this is a typical response.

Hell it’ll keep my ass of the couch and I’ll be saving a bunch of money in the months to come… Right?!

Damn! What’s going to happen to the cheerleader?!

Now Playing: Ned’s Atomic Dustbin: Kill Your Television – God Fodder