31st December 2010

(Christina)
Today is the last day of the year!  Gosh!  We woke up in our lovely big triple hotel room and had breakfast downstairs at the hotel.  I have a really bad cold (terrible runny nose) but decided to soldier on.  Unfortunately, we don't have free internet here in the hotel, so we trooped off to Starbucks around the corner to use theirs.  We had to buy special membership cards and charge them with money to get a login!  Crazy.  Annoying.  So we did that.  My cold decided to get worse then and so Charles took me to a pharmacy and we asked for some medicine.  I  was given some sudafed (the real stuff), which is nice.

We took the underground to Notting Hill, where we went to Portobello Road markets.  It was super fun!  We didn't buy anything, but had a great time looking at all the interesting shops.  There was a shop that sold both Hunter gumboots (lisa wants some) AND Melissa shoes (I love them).  There wasn't much there to interest Charles particularly, but he had a good time too.  We had lunch at a SUPER DELICIOUS gourmet burger place, which was totally filling and awesome.

After lunch, we headed back to the station and trained to St Paul's Cathedral.  But when we wanted to go inside to have a look, we found that it was 12 pounds!  12!  That's expensive!  I was super cross because I think it's WRONG to charge to see a place of worship.  It would be okay if they'd asked for a donation.  Imagine how many other people are turned off by the price!  I think it's not in their interest to charge so much.  I have opinions.


So we walked to the Tate museum of modern art, which was just over the river.  The best thing was a huge room with what looked like gravel on the floor, but was actually porcelain painted to look like sunflower seeds.  Hundreds of thousands of porcelain sunflower seeds!  We watched a documentary about it and it looks like the artwork is more about the people who made the seeds rather than the work itself.  It was really interesting and heartwarming.  It was made in a small town in China which had become a bit bankrupt so the business really helped bring the town back to life.

Other exhibitions were on surrealism and other modern art.  Surrealism is cool, but other modern art seems to mostly consist of guts and creepy stuff.

Then we were hungry again!  There was nowhere to eat near there so we randomly took the metro to Green Park station, thinking it might be busier.  It wasn't, and we walked for ages not seeing anywhere to eat.  Finally found a "japanese" place which was really disgusting but we ate there anywhere and it was okay.  Then we continued walking in the same direction and began seeing millions of eateries and NYE revellers.  It was a happening part of town!  Lots of big lights and big city.  It kind of went to my head, and I started to feel horrible so we went home.  Now we're home watching Die Hard 4 or something, listening to the police cars zooming around outside.  We're right over the road from a police station, it's not a bad part of town or anything :-)

PS every time Charles and I hear sirens or see a policeman, we just immediately think of the theme from the Bill.  Dun-nuh, dun-nuh, DAH!