April 11 - London

 April 11 - London

After brekkie in Covent Garden, Monday’s itinerary started off with a walk to the National Gallery, the museum that houses Great Britain’s national collection of European paintings.  Much of the artwork on display is by the ‘Old Masters’ but there’s also a lot by many that I’ve never heard of (art being one of the many subjects I don’t know much about! 😀). One painting in particular we were lucky to see is the ‘Blue Boy’ by Gainsborough.  This is presently on loan from the States and it’s the first time it’s been back in the UK for 100 years.


Our next port of call today was the British Museum, home of, amongst many other things, the ‘Elgin Marbles’.  No argument on here about the rights and wrongs on these magnificent artefacts but just to say that Australia and England didn’t quite come to war on this subject during our visit! 😊  The rest of the museum is open to a vast array of works dedicated to human history, art, and culture, it’s just fantastic and absolutely worth a visit (a thought shared by 50% of London judging by the numbers of people there today!). 


Post the British Museum this afternoon we trotted off to Robbie Scott’s Jazz Club where we were lucky enough to get tickets for our ‘own’ James Morrison and his Quartet doing a gig.  A bit of a strange coincidence with this really. When we were going through customs at Tullamarine I had been talking to a guy that had been carrying cymbals and we were chatting about his mate that was lugging a double bass around with him. Anyway they both turned out to be members of the JM quartet that were playing tonight in what was a great evening. 


Off to the Tower of London tonight to see the ‘Ceremony of the Keys’.  This is an ancient ritual (going back to the 1300’s) held jointly by the Chief Yeoman Warder (Beefeaters) and the Tower of London Guards every evening when the main gates are locked for the night.  It is said to be the oldest extant military ceremony in the world, and is the best-known ceremonial tradition of the Tower.  It’s a pretty impressive show but unfortunately we were not allowed to take pictures of the actual ceremony so here’s a link for more info. Here



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