Nash's London

Note to annoying tourists:

Guard is holding a REAL bayonet

If Nash had of haven it his way, London would have been the Paris of England. Weird to contemplate considering how much France and England despise each other.

Nash's London was the theme of our Wednesday Walk, we went to St. Jame's Park, Buckingham (again), Mayfair, Piccadilly Circus, Regent Street and Oxford Circus. All because these areas represented Nash's beautification attempts. He failed.

Reserved seat for 1 year is 100 pounds. I kid not

Originally Nash was assigned this impossible task to make London look nice and get rid of scummy places. We went to examine Buckingham Palace (which I personally despise) and it turns out that Victoria was the first monarch to live there and it is composed of 17th and 18th century styles. I just don't care for it though, I feel that there should be nicer gardens on the grounds and maybe not such pretentious statues/fountains all over the place. The Victorians were so full of themselves.

But back to Nash, apparently the land owning gents couldn't bear to give away some of their property and fought Nash tooth and nail until he was forced to give up. But there are some very popular areas of London that exemplify just what Nash was trying to do. I thought they were quite lovely, especially the curved department stores of Regent Street. They were meant to look like Palaces. Palaces for shopping though.

We had a super long lunch break then went to meet Peter at Tate Britain.

Very interesting museum. It's eclectic for sure. There are works by a whole assortment of famous painters but my favorite was Carnation, Lily and Lily Rose by John Singer Sargent (an American....represent!)

We had a lot of fun looking at pre-Raphealite works and some more contemporary pieces, that normally confuse me but now I have found they are really fun to examine (swords in pictures can symbolize a whole lot more than you'd think).

this piece obviously symbolizes

the war in Iraq

I have always loved going to art museums but I never was able to digest modern art. It is just so zany and normally students aren't taught about how to approach such works. It was nice that this trip allowed us the chance to really get close to the pieces and receive the background to help us understand them. I do recommend Tate Britain, just go with an open mind.

It actually was just a space heater