On the morning of our arrival we needed to get outside and walk, so we headed to Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park. At the Serpentine Gallery we saw Jesús Rafael Soto’s Pénétrable BBL Jaune, a cool interactive installation made of hanging rubber tubes. The nearby Flower Walk was lovely with summer blooms, and gave us a nice view of The Albert Memorial.
Later that same morning, we walked over to the Victoria and Albert Museum. On this trip, we focused our time on the sculpture gallery, plus the impressive cast court with their impressively detailed plaster casts of famous sculptures and historical objects like the Trajan column.
While waiting for our hotel room to finally be ready, we also made a quick visit to the Science Museum next door just to check out some of the early steam engines and the clock collection.
After a well-earned rest, we headed to Soho on a warm Thursday evening. With a little time before dinner we took a short walk around Chinatown.
After dinner, we took my dad over the Golden Jubilee Bridges for some fantastic evening views looking toward Parliament, Big Ben, and the London Eye.
On Saturday morning we spent about an hour and a half at the National Gallery, arriving shortly after they opened at 10am. We spotted a few new pieces that caught our eye, including The Lavergne Family Breakfast, a pastel by Liotard that was executed so smoothly it looked like an oil painting, and of course multiple Monet and Van Gogh works. Caravaggio’s Supper at Emmaus was a real standout that we somehow hadn’t seen on previous visits.
After lunch, we hopped on a bus from Trafalgar Square and rode up Regent Street toward Marylebone.
Our next museum was the Wallace Collection. It still features a massive collection of weapons and armor alongside classic paintings, all set inside a very ornate interior, but it felt like some of the rooms had been reorganized. It remains one of our favorite fun, free museums in the city.
Finally, we headed over to Westminster Cathedral for the 5pm Evensong. I hadn’t been in the church before, and the layout felt a bit odd, with sightlines noticeably worse than in St. Paul’s. The service overall felt much fussier, and I wouldn’t bother coming back here for Evensong again.
On Saturday, Leandra had some time to check out the nearby London Oratory and the picturesque Ennismore Garden Mews, where she worked on a sketch.
