Last Trip into London

As we got ready to end our wonderful 6 week vacation in Ireland and England, we made one last trip into London to see a few more things.

Larry went in ahead of me to visit the wonderful Tower Bridge (and climb up in it and walk across it).  My legs were hurting and I was afraid it would involve too much walking and climbing so I skipped this excursion, but he got some great pictures and really enjoyed the tour.

The draw bridge is still opened three times a day.

He especially enjoyed the tour of the engine room.  In between opening the draw bridge, they pump water up into the green tank you see on the right here.  To open the bridge, they use the weight of the water to provide the counter-balance to open the bridge.  Clever people, these Brits.

We met  up later at Covent Gardens for lunch.  Phew! It is SO expensive to eat in London.  Lunch out costs about $45 on average for nothing special.  We will not miss that part of the trip, but Covent Garden was hopping with lots of people, many street performers and a wonderful open air market.  We wandered and ate and enjoyed and then headed by tube to the Victoria and Albert Museum, the last museum on my list of places I wanted to visit.
The first thing that strikes you about the museum is the absolutely incredible building it is housed in (and the fact that it is free - very welcome after that expensive lunch).  

The building was built in the 1800's for the great London Exposition.  It was the only building kept from that and it was well worth keeping.  The museum is all about design, so it contains all sorts of interesting things, but the building is the real gem in it all.
One area that particularly caught our interest was the Plaster Cast rooms.  They had made plaster molds of many famous buildings, monuments and statutes and had them on display.  It was breathe taking to see them all together in a single room. 

A second room was under construction next door which had a replica of the David from Florence.  Outstanding!

The museum also contained an incredible jewelry display, a silver and gold metal works display, and so much more.  There was even a theater exhibit (they had moved the Theatre Museum from Covent Garden to here a few years ago) with costumes, posters, props, scripts, pictures...really neat stuff.

The building was constructed around a magnificent court yard and it contained a real up-scale (read "expensive") cafe in a set of rooms which previously were part of the ceramics part of the museum.

Cafe at the V & A

Seriously, this building was just incredible.

Finally, we bid farewell to London and headed back to our "home" in Richmond to start packing and cleaning (why did we exchange with a house that had 5 bathrooms?)