(Karlee, Julia, Me, Kasyn, Synne, Lars, and Mark who's taking the picture)
Last Sunday, a group of seven of us went in to London for the Thames Festival. It is much like Art On the Green in CDA, substituting a river for a lake of course, or any county fair really, without the greasy food, warm weather, and rides. So I suppose some would argue it's nothing like a county fair, but for the sake of comparison, we will use a county fair.
Stepping out of the Waterloo station near central London, we walked towards the sidewalk following the Thames River through the city. And though I had been in that exact same spot along the river the previous weekend, and the weekend before that, this time was very different. Booths lined the walkway on both sides full of fresh food, street performers, and all kinds of artistic creations: clothing, jewelry, photography and paintings. This time it was difficult to keep track of the group. We were in a less crowded space than we experienced at the Notting Hill Carnival but with a more rapid traffic flow.
I made the terrible mistake of wearing flats on this outing, which is curious considering I swore off wearing them while walking around town anywhere for good just the day before. In all, we walked an estimated four miles throughout the day and I came back to my room with blisters on my feet - a much more tangible reminder to never wear flats into London again.
The first sight we happened upon was a section of the beach along the river where a group of adults and kids were making portraits in the sand. This sand portrait is of Boris Johnson, the current Mayor of London and former representative Member of Parliament for Henley.
The beach was about 15 feet down behind a railing from the sidewalk and these sheets with a bucket were laid out every few feet along the railing for people to try to drop their coins into (an easy way to make money for sure!).
Next we came to the Tate Modern, the museum of modern art in London, where we went inside to sit down for a bit. When entering the building, you are almost immediately dumped into this huge commons area.
We went down at sat on those steps you see on the bottom left where these two boy (below) were running around left and right. They had no fear, running down the cement grade and in between our group on the floor. Something must have been extremely interesting in that corner that you see them in below because they kept coming back to it every minute or so a dozen times.
Just outside the Tate Modern was the Fire Garden, part of the night-time festival. I have only a few pictures of it during the day and couldn't get any good ones in at night, but the display of fire in these huge orbiting globes with hundreds of people huddling close in such a small space for warmth was spectacular. Here I am sitting in an iron chair that in the evening channeled fuel and fire to come out of those glass bulbs you see on the right side.
There was also live Big Band/Swing music with a dance floor that we spent about an hour at dancing and having an all-over good time.
The weekend before, when we were in Windsor, there was talk of going to Wagamama which is an Asian restaurant chain in England. However, at the time we decided to save it for later and went to the pub instead. Now that we were in London though, and Kasyn had been talking about it all week, it was to go. At this point we had all gotten quite hungry, all except for Mark who had had a very large, very authentic burrito, and Wagamama was on everyone's minds.
I'm sure you've all had those experiences where someone talked up a movie, a restaurant, a show, or some kind of event so much that you idealized the situation far past any real expectations and whatever it was just didn't live up to its glowing reviews. Well, this was definitely not one of those situations. Walking in, the restaurant looked much like a cafeteria with rows of long benches. I ordered the Yasai Katsu Curry which was breaded and fried slices of eggplant and sweet potato, a delicious curry over steamed rice, a salad, and desert: three scoops of the most pure coconut ice cream with a mango sauce on top. I'm not sure if it was my aching feet or my growling stomach, but it was definitely one of the best meals I've had - ever. Unfortunately I devoured the main dish before I remembered to take a picture of it so you will all have to come and try it yourself.
Bellies satisfied, we slowly made our way back to the train station, stopping by a small trailer where a band of four guys were acting as a sort of live jukebox playing everything from Elvis to Alanis Morissette. Somehow they had rigged external speakers to their equipment inside and a song selection system with letters and numbers (a donation of one pound) for quite an interesting and unique result - certainly nothing I've ever seen before.
... and ended the night with fireworks...
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