Soane's House and the BM

Today we took it very slowly, as we will need to be up early and firing on all cylinders the next few days.

First stop was Sir John Soane's House. I found it unsettling/annoying for a number of reasons. The collection is not well organized or described, and despite forking out three pounds on the guide book, I was not much the wiser as to what most of the stuff was, where it came from, how it fitted with anything else. The house is fairly squeezy, crowded with people, and a fair chunk of the available space is taken up by an exhibition of contemporary sculptures, disturbingly anatomical life sized casts in the middle of most of the rooms. For my money I would go direct to the British Museum.

Which is exactly what we did next.

The British Museum was for us an antidote to the morning's experience. As librarians, we like stuff ordered, and the Enlightenment room, with it's splendid light filled spacious proportions and well ordered glass cabinets of well described objects, was our sort of place.

Anne had a specific shop she wanted to visit over near Hanover square, so we navigated our way there and while she shopped I visited Handel's local church, pretty much unchanged from when he worshipped there, and just down the road from the venue of the first performance of the Messiah.

The metro was hot and crowded, and we were relieved to get onto the light rail and be transported home. After resting up a bit, we collected our tickets for the train to York on Thursday, hit Sainsburys to stock up on supplies, had a chat to a chap with a Brompton folding bike, caught up on the washing, then wandered over the road to the Golden Chippy which apparently is Trip Advisor number 2 restaurant in London. Not quite sure how they manage to get so far up the ranking, but cheerful cheap and nice chips so we we're happy.

Tomorrow we are off to William Morris's Red House which should be a nice change of pace.