This weekend was very productive and I have to pat myself on the back for that :) On Saturday, my friend Britania and I met up at the Charing Cross Tube station to be greeted by a bagpiper-street-performer. Hearing the bagpipes as I walked out of the tube station gave me this great touristy feel, kind of like a “this-is-what-England-should-feel-like” feeling (I know, stereotypical). After getting to Trafalgar Square and taking a bunch of pictures outside, we went into the National Gallery. The great thing about the Gallery is that it’s totally free, and unlike the Met, they don’t have a teller to solicit “donations” from you which was great because that can always be a little awkward when you don’t plan on donating. We stumbled into this amazing life-size exhibit of the Red Light District in Amsterdam, complete with window displays of prostitutes. Afterwards, Britania and I wandered around for a good bit and finally decided to look at the map to see which exhibits we wanted to see. The organization of the Gallery also made a lot of sense, since everything was more or less organized by country of origin and time period. We were really excited to see the da Vinci exhibit and when we finally got there there was only one piece, which was the original sketch for the cartoon The Virgin and Child with St Anne and St John the Baptist. It was pretty cool but very misleading since we thought there would be a couple more pieces. After that, we checked out the more extensive Van Gogh exhibit that had his classics such as Sunflowers and Wheat Field With Cypresses. Finally we got to my favorite part, the Monet exhibit. It had all his classics also, including several of his Water Lillies paintings. Unfortunately, I couldn’t take any pictures since a) no pictures are allowed and b) there were vigilant guards in each room making sure I couldn’t sneak a picture or two.

Afterwards, Britania and I wandered around Piccadilly Circus which I would say is the rough equivalent of Times Square and found a McDonalds to grab some dinner :) That was basically it for the day and when I got back to my flat, I watched a few more hours of 30 Rock (that’s all I’ve been doing) and called it a night.