mr phil's paris posts
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FRIDAY, APRIL 7, 2000/LONDON - This morning Marti & I moved out of the grim Forte Posthouse Bloomsbury Hotel & into the decidely more livable Montague. Last night we met our friend Marie Devlin there for drinks -- she's staying at The Montague on Marti's recommendation -- then cabbed together to one of Marti's best London restaurant finds: Byblos, a Lebanese place in Kensington. Their speciality is grilled quail, which Marti & I both ordered. (I shared tastes of mine with Marie, who loved it.)
Prince Albert memorialized.
On the way back to Bloomsbury we passed the newly-restored Albert Memorial, considered the ugliest monument in London. It certainly is an example of Victorian kitsch. Prince Albert himself was opposed the idea of a memorial. "It would disturb my rides in Rotten Row to see my own face staring at me," he said, "and if it became an artistic monstrosity, like most of our monuments, it would upset my equanimity to be permanently ridiculed and laughed at in effigy." His worst fears were realized when the widowed Queen Victoria held a
memorial design competition a year after his death & picked a neo-Gothic freak named George Gilbert Scott to create it. Apparently, the Albert Memorial was a big hit with the Victorians. As recently as 1928 Osbert Sitwell described it as "that wistful, unique monument of widowhood." Writer Norman Douglas was less kind. "Is this the reward of conjugal virtue?" he asked in 1945. "Ye husbands, be unfaithful!" The thing is truly horrendous.
We spent a great evening with Marie, a dear friend. It compensated for the hassles that both Marti & I had encountered earlier in the day trying to get the Microsoft e-mail program installed in her new laptop to work properly. I put the blame on death rays emanating from the nearby BT Tower. Marti was not amused.
The British Telecom Tower.
My favorite example of kitsch in London.
Today we're going to visit Southwark,
across the Thames.
SATURDAY, APRIL 8, 2000/LONDON - It's another glorious, sunny day here in Limeytown. Marti & I enjoyed a leisurely morning, ordered room service brekkie, then strolled down to Oxford Street. Right now Marti is shopping-'til-she-drops as I read e-mail & post to my page.
After we checked into the Montague yesterday I went CD shopping, hit the Webshack & had veggie lunch at Govinda. All my CD shopping at Borders yielded two free tickets to the National Film Theatre at South Bank (an April promotion). So we had a movie date last night.
First we downed cocktails in the sunroom of the Montague bar. A jazz group featuring violin, guitar & double bass played some sweet melodies. Marti ordered a scotch on the rocks & I had a Manhattan, my first in years. Deelish.
Paddy Considine & Andrew Shim
in A Room for Romeo Brass.
We thoroughly enjoyed A Room for Romeo Brass, filmmaker Shane Meadows' slice of life in contemporary Britain. Described in the program as "an extraordinary movie about ordinary people," this one artfully combined hilarity with sudden shifts to menacing terror. See it if you can.
After the movie Marti & I went to dinner at Dionysus, a Greek fish & chips restaurant at the hot corner of Tottenham Court Road & Oxford Street. The streets were teeming with Friday-nighters, very different from the scene on the boulevards of Paris at the weekend. This crowd was younger & fueled heavily by alcohol, more like Georgetown in D. C. on weekends. Dinner was great, albeit accompanied by very cheesy live electronic keyboard music. The jazz trio at the Montague bar had been much better.
Marti in the heart of Picadilly Circus.
SUNDAY, APRIL 9, 2000/LONDON - Museum day. Today Marti & I went to the Victoria & Albert Museum in South Kensington to see the Art Nouveau 1890 - 1914 exhibition that just opened. There was a waiting period, so we got an entry time slot, then went to the museum restaurant for lunch. There were a couple of jazz musicians playing as Marti dug into her Mediterranean stuffed pepper w/veggies & I attacked my traditional Sunday roast beef platter.
Art Nouveau 1890 - 1914
at the Victoria & Albert Museum.
The show was comprehensive & excellent. Many of our favorites were in attendance, such as Hector Guimard, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Louis Comfort Tiffany, Rene Lalique, Victor Horta & others. With more than 400 items on exhibit, however, some of the Art Nouveau stuff was really ghastly.
The Guard wasn't changing when we walked by
Buckingham Palace today, but a couple
of them were standing on duty.
It was such a gorgeous afternoon that Marti & I decided to walk to the next museum. Our hour-long stroll took us past Harrods, Harvey Nichols, Hyde Park, Green Park, St. James's Park & Buckingham Palace.
Harrod's; St. James's Park.
Spring plantings at Buckingham Palace.
Our destination was the National Gallery. Regular readers of this page may recall last year's Easter tour to the States, which included a rare opportunity to see Caravaggio's The Taking of Christ on temporary exhibition at Boston College. That had been the painting's first trip outside its permanent home in Dublin.
Caravaggio, The Taking of Christ, 1602.
National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin.
Marti is a serious Caravaggio fan & we're going to Rome this June to seek out the couple of dozen Caravaggio canvases that reside in churches & galleries there. So it made sense that while we were in London this week, we'd go visit (again) a couple of his paintings in the permanent collection at the National Gallery.
Caravaggio, Boy Bitten by a Lizard, 1596.
National Gallery, London.
Caravaggio, Supper at Emmaus, 1601. National Gallery, London.
go to page three of my London Journal entries
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Email: phildemetrion@yahoo.com
