We arrived back from Seattle a couple of hours late. British Airways informed us before we came to the airport of a delay of 45 minutes. When we had all taken our seats our pilot announced that ice on the wing would add further delays to our takeoff. As I was already pretty tired I hardly noticed this as I dropped off to sleep and only woke up when we had left the ground.
We opened our front door around 6 and did a little shopping for the arrival of Adam and family and our evening meal. We both flaked out around 10:30. I didn’t hear Adam’s family come in and retire to bed in the small hours.
Maggi presented a cooked breakfast for everyone around 10 and we set off for town at midday. Sarah and Adam wanted to see a friend of Craig’s, Glen Scoller, who had an exhibition of his art at the Panter & Hall in Pall Mall. The paintings featured pleasant rural scenes from Portugal.
The Philip Mould Gallery sits a couple of doors further along Pall Mall and because of the Fake and Fortune programme everyone to have a look around. We opened the doors and all 8 of us trooped in this very plush environment. He had two paintings by people I had heard of, Paul Nash and Joshua Reynolds. The rest of the works belonged to people who are probably well known to the cognisant.
Portrait of William Wentworth Fitzwilliam (1748-1833), 2nd Earl Fitzwilliam in the Peerage of Great Britain, and 4th Earl Fitzwilliam in the Peerage of Ireland, 1785
Next stop the Redfern Gallery where we needed to press the bell to gain entry. On display here the works of Desmond Morris. His art is made up of rather odd figures and with some nice combinations of colours, but the works seemed to me to be meaningless.
We then moved on to Waterloo Place to go to the Iconic Images Gallery in Waterloo Place. Many more people wandered around in the space looking at photos of famous people from the 60’s onwards.
Our cultural trip did not end there because we decided to pop into The National Gallery. Keir had a nose bleed and Maggi and I visited the afea devoted to 17th Century Dutch artists. I wanted to see the galleries two Vermeer’s and in the meantime we had a good stare at a Rembrandt self-portrait of him as an old man (60).
Outside the National Gallery we saw a display of NFL helmets, presumably to drum up support for the game. Naturally we all headed for the Seattle Seahawks helmet and hard to have a family photo.
After an hour in pub we headed for Balthazar Restaurant in Russell St Covent Garden which Maggi had booked. The place is quite posh but not ridiculously expensive. We saw that they had a 2 or 3 course menu but when we sat down the waitress hadn’t given us the set course menu only the a la carte menu. We objected and she told us that it didn’t apply to parties over 6. I suggested that we split up and sit in two groups of four. After much grumbling and asking to see the manager he agreed that as long as only 6 of us wanted the menu that would be ok.
I had the burger from the a la carte menu which I thought was poor. Maggi said she enjoyed her soup and main course.
Maggi, Keir Islay and I left the restaurant and set off home, while Adam and Sarah and the younger boys continued with the culture and walked to The Royal Academy.