Wallace Collection and Hyde Park on Sunday

One of my favourite museums in London is The Wallace Collection. The Wallace Collection is a national museum in an historic London town house. In 25 galleries are unsurpassed displays of French 18th century painting, furniture and porcelain with superb Old Master paintings and a world class armoury. 

The Wallace Collection is a national museum which displays the wonderful works of art collected in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by the first four Marquesses of Hertford and Sir Richard Wallace, the son of the 4th Marquess. It was bequeathed to the British nation by Sir Richard's widow, Lady Wallace, in 1897.

Displayed at Hertford House, the main London townhouse of its former owners, the Wallace Collection presents its outstanding collections in a sumptuous but approachable manner which is an essential part of its charm. It is probably best known for its paintings by artists such as Titian, Rembrandt, Hals (The Laughing Cavalier) and Velázquez and for its superb collections of eighteenth-century French paintings, porcelain, furniture and gold boxes, probably the best to be found anywhere outside France. There are also splendid medieval and Renaissance objects, including Limoges enamels, maiolica, glass and bronzes, as well as the finest array of princely arms and armour in Britain, featuring both European and Oriental objects.

unfortunately I am on all the pictures, so I had to crop this one.

It is a real house filled with the antique and beautiful things. It's like moving back in time to late XVIII century Paris and France. The clocks are ticking and playing unique sounds every fifteen or thirty minutes - in every room there's different one! I became familiar with this place after Mother wanted to see one of the Delaroche portraits showing Virgin Mary. Apparently, the model was Izabella Potocka - Polish aristocrat living in Paris during the time when Poland was non-existent. Mother loves her and she read almost every book on her, so it was great to actually see the portrait she was reading about and saw it in the book!

Boyfriend and me cycled to there today from our usual spot - St John's Wood - that's the nearest docking station from us. This time we took a different route and cycled through Regent's Park - there is a footpath available for cyclists too! Then we entered Marylebone High Street and passed by the old AM's flat, where her sister currently lives. It was great to cycle on the Sunday morning - there streets were mostly empty, I think that the time change had something to do with it!

We went out early today, because on 11.30am was a free Public Tour around the place. A very lovely woman told us a little bit of history of the place and we covered few major pieces of exhibition. Now I want to buy a book about Madame de Pompadour - I had no idea she was such a vital person in promoting arts. 

Afterwards, we grabbed a quick lunch - vegetarian Sunday roast - and went to see Limitless. I liked the trailers, I read few reviews and I heard that the movie is on top of the list in the USA. To be honest, I was disappointed. I was expecting something ground-breaking, but it was an action movie. In my opinion, there was no need to focus so much on fights, blood and chopped hands. The idea behind the script was great, but I think the screenplay had been lost somewhere along the way. Unfortunately it's a typical guy movie. 

The weather was so nice and it was barely 3pm when we walked outside, so after quick chat we've chosen to take a stroll in Hyde Park. It was packed. On Speaker's Corner, people listening and just general madness, at The Serpentine (a huge artificial lake in the middle, created for the Queen Caroline in 1730) people were paddling in boats and the birds were just mad with happiness. We walked all the way to the South Kensington and Harrods, then turn left to Green Park. We walked for 3 hours and I could certainly feel it in my legs. But it's great to be so tired.

Fun day cycling with London protests in the background

Today was the perfect Saturday. It was just perfect, despite the fact that there were huge anti-government protests in London, we were in the middle of them and had few encounters with anarchists on the way. I was seriously scared a couple of times, but there was A LOT of police, so that made me feel safe a little bit more. 

1 1/2 house

But the day started with meeting Dom-dom at Finchley Road, walking to St John's Wood (longer walk than I expected!) and enjoying the warm and sunny day. Dom-dom has never cycled in London before, so she was major scared, because our plan was to cycle from St John's Wood to Tottenham Court Road. Of course buying Boris bike pass was not problematic and it took us around 20 minutes (!!!) to buy one for each of us (3 people in total). We didn't know the latest trick in the book aka when you pull the bike from the docking station, press both brakes simultaneously and then pull as hard as you can. Easy. Right.

trying to buy bike pass

In the end, with the little help of a guy who was returning his bike, we went on and cycled all around Regent's Park to the British Museum. We made a little stop there. In the original plan we were going to see The Eagle at Odeon on Tottenham Court Road, but we were so hungry, so the decision was to eat some lunch. 

We spent few ours eating, laughing and joking. Dom-dom had her first encounter with the Nintendo DS  - me and Boyfriend have one each (mine is pink of course), so we played against each other and it was so much fun! I forgot how great Nintendo is - usually I'm going through the gaming phases like playing The Sims, Caesar, etc. and then the circle overlaps. Anyway, Dom-dom now wants to buy Nintendo too, so we're be playing together aka even more fun.

I won

When were were talking, I said that I want to go to the Selfridges today and buy MAC lipsticks. I had my eye on both Lady Gaga ones and also the hottest spring trend - orange! I've found on the MAC website a great colour called Morange and I knew it had to be mine. Dom-dom claims that she also wanted to buy orange lipstick for quite some time, but of course we all know that it was my idea. 

not a good photo, but I will write another posts about the lipsticks and post better pictures.

We went all the way from the Tottenham Court Road to Bond Street. We didn't take the main road (Oxford Street) because of the protest and it was very good idea, because when we were passing Topshop on a parallel road, there was madness - shop closed, paint on the walls, windows smashed. Anarchists had a really good time out there. It was rather shocking to see all these people with banners, shouting and in black hoodies and then enter Selfridges and pass Louis Vuitton, Prada, Marc Jacobs and Chanel. Two completely different worlds.

We bought our lipsticks and parted our ways. Dom-dom went home to get ready for a friend's birthday drinks (I was also invited but didn't want to go) - in the end she was so tired (we can really make people suffer) and went to sleep! Score Dom-dom!

Me and Boyfriend wanted to go to the cinema badly, but when we saw that the earliest movie at the Odeon Marble Arch is in over an hour, we were stuck. Our bike pass was still valid (it lasts £1 for a whole day and then £1 when you use bike for over an hour), so we cycled back to Tottenham Court Road to the Odeon we were originally supposed to go to and see The Eagle. Because there was still a little bit of time and there's a HUGE Paperchase store (aka my heaven - I LOVE stationery!) on the other side of street, I have a new mug and notepads (pictures to come soon). 

The Eagle was better than I expected. I don't want to put spoilers, so I won't write about the essence of the movie, I will only say that it's much more than fighting and blood on the scree. Of course there are battle scenes and nasty usage of the knives etc., but as my usual reaction to this is hiding behind my jacket, I don't remember it after leaving the cinema. It was an interesting movie and I'm glad we went to see it. It gave me a chance to not only salivate over Channing Tatum, but also remind myself about honour and true friendship.

Ancient Egyptian Book of The Dead

We had a very productive Sunday. I've woken up really early, got ready and we were out. It really helps that everyday I'm eating plain porridge with some fruit. First few spoons on Friday were more than horrible, but now, I'm actually looking forward to it every morning and it tastes great! The porridge I was usually eating was with added honey and sugar and it had too much calories for me to eat it nowadays. Besides, it was too sweet and I was always feeling funny - when I still had a couple of spoons left. This plain porridge is much healthier option and I like it! Anyway, our weekend breakfast were always a fuss - Boyfriend spent hours preparing it and now it's swift. 

On my way from the gym last week I saw a poster on the bus stop saying that Boris bikes aka bikes which are on the street and you can rent them for as long as you want them (for a price of course!) can be finally rented-as-you-go. After checking yesterday evening what the prices are, Boyfriend discovered that the booking price for 24 hours is only £1 and for first 30 minutes it's another £1. So we decided to travel to St John's Wood station and from there take a ride through Regent's Park. The sun was shining, it was warm - a perfect weather for the bike ride! I was so scared of riding on the London streets, because my first ride was a disaster. In the end, we couldn't ride into the Regent's Park, because there's a ban on bikes, so we decided to ride to British Museum. So we rode around Regent's Park, through Great Portland Street (Boyfriend's work) and next to the UCL. We were riding for around an hour and it was just GREAT! However, I couldn't focus on sightseeing this time, because I was constantly alerted and in a deep shock.

That's my bike - 17217!

We came to British Museum because there's a fantastic exhibition: Ancient Egyptian Book of The Dead. I am a Member, so we could go and see it anytime and without queuing. Yey! Those, who were on Sunday in a British Museum know that it's absolutely crowded or I should rather say swarmed with people. We went to see this exhibition last week, but only managed to see half of it, because they were closing the Museum (earlier in a day it took us a really long time to find a place to eat). So now we only had second half to see. I must say that this option worked even better. 

Entrance to the Museum

The exhibition is heavily founded on the papyrus and after a while you loose interest and patience to look at it. Because I was fresh I could concentrate better on the next half, unlike other people who simply passed, because it was too tiring. I must admit that the exhibition is very time-consuming and with only few places to sit, it's easy to get tired. I read so much about that I was expecting something a little more spectacular - maybe like famous The Terracotta Army. But in overall, I enjoyed it, and that's most important thing. 

Before going to the exhibition we ate some lunch - we were really hungry after the bike ride - and later we went to eat some more food to a French bistro. I ordered two starters - a soup and caesar salad, which turned out to be one of the best salads I've eaten in my entire life! Because it was only 2.30pm we went to Swiss Cottage to see Black Swan. Boyfriend absolutely loved the movie, I, on  the other hand, was expecting something more - similarly to the exhibition I read a lot of reviews so I made up in my head this great movie. I'm not saying I was disappointed, but I thought it was going to be a little different. Still - the ending is perfect. 

SkyRide 2010

What can I say? It was simply awesome!!! Truly amazing feeling when you cycle around London's most famous landmarks on your bike! Total freedom and smile on your face all day long! Nothing else matters - it's just you, your bike and tens of thousands other people around you - with the same smiles. 

It is great when you cycle and look around and all you can see is a massive crowd with none car in sight! And it is surprisingly easy and fast to get from one place to another - (central) London is really, really small. Even tiny some may say... We managed to cycle from St James Park, next to Big Ben on the Embankment right up to the Tower of London. Coming back, we decided to elope on to the other side of the river, which ended in a slalom between pedestrians. After driving up to the London Eye we decided to come back to the proper, bike-friendly side. In the meantime we saw a couple of dogs with their owners cycling, A LOT of kids on the tiny bikes and even some weird looking tandems and machines comparable only with some gym equipment (one was similar to rowing one). 

Going home wasn't so easy when it turned out that we cannot take Bakerloo line and of course Metropolitan line was closed during the weekend. In the end we cycled through Hyde Park and Kensington to get to the overground station. From there, we only managed to get to Westfield. I have no idea how I managed to cycle from Westfield to Willesden Junction. Over 30km in one day! I am aching now. But it was worth it. I just feel angry at myself that I was getting so nervous and impatient. It felt soooo good to come back, eat and then sleep for 10 hours!