Tea and Paintings

When I think of England several things come to mind: fish and chips, double-decker buses and of course tea. However, since being here in London, I have discovered that the British are not all tea drinkers anymore... in fact I haven't met a single British person that likes tea.

Despite this, I've been determined to visit tea shops and so today after work I hopped on a bus and found my way to Twinings tea shop. The shop itself has been around since 1706 and though everything surrounding it is many stories high, Twinings is only one story and about the width of an alley-way.

I enjoyed wandering around smelling the different teas and, since they sell individual tea bags, I got a few flavours to try. I may go back before leaving London and purchase some loose tea.

After my tea shop venturing, I wandered off to the National Galleries which, like the V&A, is open late on Friday nights. Unfortunately, photography is not permitted inside the museum so a picture of the outside will have to suffice:

I decided to rent an audio guide to the paintings, and I was very happy that I did. It was nice to listen to a discussion on the paintings I found interesting, and since I was wandering by myself, I didn't feel like I was holding anyone up by stopping and staring at paintings for long periods of time while my headset told me about the different parts of the painting and what made the painter unique from his contemporaries.

From Rembrandt to Vermeer, Manet to Monet, and da Vinci to Van Gogh and other well known, and less known, artists the paintings were beautiful. All in all it made for an enjoyable evening, but not that many photographs! Cheers!