London

It has been far too long, but I am back.  However, I should warn you that I will be talking about our trip to England and showing photographs from that trip for some time.  First the minor details.  This was our fifth  trip taken through Road Scholar, an organization that has existed for some time now, and is committed to "life-long learning". 

When we were young we each traveled to England on separate occasions before we married and then went there together on our wedding trip.  So it had been quite a while since either of us had been in England so it was with a great deal of excitement that we embarked on this adventure.  By the way, we shared this excursion with one of my brothers and his wife, the same couple whose company we enjoy so much in the summer at the lake.

The first stop was London; due to a camera mishap, the earliest photos taken specifically for painting purposes were lost, but the sightseeing kind were still on the memory card.  Our first foray was to the Victoria and Albert Museum which is huge so we limited ourselves to a few exhibits.  One that really knocked my socks off was the Cast Courts.  During the Victorian era copies were made of both works of art and architecture so people who couldn't or just didn't travel could see some of the world's wonders.  I knew about art castings but had no knowledge of the architectural side or its scale of this activity.  Below, if it does remain in this blog, is a photo from the V&A Museum (with the its address so you can find it and other photos) that shows Trajan's column with two people near its base.  My photos do not have people in them which makes it difficult to appreciate the sheer size of some of these castings.

Plaster cast reproduction of Trajan's Column by Monsieur Oudry, Paris, about 1864. Museum no. REPRO.1864-128, © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/t/the-vanda-cast-collection/

Here are a few photos (remember to click on the image to bring up a slide show that shows the photos in larger scale) I took from the Korean exhibit: 

 the Cast Collection:

and wood work from the outside of a building built during the medieval age.

The remaining photographs are all from Kensington Gardens:

A white rose.

Centifolia roses,

Herbaceous borders,

Flowering trees,

a conversation with "foreign" wildlife,

and the Albert Memorial.

That's probably more than enough for one day!  Tomorrow we'll move out of London.