A Day Of Art & Shakespeare

With only a few days left in London, we headed out today to cram in a few art galleries before catching the evening production of Romeo & Juliet at Shakespeare’s Globe theatre, which we had purchased tickets for online last week when we stopped by the Globe and realized that pretty much all shows sell out in advance. After today, I think we can both say we’ve had enough art and theatre for the next little while…

We started at the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, which houses Britain’s national collection of Western European paintings from the 13th to 19th centuries.  We hadn’t planned to spend much time here, but the National Gallery surprised us both in terms of the breadth and scope of art it houses and we ended up wandering around for much longer than expected.  I found quite a few paintings by Monet, Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Peter Ruebens, and Picasso that I really liked and ended up going back for a second look at a few things.  It blows me away that an art gallery funded mainly by donors and grant aid can provide such amazing art for the public to see for free!

After the National Gallery, we tried to go to the National Portrait Gallery, thinking it was right next door, but we ended up in a building which leads back to the National Gallery!  We figured out that the Portrait Gallery isn’t far away (it’s actually behind the National Gallery), but decided not to go find it since we weren’t that interested in portraits of historically important and famous British people anyway.  We headed off to try to Tube to the Tate Modern, Britain’s national museum of international modern art, but the stupid Tube upgrades meant the line we needed was closed!  Thanks to the not so helpful Tube staff, we got directed to go around in circles, trying to take the Overground trains instead, but then we found we couldn’t use our Oyster cards for the train we needed! 

We ended up taking a different Tube line that was running to Waterloo station, where the London Eye is, and walked from there to the Tate Modern, stopping to check out street performers and a “Refugee Week” festival that was taking place on Southbank on our way.  The walk was longer than anticipated, and by the time we got to the Tate we were both tired so we cut our visit short and just did a quick walk around the gallery.  I have to say, I just don’t get modern art at all!   When I look at most of it, I can’t help but think “that’s art?!?!”  There were a few really weird videos on display at the Tate, such as one involving a man playing/dancing with his privates, and I really couldn’t figure out what the artistic merit of something like that was – who gets this stuff???

We finished our day with Romeo & Juliet at Shakespeare’s Globe, which turned out to be one of my worst ideas so far.  The play itself was good, but I thought it’d be neat to get tickets for the standing room section which is right up front, surrounding the stage, and that turned out to be the worst idea in the world for a 3 and ½ hour play!  Paul was dead tired from walking around art galleries all day so he tried to crouch down and kneel on the floor, but there are ticketing staff all over the place that come around and tell you you can’t sit or kneel in the standing room area!  By the time the intermission broke out, Paul was ready to abandon ship and leave the play, but I convinced him to stay since I wanted to see the second half, and we found a spot to stand near the back of the enclosure so we could lean against the wall which surrounds the beginning of the seated area.  While I would highly recommend catching a production at Shakespeare’s Globe (the actors were impressively good), make sure you buy tickets for the seated area!  You won’t see the actors right up close like in the standing room area, but your legs and feet won’t be killing you at the end of the night!