Cultural today

Decided to visit the National Gallery with 2 new found friends from the same hall.

We spent some time walking along the river bank, enjoying all the stalls set up for the Thames Festival. Wish I had the budget to try all the food, but well... Learning to do without the tangibles and enjoy the intangibles... *grin*

Then, spent some time at Trafalgar Square just resting, enjoying the sunshine, and the free Concert going on to celebrate the start of London Peace Week. Decided to take part in the 5k Peace Run the coming Saturday. A great way to force myself to (finally) run in London. Just hope the weather will stay good and sunny!

Finally, time to go into the National Gallery and get some culture! *laugh*

Boy, was it an enlightening experience! Seeing the paintings upfront is really different from seeing their pictures in books, online, etc. Some of the pictures are really huge, and reading about their history and process brings them to life and i definitely felt a deeper connection. I mean, how can someone spend 12 years on a painting? The effort and attention to detail of some painters are just astonishing. Of course, much admiration came from this visitor that day. I found that i really enjoyed the pre-17th century painters more and the modernists and impressionists. Their sense of lighting and texture is just amazing with the limited resources they have access to. I wasn’t as engrossed as a lot of the visitors in Van Gogh’s Sunflowers. I much preferred one of his scenery ones.

Since we went into the Gallery pretty late, and my fren and I both spent a lot of time reading each and every piece of painting in each room, we only managed to cover like 7 rooms in the 2 hours we spent there. Definitely a place for a return visit! It helps that it’s within walking distance from my campus.