London tourism, part 1

On Tuesday of the week I was on holiday, I went down to London for the day to be a tourist. I started off at Piccadilly Circus tube station...


and walked down Piccadilly, past Fortnums with its wonderfully strange lamps
to the Royal Academy of Arts which was looking very pretty in the sunlight.

On the way into the courtyard, a brief pilgrim stop at the society for the secular patron saint of classifiers.
Sir Joshua Reynolds appeared to be in fine fig, complete with garland...

I went to the J W Waterhouse exhibition, which was rather wonderful - 'mysterious females with ambiguous intentions', in the main (that was taken from one of the bits of blurb on the walls)... All but one or two of his most famous paintings were there, most of which I'd only seen in books. Lots of people doing textile-type things in the paintings - the Lady of Shalott with her tapestry, of course, but also Penelope with her loom - I love the way she's using her teeth, there... Circe poisoning the waters was a new one on me, as were many of the earlier history paintings. It was a reasonably sized exhibition, and there was enough to see without it being overpowering.

I headed south, via Jermyn Street where the traditional tailors seem still to be going strong

and down to Pall Mall heading for St James's Park; this is part of St James's Palace.

The view across the lake was, as ever, spectacular - although the pelicans were obviously a bit too hot to be bothered and were slumped on their rocks like untidy heaps of feather dusters.

This squirrel was eating pieces of sandwich people passed to him - he'd come over and take the stuff out of their hands...

And another piece of fauna from Lower Marsh, where I headed next - the cat belonging to what the butler wore squidged against the front window in the sun...

No explanation needed for why I might be in Lower Marsh...

And then it was lunchtime... More photos later when I get them cropped and uploaded...