Two beautiful days in London town.  On Monday, I started the day trying to download an update for my Fitbit.   It was going to take 10 minutes.  After 40 minutes, I stopped and restarted then left for my museum adventure.  (When I got home, I found  out why the “update” took so long.  It was actually providing all the daily information that had been missing since I bought this replacement several months ago.)
Leicester Square Tube Station is a gateway to the heart of London’s theater, cultural, tourist, and party world.  To climb those stairs is to step into a bustling world – the square itself, St. Martin in the Fields, Foyles’ Books, Trafalgar Square, the National Portrait Gallery, the National Gallery, restaurants, theatres,  and so much more. On this day, I walked through Trafalgar Square with the homeless, the tourists, the buskers,  the chalk artists, the man proclaiming his personal knowledge of God’s revelation (about human sexuality , of course) and the rest of the Human Comedy playing there.  I crossed the Square and entered Britain’s National Gallery of Art.  The Gallery has a great collection of Impressionist art tucked away upstairs in several connected rooms.  I  love to make the trek through art history to reach them.  Monday was quite busy with the people taking pictures of the pictures.  This particular phenomenon has become more prevalent recently.  I like to sit with a piece like “Bathers at Asnieres”  by Seurat, to name one and take in the incredible detail.  To have the camera monkeys snapping away is kind of sad and disturbing.  Putting them aside, the collection remains, for me, enthralling.  These works, “La Terrasse at Vasouy, The Garden”, by Vuillard is another, can let the mind spin such tales, if you let it.  I hope that this not lost on people.  It was a glorious afternoon for me.
Tuesday turned into another lovely day.  I decided to spend part of it just enjoying a walk in the city, culminating with a nice lunch at Thai Square, a great restaurant on the verges of Covent Garden and Leicester Square.  The service is notoriously sketchy, but the food is worth it.  When you order a hot curry, you get a hot curry!  After a great meal and a walk around Covent Garden, I headed back to Russell Square to enjoy the sunshine.  This picture really captures the lovely leafy square, just a few blocks from my flat.  After enjoying the sunshine and the fountain, I made my way to the nearby Weiner  Library that is hosting an exhibit on Nazi human experimentation during the Holocaust.  This institution is described as:  The Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust and Genocide; is the world’s oldest institution devoted to the study of the Holocaust, its causes and legacies.  Sadly, in the times we live in when Germany has just elected far-right politicians to its legislature, I found the doors to the library locked.  Entry was through an electronic system.  The exhibit was every bit as sobering and disturbing as one would expect.  It certainly puts our petty bickering over who is a patriot and who is a “son of a bitch” to shame.  We all love our country an we should all be grateful for our right to dissent.  Let’s never confuse our symbols with our loyalty.  Let’s not disrespect our flag by trampling on it or wearing it, but let’s also respect all Americans and be grateful that our parents and grandparents fought to stop the insane ideas that came out of Nazi Germany and out of the Eugenics Movement in America too.  Teach your children well!

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