Playing Tourist

Before I landed in London, I made a promise to myself that I would behave like a tourist one day of the week. To me this meant walking around with a map and my camera gawking at the things I had only seen on television or in the movies...trying to play it cool when I round a corner and suddenly there's Big Ben or the London Eye or whatever.

So yesterday I kept my promise to myself and went to the National Portrait Gallery.  I would understand that this is place that probably wouldn't be very high on many people list of priorities when coming to London. But I thought "I have a year. What the hell." I like art. I do. I'm not a great lover of it by any stretch of the imagination but I appreciate beautiful and well done things. I spent about an hour and half there lingering over the portraits of people I'd actually heard of and glancing at the rest. The gallery had portraits of everyone from Henry VIII (and his many, many wives) to Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots, to Charles and Diana and a rather interesting rendering of Elizabeth II by Andy Warhol. The newest addition to the royal family portraits was the portrait of Princes William and Harry unveiled just last year. All in all, an extraordinary place to visit but I wouldn't necessarily go to again.

After leaving the gallery I walked around for a while. I decided to hope back on the Tube and head for St. James's Park. Not a random choice since the path through the park leads to Buckingham Palace. The park was nice. It was fully of families and kids feeding the already over-fed pigeons. As an aside, these pigeons are something London really needs to take care of. They are everywhere. EVERYWHERE. I've hardly seen a squirrel since I've been here but I can't for the life of me escape the pigeons.

Anyway, I found the palace. And it was...a little underwhelming. It's like when you see the White House for the first time. It's impressive, of course, but you have the feeling that it should be, well, bigger. I felt the same when I saw Westminster Abbey earlier in the day. The last stop of the day was Westminster, the home of the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben.

All in all, I had a good day. It's good to be able to play tourist some days and play Londoner others. I like straddling the two worlds - one where I'm marveling at things I've dreamed of seeing and one where I wish people would walk faster on the sidewalks and remember to stand on the right on the escalators in the Tube stations.