pour améliorer: The Arty Side of London

After our very busy morning of Thames cruising and then exploring the Tower of London, we wanted to cross the river again to see the Tate Modern, London's modern art museum, and the reconstructed Shakespeare Globe Theatre. We decided to try out London's bike hire options. You pay a tarrif and then 1 euro for the first hour if you collect a bike from one of the bike hire stations and return it to another one within that time.

We got a bit distracted by another one of these headless street performers.

Now I hadn't actually ridden a bicycle for about ten years, so the idea of competing with cars, buses and pedestrians in busy London was more than a little intimidating!

I gritted my teeth and gripped my handlebars hard, and we were on our way over the Tower Bridge. That's me here in the dorky hat and blue top.

And here again. We made it over the river OK, and searched for a while for a place to deposit our bikes.

Somehow, we managed to find ourselves on a bridge going back over to the other side of the river again. So we ended up crossing the river three times by the time we got near the Tate Modern!

We found the Tate Modern a little bit less interesting than the Musée National d'Art Moderne in Paris, but still found plenty to amuse ourselves with.

This was a pile made of hand-made ceramic sunflower seeds. Very impressive!

The view out the window to St Paul's was lovely.

Back to the view inside!

This message was one of many in a campaign for equal wages for female artists with male artists.

I really liked this one!

And yes, this is an organza staircase descending from the ceiling.

We walked from the Tate Modern to the Globe, but were in dire need of some proper lunch, so moved on for the moment.

We briefly considered a restaurant that had these gorgeous little winged lightbulbs...

Feeling inspired by our trip to the Tate Modern, Tom thought he could make an art installation with the vase of flowers on our desk. Something about the way the leaves fanned out of the stem and away from the petals that symbolised something...

My pizza was the. best. pizza. ever.

We were a little alarmed when we realised the time after our late lunch. We had arranged to visit a lady that we had met on our previous cruise from Istanbul, and go to a show with her that night. Time was running out to get back to the hotel and shower!

So, we hopped on our bikes. Which would probably have been fine if we had managed to actually procure a decent map of the city of London, but we ended up getting really lost.

After switching bikes once along the way (to avoid exceeding our 1 euro first hour) and nearly crashing into about six pedestrians (not to mention getting run over by buses) on my part, we eventually made it.

We had a lovely little afternoon tea with our friend, and then it was time for the show.

We had heard that War Horse was excellent from a lot of people we'd met, so were very excited.

It was absolutely fantastic. Best show either of us have ever seen.

We couldn't take photos inside the show, so Tom took these photos of the programme and the ads posted up in the tube stations.

We had a quiet stroll through Covent Garden after the show...

We passed by the theatre where 'Shrek The Musical' is showing.

I thought it was absolutely hilarious that the position of the theatre is on Drury Lane! Anyone else remember this sequence from Shrek the movie (I couldn't find the original on Youtube, so this one will have to do)?