Camden Market, 2022

After a day of idling, researching/planning further adventures, blogging, and binge-watching Bridgerton, we decided to head up to Camden Town and the Camden Market, where we had great fun in 2021. Somehow it just wasn't that exciting the second time. It's a year later, almost, and the crowds have returned. Big crowds, and all in COVID-denial. Maybe best to do Camden on a weekday. We looked around a bit, snapped a few pix, and then decided to walk back to our apartment. Awaiting us, en route, was one of the great architectural surprises of this campaign...

I'm still awaiting the Second Coming of the leisure
suit...

Arcade scene

Typical

Ditto

Kangol now into weirdness

Street scene

Imperial foot-long

Gin-infused bubble tea can't be far away

And now the surprise: I bet you've never heard of Egyptian Revival
Art Deco; neither had we; but there it is, the former Carreras Cigarette
Factory, built in the 1920s, when Egyptian and Turkish cigarettes
were all the rage, in some places...think "I'd walk a mile for a Camel"...

Thus; note Egyptian-type imagery

There it is; Carreras went out of business years ago, but the
building was restored in the 1990s

And is now Greater London House...an office building

Greater London House...home for a number of well known firms;
but, ever more interestingly, figures in the BBC mockumentary
W1A, which satirizes BBC management; even more interestingly,
W1A stars Hugh Bonneville (Lord Grantham to some of you); read
up here and here and you'll know even more about all this than I do

Albertopolis And Beyond

From the Natural History Museum we marched on through that part of Kensington known as Albertopolis, the site of the Royal Albert Hall, the Prince Albert Monument, and other Albertian things. A stroll through some recent British history, then through Kensington Gardens to Hyde Park, ending on Oxford Street and the few blocks back to our apartment.

Rounding the bend to Royal Albert Hall

Thus

And thus, with tour buses for scale

The Albert Memorial: as good as prince consorts
get, I suppose; certainly contributed memorably
to his Queen's reign

Detail of the monument: Asia (from the four classically-
known continents

Apparently a favored site for pugilistic practice

Unforgettable scene

Not least of Albert's accomplishments was the
great British exposition of 1851, the centerpiece of
which was Joseph Paxton's Crystal Palace, which 
was built here, in Hyde Park

So now we are on the Princess Diana Memorial
Walk

Going to the dogs

Nearing Oxford Street, one of many such stations being prepared
for the crowds expected for the Jubilee

Ring twice at least one nano-second before over-taking
pedestrians...

The Marble Arch, site of the ill-fated Mound of yesteryear

Oxford Street, bedecked, as everywhere else, with the Union Jack

Art Deco BBC Broadcast House, near our flat, where
Penelope and I starred on closed-circuit TV back
in 2013

Natural History Museum

We visited the Natural History Museum (actually: "The British Museum (Natural History)") in 2013, hoping to interest toddler Penelope with the dinosaurs and such. We did not stay long. We thought we'd give it another go on this visit, having toured most all the other major museums in London. We did mostly dinosaurs and minerals. It was another short visit, in part because of my aversion to mere bones and stones exhibits (I like a little history of science context also, please), and partly because of painful memories incurred of Geology 101, 102, and 103, courses I barely passed. But I digress. Actually, we were there as much for Alfred Waterhouse's neo-Romanesque and Victorian architecture as the exhibits. The building is often called the "Cathedral of Nature." 

Bones of a giant blue whale swooping down; this used to be
where Dippy the Diplodocus resided, now removed to other realms

Sculptural program: Darwin's monkeys?

Chuck himself, presiding; looks lonely, bored

Fearsome animatronic life-sized dinosaurs, worthy of Disney

Open a little wider, please

I was hoping for a little dinosaur whoopie, but it's a family museum

The architecture really is astounding, even considering
the great wealth available in England in Victorian times

Darwin's pigeons; apparently he enjoyed poisoning pigeons
in the park

Four or so large cases of important objects, with occasional
references to why they might have been important to the march
of science

Huxley, Darwin's attack dog; I can rarely think of him
without reference to Huxley College in Horsefeathers; my
favorite higher education movie; Groucho was president

Moving on to the mineral wing, because: diamonds,
which are a girl's best friend

Diamonds of color

2,000 carats of topaz

Mineral wing

We were on tour too and I was ready to move on

Major destination for school groups