Last Day in the UK

Today was a big day! I did a lot of catch-up since this was my last day in the UK. The only disappointment was that I didn't get to see a London play (put it off, and as it turns out hardly anything plays on Sunday nights). I did however get to see Buckingham Palace, go to a Palm Sunday service at Westminster Abbey, and tour both the National Gallery and the Tate Modern.

Person:

My person for the day was Vincent Van Gogh. Today I got to stand in the presence of a painting that is worth in excess of 40,000,000 dollars, and after the artistic journey I'd gone through (see below), I was absolutely wowed in a new way by Van Gogh's technique and passion. Van Gogh was mentally disturbed, spent part of his life in a mental hospital, and eventually shot himself. He never enjoyed success during his life, having only sold 1 painting. They don't allow photos to be taken within the National Gallery, but here's an internet image of one of the paintings I got to see.
Place:

As indicated above, my favorite places today were art museums. I got to do an amazing tour through the annals of art history, all in a few hours. I started with Medieval paintings at the National Gallery, then moved from two dimmensions to three with the Rennaisance. I traveled through lofty Italian biblical scenes and worldly Dutch portraits, both teeming with symbolism. From the Rennaisance I moved into Baroque and Rococo, and finally ended at the National Gallery with some supurb examples of Impressionism. As I moved from The National Gallery across the Thames to the Tate Modern, the camera was invented, along with the motion picture and other technologies, and as I arrived, I saw artists turn away from realism in favor of increasingly creative an abstract techniques. The Tate Modern showed me how Impressionism gave way to Fauvism, which in turn gave way to Cubism. Finally, I saw art in some of its most extreme and challenging forms with the advent of Surrealism and all the other -isms that have made up the last half century of contemporary art. That all sounds pretty brainy, but I honestly had a lot of fun seeing all of this today. The picture is of the National Gallery when viewed across Trafalgar Square from the base of Nelson's Column.Food:

I didn't do any fancy dining today, but I did repeat an experience from earlier in the trip that is one of the great gastronomic delights to be had in London: the soft-serve ice cream cone. The ice cream is excessively rich (Pat tells me this is because it's mostly vegetable oil, but I'm trying not to think about that), and they put a chocolate stick in it that is the same high-quality chocolate that everything seems to be made from in England (even things like Kit-Kats and Snickers). Here you see my frozen treat against the backdrop of my ill-fated visit to the half-price "TKTS" booth in Leicester Square.