In the morning we took a short visit to Buckingham Palace, which is widely denounced in the tourism literature as an underwhelming experience. Today, at least, there was a marathon going. Other than the historical significance of the site, the literature is quite right. There isn't much to do or see here.
Since the British drive on the wrong side of the road, they are compelled to point out to tourists which way they should look for oncoming traffic (and this really does help, trust me, as it is not so easy to reverse years of ingrained behavior):
After that we went to the Tate Britain, to see one of Natasha's favorite painters, John William Waterhouse. We were disappointed to find that they only have one and it was on loan. There was plenty of other interesting stuff to see, including...Rothko. I've tried and tried to appreciate this type of art before, but time and time again I am left in dismay when I see it. To someone without an art history background, these appear to be simply shapes on a canvas. I must confess I have little formal art education, so perhaps I'm missing something important, but I think I understand what this art is trying to convey, and I still think it is shallow and self-indulgent. It seems more like a big joke that everyone is in on except me. Nevertheless, I keep trying my very best to give it a fair shake.
Later we saw 4 bookstores on one street in the Theatre District (London's version of Broadway). We finally found cupcakes at a coffee shop, which weren't very good compared to those back home but hit the spot anyway.
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