The Wallace Collection, Maughan Library, Christmas by the River Market, & The Lucas Arms

Last Saturday - well hallelujah, Bucket List London finally scheduled something I wanted to go to, at a time I could make! He was off to see the Wallace Collection that morning - and so was I. I woke in OK time - made my way down there on a bright, fresh morning. We'd arranged to meet at 10, but he messaged to say he was running a bit late - as it turned out, the place only opens at 10! So we were gathered in a crowd outside. Well done to the third person in the group for correctly identifying me - we were glad to get in from the cold, and made our way to the Great Gallery, where he'd said to meet.

This is another of those incredible collections, with far too much in it - you could easily spend days going through it. As usual, I oriented myself by portraits of royals that I recognised. Here, for example, we have a young Queen Victoria, on the other side of the door, a very flattering portrait of her uncle, George IV, and over the door, his dad, George III!

We shortcut the trip through the house, and headed for the Great Gallery - which we discovered was upstairs, at the back:

And in due course, as promised, our organiser joined us. So we spent some considerable time going through the house - seriously, never mind the day, you could spend a few days here if you wanted to do it properly! And oh look - George IV again:

With such a wealth of things to look at, I restricted myself to snapping pictures of art I found interesting. For example, the beautiful blue here:

The house in general is gorgeous:

I also took pictures of paintings I'd seen before:

One room was dedicated to depictions of Venice, which took me back:

As we continued our tour of the house, we noticed some recurring themes. For example, a lot of paintings had mythical subjects (generally with naked women, which might have been the reason to paint them). This is from Inferno, with text from the poem inscribed on the frame:

Oh, and they seemed very keen on hunting - lots of pictures of dead animals:

Finally, we visited the armoury - which has the only complete set of horse armour, as I recall! Anyway, this looked impressive - seems they also consulted on the film The Lost King, about the discovery of the burial place of Richard III. There's a small exhibition about that, too.

So yes, yet another of the spectacular collections that are free to view around London! Many thanks to our organiser for bringing this to our attention - lovely to see him again too, it's been too long.

In the afternoon - London Social & Cultural Meetups planned a bevy of Christmassy stuff! They were off for afternoon tea first - we were headed to the Garden at the Lane (at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane). And she discovered that she had a clash for lunch, so, mercifully, I got a bit of a break in between events to have my own lunch! and do some things that needed doing. And out I schlepped again to meet the others. Unfortunately, traffic was bad, and my bus a bit delayed.. I was slightly late, and the others were there when I arrived. It's a gorgeous venue:

Sadly - in common with so many places - they wouldn't let our organiser book in advance, and when we got there, it was full. So, we continued to the Knights Templar pub, where we'd been planning to go later anyway - passing, on the way, that interesting upside-down globe on Portugal Street:

We also took a brief detour to see some other interesting sights on the way:

..including where the lawyers get their gear! (This being the part of town for them):

The pub, sadly, was also packed - large as it was. So we gave up on that, and headed straight for King's College Maughan Library, for an exhibition of old manuscripts, which had been the next thing on our list. It's in a converted chapel, with gorgeous stained glass windows:

and a couple of elaborate tombs:

Some of the manuscripts are gorgeous, with medieval woodcut illustrations:

and there are fascinating works relating to John Snow's reform of London's water system, and Edward Jenner's development of the smallpox vaccine! This interesting exhibition runs to the 12th of March. On our way to and from the exhibition, we did notice some interesting doors to the study rooms - the mind boggles:

And finally, we hit the Christmas markets! All part of the Southbank Winter Festival. First was to be the Southbank Christmas Market, where they sell white mulled wine.. but although she confirmed the presence of that, our organiser wasn't so keen on the rest of the market, and suggested we go straight to the Christmas by the River Market. Which is what we did, stopping at Hay's Galleria on the way:

We were on the hunt for white mulled wine, but the only place serving mulled wine at all was the bar - frankly, I didn't fancy their chances of having it, and I don't do red. So I gave up.

The others went off in search of food that wasn't exorbitantly priced - me, although I was hungry, I passed, and bade them farewell - it'd been a fun afternoon.

I had to leave, because that evening - I bravely scheduled another meeting of the Rarely Seen. It was my last weekend in London before Christmas, you see. Well, Ivan and my first boss in London confirmed! while the one person who came the last two times was busy, for once. I booked The Lucas Arms - O' Neill's wasn't taking bookings for that day. Deposit payable, refundable with cancellation up to 72 hours beforehand. I just had time to shop beforehand - and wouldn't you know it, they both showed up! Excellent - and what's more, they got on like a house on fire. We were also right in the middle of the football crowd, and excellently positioned to watch the match - which suited them more than me. We were excellently fed too, of course. The night finished early for me, when the poitín I'd brought as a Christmas present for Ivan got shared around.. I can't mix, and was in need of my bed rapidly from then. The others, apparently, finished the bottle, and made a late way home. A busy day, a terrific end - looking forward to doing that again.

Of course, I was too wrecked to blog, that night.. see the next instalment for details of last Sunday and ongoing..