Saturday, 21 October 2017: City centre and Tate Modern

Today’s weather: windy – it shows! But the scarves Aki knitted for us keeps as warm and cosy and are just the right thing for this weather. πŸ™‚

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Today, we’re walking around Covent Garden and our first stop – as usual – is our favourite Sci Fi store, Forbidden Planet. They’re launching a lot of Rick and Morty merchandise. I’m holding back and only buy one t-shirt. And a Back to the Future notebook with a light-up logo. πŸ™‚

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We have a look at the different shops in Covent Garden’s market halls and eat lunch at Shake Shack. The cheese sauce on the fries is out of this world! No wonder Gabi looks so happy!

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On the way to Leicester Square, we pop into a new interiour shop. My mother would love this place – what they have on offer and how they display the products. At the back, the store turns into a plant nursery.

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We then reach Leicester Square and join the queue for the LEGO store. I do own more than enough LEGO since I got all those LEGO sets for birthday, but it’s nice to have a (second) look at this LEGO flagship store that only opened ten months ago.

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The focal point at the back of the store on the second floor: the LEGO Millennium Falcon, the largest LEGO set yet with roughly 7,500 LEGO bricks. Most visitors take a closer look or a photo. I still can hardly believe that I own one of these. πŸ™‚

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We return to the car and drive to the southern shore of the Thames to visit the new extension of the Tate Modern art museum.

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The big sloped entrance hall of the Tate Modern is currently covered in carpet. A lot of visitors sit down and relax – or roll downhill.

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The new extension’s top floor contains a 360° viewing platform. We enjoy the view of London as always… with the prominent ‘old’ Tate Modern’s chimney.

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The entry to the viewing platform as well as the museum’s general exhibition is free. That’s what we love about London. So of course we stoll through the rooms. There are some contemporary video installations which don’t speak to me. Is that art? But there are other interesting art pieces too. For example, there’s an artist that lined the rooms of flats in different cities with leather bands and just hang the resulting netting on the wall. Another artist built some kind of sandbox city of couscous. One mad a cube of of things he found. And yet another artist likes to build sculptures out of bricks.

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We’ve seen the stack of aluminium and blue perspex elements before, in another location of the Tate Modern. That’s a piece I really like!

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We take a stroll along the Thames. It’s still quite windy – it’s storm Brian – and not really comfortable outdoors.

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That’s why we decide on driving back to the hotel. We again get a take-away from the nearby station: a giant hot dog and a bucket of chili with nachos and a slice of avocado from Giraffe.

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