London to Ilkley

October 1 was our full day of London tourtist-ing. We started off walking to Borough Market for crème brûlée donuts, the same thing we did last time we were in the UK. This tine we weren’t going for a big lunch at River Cafe, so we also got a cinnamon roll and an almond croissant. And a latte and a mocha.

We walked along the Thames to get to the Market, and then walked back to get to the Tate Modern for the Frida Kahlo show. The night before, walking to the Globe we had discovered the  easy way to cross the river, coming out of the underground and using the train platform, but we crossed nearer Big Ben this morning.

The Frida exhibition was the kind where there was also work by the artist’s contemporaries, and people and things the main artist influenced.

I kinda liked the Frida merch room. Note Frida as Patti Smith. The museum missed a huge merch opportunity, though. There weren’t any cool Frida-style earrings. I totally would’ve bought some and I’m sure I’m not the only one.

The contemporary of Frida that I liked the best was Rosa Rolanda, even though some of her paintings remind me the big eye kids.

I also liked this costume made by Astrid Hadad. It reminded me of my sister-in-law’s work more then Frida, though.

There were also lots of portraits of Frida by other people. These three are by Nickolas Muray, who Frida might or might not have been sleeping with at the time.

 

But I’m such a philistine, I start getting bored with all the influences and research and start thinking, “wait, I’m really here to see ___” in this case, Frida.

I didn’t know much about Dorothy Hale, but evidently she was a friend of Clare Booth Luce, who commissioned Frida to make a painting for Hale’s mother. This was not what Clare Booth Luce expected.

We proceeded on to the British Museum, where we were going for tea. We didn’t get tickets for the Bayeux Tapestry blockbuster, but I’m going to try again later this month. Of course we peeked into the reading room, although it looked more like a book museum than a library to me.

We got one champagne, which means a flute of champagne along with the tea, and one regular.

The sandwiches were coronation chicken, salmon (I let Mark have those), egg salad, and ham. Raisin scones with cream and jam next level up, and the pastries are canelè, pear bakewell, raspberry (I think) macarons – they mostly tasted pink, and a cake with pistachios in it. 

The canelè arrived with a big swirl of chocolate ganache on top, which only served to hold on this chocolate reproduction of a boat in the Bayeux Tapestry.

Afterward we partially walked and partially took the underground back to the hotel to kind of regroup until our play tickets, for Kimberly Akimbo at Hampstead Theatre. Quite a good off Broadway production, and we got one of the little tubs of ice cream to split at intermission. The Underground was really crowded on the way there but things had straightened out by the time we were coming back, although one of the lines we were on, Jubilee, probably has the least upgraded cars. On the way back there was all this wind and I didn’t know why until someone got up and shut the window in one of the doors that had fallen open.

In the morning, we got checked out of the B&B, oh yea haven’t told you much about it as yet – let’s just say it’s just down the street and less nice than the Lime Tree Hotel where we stayed in 2024. We had room 9 – maybe we’ll get a better room when we stay there overnight on Monday on the way home. Anyways, we got coffees and pastries and took the tube to King’s Cross where we got the trains to Leeds and Ilkley, but unlike the last time, the trains were not all delayed and we were actually in Ilkley with time to explore before dinner. At a nice Italian place. That was quite empty for a Friday. We speculated that everyone was seeing Andrew Davies on the first night of the Ilkley Literature Festival.

The B&B had some questionable decor, featuring rhinestones and black velvet. And filthy carpet going up the stairs from the pub to the rooms. The bathroom off the pub was much nicer than the one in our room. Our B&B in Belgravia for our London nights had pretty filthy stair carpeting too, and a not so great bathroom. Now that we’re back in London overnight before flying home, we have a nicer room at the same B&B. It’s on the other side of the building and those stairs have cleaner carpet and the bathroom’s a lot nicer except there does not seem to be a fan, so it’s a lot wetter, too.

It was right on the river and we explored a bit going away from the Dales Way trail head.

We decided we liked the train station coffee bar the best.

And in the morning we took off.