DAY 6 AM: The Tate Modern

I agreed, reluctantly, to go to the Tate Modern, an art gallery of modern & contemporary art. We ended up almost staying the entire day!!!!  It was so interesting.

Dubbed as the ugliest building in London, the inside far exceeded my expectations.

NOTE: This is a photo from the Internet. Our day was drizzly and windy!!

This is one of the first things we saw when we entered the Tate

A group of students with their sketchings all about. (BTW everywhere we went there were field trips. Students all seem to wear uniforms). At the Tate, there are many tours to choose from, but this one caught our eye. 

Georgia, our guide, opened our eyes to many in the collection that we normally would have looked at at a glance and moved on.
In our tour group there were people from Poland, Singapore, Israel, and Australia. Remarkable!!

This is a Salvador Dali that I have actually seen before and dismissed as ugly. After spending a good 10 minutes with Georgia, I fell in love with this painting!!  Read here to learn a bit of what it's about

Georgia further explained the theme of narcissism in the painting and about the narcissistic tendencies in us all. This is something that has interested me (I've actually read books on it!) so her explanation was intriguing.  She completely changed my original thoughts about this piece of art.

 This is Georgia explaining this piece of art called, The Uncertainty of the Poet.  She drew our attention to the shadows, and the light, to the train in the background, and the sailboat.  I never would have noticed these things, or considered why the artist included them in his work of art!

Totally engaged!

We decided to grab lunch at a familiar place, Doggett's, and had a great sandwich and a needed rest (and free wifi!)

On our way to to the London Bridge, we decided to walk along the Thames so that I could grab a rock for the Arthur Rubinstein Memorial Garden -- here I am along the Thames