Adventure is out There!

My day had a fairly inauspicious beginning. This week, since I had Core Methodologies Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday are totally free. So I slept late, ate the last scratch of food I had in my room and thought to myself: What do I do today? 

Well.

Sally had mentioned that the Crytal Sceptre, a gift from Henry V to the city after the Battle of Agincourt, was on display until the 3rd at the Guildhall Art Gallery near St Paul's. Okay, I thought. Why not? Especially since this object is never on view and has nothing published on it. So I set out walking.

It's about half an hour down the Strand, down Fleet Street, past St Paul's and then across a street or two to reach the Guildhall Square. They were having a food truck festival complete with band! The Traveling Tilbury's (haha...) playing George Harrison to a group of snacking Londoners. The atmosphere was really great, the band friendly and I enjoyed walking around and looking at the various foodstuffs. 

I ducked inside the gallery to find my sceptre and it was just inside the door. Really, startlingly beautiful object. The rock crystal particularly. It look almost looks too nice, too elegant for being 700 years old. It only comes out of its hiding place once a year for the Silent Ceremony, and for the handing over of power from on mayor to another. A feminist art historian would say its a visual embodiment of masculine, phallic power. what do you think?

 There were some other nice things in the gallery as well, including a work by Rosetti and beneath, the ruins of a roman amphitheater. It was just a pile of rocks so I didn't take a picture of it...

 This is the Rosetti 

 I referenced this painting in a paper i did on Millais once and then just ran into it here

Nice, right? 

Rather bizarrely, in the rooms of the gallery they were having a brick-a-bracky Christmas fair, with little old people and baked goods and hand made items. I sort of felt like I'd run into a flea market ... but I was in an art gallery. Go figure.

Days out exploring in London on your own on so special--you never know what you'll find!