A Journey Through London

I haven't blogged for a while, so I thought I'd go back about two weeks to the start of the Easter fortnight. I was on holiday that week, so I thought I'd go into London to visit some museums and art galleries.

Stratford to Kew Gardens

I got off the C2C from Pitsea at West Ham and made my way to Stratford to pick up the overground. From there, I got the Richmond train. I normally get off at Camden Road, but I stayed on all the way to Kew Gardens. The Overground shares the same rails as the District line from Gunnersbury.


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I got to Kew and wandered around for a bit (£15 to go in!) and ended up at Gunnersbury station, where I took the District and Piccadilly to Hyde Park:


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The idea was to go to see the Hockney exhibition, but the queue was massive: a four hour wait. If it had been Rembrandt or Raphael, maybe, but not a Yorkshireman!

The Design Museum

Being at a bit of a loss of what to do, I decided to walk to the Design museum on the South Bank:


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I hadn't seen Design of the Year competition last year, so it was good to have a look. The standouts where a giant dandelion for blowing up mines;

a suite of furniture which folded up into crates;

a font for Nokia phones (as a fontophile, one of my favourites); two electric cars; and a temporary house built of wooden blocks under an overpass in East London:

In particular I liked the idea of Not-so-expanded Polystyrene (NSEPS), created by making textile moulds, filling them with polystyrene granules and then steaming them, causing the granules to both expand and harden. Cool materials stuff.