Friday and Saturday or "How I learned to stop worrying and just post the damn thing"

So, trying to get my blog post "just right" is evidently a recipe for just not posting.  So some bits from last week:

On Friday, I started out at the Victoria and Albert Museum of Applied Arts, which turns out to mean “Museum of Stuff and Other Shit People Do.”  It has collections of all kinds of crazy things, including fashion (surprisingly interesting!), ironworking, glass, etc.  Just a couple of highlights:

This next I found really interesting.  Artist's commentary follows.

So, having made it safely to the event, I got my first glimpse at the revamped Museum of London (the raison d'etre of this whole trip).  More on the galleries later (spoiler: they're AWESOME).  

To coincide with the opening of the new galleries, there is, in the lobby, an installation called “London Wall,” in which the digital artists watched a twitter hashtag—I think it was #molwall—and combined the tweets into a representation of a slice of London in a large installation.  I’m going to photograph some more favorites when I return to the Museum, but here are a couple that I thought were great.  They probably weren’t the best, but they are where my amusement and my camera intersected.

"This week your assignment is GAGA."

"Ich bin de makdaddy"

So, following this lovely event, I had yet ANOTHER wacky public transport adventure, but this time I was much more impatient about screwing stuff up.  That said, I am a big fan of taking the bus, if only because you get to see so much of the city.  It’s really a nice way to travel.  This is one bus stop where I spent rather a long time waiting. 

Made it back, passed out.  Fin.

Saturday I had to check out of Hostel 1, kill a little time, then check into Hostel 2.  Here’s the view out of my window from Hostel 1.  Lovely, right?  That said, it was loud and very hostel-y.  Had to pack everything up before leaving, tiny showers, etc, but it was good for what it was. 

To kill time, I thought I’d go check out Portobello Road Market, which is at its most bustling on Saturday mornings.  And bustle it did! 

I got lost trying to find Hostel 2, had packed my backpack poorly on the reasoning that I’d be carrying it only a very short way, so I was super uncomfortable, etc.  Thankfully Chris didn’t mind waking up at a ridiculous hour to guide me with google maps (thanks, honey!), and I got there fine.  Unfortunately, getting lost ate up the extra time I’d allocated for getting to the 2pm talk I wanted to attend, and I missed it.  Boo.

In the interest of actually posting this here blog post instead of endlessly fretting over it, I'll just end with this proof that London was made for me:

"Hi Catherine.  I've been expecting you!"