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Sometimes when we're feeling a bit tired of how long it takes to get around London, I think we subconsciously choose a destination that involves the Victoria line tube--it's only minutes from home to Highbury & Islington station by bus, and then the Victoria line is very quick, albeit one of the most rattly lines, especially between Highbury & Islington and King's Cross-St Pancras stations--Bob can barely do his sudoku (yes, folks, supply teaching in far-flung areas of London has made him a sudoku commuter). Anyway, today we started off at Tate Britain (seven stops south on the Victoria line, but they only take about fifteen minutes to travel), where we spent some time taking in the current survey of British photography. It was much less crowded than the last time I tried to see the exhibit, when people were crowding four- or five-deep in front of each photo, but then again, that was a pouring, cold bank-holiday in March, and today was a sunny, warm July weekday! We also stopped by the nearby Chelsea Space to see what was currently on show, and found the gallery strewn with all sorts of clutter:

Frank Sidebottom has a papier-mâché head and creates all sorts of silliness in various media--to use a phrase that we often hear on the street, he seems a bit mad, really. By now it was time for a bit of snack and we started heading toward a place that I've been curious about ever since it opened recently. But in order to get there, we had a bit of walking to do, so we started randomly heading toward it to see what we'd encounter along the way. The gorgeous St. John's, Smith Square is at the centre of a quiet, lovely neighbourhood, and the street in the above photo held a few sights that were worth extra photographs. The first was this pair of WWII bomb shelter signs, almost too weathered to read on the brick: "Public shelters in vaults under pavements in this street" and "S-->Shelter."
The second was a blue plaque marking Lawrence of Arabia's residence from 1922-28: Next, we came upon Westminster School, former school of notables such as Ben Jonson, John Dryden, John Locke, Christopher Wren, A.A. Milne, John Gielgud, Peter Ustinov, and Helena Bonham-Carter. (Yes, they did finally start admitting girls to the school in 1967, but even today, girls are only admitted (along with boys) to the sixth-form college at age 16, rather than at the other boys-only intakes at ages 7/8, 11, and 13.)
Just a bit posh . . .
Oh and Westminster Abbey is just around the corner from the school.
Not a bad address:
We'll have to have a look inside Westminster Abbey one of these days, but not on a day when we're aiming for coffee and treats (living here rather than being here on vacation allows us to have such skewed priorities)! We kept walking, cutting across a bit of St. James's Park, where we spotted the pelicans sunning themselves and a bit of a bike race:
It's not quite the display we saw over the weekend, but it was still cute. Finally, we arrived at our destination!
I had heard that the Nordic Bakery had great coffee, delicious food, and a lovely overall design, but I didn't realise that it was getting so much good press. In any case, it's now our new favourite place for coffee and treats! Fantastic strong coffee (Illy or Monmouth apparently, and regular readers know how much we love Monmouth coffee)
and the best carrot cake I've ever had (very different, very dense, very addictive),
along with an amazing-looking assortment of open-faced sandwiches and other goodies mean that we'll definitely be making a return visit. When we paid our bill, the man asked us how we liked the carrot cake and after we said how great it was, I added that it was a good thing Nordic Bakery was just far enough away from home that we wouldn't be passing by every day. "We're planning on expanding," he said, and I said that if they opened up in north London, I'd be in serious trouble, which he seemed to enjoy hearing. We decided to head home to do some things around the house, and along the way, we came across more of the Grand Tour prints than we'd seen before. They're really great, in their disjointed everyday settings--we've only seen one other person looking at a print while we were around, suggesting that for many people, it's being in the institution of art (museum, art gallery) that signals when to look around for upper-case-A "Art"!