Hammersmith

Weather: Overcast, cold - Min 7, Max 14

It’s seven days since our arrival in London and it seems so much longer. We have seen a lot already and still have two weeks of further exploring.

We woke to a very different day from yesterday as the temperature has dropped considerably. Our planning of going indoors took effect. We decided to visit the National Gallery which overlooks Trafalgar Square in central London. 

On our way to the gallery we passed quite a number of souvenir shops and I bumped into the Queen at one of them.

As we walked across Trafalgar Square towards the gallery a rare patch of blue sky emerged for a brief moment. 

Nelson’s Column dominates the square and the statue of Nelson standing on top looks tiny but he is 5m in size. There is a point in Trafalgar Square that is regarded as the centre of London and all distances from London are measured from this point. 

Entry to the gallery is free and as soon as we entered we were enveloped in warm air and had to quickly take off our coats. We immediately went to the gallery cafe on the ground floor for a coffee before viewing the paintings. The gallery houses so many wonderful paintings. it’s hard to take it all in. It is spacious and has plenty of seats to sit and study the paintings in detail in each of the separate exhibition rooms.

The Impressionism and Post Impressionism paintings were popular with the gallery visitors including us. There were works by Van Gogh, Cezanne, Monet, Manet, Pissaro and many others. The large Seurat painting, ‘Bathers at Asnieres’ was amazing to see. I didn’t realise it was so large. I remember studying it for Senior Art as well as many others on display. 

We enjoyed seeing the many British paintings including Constable’s ‘Hay Wain’. 

After two hours we were ‘painted out’ and we couldn’t appreciate it all. We also felt like we were being parboiled and needed to get some fresh air and cool down. We walked to St Martin-in-the-Field which is also in a prominent position overlooking Traflagar Square and sits beside the gallery. 

After viewing the inside of the church we went down to the crypt for lunch. As well as the cafe it also has a gift shop, a book shop and a brass rubbing centre. We decided to give brass rubbing a go and chose a design from the many on display. It was harder than we thought and it took some time pressing the metallic wax crayons hard enough on the thick paper to see the design. I gave up but Henk pressed so hard for so long to finish the piece that his index fingerprint didn’t work on his phone when he tried to access it. 

We called it a day and as we passed Trafalgar Square there was a small ‘Free Iran’ demonstration. At the same time thousands attended an antisemitism rally outside Downing St. One of those attending caught the same train as us and was going home with his placard.

For the first time we saw a police presence at the railway station. At Hammersmith Station we called into Tesco Express to do some grocery shopping for dinner as we wanted to avoid going out into the cold in the evening. 

Today was a far more laid-back day and we have so much more to see.