A few times over the last couple of days I have found myself wandering along through the streets, gardens, and museums of London. While I generally had an idea of where I wanted to end up and when, I also did not feel any rush or pressure to get anywhere at a certain time or by a certain route.
Duck Island Cottage in St. James Park
This resulted in numerous detours, delays, and unexpected surprises. After running into Kristi and Hayley before the changing of the guard, I ended up wandering through St. James Park where I found a small cottage where the bird keeper used to live. Then I saw two soldiers on horseback outside of the HouseHold Cavalry Museum and wandering under Admiralty Arch before finding my way to Westminster. Even though I lost track of exactly where I was or where I was going, I ended up seeing parts of London which I did not have a plan to walk through. This was also the strategy Annie and I used at Hampton Court Palace, Tate Modern, and the Portrait Gallery. Even though we did have a few specific rooms, paintings, or portraits that we wanted to see, we did not make it our mission to seek those out first. Rather, we just wandered around the various buildings taking in everything along the way and finding small treasures which we didn’t expect to see.
Admiralty Arch
For example, we learned in Hampton Court Palace that ‘drawing room’ is actually short for ‘withdrawing room’ where many royals would ‘withdraw’ with other persons of power to conduct business. We also accidentally found Weeping Woman by Picasso and the Metamorphosis of Narcissus by Salvador Dali in the Tate which were significant paintings for Annie and I respectively. While meandering through the galleries we also discovered a favorite female surrealist artist who was previously unknown to both of us. In the Portrait Gallery, I literally dropped my pen upon unexpectedly finding the portrait of John Donne which as featured on the cover of the autobiography which I read in a poetry class with Professor Gertz last fall. We also successfully navigated the at times unnecessarily confusing bus system which felt like one of the biggest accomplishments we have achieved thus far. All of these unexpected discoveries and happy mistakes have led me to find new and known items in different and surprising ways. They have also underlined the importance of having an easy-going attitude while travelling and to remember that blunders can lead to some of the best learning experiences.
Metamorphosis of Narcissus – Salvador Dali