Spring day in London with the stars

Our youngest has come home from Uni for Easter and I took the opportunity to go up to London for the day to meet him off the bus. My plan was to go to an exhibition at the National Gallery then see a film I've missed on the local circuit, A Bigger Splash. However, as it was such a beautiful Spring day, the warmest this year so far, I decided to skip the art and save it for another trip, and walked from Victoria Station to Oxford Street, strolling through St James Park, enjoying the sunshine and the sight of so many people sitting on the grass, relaxing and chatting.

The thing I really love about London is that no matter how much time you spend there, and in my case that includes living and working in north London for 4 years as well as countless stays and day trips, you can always find new routes to walk, through streets and small pedestrian cut-throughs which reveal buildings, shops and landmarks you haven't seen before. Today, cutting through from the park to Piccadilly, I came upon the statue of Beau Brummell in Jermyn Street outside the Princes Arcade, which I don't remember having seen before, and stopped to admire him. After a bit of shopping in Oxford Street, my reward to myself was afternoon tea in the John Lewis coffee shop, which turned out to be filling enough to replace dinner, so didn't feel like too much of an indulgence.

The walk to the cinema in Leicester Square took a bit longer than expected due to the levels of  security in the square for the premiere of Batman v Superman. Ben Affleck and the rest of the cast were walking the red carpet, with big screens up around the Square. The normal route through was sealed off and large crowds were waiting to catch sight of the stars which made for slow progress; however, I made it in time for the pre-film ads but had no chance to take much notice of the goings-on in the square itself.

I was quite disappointed by the film, which turned out to be less gripping and dramatic than I'd hoped for and, at almost 2 hours, was longer than it deserved to be. The real star of the film was the beautiful island of Pantelleria, off the west coast of Sicily, which was stunning and much more interesting than the human characters. Tilda Swinton, as an ageing rock star, did wear some fabulous clothes though.

Anyway, I can cross that one off my list now and the timing worked well to meet my son off his bus and catch up with the news on the train home. Our daughter and older son will be arriving home on Thursday so will be great to catch up with them all!