Skip to main content

Olympic London

I am failing at the Rav Games as I am too busy enjoying Olympic London. The atmosphere here is superb - friendly and polite, welcoming and quirky.

On Sunday myself and a few friends went on tour visiting national houses. Some countries have commandered buildings in London to showcase their culture. Most of them are free and they are good fun.

We started off in Casa Brasil aka Somerset House, where we saw some artwork, plus plans for their games in 2016. I think I'll go back in the evening and enjoy a caipriniha or two and pretend I'm on Copacobana beach.

To keep this linked to the fibre arts they had this fabric wall

Casa Brasil - fabric wall

and these freaky crochet dolls in part of an art exhibit.

Casa Brasil - freaky crochet dolls

We watched a little bit of the women's marathon

Marathon

which to be honest was a little tiring so we mooched along South Bank, stopping off at the Tanks at Tate Modern, taking a break from sport and enjoying some culture

Tate Tanks

I think Swiss House was my favourite as it had cheese and chocolate

ALL THE CHEESE

and we got to see a Master Choclatier from Lindt at work and sample his wares. A cunning move as we all bought some chocolate, I went for their new wasabi flavour.

Master choclatier

This loo door sign amused me in Swiss House

Loo door in Swiss House

I'm collecting photos of our mascots, Wenlock and Mandeville (or Stevenage and Mildew as I like to call them) and spotted a fair few, though apparently there are 83 of these all over London. Good job they're not like Pokemon.

City Hall Wenlock

We finally saw Tower Bridge with the iconic rings...

Tower Bridge

and then headed to Denmark where there were beautiful people, good design, and Lego

Lego Olympic Park

Plus I think we ended up on Danish TV. Tak. (I went into Sara Lund mode though I couldn't remember any useful Danish)

Denmark house

Lou and I were then going to head to Austria house for some thigh-slapping wurst but MrG phoned as he managed to get two tickets for Greco-Roman wrestling. Luckily we were next to a DLR station so we headed to the Excel Centre where we saw a sport that baffled both of us.

Olympic London

Nevertheless we enjoyed ourselves and the atmosphere. Plus I bumped into two twitter friends on the way out. Marvellous. London, I salute you.

Comments

mostcurious said…
I am, as a US citizen, horrified by the awful crochet dolls. HORRIFIED.

Also personally I'm insanely jealous of the LEGO in the Denmark house. FYI I am trying to vicariously enjoy the Olympics more through you. :)
10 August 2012 at 15:27
Anonymous said…
Pfeh. that was me up there.
10 August 2012 at 15:29
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

We have a winner...

Check out my pea seedling, how intact and un-nibbled it is. My mysterious object, as correctly guessed by Madmurdock and Montyknits, is a gastropod guard. It seems to be working. I'd heard that slugs and snails don't like slithering over hair. I tried using hair clippings a few years ago as a barrier. It worked for a few days, til I found chewed, leafless stems and on further inspection a guilty slug covered in ginger hair. Hopefully the fleecy barrier will stay in place and mean I get a good late crop of peas. Congratulations to the winners and thank you to everyone who took part.
4 comments
Read more

Unravelling the NHS

If you follow me on twitter you'll already know I have a healthy interest in politics. Our current government is slowly and steadily dismantling our beloved NHS (National Health Service) from one with full public accountability to one which is more dependent on profit margins rather than evidence based medicine. THIS MAKES ME VERY ANGRY. There's a lot of despair at the moment, many of us feel our government is not listening to us, the people, or experts in the field such as the British Medical Association or the Royal College of Nurses. Yesterday our unelected second house, the house of Lords, voted through the government's ill-advised health reform bill. We all felt hopeless, then I read this blog post . You should read it too. Many of us are working out what to do. How can we reverse this disastrous decision when essentially the democratic process is failing us. "The NHS reforms did not appear in either the Conservative or Liberal ...
4 comments
Read more

TOTOROOOOOOOO!

I finally handed over the Totoro hooded top to it's two year old recipient today. It also fits his four year old sister which is good as she likes Totoro too. They both looked very cute in it. We met up at the Wellcome Collection which has a lovely airy cafe and free exhibitions. The Totoro kids mum is a fellow scientist so we went round the Exquisite Bodies exhibition explaining why calves are sometimes born with two heads, how babies are made (the four year olds current interest) and lots of other science fun to the kids. If you visit the Wellcome centre with kids ask about their young investigators pack. It's really cool (I was disappointed I didn't get one) and it's free. Brilliant. The staff were really helpful and pleasantly surprised at seeing young kids enjoying a strange exhibition, rather than being freaked out by it. Personally, I did enough human dissection as part of my degree to make me not want to see another cadaver ever again, although the models wer...
4 comments
Read more