Yan

Unlike pre­vi­ous ses­sion, which lec­ture ends at 5pm, classes end up early at 3pm this week. I got plenty of time to go to National Gallery for the “Corot to Monet” exhi­bi­tion this Fri­day after­noon. Been here in Lon­don for 5 weeks already and it was not until today did I step in to National Gallery…what a shame. The exhi­bi­tion is excel­lent, it includes paint­ings from ear­lier land­scape painters to bar­bi­zon school to impres­sion­ists. If time allowed, a sec­ond visit is def­i­nitely on my schedule.

After my visit to National Gallery, I went to Spi­tal­field with Chloe for a restau­rant named Can­teen. It has been rec­om­mended by both Lonely Planet and Wall­pa­per City Guide. We thought it’d be pretty good…yet it’s just aver­age to me, at least for its sig­na­ture fish and chips. Don’t always rely on rec­om­men­da­tions, (though I love Mango Room, another restu­arnt rec­om­mended by Lonely Planet), just like cam­era some­times lies.

Located in Spi­tal­field Mar­ket, Liv­er­pool Street, Can­teen is a British chain restau­rant with very clean and min­i­mal logo, reminds me of designer shop at first sight.

Min­i­mal­ism in the menu design. I like it.

Canteen’s sig­na­ture fish and chips, eaten in the tra­di­tional way — vine­gar and salt. Fish was good, but chips were really dis­ap­point­ing — nei­ther fresh nor crisp.

My first time to try Scotch egg with pic­calilli, very inter­est­ing, and the sauce is pretty good.

Rhubarb com­pote and fresh straw­ber­ries, I have to say rhubarb resem­bles cel­ery to me!!

We had a steak and Chloe ordered a choco­late sun­dae as desert (play it safe, for the sake of my vir­gin Bloody Mary with cel­ery the other day). A good meal, but aver­age food. Plan after the meal was to see Adam, the movie. But turned out to be a Plan B a tour near Thames. We stopped by the Big Ben, West­min­ster, and went to South Bank for Lon­don Eye, and Mary-go-around!

Some archi­tec­ture of today

Liv­er­pool Station

RBS at Liv­er­pool Street

Inte­rior of LSE New Aca­d­e­mic Building

Only one week left in Lon­don, will leave this charm­ing city on August 15th. Then it’s time to say HELLO COPENHAGEN!