Day Out

I had a day out yesterday - I went up to London to see this exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum. I also met up with a fellow blogger - Loraine from The Balancing Kiwi - who had an appointment in Hammersmith which tied in well with our meeting at the V &A.

a

We met in the cafe there and had lunch together and got to know one another - she was every bit as charming as she seemed from her blog and id didn't take us long to be chatting like old friends. After lunch we went to buy tickets for the Diaghilev exhibition and the earliest we could get were for 3.15 (should have done that before lunch perhaps?!) which gave us plenty of time to wander round other parts of the museum and we eventually found ourselves in the jewellery rooms. Wow! what amazing stuff they had there - not that any of it would have been suitable for wearing to do the weekly shopping of course!! Some incredibly old stuff and also some fantastic modern pieces.

a

a

After a cup of tea to refresh ourselves we made our way to the exhibition we had come to see which was excellent and appealing on several levels. For me it was the costumes and the textiles that appealed most but it was interesting from the musical aspect, the art - Picasso and Matisse were artists whose work was displayed, the political and the dance of course. The costumes were stunning and what struck us was how much larger the dancers were than nowadays - some of them might have fitted me! Sadly no photography was allowed but for more images you can try Google Images here

a

This was a backdrop which was enormous - how it was transported I don't know but I loved it and was reminded of a friend who does batik and a card she made me years ago. Don't you agree? Although her's was just postcard size and the one in the V&A enormous.

It took us an hour and a half to see the exhibition - as some people we had shared a table with whilst having a cup of tea had told us it would. We left the V&A feeling as if we had been to another world and were suddenly returned to the dark wet streets of London. Loraine and I parted at the Underground station and I made my way back to Hammersmith for my coach home tired but having enjoyed my day out so much. Thanks for coming with me Loraine.

By the way I am sorry if you feel a bit drunk viewing these pictures but they were scanned and I didn't get them in the scanner quite straight and haven't got time to figure out how to tilt them to the vertical properly!