No Fashion?! How Disappointing.

Elizabeth, Susan and I went to the Victoria & Albert museum last week.  It is a lovely museum, and has a large fashion collection. (If you're going to go to a link, I suggest the second one - it is the link to all their fun collections & articles about clothes - but if you are a big link-follower, go nuts!) I was especially excited to see all the stuff they have by Mary Quant (the original miniskirt designer, and super mod fashion queen of swinging London in the '60s) like this awesome dress:

 

Which, by the way, I want to wear today.

So anyways. We get to the museum (aka bus-train-tube-walk there), and the entire fashion section was closed because they are having a ballgown exhibit in May. Are you kidding me??! And I have since checked their website - uh, there is no mention of the fashion section being closed in preparation for this exhibit. Thank goodness Elizabeth was asleep - I had to talk myself out of having a 'discussion' with one of the Information people about the uselessness of uninformative webpages, but I would have woken her up. Thank goodness - those 'discussions' never end well. At any rate, we had a wander, and Susan and I looked at some 19th century sculptures, and then some Islamic art, including some beautiful tapestries, and then some great sacred silver that was used in religious ceremonies, and then a shawl made of spider silk. I'm not joking - it's a shawl made from the silk from a million golden orb-weaver spiders from Madagascar.

Then we got to the jewellery room, and just as I was designing my own ring on this super fun touch screen computer thing, Elizabeth woke up. The room was dark, with the cabinets lit to showcase the bajillions of dollars worth of ancient & modern jewellery. So when Eliz woke up, she was appropriately freaked out. And then this old British dude (read: questionable dentistry) stuck his face in her stroller and said, "Cheee-er up, love!" which really didn't help her cheer up at all. Then she had a massive freak out, and we had to bust out of the quiet, quiet jewellery room while she had a good long wail.

We headed to the cafe, and had to share a table with three ladies. This turned out to be very entertaining, as one of the three ladies was late arriving, and before she got there, we got to hear the other two complain and gossip about her, and then act as if they were all chummy-chummy when she arrived. I loved it.

Elizabeth was much happier after lunch, and we did walk through one of the sculpture hallways, that led to the gardens. Elizabeth said this sculpture was "Daddy!!"

The "gardens" was actually a shallow pool, with three wide steps around the base, and three gradual-height fountains on either side. The cement darkened from the splash of the fountain bases, and I told Eliz that she wasn't allowed to step on the dark parts. This was very effective - but she is almost two, and is a very good boundary tester:

You can almost hear her thinking, "I'm not touching it, I'm not touching it."

Most of our time in the gardens was spent listening to Elizabeth yell, "Daddy Foun-tin! Mummy Foun-tin! Baby Foun-tin!" while pointing like mad, or listening to her yell, "Buuuurrrrdddyyyy!!" at the many, many pigeons. I guess lots of 'business people' come to the V & A on their lunch breaks, since the food is not bad, and they have the option of sitting outdoors in a quiet and serene garden by a pool. Too bad for them if they went last Wednesday...

The V & A is in South Kensington, along with the Natural History Museum, the Science Museum and the Royal Albert Hall. It is a pretty swanky area, with streets that look like this:

And really rich people live and play here, and are allowed to park their Rolls Royces and Lexuses from Dubai wherever they want.

We did not take our Rolls Royce into London that day - instead we took the tube back to Kings Cross station, and our little girl is a tried & tested public transporter. I love her - our little Safety Kid, holding on tightly.