Saturday, January 10, 2009

My Ever-Growing List of London Must Do's

Given it is January and it's time to start new habits and bin old ones, I decided to clear out our back office (interpret: shed). So far I've managed to clear out a stacks of Time Outs.

Every year when our subscription comes up for renewal, we discuss whether to renew it. My instant (frugal) reaction is NO. Then, we talk about how fabulous it is: jam-packed with great things to do, shows to see, music to discover. We both know we never manage to read more than an article let alone the whole thing.
J argues,

"but it is full of fantastic things to do. How will we keep up with what is hip in our adopted city?"

Then I point out what we typically do each weekend i.e. spend our time close to our hood, visiting our regular haunts and drinking in the same old pubs. Hmmm. Is there really a need for this weekly London Bible?


YES. We've decided to renew again. That means I have to make room for the onslaught of new issues. The old ones have got to go.

But maybe, we'll want to refer to the ideas from past issues?

Here's my solution
. I'm going to keep track of those things that sound interesting here. Perhaps we'll use it to plan our weekends. Maybe, I'll even cross off the things we did - like
My Santa List. Here goes (in no order whatsoever):

  1. Dress up & dance in 1950s prom style at the Bethnal Green Working Man's Club
  2. Tap dancing at Pineapple Dance Studios or Urdang Academy (still need to find some shoes at eBay)
  3. Visit an exhibit at the Wellcome Institute
  4. Go the Highgate Cemetary
  5. Make it to the First Thursdays Art Night in East London. This should be easy given I work at Old Street tube.
  6. J wants to the Imperial War Museum (What is the fascination with guys and war?)
  7. Finally, make it to the Saatchi Gallery where perhaps I can see my friend (introduced via Burke), Matthew Carver's, piece on display. He had one of his graduate pieces bought by Saatchi.
  8. Take a shoe-making course or better still a boot-making course (Tamsin at work has made a beautiful pair of shoes)
  9. Dennis Sever's House. It is a step back to the early 1800's London. It sounds a little like the visit that the girls and I made to the Tenament Museum in NYC.
  10. Fashion and Textile Museum in Bermondsey
  11. The British Museum has been said to be the best gallery/museum in London and I've never been.
  12. Visit Buckingham Palace INSIDE. The Queen opens it up each summer and in 2010 there's a special exhibit.
  13. Bike over and see the construction site of the 2012 Olympic Site.
  14. MORE TO BE ADDED AS I WORK THROUGH THESE TIME OUTS. At least I've started.


I've slowly started to strike them out as I've done them.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

london DOES sound pretty aweome!
:)

YYZ-LHR said...

Can I come? I am soooooooooooo ALL OVER dancing in 50s prom style, as long as I can dress for the occasion! (Perhaps my duds would distract people from the fact that I am most emphatically NOT "the best dancer at St. Bernadette's!"

YYZ-LHR said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
YYZ-LHR said...

Please add a closing bracket and the end of my parenthetical statement in previous comment-- I hit "publish" before I noticed. Proofread, Ms. O, PROOFREAD!

Anonymous said...

HELLO!! Just checked out the shoe-making link. Shoes, yes, but I want to take the corsetry and millinery courses, too! Add them to my list of things to do on my year off!

Anonymous said...

Really, the war museum rocks. You'll have a good time!