Elsien's Traveblogue

Saturday 6th March 2010, London

Spent two nights in a 'boutique hostel' in Swiss Cottage. When I booked it, I thought I was booking a single room in a hotel which also had dormitories, but it turned out I was booked into a 28-bed male only dormitory! Fortunately they could give me a bed in a smaller, mixed dorm, so now I have a kind of plarform double bed with little curtains to myself.
I had tickets for a lecture and the van Gogh exhibition at the Royal Academy and today I have an OU Art History Conference for MA students. As the 'hotel' cost barely more than the train tickets to Stortford, I had decided to stay in London for the two nights.
The lecture was good, very interesting. The lecturer gave a fascinating overview of van Gogh's life and work through the letters that are the backbone of the exhibition. He showed that poor old Vincent wasn't 'mad' , but probably did suffer from what's now fashionably called bi-polar, with probably touches of epilepsy in his last years.Mind you, the man smoked a pipe, drank copious amounts of coffee, wine and absinthe, enough to make anyone manic! The exhibition itself, while fascinating, a bit of a nightmare. Normally I avoid these blockbuster events, but I thought it might be OK this time and it would be silly to go to the lecture and not see the exhibition. It was murder, far too many people, shuffling clockwise around the paintings and letters. Most people couldn't read the letters, as most of them are in French or Dutch, only a few in English. I must have been one of the very few there who could read them all.
Interesting choice of paintings too, not many of the very well known, but, as I said, far too many people. Met up with the kids afterwards for beer and pizza. Nice to be in London and not have to rush back to the suburbs!