London: Sep 1: The East End and the West End (inc. National Gallery Part 2)

Beigels & Vicinity
I spent the morning following a guidebook's walking tour in the vicinity of the East End around Brick Lane, taking these pictures on the way. They document the sites much better than this blog post. My main excuse for doing this tour was to visit a particular bagel shop for breakfast. The tour was only okay for three reasons: I'd already seen most of the area before, the architecture is low-end and bland, and the tour's historical emphasis was on Jack the Ripper (whose story I don't care about).

First, I stopped by Beigel Bake, this time to actually try some bagels. (I saw it once before with Di Yin, but we weren't hungry then.) I had one with butter and one with cream cheese and lox. They were okay bagels: better than supermarket bagels but not as good as New York bagels. I'm not sure what was wrong with them -- perhaps not enough bite to the crust? I wouldn't buy them again.

On my route around Brick Lane, I stopped by Spitalfields, which was setting up for a clothing and accessories market. Soon after, on Wentworth Street, I found another fashion market, or it could just be that all the shops on the street were placing their racks outside.

The National Gallery & Theatre District
In late afternoon, I left work to explore the area of the West End around Piccadilly Circus, Trafalgar Square, Leicester Square, and Chinatown, with a stop by the National Gallery to see what I missed on my last visit. This area includes much of London's theatre district, though the district covers a wider area than I explored this day. By the way, the West End is east of Buckingham Palace and where I work, so I have trouble with the name.

While wandering the West End, I took pictures. Again, these pictures describe more sights than I'm writing about here. This area is definitely a much nicer part of town than the East End. I like the liveliness of the area, and that there are few roads crossing the district to interfere with strolling.

As for Chinatown, in particular, it's no bigger than I previously thought (a couple of blocks). Still, it's not quite as bad as my previous impressions: I saw people behind windows rolling noodles and steaming dumplings.

As I mentioned, I stopped by the National Gallery. Here are my notes:

• I breezed through 13th-15th century paintings because religious art generally doesn't interest me (and many paintings had such themes), and because a good fraction of these paintings don't include perspective and I thus had trouble finding them attractive.
• Carlo Crivelli, a 15th century painter, paints religious scenes with naturalistic details. He uses vivid paints and does a good job with depth.
• I wanted to photograph one painting because of its elaborate frame: rose vines surrounded the painting and were elevated above the frame itself. It was no mean feat to remove that extra underlying wood.
• I took longer in the wing of the 17th century paintings because they varied much more in subject and look than the 13th-15th century wing. Incidentally, the 17th century wing's emphasis was on Rembrandt, Van Dyck, and Rubens.
• I like Richard Wilson's landscapes, especially A view of Holt Bridge on the River Dee.
• Claude Gellée (a.k.a. Claude Lorrain) was the model for / precursor of many later landscape painters I like.
• I definitely liked the Flemish painting Cognoscenti in a Room hung with Pictures (circa 1620). A painting of paintings, it reminded me of two similar works I saw at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston: 1, 2.
• Hendrick van Steenwyck (the Younger) made good paintings of attractive architecture.