What an amazing day I have had, despite the crazy rain.
Today I headed to London to hang out with my Uncle and to visit some of the city's hidden and not so hidden treasures. The day started as it meant to go on, with a great and steady British downpour, the streets were soaking, the taxis were splashing and brollies were whacking into lamposts, brick walls and tall teenagers like myself.
What better way to shelter from the rain than to get inside a 6 metres per second elevator that took us 72 floors to the top of Europe's tallest building, The Shard. The view was stunted a little by the low cloud cover but as we worked our way around the glass sky scraper, the views were amazing, as long as I didn't look straight down. I learnt a brilliant fact - No new buildings of similar size to the Shard are allowed to obstruct the view to St. Paul's Cathedral, hence the lack of sky-rises in Westminster, hence the funny shapes of these things!
For the afternoon we went on a guided tour of the street art in Shoreditch, led by Dave the Expert, we learnt some amazing things. Firstly, the first picture is something that nearly always goes un-noticed on Urban streets - These stickers are essentially the calling cards of the street artists themselves, some of which are worth a few hundred pounds. The other pictures are of some amazing street art spotted along the route and the second to last picture is of a man in the distance, power washing the paint off the wall of an office block. It is interesting to note the apparent difference between graffiti and street art:
Graffiti is for the artist's ego, it is used in order to gain kudos from other graffiti artists, the general public are not the intended audience.
Street art is (as Dave said) art done by anyone for everyone. It is the first fully accessable, mass art form since church art in Medeival times.
The final picture is an original Banksy.
After an Italian meal tonight, I am feeling very content. Understandable after such an amazing day!
Until tomorrow
Will :)
