London Mini-Guide: Bermondsey Street, SE1

Images: Laura Nelson

A Saturday afternoon recce for my flatmate's sisters hen night brought us to Bermondsey Street - just a stones throw away from Tower Bridge, but a world away from the tourist buzz of the SouthBank. It has a village feel, as is filled with independent shops and bars.

I got a delicious Banh Mi (spicy Vietnamese baguette) from Caphe House - a small little Vietnamese cafe and coffee shop. They also sell a few Vietnamese staples that are really hard to find in London - they even had the smallest bottle of sriracha I've ever seen!

We also had a drink at The Garrison where we were surrounded by a group of people who had done the bull run in pamplona for years - and were out celebrating the life of a friend who had done the run with them.

The Shard officially opened last week - and there's an amazing view of it from the top of the street.

There are always the best signs and carvings on old buildings - it helps you imagine what the streets were once like.

Images: Laura Nelson

The White Cube Gallery is right in the middle of the street, and we were lucky to catch the last weekend of the Damien Hirst show Two Weeks One Summer - which I really enjoyed.

Images: Laura Nelson

Interior Fixation, No. 3

Images 1/2/3

Bauhaus: Art as Life

Images: 1/2 Otto Umbehr/3 Enrich Consemulller

Taking advantage of my week off I went to the Bauhaus: Art as Life - which is on at the Barbican Centre until the 12th of August. The exhibition walks you through the entire life of Bauhaus 1919 to 1933, it was a child of the inter-war years founded on idealism and an ethos of community living and working. At the Bauhaus your art was your life.

Images: 4-6

The developed standardize typography for the school.

Images: 7/8/9

Marcel Breuer began at the Bauhaus as a student and rose to the head of the Bauhaus' carpentry workshop. One of the most iconic chairs to come out of the school may be Breuer's Wassily Chair (1927 - 1928). The exhibit at the Barbican has his set of colorful nesting tables displayed next to Josef Albers' set, which you can see below.

Images: 10/11/12

To see these two takes on one idea was really interesting, it showed you how the ethos of the Bauhaus - the Josef Albers set has become a design classic. 

Dutch Light

A few years ago I went to a fascinating exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery: Vermeer, Rembrandt and the Golden Age of Dutch Art Masterpieces from The Rijksmuseum - in many ways it was a typical exhibition of the Dutch masters from the Golden Age. I grew up spending a lot of time in Holland and went to University there for a year, so I'd seen most of the art before, but they took a unique approach to how the art was displayed, and what stays with me the most was a video on "dutch light". Now every time I'm in Holland I stop and look up at the sky - and it does seem much more vast than the sky in London or Seattle. The only other place I've been that has rivaled the Dutch sky was when I lived in Iowa - it must be the flat land. 

It's even beautiful in the puddles.

Biking in Leiden