Things to do in London in one single day...

OK, ok China is in London now and therefore many events and exhibitions from, around and about China are available to the public at the moment and most are for free, which is great for us students here.
We started our day by going to The Three Emperors exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts. It is a really great exhibition and I remembered most of the stuff from my classes at the University of Cologne and reading Jonathan D. Spence "The Search for Modern China", gosh I loved that book! Anyway after room three of 157 we were all a little bit exhausted and overwhelmed by all the information given on details regarding the palace culture and so forth. On the following pictures you see us after we saw the whole lot of it in front of the Royal Academy of Arts. It was the three of us Kuki, Max and me. (Please keep scrolling and reading...)
After the Royal Academy of Arts we were really hungry and actually we sort of got lost on our way to The Red Mansion Foundation. Suddenly we were and Hanover Square and discovered this health conscious Japanese fast food restaurant, targeting most of the busy office crowd in that area. Food is good and the prices are reasonable.



While searching The Red Mansion, where they were supposed to have some Chinese pop art on display we crossed the Burberry Passage and took a look at the Liberty department store, which is said to be nicer than Harrods...hard to believe since it looks like these half-timbered constructions in the South of Germany.
Liberty is just across the Apple store on Regent street. We went there as well since we were in the neighbourhood. I wanted to check out the new Intel inside Mac laptops, but they only had them on photographs...

























































At this point we did some serious walking and were all grumpy and exhausted. But suddenly we reached Selfriges department store.They were also taking part in that China in London theme so they had some of their shop windows decorated by Chinese artists. Pretty colourful.
At Selfriges we got some Italian ice cream, which was pretty delicious for London and very common in Germany or Italy itself. We passed a beautiful building, which contains according to the sign The Wallace Collection (supposed to be the largest private art collection of some region...maybe the whole world?)


















Unfortunately we could not really appreciate what was on display there...too much pomp and kitsch.
All three of us where happy to see the "OUT" sign soon after entering and we were still trying to find The Red Mansion Foundation, we are just way too much of Londoners so that we would never ask for directions or take a look at our A to Z guides.

Still on our way we entered St. James Church at the Spanish Place and got a quick impression of Roman Catholicism in London.
Finally we arrived at The Red Mansion Foundation and we saw some paintings by Feng Zhengjie. Below you may see a sample of one of his squinting women. The other sample is a photograph taken by Cui Xiuwen. Originally we wanted to go to the British Museum as well, there was supposed to be something called Dog and Dragon some artsy fartsy stuff about Chinese zodiac signs... It was too late for that, but we had a chance to see the beautiful Chinese lights around Oxford Circus.