You may think the Royal Opera House is the sort of place you need several hundred pounds and a much sought after ticket to get into. Not the case! At lunchtime you can stroll in and go to the Amphitheatre restaurant on the top floor and have a lovely and not too pricey a lunch. It was all calm when we were there and the mushroom risotto with rocket comes highly recommended. The Opera House runs tours so you can see behind the scenes and we decided that we’d do one of those soon as I’m sure they are fascinating. Apart from the good food, you get to see inside the main areas of this wonderful building, as this photo shows.

Lunch was a just the warm up event for the start of our art course. We’ve signed up for 10 weeks on Contemporary Art which is a fabulous course involving visit about 3 small commercial galleries each week to view and discuss the art on show. So, no classroom work at all! We get to visit a whole range of new galleries with a friendly, knowledgeable tutor and it costs just £136 pounds. Week one saw us at 3 new venues around Picadilly: Spruth Magers who are home to Cindy Sherman’s new photographic murals; Marlborough Fine Art home to Cathie Pilkington striking sculptures made from a wide range of materials; and, John Martin Gallery showing a range of work with some potentially purchasable work (funds permitting of course!). It was mostly new work to me and new galleries so a great start to the course. I’ll take some photos next week as we head out to the East End.

London Bloggers Group held one of its regular meet-ups this week which was a great chance to chat to some rather more established excellent bloggers and try to pick up some tips over a free glass of wine – great stuff! Leaving the venue on the River Thames I took the time to admire the wonderful sight of the river and the river banks by night and here are a small selection of photos for you to share in this – and what a view!

Must be off – lots to do. Bye for now.
Sue
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