Baskerville's Tea Room - Palmers Green

I used to live in Palmers Green and it's always nice to go visit - especially when I find plenty of books I want in the very excellent and plentiful charity shops there AND discover a large tea room has opened and it is very pretty and has a garden and a huge tea selection (I had a refreshing green tea with ginger and lemongrass) and banana cake with peanut butter frosting. Banana cake is my favourite and I love peanut butter. Yesssss.

Margate Shell Grotto

Mysterious underground grotto decorated with shells - no one knows why!

Pretty hummus lid!

Condensation on the lid of my hummus pot, on top of my bird notebook. Pretty.

Spectra - Ryoji Ikeda - Victoria Tower Gardens

Just caught this on the last night and was well worth hanging about to experience. Bright jets of light straight up in the sky in the middle of London and hypnotic sounds as you move amongst the pillars of light in memory of the first world war. Dust sparkled as it passed through the beams. Beautiful.

Boyhood

Drinking Prosecco while waiting for Stu to make cheese toasties before we set off to see Boyhood. Happy.

Books about town - City & Bloomsbury Trails

I love a charity art hunt and the big egg hunt was very disappointing this year - rows of eggs in Covent Garden is not an egg hunt!

Hello, books about town! These are benches that look like a big book, each illustrated by a different artist to convey a different book and all to promote literacy. Come October, the benches will be auctioned and the proceeds will go to the National Literacy Trust.

It's a really fun way to explore London, support a charity and see some free art. And I love books! Yay! Yay!

They even provide maps, tick lists and quizzes on the website. My love of ticking off lists loves this!

Noughts & Crosses - Malorie Blackman - City Trail

Tick List!

Cricketers Almanack - City Trail

The Lion, the witch & the wardrobe - CS Lewis - Bloomsbury Trail

JM Barrie - Bloomsbury Trail

James Bond & Agatha Christie - Bloomsbury Trail

Next stops: Riverside trail and Greenwich trail!

Links:

Books about town

Vikings - British Museum

I've tried to visit twice but it has been so incredibly crowded that I've not really been able to appreciate it it. The massive viking boat is very impressive and the exhibition opens up a bit here but the lead up to the boat is so awful I barely took anything in. 

I'm having some bad timing lately I think as I visited the Comics Unmasked exhibition at the British Library a couple of weeks ago and that was jammed too but less oppressively. 

It's frustrating shuffling in a disorganised queue around an expensive exhibition though and you barely get to see as you feel guilty holding other people up. 

I often go to popular and crowded exhibitions though but none that made me shut down like Vikings did. I just wanted to leave as soon as I went in the second time and pretty much did. Such a shame and I'm annoyed at myself as I'm interested in the Vikings. I will be reading a book instead I guess!