alexist

Not got my passport back yet. We're going to France on Friday. It better show up! (I could try getting an emergency passport... it might be fun since my old one, and my marriage certificate, are with the embassy!)

They've charged my credit card, so I know the application was received and approved.

(Oh, and I was really clever to do it when I did: looking at the website, they've just raised the fee by $12. The CC payment form says "revised March 2005" so I must've just got in. :-) )

I also need to book tickets to the States, and I don't want to do that until I've received my new passport and made sure they did my name the way I wanted (it's double barrelled... though I stupidly put both surnames in the surname field, instead of putting my maiden name as a 2nd middle name, which is what I was originally planning to do. I don't know why.)

We went to 2 exhibitions at the Royal Academy of Art.

The Matisse was somewhat disappointing--it really wasn't worth £8. We got through it in about 25 minutes. It didn't have many of his best works (I'm a bit of a Matisse aficionado, so I know). One of these days I'll get to the Hermitage in St Petersburg.

In between we went to Green Park as it was such a nice day. The park was lovely--all the daffodils were in bloom. It's a shame there was so much litter. The bins were overflowing and people had left their trash all around them. :-(

Later we went to see the Turks. This was well worth it--I nearly overdosed on illuminated manuscripts. I love illuminated manuscripts. :-) I was surprised at how much representational art there was in them; Islam is usually fairly strict on representational art. There wasn't any in the copies of the Koran, but the others had very elaborate, realistic artwork. I love the detail and precision of illumination. Sometimes I wish that modern art didn't seem to reject beauty for its own sake so much.