victoria and albert

Today being a Sunday, and thus sort of my day off (the Reading Room being closed) I thought I'd take a stroll through the Victoria and Albert Museum, just a couple of blocks away from my hostel. Above is part of the facade, with a statue of Albert over the doors and a statue of Victoria over him (as of course is proper)

It's a really nice museum, dedicated to design rather than just art. For instance, this sculpture area had European sculpture arranged chronologically, from its beginnings to more modern pieces. It was nice because you got to see how different ideas transformed as time went on and how things built off of each other. They even did this for the Asian art sections, which I thought made for a much better section rather than the usual "look at all the foreign stuff we stole"

In the fashion section, for instance, there were these nice displays of how mens and womens fashions have changed over time. Here we see mens suits from about 1890 - 1960 or so. Surprisingly they've changed very little, but also more than you'd expect. I particularly like that flamboyant orange one.

Here's a similar interesting display of posters for concerts and events; they have a whole section on performing arts that had a bunch of cool artifacts from all these different places and time periods

They also had an awesome hall with cast reproductions of famous sculptures/buildings from around the world, some of which have since fallen down so this is the only place you can see them. It's pretty sweet, the column there (the two are two parts of the same Roman column) are absolutely huge.
After the museum I took a walk down a side street and found myself in Kensington Gardens, where there's this absolutely amazing monument to Prince Albert. Honestly, I don't think anyone has a monument this over-the-top; the golden statue, the decorations of the four continents he ruled in marble, all of it...just amazing.
Edit: yeah, only four continents. Africa, Asia, Europe and America. Strange, especially since he didn't really control much of America but he did control all of Australia...maybe it wasn't considered a continent at that time?