Visits to Islington and The Barbican

Tuesday, February 11, 2020:

No rain today, so we opted to go for a walk.  We chose Islington, a neighborhood mostly unfamiliar to us.

We had lunch at Kipferl, an Austrian eatery in Islington.  I ordered Kasespatzle, an alpine dish of pan fried egg noodles with mountain cheese and topped with fried onions.  It tasted like a very rich macaroni and cheese. Eddie ordered sauerkraut and pickles with vegan wieners, served with sourdough bread, mustard and freshly grated horseradish.  For desert, we had a delectable Linzer Torte, a traditional Austrian pastry from Linz on the Danube, made with red currant jelly and spiced with cinnamon and clove.  Wunderbar!

Eddie pointed out over lunch that people here (in the UK) often respond to "Thank you," with "No Worries," rather than "You're welcome."

We began our walk, but the weather was so very cold it was difficult to fully appreciate this engaging neighborhood.  It included "New River," which is neither a river nor new.  Initially an aqueduct built in the early 1600s, today it is a public garden. We ventured forward and came upon the house on Canonbury Square where George Orwell began writing 1984, his great dystopian novel. We then walked to Union Chapel, a beautiful Victorian gothic church, where only a few weeks ago we saw "Band of Burns," a fantastic folk-artist supergroup, in concert.

New River

A late 1960s Fiat 500L

Canonbury Tower, a Tudor Domestic House, Built Between 1509 and 1532

Behind Union Chapel

Union Chapel, 19th Century

Shop Window

Just Another Building in Islington

We then walked through the neighborhood of Clerkenwell to the Museum of London.  The Museum documents the history of London from ancient times to the present.  It is located in the Barbican Center which is the largest multi-arts center in all of Europe.  The Center is owned, managed and financed by the City of London.  The Barbican Center is located in the Barbican Estate, a massive modernist residential complex that was created in the 1960s and 1970s in a area that was mostly destroyed by German bombs in WWII.  Surprisingly, Barbican Estate apartments today sell for in the millions of pounds.  The Barbican style of building design is known as Brutalism or Brutalist architecture, a style that emerged in the 1950s and grew out of the early 20th century modernist movement.  Brutalist buildings are characterized by their massive, monolithic and 'blocky' appearance with a rigid geometric style and large-scale use of poured concrete.  I'll have more photos of the Barbican Center in future Blog posts.

Mural Depicting a Rainy Street Scene in Clerkenwell by artist Dan Kitchener

Barbican Estate Residences

View from the Museum