The Grange Langham Court Hotel.

Our main objective for Friday was to see the new Tate Bankside museum. We had read about it before arriving, and knew it was supposed to open sometime in early May. Yesterday we found out that today was the first day that it was open to the public. What luck.

Our first stop was a motorcycle store in Northeast London where Randy found some great boots and gloves. The store only carries motorcycle clothing and accessories, and it had a larger selection on display than Randy had seen anywhere else. Not the greatest idea to pick up something heavy like boots a the beginning of a long day, but, what can you do.

We saw this heading back to the tube station.

After one more shopping stop at a store named "Expectations", we took the tube to one of the newest stations, Southwark (pronounced "Suthuk"), which was very impressive. Lots of shafts running up to the surface letting light in.

As we walked towards the museum, we could see that there was quite a bit of foot traffic, but once we got inside we found that it was crowded, but not mobbed. We could only imagine what it would be like over the weekend!

The interior of the museum is amazing. It's built in an old power station, and the scale of the building is massive. One third of the building is an open space, where the turbines used to be.

Rick's looks over the turbine room.

The whole museum is free to the public, except for the third floor, where 3 pounds is required to see the exhibits. We thought we were being smart by heading directly to the top floor to grab some lunch and then work our way down, but we weren't the only ones with that idea. We decided to see the floors somewhat quickly and eat afterwards. There was some cool art, but the building was really the main event.

These towers are viewed by one
person at a time from the top of the stairs.

Looking outside we could see the new Millennium bridge under construction. It's slated to open next month, and even though it's just a foot bridge, there's a big deal being made about it because it's the first new bridge over the Thames in about 100 years.

After some much needed lunch we walked along the river and stopped at a store called "Recoil.557". It's a cool little shop located under a railway arch. If you didn't know where it was, you'd never find it!

You'd never guess a store was under that arch.

And it certainly doesn't look open!

Then we stopped at our friend Chris' house. He had made us some custom gear, and he offered to give us a ride down to a fun Friday night bar later on in the evening. We took the tube back to the hotel and napped a bit after being out and about for eight hours or so. Along the way Randy decided to try out the "movie" mode on his new digital still camera (the one being used for all the images on these pages). The results can be found here.

Room service was the dinner menu, and around 11pm Chris arrived. We drove across the city and arrived at "Backstreet", a fairly dark leather bar. The crowd was fun and we stayed until around 2am, when we caught a ride back to the hotel with Chris and got some much needed sleep.