I think I'm finally getting into the groove. I was spending too much time exploring our new neighborhood and I hadn't visited much else. It didn't feel quite right. So I set off for the Tate Modern. My shoes were good, my feet felt fine. I was ready to visit my old haunts.

With a smile on my face, I crossed the Millenium Bridge, the Tate Modern ahead of me and St. Paul's Cathedral behind. Life was good.

They were in the process of installing Ik-Joong Kang's Floating Dreams. I'll have to get back at night to see it.

In the turbine hall, Doris Salcedo's Shibboleth, the large crack running the length of the massive hall, was gone. You could, however, see where they had patched it.

I had to decide between two ticketed exhibitions because I knew I wouldn't have time for both. I picked Georgia O'Keeffe, a wise choice, it turned out. I have seen several exhibitions of her work and I thought that I'd be able to have a quick look at what I thought would be maybe thirty works and then move on to their permanent collection and other installations. Nope. There were 13 rooms of her artwork, interspersed with the occasional Alfred Stieglitz or Ansel Adams photograph. No photos were allowed so I had to commit my favorites to memory.

The rooms were loosely organized chronologically, geographically and by subject. I learned a little about synaesthesia (the stimulation of one sense by another), and chromethesia (sound to color synaesthesia). I particularly liked some of her quotes that were in the wall text. It gave a little insight into the person she was, her creative process, and her response to her critics. Here are a few examples.

"I paint because color is a significant language to me."

"Men put me down as the best woman painter...I think I'm one of the best painters."

"When people read erotic symbols into my paintings, they're really talking about their own affairs."

"Nobody sees a flower--really--it is so small--we haven't time--and to see takes time...So I said to myself--I'll paint what I see--what the flower is to me, but I'll paint it big and they will be surprised into taking time to look at it--I will make even busy New Yorkers take time to see what I see of flowers...Well--I made you take time to look...and when you took time...you hung all your own associations with flowers on my flower and you write about my flower as if I think and see what you think and see of the flower--and I don't."

"Where I was born and where and how I have lived is unimportant. It is what I have done with where I have been that should be of interest."

I didn't have a favorite room, although I did like room 6, Flowers and Still Lifes, and the Jimson Weed, White Flower No. 1. (Did you know that Jimson weed is hallucinogenic and highly toxic? I learned that 46 years ago.) I was probably least excited about her Kachina paintings. But really, I liked it all. There was a nice little painting of Lake George that I would be happy to live with. And the last room, Late Abstractions and Skyscapes, had some particularly lovely large landscapes.

I could have spent hours in there--wait, I actually did. I mean I could have spent another couple of hours in those rooms with those paintings. But it was time to move on. I went up to the fourth floor and went through the galleries. There are always interesting installations. Like Babel, 2001, by Cildo Meireles, "a tower of radios playing at once, addresses ideas of information overload and failed communication."

Or this untitled piece by Linder. ('Cause, really, what would you call it?)

I then walked across the interior bridge over the turbine hall

to the Switch House section of the building and took the elevator up to the tenth floor viewing level.

I then wandered through the 4th floor galleries of the Switch House where there was a Louise Bourgeois exhibition. This is her Legs 2001.

And you'll never guess what this untitled model of the ancient Algerian City of Ghardaia by Kader Attia is made of.*

*cooked couscous!

This was part of an exhibition on cities, that included two short videos, one of Ai Weiwei talking about Beijing, and the other of Sheela Gowda on Bangalore.

There were so many interesting pieces, but I'll limit it to one or two more. Magdalena Abakanowicz's Embryology, 1978-80 (above) took up a whole room, as did Sheela Gowda's Behold 2009, made up entirely of 2.5 miles of hand-woven human hair and car bumpers.

Remember at the beginning of this entry I mentioned how my feet felt fine? Well by the time I got to the Tate Modern I realized that I was getting a blister, and it got progressively worse as the day wore on. It's strange because I have worn these shoes many times without a problem.

It was time to go, so the other floors would have to wait until my next visit. I walked (limped) over to Borough Market only to discover that it must close at 5 and it was now 5:20. It was interesting to see it deserted.

I also got a few shots of Southwark Cathedral.

As I ascended the escalator from the underground at King's Cross Station I marveled at that invention. We have Jesse Reno and Charles Seeberger in the 1890s and Nathan Ames in 1859 to thank for that. Moving stairs. How awesome is that? It can move hundreds of people in minutes up or down during rush hour. And it wasn't just my painful blister (or blisters, at this point) talking to me.