V & A

Various shots from the V&A: interior courtyard, the Rodin gallery, Rodin's Cupid & Psyche, "Scandal", lunch in the Gamble Room, detail of a food quote window, Dale Chihuly's glass, the guide describing a C18th wall hanging in the splendid British Galleries (1500 to 1900), showing a formal garden, complete with beds of tulips and a slave servant, which were both signs of great wealth. The grand Michelin House (1911) with faience tiles showing the Paris-Brest bike race and the smoking, bike riding Michelin Man stained glass window.

Today's another scorcher, so I headed to South Kensington, aiming for the Victoria & Albert Museum. I'd hoped it would be nice and cool inside. Well, it is very nice and very cool, but I'm not talking about their a/c, which wasn't really coping well with the heat. It's the collection that's cool. Such a collection of unexpected objects, everything from wallpaper pattern books, cotton textiles, carved wooden panels, embroideries, formal paintings of the craziest subjects, all the way through furniture with lion's feet, a lifesize ceramic St Bernard, to full sets of china plates and Charles II's wedding frock coat and breeches. Heck, even the gift shop was photo-worthy.

Lunch in the museum cafe was an experience all of its own. These are the Morris (1868), Gamble (1878) & Poynter (1881) Rooms. Apparently these 3 rooms were designed to be the first museum cafe. The one on the left is dark and green, all gilded Pre-Raphaelite panels and Burne-Jones stained glass. On the right is Poynter, decorated with blue tiles that show the seasons and the months of the year. Gamble is the knock-out yellow and cream room in the middle. The tiles are cream-colored Minton and cover the walls and the pillars. There is a ceiling frieze of cherubs and a quote from the Bible, and all the stained glass windows have rectangular panels containing quotations about food from authors like Dante and Spenser. An example: "hunger makes the best sauce."

The place was totally packed, hot and stuffy. All the formica tables, which looked so odd placed against the C19th grandeur of walls and ceilings, were in constant use, and the staff were very slow about table clearing. Plus they were serving hot food, things like pastry-topped pies and roast chicken. It must have been over 90 degrees inside. The British are obviously a tough crowd. Doesn't matter if it's 1pm on a blazing hot day in Africa somewhere. If it's Monday, we must eat our roast beef and pudding, etc.

I joined the 2:30pm free tour of the British Gallery, 1500 to 1900, and the docent gave a quirky and educational walk through of some of the treasures, like the Great Bed of Ware, which appears in Twelfth Night, and a marble statue of Handel. The composer, without his wig and wearing a cloth cap sits in torn breeches on a pile of books (you can see "Pope" and "Homer" on the spines of a few). One slipper dangles off his foot, while he strums a harp and composes, with a handy cherub at his feet to transcribe his music with a quill.

Other galleries or works that just stand out are the Raphael cartoons, a collection of Rodins, and my all-time current favorite, two art deco pieces by Charles Sargeant Jagger that the V&A acquired just a few years ago, made for someone called Henry Mond. One is a wall relief called "Scandal", the other a fireplace panel that tartly expresses Mr Mond's contempt for the gossip that surrounded his unusual personal life during the 1930s.

That's what so great about the V&A. You just never know what will grab your attention. There's a chandelier by Seattle artist Dale Chihuly hanging over the information desk on the ground floor, for example. I'll have to go back if I want to see Tippoo's Tiger, a wooden automaton of a tiger attacking someone from the East India Company, or the special show on Grace Kelly.

It was still hot when the museum kicked us out at 5:30pm, so I walked along Brompton Road, looking for the art deco Michelin Tyre Company building. It's now a swanky restaurant and it wasn't hard to spot. Whoever designed it must have been inhaling gasoline fumes while drafting the architectural plans. It has a stained glass window featuring the Michelin Man, ceramic wall medallions shaped like tires, and tile panels showing bucolic scenes of the French countryside, replete with turn-of-the-century roadsters (and one bike!) speeding along. The building is topped with matching pyramids of stacked tires which illuminate with a soft glow at night. Perfect! This building definitely deserves to be added to the collection of the V&A sometime in the future.