Open House, Part 1

As we all could have predicted, I'd planned more than we could do on the Saturday of Open House Weekend. Way more. I had 15 index cards that I wrote out and sorted for Saturday -- we made it to 8 of the destinations. Here's a quick list of the places we hit:

• City Hall (where Boris presides over the Greater London Authority)
  
• [Borough Market -- Not an Open House destination, but we stopped here to get portable food to sustain us through the day]
• Allies and Morrison Studios (an architectural firm)
• Blue Fin Building (designed by Allies and Morrison; home of IPC Media)
  
• Kirkaldy Testing Works (Grade II listed industrial building, purpose-built to house D Kirkaldy's unique testing machine, now restored)
  
• Freemason's Hall (no photos allowed in this top secret place, but I just may have taken one when the poobahs weren't looking)
• St George's Bloomsbury (the last of Hawksmoor's six London churches, consecrated in 1730, recently restored)
  
• German Gymnasium in Pancras Road (1861, the first purpose-built gymnasium in Britain, now the King's Cross visitor centre)
  
• St Pancras Old Church (there's been a church on this site since the 4th century; the one there now has Norman and Victorian parts)
  

When I post the pix of all these things on Flickr, I'll fill in more of the details about each building. I think we had a good mix of historic and modern stuff.

That evening, we went to see a play at the New End Theatre up in Hampstead. I could hardly stay awake (but I did!).

Pedometer reading: 25,000 steps, 10.1 miles (I have blisters to prove it)

Expenses:

• £3 for a chicken & veg pasty and £2 for a brownie at Borough Market
• Another tenner to top up the Oyster card
  
• Spooner treated me to theatre