It's incredibly huge. Be ready to walk and walk and walk. Luckily the museum realized you might get tired and placed free folding stools that you can cary and unfold and sit anywhere you please. As usual in England, this museum has no admission fees except for visiting exhibits.

The museum is very well laid out, but it's a good idea to get a free museum guide and make a plan. At that time the "Warhol" exhibit was there, and that was all I could take.

There's a quaint museum cafe at the top with gorgeous views of the Thames. Be prepared to wait even in off hours since the museum is very popular with tourists and locals alike. They have good food though and decent prices for London standards. A good way to end your trip in the museum or to re-engergize.

A museum that can't equal MOMA in its selective, and seemingly un-well-rounded collection, but still strikes a chord with its interesting collection of artwork. While it has more than enough artwork by modern masters, it is more meant to showcase the puzzling, interesting, imaginative, and occasionally brilliant artists we ignore. The main problem is the fact that large areas of space are devoted to mediocre artists like Joseph Beuys, a Luftwaffe pilot with the fame of having a coyote shit on the wall-street journal, or Hannah Darboven, who makes hundreds of notecards equating to obscure mathematical systems. But, the greats Giacometti, Picasso, among others, some unknown, contradict the horror of some artists one can only giggle at.

How to get there:

Take the tube to either Southwark or Blackfriars and walk the rest of the way.

Tate Modern is housed in the former Bankside Power Station. The museum displays a collection of international modern art from 1900 to the present day, such as works by Dalí, Picasso, Matisse, and more contempoary artists like Dorothy Cross, Gilbert & George and Susan Hiller.

I have to admit that I found Modern Tate a bit disapointing - I think you need to be very interested in modern art to understand to qualities of the collection.

Of course the works of Dalí, Picasso and Matisse are nice but having seen these paintings before I had hoped to be pleasantly surpriced by the newer artists.

I found the buildning a bit boxy but still quite impressive. However I won't spend the time to see Modern Tate the next time I visit London, there are so many other great things to do.

Tate Modern houses fantastic modern art collection in a former power station. Level 3 and Level 5 contain the permanent collection which includes works of Dali, Matisse, Monet, Picasso, and much more. Wonderful city view from the Level 5. Did you notice St. Paul’s Cathedral and the Millennium Bridge on the picture? Built for the Millennium, the bridge has had its wobble stabilized and is open again. It is purely pedestrian and runs from St Paul’s Cathedral on the North Bank to Tate Modern on the South.

Take the underground or bus to St. Paul's Cathedral and walk across the Thames on the Millenium Bridge, a pedestrian-only bridge. The Tate Modern is housed in a converted power station. The lobby area is open all the way to the 7th floor ceiling. Admission is free. Open until 10 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays.

To me, the most unusual thing about the Tate Modern is the curator's choice in arrangement of the paintings. Instead of arranging them chronologically (or by artist) as most museums do, the paintings here are arranged by theme: History/Memory/Society, Nude/Action/Body, Landscape/Matter/Environment, Still Life/Object/Real Life (containing a favorite piece of mine, the Claes Oldenburg Giant 3-Way Plug -- Oldenburg is known for his giant replicas of everyday objects). While I'm used to seeing all the museum's pieces by a certain artist grouped together with others of his/her genre, this arrangement allows a comparison of how artists through the years approached a similar subject matter. Very thought-provoking.

Another feature I liked was the lounge area with headphones and recorded mini-lectures. You can pick one of about 10 lectures at any of several headphones and hear explanations of the architecture of the building, explanations of the art styles and movements, or critiques of various pieces of art. Also unusual is the fact that there are very few benches in the galleries. Instead, there are stacks of little canvas folding stools that you can take with you and set up whenever you want to stop and study a particular work. All in all, a truly modern modern-art museum.