London Series: Part III

After our first Tuesday class, a faculty member at IES took us on a tour of the Bloomsbury District, not only the location of our classroom, but a famous literary district in London.

The large building in the background is said to have inspired George Orwell when he was writing 1984. It's now a part of London University. 

 A taxi driver station.

The above building is now a hospital but it once housed Charles Dickens in the lower right section. There was also a bus explosion here a few years ago that killed quite a few people.

 Tavistock Square or "Peace Park." In one corner resides a copied statue of Virginia Woolf... it will appear in later photos.

St. George's is the church where Sylvia Plath married Ted Hughes.

Afterward, most of us went to the British Museum. A handful of the girls decided to pay 17 pounds to go see the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie--how foolish were they? The British Museum is one of the best in the world because the British have basically stolen everything from everyone. I went twice and still didn't see everything. It was incredible. 

I got to see the Rosetta Stone, which was surrounded by many Asian tourists. It was incredibly crowded (as expected with free museums) but it was one of the most amazing places in the world.

After that, Camille and I went to Covent Garden for dinner. We both ordered Cokes and gorgonzola pizza. I was so hungry that I was eating the pizza at record speed--once I started getting full I realized it tasted sort of funny. "Well, it's bleu cheese," Camille said. I responded with a horrified, "WHAT?!" I absolutely hate bleu cheese and had failed to recognize gorgonzola is a bleu cheese. Needless to say, I didn't die or anything but I stopped eating after that convo. 

We also went to the three-story Apple Store so Camille could get her nerd on. At the time, Camille was working at the Apple Store at the mall so she promised her coworkers she would make a pilgrimage to this techie mecca. Overall, it was a great day.

London Series: Part II

On our first day of class, a woman from the IES center walked us around Chelsea to the nearest tube station, which for us was South Ken. From there, we took the tube to Bloomsbury.

Walking around Bloomsbury, where our classroom was, made me tremendously jealous of local Londoners. Seeing them lunch on the grass in the middle of the park just seemed like the perfect thing to do. I wished I could live there all the time. 

After class, we went on a bus tour of London to introduce us to the city. We were supposed to take mental notes of places we would like to return but my head basically exploded because I wanted to see it all. 

The driver let us out to look around at Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, Parliament & Big Ben, etc. The picture of all the tents outside Parliament are protesters and the building whose entrance is covered in shrubbery is Prince Charles' office. Apparently, in an attempt to promote "being more green," he literally partitioned this entrance. I viewed it up close and it is literally a bunch of little glasses of water with greenery coming out. It's ingenious, really.

Please appreciate the sign for Vietnamese noodles. This was right around the corner from our res hall.

That night we went to see the War Horse at the National Theatre on Drury Lane. Tara and I are thumbs-upsing in the audience before we realized photography wasn't permitted. Some of you might have seen recent previews for the War Horse movie coming out on Christmas. I've heard complaints about a film reproduction of the play since half the magic of the play is the fact that the horses are exquisitely well-executed life-size puppets. While I do agree that the lustre of this piece comes from the puppeteers and the beautiful work on the puppets themselves, the story itself is heartwarming. And if people aren't able to see the theatrical production, I'd definitely recommend seeing the film. Anyway, that's just my take...

After this day was over, I was exhausted. But ready for more.