Can I just say I LOVE London! It is just so fun, and I am with an amazing group of people which just makes it that much better. :) So....at the beginning of the week a group of us took a walk down the Thames around sunset. I love taking walks here because there is just so much to see. It was absolutely beautiful! There is a bridge that goes across the river that we just sat at forever, talking and taking pictures as we looked at the London Eye, and Big Ben all lit up. I absolutely LOVED it! We even talked to the locals a bit. There was this one guy that talked to us for like fifteen minutes all about American television shows haha. He mainly talked to us about shows that he likes to watch and how he thinks the CSI and Spiderman franchises have been kept going too long... funny guy.
I am learning sooo much here too, its great! I was able to go to the London Museum with our whole group, and learn all about the Romans in London, the Black Plague, the great fire, and London in WWII. It was really neat seeing all of the old artifacts, paintings, and relics that they have collected over the years. That night we all went to the Old Victoria theater and watched "Richard III" with Kevin Spacey. I liked it, but it seemed extremely LONG to me. I appreciated the wonderful Shakespearean script, but I had a hard time enjoying the story. It was funny in parts, mainly it was just really sad! At certain intervals of the play I found myself singing Phantom, Les Mis, and....Disney Pocahontas songs oddly enough, haha. I want to see a musical, bad! Things are always pretty exciting around us though....We had a little incident there where a British woman yelled at one of the girls in our group for sitting in her seat accidentally. This woman was MEAN....haha. Everything turned out to be alright though, after turning over the seat to the unhappy and mean British lady. One thing I really did like about the play was that it was a really great way to help me remember the history of the monarchy...which can be pretty confusing.
My favorite part of this trip so far was going to WIMBLEDON!!! I absolutely loved it. After going to the National Gallery- which was sooo neat- we took the tube to Southfields. As we waited in line we listened to British commentators on loudspeakers give us play by plays of the Murray vs. Fish (who I was of course rooting for), and Nadal vs. Lopez matches. Unfortunately the grounds were full of British people watching the Murray/Fish match (they worship Murray here, which is expected) so we had to wait until it was over until we could get in! But we totally got in, and it only cost us eight pounds which was just an added bonus! When we got our bags checked before we went into the grounds, one of the security people asked us about BYU, and asked if we were the Mormon University. I thought that was really cool that he recognized us and knew who we were!
Right when we got in we decided to try to get into center court for a men's doubles match, so we waited in the stairwell as people came down, and then asked them if we could have their tickets. Yeah, we were kind of mooching. It was super exciting as each of us got our tickets from all the really nice British people we asked. We all were jumping up and down and high fiving each other, haha. Once we all got our tickets, we went in and sat together. The doubles match that was going on was super chill. They were really great players and we all just loved soaking in the environment, oo-ing and aw-ing with the crowd, clapping, watching the ball hoppers run, the line judges make calls, taking pictures, and just watching some AWESOME tennis! Absolutely loved it! We saw that there was a women's doubles match going on with Hingis and Davenport so we decided to leave the center court doubles match after a set or two, to go see them, but right when we got there, they won match point. So, we decided to fill our empty stomachs and get some strawberries and creme. Man, were they good! I heard that they pick their strawberries fresh every day...haha, not sure if that is true, but they definitely tasted fresh and delicious. YUM!! Such a classic. :) After looking around in the Wimbledon store, we watched two smaller matches. One was a co-ed doubles match, and the other a boy's junior match- which was really cool to watch. It seriously was such an amazing day! I could not stop smiling while I was there. Ah, Wimbledon.
On Thursday I went with a group to this cool restaurant called Nando's, this place known for their spicy chicken. I got a chicken burger, and it was pretty good! After that we left to Royal Festival Hall to see the Philharmonic Orchestra Play. They were absolutely AMAZING! They played Tchaikovsky, Berlioz, and Rachmaninov. It was so relaxing, and beautiful! It made me wish I could come see them play some scores that I really love from movies like The Young Victoria, Cinderella Man, Snow Falling on Cedars, and The Painted Veil.
Yesterday we all went to the Tower of London. It was really really cool. One of the first things we did was take a tour of the royal jewels. It was insane. In the jewel chambers they had this scepter that holds the largest known diamond in the world- around 530 carats. The crowns and rings were so extravagant. All the diamonds on the jewelry were extremely brilliant! It was way fun to see. After that we decided to tag along with a huge group in order to get a Beef-eater tour (what they call the tour guides). Our guy was hilarious! He took us to see the private execution area in the Towers. It was really sad and chilling to hear him talk about the execution of the six different people that were killed there, like Anne Boleyn, and Protestant Lady Jane Grey and her husband. :( Pour Lady Jane Grey was only sixteen when she was killed, and because she lived in an apartment in the square near where they performed the private executions, she saw her husband killed, and her own scaffolds being prepared for her. All of the stories I heard made me thankful I live in the time I do.
After seeing the private execution area, we got to go inside a really really old church on the grounds (where those killed were buried), restored in the Tudor style by Queen Victoria. After that we toured the White Hall, which was built by the Norman (or French) William the conqueror around 1026. It was the oldest building in the complex and had this super cute chapel called St. John's chapel that was just really beautiful. We saw old weapons, cannons, royal outfits-haha, and armour. It was really neat. We also toured the different towers around the exterior of the complex, where they housed prisoners. These prisoners (a lot of Catholic and Jewish missionaries and offenders of the king etc) made inscriptions on the walls that included their names, scriptures, and other information. I thought it was really neat reading the plaques that described these inscriptions because they made me recognize the reality of the place I was in, what the prisoners that were there went through, and what life was like for them. I really wished we had more time to spend at the Tower of London, but we had to leave in order to head to our next destination, the Tate Modern.
On our way to the Tate, we went over the London Bridge, and towards Borough Market, this wonderful market that has tons of food stalls with all kinds of stuff: sausage, fresh pasta, Turkish delights, desserts, steak sandwiches, smoothies, meat pies, fish, and cheeses....they had sooo much food there! I got gnocchi with a pesto sauce and parmesan cheese from this awesome Italian vendor. It is really neat to order a specific type of food, like Indian, Italian, etc. and actually get it from a real Indian, Italian person. We have legit food here, haha. As we continued on from Borough Market, we came to the Tate Modern. At first all the art I saw just seemed really pointless to me, because I could not appreciate it. The galleries were filled with crazy pieces of art, that seemed either disturbing or weird to me (like a HUGE pile of thousands of hand made sunflower seeds, or a exhibit with piles of clay that looked like poo). I made fun of/ran away from most of what I saw until I was able to tag along with my art professor Peter, who explained the paintings and art to me, which made things a lot easier to understand and comprehend. I think my favorite piece of art there was a painting by Monet. :)
After the Tate we walked across the Millenium Bridge- Yay for Harry Potter- in order to get back home in time for a lecture from this Scottish professor. She had some stuff to tell us about Scotland, in order to prepare us for our journeys there next week! :) Fun stuff! Until next time!
