London
A trip to the capital
The class spent three or four days in London to watch a couple of performances at the newly reconstructed Globe Theater. Kinda interesting. The old foundation of the Globe, the theater in which many of Shakespeare's play were presented, was found recently and a couple of people thought it would be cool to remake the Globe according to old drawings of how is supposedly looked and using old techniques of construction (basically tongue and groove and wooden spikes as "nails"). They even spent lots of money buying a permit for a thatched roof... a roof prone to promoting fires and probably a major reason why the original globe quickly burned to the ground.

So anyway, I spent a lot of time sightseeing with a couple of classmates. And it's a pain in the butt when you have to lug around a twenty pound (weight, not price) piece of pottery and a bag of knick-knacks with you as you try to tour London. Annie has an aunt in London and her mother wanted her to like give her some presents or something. So we had to lug them around for half a day before we met up with her aunt in Chinatown (near Soho). At least her aunt paid for lunch! Wo-hoo! I was on a budget!

The one thing about dim sum is that you feel full when you pay the check, but right when you leave the restaurant, you get the munchies.

Oh, well...

And I saw the city on a double decker bus, on a boat going down the Thames, and by foot. Pretty much saw all that I could think of:

 

  • Tower Bridge
  • Tower of London
  • Westminster Abbey
  • Buckingham Palace and the changing of the guards
  • Houses of Parliament
  • Big Ben
  • the National Gallery...
What sticks out in my mind is the one guard that was stomping around in front of the gate. You know, they have to do that stoic thing and ignore people unless they become a threat to their post... so my friend gets really close to this one guard so that I can take a snapshot, but then he starts shouting at her and stomps around... and I swear he was about to stab her with that bayonet of his!

We decided to leave him alone... for awhile...
=)