London: the city that has basically everything.

 
We have seen A LOT of London these past 5 days. Kevin, my roommate from last year and one of my best friends, and I are getting pretty good at navigating the subterranean maze known as the tube as well as walking around the ancient city, if I do say so myself. Even one of the native Brits asked us where Covent garden was, when we told him the direction in our American accents, his face made one of those unforgettable faces, too bad I didn't have a camera ready. Here is a condensed version of our London trip with pictures so you can follow along without being too bored. 

Day 1

-Covent Garden

-National Gallery where works from Van Gogh, Raphael, and Michaelangelo are displayed

-accidentally wandered into Big Ben and House of Parliament. 

-Natural History Museum
 
- basically like a zoo except that all the animals aren't as lively (their dead) and stuffed. 

Honestly, I think it's pretty interesting because it was the way that the first zoologists studied animals. 

Day 2

-British Museum. 

There was too much to see here. Last year Kevin and I took an Egyptian art class at school. We were able to see so many of the piece we studied. 

Alisa, we wished you could see it with us!

It was chock full of artifacts and pieces of history from all over the world including the Rosetta stone, pieces from Nineveh, Sphinx's beard, head from Easter island. The list goes on and on.

-King's Cross where scenes from Harry Potter was filmed. Story: I went to the ticket area to a rather large gentleman and said "Hi, I'--" "Harry Potter?, platform 9 3/4, turn left and then another left" "Thankssss." How did he know? 

-British Library. There were original works from Mozart and Beethoven, notes from Leonardo di Vinci's notebook on flight, Jane Austen's writing desk, the original, handwritten copy of the Alice's Adventures Under Ground by Lewis Carrol (the first Alice in Wonderland), the Gutenberg Bible, the first copy of Beowulf that was written down, and so so much more. Sadly, no cameras were allowed. 

-Soho 

- Chinatown. Hearing a Chinese, British accents is one of those things that I will never get used to. "Ver you lie to siet?" Crazy.

Day 3 (this ones a doozy)

-Westminster Abby. The pope was due in today. So there was police and security gates everywhere. 

-House of Parliament

-Big Ben

-London Eye

-Tate Modern

-Borough Market. I hope to do a whole post about this one Salt&Spatula. Check in a day or so. : )

-Millenium Bridge

-Shakespeare's Globe Theatre

-London Bridge, it's not exciting at all. It's grey and cement. The cool one is the Tower bridge.

-St. Paul's Cathedral

-Tower Bridge

-Buckingham Palace. Her majesty wasn't there; she was with the Pope. "You know the Pope, God's friend the Pope." (quote from Mr. Sugimura)

-National Portrait Gallery

-UC orientation

Day 4

-Tate Modern, why not again? This time we had a tour guide.

-Thames Cruise. We saw the sites from the last day from the comfort of a ferry.

-Walking tour of London. Good thing this was at the same time the Pope was going to travel thorugh central London. It was cool to see all the police though. Every time a head of state visits, they put the UK Union flag and the other flag all the way down parade route.

-Wagamama. Japanese fusion restaurant. enough said.

Day 5

-academic orientation

-arrived to Canterbury

-checked in and registered. Now what? We don't know. We asked about orientation and then had the same puzzled look that we did. Oh well. class starts in a week. Time to meet and greet. Maybe a trip to Paris is in order. 

London was an amazing city, so rich in culture and history. The food was great too. We ate Korean, Thai, Chinese, and British food, with so many more to try. All the museum were free. I love that. It's great how anyone who wants to learn can go and learn for free. On that happy note, I am going to sleep. Cheers!