I’ll go ahead and dispense with the pleasantries of apologizing for not updating this blog very frequently. We can go ahead and take that as given, I suppose.
In truth, I didn’t have too much to write about for about a week and a half after the last post, and that’s in part because I was catching up a bit on reading and work that I hadn’t been doing the previous couple weeks. So, that was the story from about the 13th through the 23rd of October.
Fortunately, I did have some fun and interesting stuff going on last weekend. Charly came over the pond for a convention on Friday (the 22nd) and stayed in town until early today (the 29th). He arrived that Friday afternoon and we walked around a bit, grabbed a pint, and caught up. The next morning, he was off to the Unconvention, and I was off, with all the students, to Oxford!
Oxford was, in a word, lovely. We rolled into town (on a rail, of course) around 11am to find that the weather, which was supposed to be cold and rainy all day, was actually a beautiful sunny and clear 50 degrees. We had some time before our scheduled tour, so Ann and I went over to the Ashmolean museum, where there was a very nice (and pretty extensive) exhibition on the pre-Raphaelites, specifically “The Pre-Raphaelites and Italy.” It was an extremely impressive exhibit, especially the entire wall of Ruskin drawings and daguerreotypes (very important since I’m looking at Ruskin as part of my project). There were also some very good D.G. Rossetti and Burne-Jones pieces. Very cool.
After that (and lunch), the group got a walking tour of Oxford, which took us through 2 of the 38 colleges of the University. Oxford is organized into colleges, which don’t really mirror the American model. To paint with VERY broad strokes, think of the college as an American college within a house in Harry Potter (I know, I know, but you get the point). First up was Trinity College, one of the smallest colleges (400 students…the only college on campus that can guarantee housing to all its students). Famous alumni of Trinity include Cardinal Newman, and, in fiction, Jay Gatsby (not that I equate the two. Good lord do I hate The Great Gatsby…)
Even the smallest college has, of course, huge gardens and fields, which are all beautiful and out of the way. These are neatly enclosed behind stone walls (in quads) and locking gates, primarily because of the historic tension between town and gown. Modern iterations of that kind of drama don’t really hold a candle, especially given the body count (one riot saw 63 students killed by townsfolk). Hence, the quad (essentially a fortified structure) as spatial organizing principle of the university.
Anyway, from there, we walked over to New College, which is one of the larger colleges and also, famously, a shooting location for the Harry Potter movies, including the dining hall scenes. Yes, the Griffyndor table is the most popular, and it’s the only one they set when they have a low traffic evening. It’s a bit interesting to see it as college dining hall (complete with computer and card scanner at the front). It’s cool because of its age, though it’s clearly been renovated and refurbished. (Of course, this is where I obnoxiously claim that the dining hall in Burton-Judson at Chicago is just as nice, not to mention bigger, while admitting that it owes its design in part to this kind of room at Oxford…etc, etc.)
Right around the corner from the dining hall is the New College cloister, also a location for Harry Potter filming (Malfoy got turned into a ferret under the big tree in the middle). Needless to say, my students were a bit ecstatic at all of this, and there were plenty of photo ops. Hell, I admit it, I had fun too.
The tour took us by THE Bodleian Library, which was wonderful to see, and then out and around the corner where we finished.
We had group train tickets (you needed to travel together), so we broke into groups for the rest of the day. My group included our two Museum studies majors (and since I didn’t have anything specific that I wanted to see, I tagged along with their plans), so we went up and spent a couple of hours in the Pitt-Rivers Natural History Museum.
Now, I’m not sure when I got it in my head that I didn’t find natural history museums interesting. It must have been after I concluded that I did not, in fact, want to be a paleontologist, which was actually a bit later than most kids my age, but I decided, unconsciously, that I liked other history museums better. Don’t know why (but it does kind of explain why I liked the MSI so much more than the Field Museum…). In short, I would not have thought to go to the Pitt-Rivers museum had I been left to my own devices.
And I would have missed out in truly spectacular and embarrassing fashion.
It was probably one of the most interesting museums I have ever seen, from the building interior (which positively screamed turn of the century stone, steel, and glass) to the exhibit design, which retains the wood and glass case layout (including hand-written captions), to the positively mind-boggling amount of stuff packed into the space. The average case was, say, four by six feet, and each one had to contain dozens (and sometimes upwards of 50) artifacts and objects. It was overwhelming. You could walk through the place, setting foot in every square inch of available floor space, and still not see something. I retraced my steps several times, and I know that in walking down the aisles of cases that I missed something, regardless of how often I looked through each case. Plus, there were dinosaurs. Lots of them. Fully reconstructed dinosaur skeletons are always, always, going to be awesome. Admit it.
It was overwhelming and exciting. And because it looked so much like a late Victorian museum, there was a feeling of looking back at a sensibility that has (justifiably) passed on. There are some very controversial issues with British museums, as you may know, and there are quite a few artifacts at Pitt-Rivers that were acquired by less than, shall we say, honorable means (yes, I know that downplays the severity). The building still looks the part of imperialist showcase, but the exhibits that contain controversial items acknowledge the controversies as part of the display, which adds a fascinating angle to the whole thing. It has the interesting effect of making you feel (or it made me feel, I guess) as if you’re looking at artifacts and the controversy surrounding the artifacts and museums and cultural property and repatriation and all of it at once. It’s messy and chaotic drama sitting behind a piece of glass. It just doesn’t seem to lend itself to a neat and tidy answer (should this that or the other thing be done…).
And because of all that strange nuance, it was, frankly, overwhelming and wildly intoxicating.
But enough of that, reductive as it is. The Pitt-Rivers Museum is an incredible thing, good or bad.
Afterwards, we found ourselves in need of dinner. And of course, if you’re a nerd in Oxford, there’s not shortage of places to go, but since we had both C.S. Lewis and Tolkien nerds in the group, it was off to the Eagle and Child.
The Eagle and Child is, of course, where Tolkien, Lewis, and the Inklings (their writerly group of geeks…or geeky group of writers?) met to talk over matters of geeky or writerly import. And also to drink. Or to drink and talk over…well, you get the idea.
Anyway, the original pub has expanded into what was once the horse pasture out back, which is where the only available seating was (we were quite literally seated in the back corner of the building). The fish and chips were good, and it was neat to eat there. Sadly, there was a bit of a tourist element to the clientele, and what appeared to be a group of carousing American students and their British friends (by carousing I mean drunk) singing loudly. (“Swing low, sweet chariot”…”Don’t stop…believing…”…“Bye, bye miss American Pie, drove my Chevy to the…” groan.) Fortunately, they shut up after a while and we enjoyed the rest of the meal. It’s worth noting that I was not quite as excited as some of my students to use the same urinal trough as C.S. Lewis.
They did not, however, sell t-shirts or paraphernalia, so no souvenirs. Sorry.
And then we caught the train back to London. Overall, Oxford a big thumbs up.
Next time…THE TOWER!
[Quick note: when I wrote this post offline, I assumed I would be able to upload pictures. That hasn't happened, seeing as how blogspot doesn't seem to want me to. I will try to get these sorted as soon as ever I can. Until then, when I mention photos, please provide the chuckle you would give if a power point presentation shorted out in the middle. So, enjoy at my expense (no, I can't be bothered to go back and edit the text. Don't be silly.)]
Well, it should come as no surprise that after promising an update, I failed to provide it in the timely fashion I hinted at. Shocking, I know.
We’ve got three weeks to get through, so let’s roll.
Previously, I had mentioned a long walk on a Tuesday morning. Later that day, I took another walk to the first class meeting of the Art History course I’m sitting in on (some of the students get to take it for credit). We covered a few things in a classroom then moved for the second part of the course to…the British Museum. Yes, that British Museum.
This was, I admit, the first legitimate jaw dropping moment of the trip. We went through the wing devoted to Greek statuary and saw the Elgin Marbles (or the Parthenon Marbles, if you want to be PC…there’s a bit of conTROVersy (British pronunciation)). Utterly spectacular.
After that, I wandered back to the flats, cruising along Kingsway back to the east. I walked down Drury Lane (without seeing the muffin man), then back along Fleet Street again (I like Fleet street).
Later that same day (we’re still Tuesday 9/21), or rather that evening, a couple of my students wanted to go see Big Ben and Parliament (we want the funk…give up the funk…) lit up at night. I gladly tagged along, and in an effort to avoid the tube, we walked down to Waterloo bridge and took some long shots (well, they did. I’m still on photo veto). The other nice piece of info was that at night the Royal Courts of Justice are lit up a lovely shade of blue. Very majestic. So, in one day, I covered essentially the same route 5 times. A busy day.
Fast forward to that weekend. We took our only organized overnight trip with the students, up to York. Some of you have seen some of my photos (80 or so of the 267 I took) on Facebook, but here’s a few more.
In short, York was amazing.
York Minster, my favorite massive building thus far, is so epically large that it actually looks unreal (I’d say the same about St. Paul’s in London…). I think this is because it’s so massive that as you walk by it or around it doesn’t appear to move, which screws with your brain’s ability to process spatial dimension. Or something along those lines. It kind of looks like it belongs in a Lord of the Rings movie, if I’m honest.
The rest of the city center is also very cool, having preserved to various degrees its medieval layout (that’s why we ended up going, after all). This continues my earlier thoughts that the spatial logic is quite different…the streets wind around and back onto each other. I got “lost” several times (in quotes because it’s really such a small area and I always found my way back).
So, overall, the York trip was a success.
The following two weeks, I spent a lot of time organizing things for the course I’m teaching. Nevertheless, I did go visit the National Gallery (twice) with the Art History class, and also continued to explore.
There was a very interesting exhibition at the Tate Modern (the modern art museum), which had to do with photography, voyeurism, spectacle, and so on. A very cool exhibit drawn largely from a photography collection at the San Francisco museum of modern art. I only took issue with one small section (Civil War photographs…way, WAY more complex, in my mind, than simple “images of violence”), but overall it was intriguing. Even picked up a few notes to add to the project (I’m just calling it “the project” or “my project” now…because “visual rhetorics, architecture, and stuff in London” just has too many syllables. Especially when I try to elaborate on “stuff”).
Of course, the Tate Modern is an interesting building in its own right, since it is a converted turbine power plant. A very large, very utilitarian looking brick and steel building that houses…modern art. It’s an interesting space to move through.
BUT…The real highlight of that two week period (after York, before Sarah) was two evenings spent at the Globe theatre. Technically, it’s “Shakespeare’s Globe.” Yes, I know it’s a reconstruction, completed in the 1990s, and the concrete floor and electric lights underscore that point, but inside, you wouldn’t know it. I was a groundling at Henry IV parts 1 and 2 on consecutive evenings, respectively, and that was amazing. First, it was an incredible production, with some smashing acting, second, it was IN THE FREAKING GLOBE!, and third, I heard David Bevington’s soothing, scholarly voice in the back of my head: “Shakespeare…[smiles] balancing the…eh…historical usurpation with an argument against usurpation…” and “Ah…Falstaff! Heh heh…” Very cool to see it done, very cool to be in the space, and even better to have fond memories of reading and studying the plays. And…I took pictures.
And then, the highlight of my month. My lovely fiancée came to visit for a few days.
First, we walked all over London to help her beat the jet lag, then had fish and chips and a pint with Ann. The next morning, we caught a train to Nottinghamshire, specifically to the village of Edwinstowe…alleged home of that notorious rascal, Robin Hood. We spent a good 3-4 hours just walking the nature paths in Sherwood, and it was in the top three of cool things I’ve seen in England. I’ll admit, I was worried that it would be a little tourist trap-ish, but my hat is off to the Brits; the visitor’s centre was pretty classy, and the most touristy thing was the movie posters hung up in the café. Plus, the forest was absolutely beautiful. They’ve done a lot of work to maintain the ecology of the forest, which involves repairing some of the damage done by the coal industry and the second world war (a lot of materiel and troops were concealed in the forest to keep the Germans from spotting them). All in all, they’ve done a great job. The place has a public feel, of course, because of the nature trails, but it still very much retains the sort of sanctity afforded to it by its status as a Royal game reserve (it’s now a national park area).
There is a massive range of foliage in the forest, from newer trees and undergrowth to centuries old oak trees, including the “Major Oak,” which was supposedly the meeting place and camp of Robin Hood’s Merry Men. Regardless of this factoid, the thing is probably pushing 800 or more years of age, meaning it was probably a couple hundred years old when Chaucer was active. Pretty stunning.
Of course, if you live near Sherwood Forest and you’re an archery enthusiast, you might set up shop near the Major Oak to give archery lessons…as Sarah discovered much to her delight!
We stayed in a very nice, very small bed and breakfast in Edwinstowe, then headed back down to London the next day. A short trip, but a fantastic one. It was good to get out into the country, and away from the hectic intensity of London, for a while. I think that the countryside is a view of England that a lot of people have, and it was nice to experience it as well.
Back in London that evening (Sunday), we went over to Brown’s Hotel for evening tea, which was very classy indeed (and really tasty, especially the desert tray. Yes, I like sweets.).
On Monday, we slept in a bit and then, ambitiously, sought to tackle the British Museum. We saw the Elgin marbles and a good portion of the medieval Europe rooms before running out of steam. It was also quite crowded, and I have to say I was not particularly impressed with the way many people were moving through the space. Granted, everyone is allowed to experience the place the way they want, but I do have to wonder how much time people can spend LOOKING at things and thinking about them when they are snapping photos the whole time (granted, I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately). Here I am judging, true, but it was a little frustrating to be bumped out of the way so someone could get a picture of themselves in a goofy pose next to this or that artifact. But, there you go.
After that, we cruised down Charing Cross road (undergoing major construction, avoid) to have a late lunch at the crypt at St. Martin-in-the-fields. Good food, good price, good crypt. Weird how that works.
That evening, we took the Westminster by lamplight tour, which took us around, well, Westminster, specifically the Abbey and Parli-…that famous building with the famous bell tower attached…you know, the one that has had its name conflated with the bell inside. Very neat, with some cool photos (I broke my London photo moratorium while Sarah was in town).
The next day (Tuesday), we grabbed a bit of lunch with some of my students, then hit my favorite attraction so far: the Churchill War Rooms and Museum. Granted, I have to confess my nerdish bias for the time period, but I really did think the place was laid out extremely well. One part of the museum consisted of faithfully reconstructed (from photographs and testimonials) rooms from the War Cabinet offices, and the other was a dedicated museum to Churchill himself, from birth to death. It was the perfect mix of text, artifact, audio/visual, and interactive material. The handful of pictures I took don’t really do it justice, even a little bit. It costs to get in, but I would recommend it heartily.
We spent almost three hours there, then had to RUN over to Westminster Abbey for evensong. That’s the trick, by the way. You pay to get in as a tourist, but you can go to a service for free. We actually sat over in Poet’s Corner, and the rather intimidating bust of William Blake was hovering over me the whole time. Scary. After the service, we lingered about as people were queuing up to see the relics of St. Edward the Confessor. We said hello to Chaucer, Dryden, Tennyson, and a few of the boys before being shooed away by an annoyed looking Anglican priest.
We walked along the south bank afterwards, past the Eye and over to the Millennium Bridge. After that, it was off to a pub for a meat pie and a couple pints. We also took in the first half of the England-Montenegro Euro qualifier. England had the better of play the whole time, but just couldn’t seem to put it together in the last third. This apparently remained the case in the second half, since it ended in a 0-0 draw.
Then, today, Sarah had to fly back home. That was less than awesome, to say the least. We said our goodbyes over coffee and porridge in Paddington station, which was pretty pleasant, and then I came back down to the City to go on the “Legal and Illegal London” walking tour with the group. Learned a lot about the Inns of Court and the law in England, which was good, even if I was a bit distracted.
For the rest of this week, I’ll be catching up on all that work I haven’t been doing. Sheesh.
Plus, my photo moratorium is up tomorrow. Which leaves 9 weeks to go into phase to of “the project.” Before I do that, of course, I’ll need to get some of my scattershot impressions down on paper…
So. Pogolink? Crap. It’s also a bit annoying how internet access is controlled (essentially by the minute…a miserly approach at best…like old dial-up only high speed). But really what bothers me is that the network set up for our flat (just mine, mind you, the rest of the building is fine) has been down now for over 48 hours. The maintenance guy was nice enough to tell us to email someone to get it fixed (yeah, you read that right. Not a bad guy, mind you, he’s great with on-sight facilities stuff and repair, but he’s not in charge of the internet connectivity). Still, it would be nice to burn through my 2000 minutes OR 1500mb of internet time in the comfort of my own flat (since, you know, DU is getting billed for it) rather than in the stairwell on the next floor up.
To clarify, since the writing date on this post and the actual posting date are likely different, this post covers Tuesday 9/21 and Wednesday 9/22 (days 7 and 8).
Tuesday was all kinds of busy. Feeling cooped up a bit (since I’d spent most of the last several days being on hand at the flats), I decided to step out and wander around a little in the morning (we had class in the afternoon). I walked south from my flat down to the somewhat famous Fleet Street (I’m thinking of the newspapers, many of you are apparently thinking of Sweeny Todd) and walked along there heading west. I had one of the students with me, and he pointed us to the Temple Church (that is, after we passed the Royal Courts of Justice, which looked appropriately impressive). This was quite amazing, and forcefully demonstrated to me that I need to brush up on my Roman numerals…and probably learn Latin. The gardens near the temple just intertwine with all the buildings (all offices and businesses, kind of bumps the American trend of “office buildings” in spectacular fashion). We wound our way down to the river, then back east to Blackfriars bridge.
And this is where things got even more interesting. In America, of course, alleyways are nicely decorated with garbage, dumpsters, stray cats and the homeless. In London, they’re actually not alleyways at all, but actual streets or pedestrian walkways. Heading north on New Bridge Street (which crosses the river on Blackfriars Bridge), we spotted a little walkway that turned out to be Bride Lane, home to a pub, a drycleaner, and the Bridewell Theatre (which happens to be putting up a lunchtime production of the Canterbury Tales next month…I smell field trip). Walking down this way, the noise from the hustle and bustle faded almost immediately, and we would around another few shops to St. Bride’s church, which is literally tucked in the middle of all these buildings. Apparently it hosts recitals with some regularity, and we popped our heads in to hear someone practicing (or warming up) for a piano recital scheduled for that afternoon. Very, very cool.
Additionally, the little churchyard was a lovely green space, and a number of people were sitting about having lunch. An interesting ritual: lunch is mostly take out (it costs more in most places to sit and eat). So most people take away their lunch and find a nice place to eat, including church yards, gardens, parks, etc. As such, you see people using all these spaces with some regularity.
Continuing on, we got back up to Fleet Street and headed back toward the flat. On the way, we spotted another utterly nondescript alley/walkway, this one bearing a simple wooden sign that read “Dr. Johnson’s House è” Following the winding back alley (which featured doors to a number of offices and businesses tucked off to the side, we finally came up on Samuel Johnson’s house itself, nestled neatly between the more modern concrete buildings. This was very satisfying on a nerdly level. Not quite sure which way to go, we headed north-ish, through some walkways and alleys which led up to the circle just south of our flats. So, apparently, I live less than half a mile from Samuel Johnson’s house. Who knew.
Maybe an additional description would help. Being an American and quite fond of my formulaic grid pattern of city design, I think of “alley” and “street” as spaces separating essentially square buildings and plots of land. That’s not really (as in, not at all) the case in London. The walkway to Johnson’s house was a little archway through the front of a single building that led to what might have been a courtyard that connected to a winding little system of walkways that snaked through several buildings that had been build adjacent, connected to, around, and on top of each other. Think of a pop-top house in Denver, then imagine that it keeps adding on in all directions with space between additions to walk, the occasional interior courtyard, and so on. So the “alley” was just the walkway that had more or less been kept clear (not built on) to allow access back into the equivalent of the middle of an American city block. A college campus is another good example, only instead of a quad with lawns and trees between major streets (I’m thinking of urban campuses here), you’ve got a ton of buildings seemingly haphazardly tossed in like Jenga blocks, with various pathways that run through them.
Then again, the major streets seem to cut through the buildings like a river in a canyon. The buildings are shaped to the streets, like they were poured in a mold that was taken away to leave space for the street. Fleet Street winds around along the path of the river, a few blocks north, anyway, and all the buildings are flush with the street and each other, thus flowing along with the street (then it turns into the Strand further west, where you can find a lot of the West End theatres).
Anyway, I realize that I’ve written almost two full single spaced pages about the short walk that started my day. I think I’ll have to separate out the Art History class (and its walk over to the British Museum…now there’s a first day of class!) and the evening stroll.
To be continued!
Over the weekend I can’t say I did much, Saturday especially. Then again, I think I needed the break. Sunday was lovely, however.
We did our first little group field trip up to Hampstead Heath for a picnic. The view from Parliament Hill is quite the draw, with the whole city laid out to one side and the nicely wooded hills of Highgate on the other. Very nice. We parked ourselves up at the top and enjoyed a delightfully brisk London afternoon.
Today was orientation for our students. Rather, it was “induction.” Meetings and powerpoint presentations, mostly. Still, some useful info AND I got my University College London Staff ID card. It’s appropriately hideous. I was pretty awake and with it, smiling and all, but the camera makes me look disheveled and strung out. This is likely a digital special effect, like sepia or negative. Amazing what they can do with computers these days.
All in all, a useful day in the sense that we are getting close to being on a regular schedule, which I am looking forward to. I’m behind in my work already (not that that’s a surprise).
Tomorrow will be nice. Our first Art History course in the afternoon. I think I’ll walk around a bit in the morning, maybe down to Fleet Street and over to some of the theatres. More ruminations on what I see are in order. I’ve got nothing interesting to say from the last three days…or four, since my sketch-tacular internet is out. More tomorrow! (and this post into the bargain!)
Yesterday (Thursday) I checked out the various places our students will be attending classes: the Barbican Center and Guildhall for our music and drama students and City University London for everyone else. Also, got moved into our flats. They’re nice, but I don’t have a desk. I do get a room to myself, which is good, but it still has the two beds (they're all at least doubles). I’m sitting on one (all the way against the wall) with my feet up on the other. Now, you may say, “hey, Rob, you’re tall,” and you wouldn’t be wrong. Still, you’d have to work to squeeze a queen size bed in here.
Anyway, today (Friday) was move in day for our students, and it went pretty well (aside from two delays and some lost luggage, which was, thankfully, found and will be delivered tomorrow). Everyone is here, and they’ve got the weekend to get settled and explore a bit.
Should be a nice quiet day tomorrow, which is good since I actually need to get to work with some of my reading…
(Having returned from the pub)
After I managed to roll out of bed at 11 am on Wednesday (a good sleep, if I do say so myself), Ann took me on a walking trip down in the heart of London. Okay, beginner’s description. It may not have been the “heart” of London, but I saw some of the famous stuff.
We took the tube down to Leicster Square and checked out some of the theatres and half-priced ticket booths. From there, it was just down the street (seriously, maybe a hundred yards) to the National Portrait Gallery and Trafalgar Square. Interestingly enough, I think Trafalgar Square was the most impressive thing I saw all day. The pillar and statue of Nelson is truly massive, and it sort of jumps up there whereas most of the buildings around are just not that tall. We also dipped right in to the National Portrait Gallery and within 30 seconds were looking through the Impressionists (reminds me of the Art Institute a bit, all the famous paintings from the textbooks right there on the wall…what a concept…).
We had lunch in the Crypt at St. Martin-in-the-Fields, which was…a bit creepy. Something about a lunch counter…in a crypt…yeah. Cauliflower soup was quite good, though.
We then would our way down Whitehall into Westminster, past the Horse Guards and Downing Street to, of course, Westminster Abby, Big Ben, and Parliament (and yes, the word “Parliament” makes me think of George Clinton. I’m sorry, it just does.). A couple notes here. First, as it’s the 70th anniversary of the London Blitz/Battle of Britain, there are a ton of events and exhibits sort of happening and parked around London. So, while walking down Whitehall, we passed a Spitfire I sort of parked at the side of the road, and as we passed Downing Street, one flew overhead. This was pretty cool for my inner WWII aviation nerd.
Also, and I feel a bit bad about this, but I was not real impressed by Big Ben itself. Let me explain. It was, indeed, very cool. But as an ignorant American, my exposure to it is through the always accurate lens of Hollywood, which tends to exaggerate its scale somewhat. This, paired with my very American sense of large distances between important landmarks or notable buildings, naturally has a profound influence on how I experience “important” or “famous” space (much more on this later, as I try to wrap my head around the different spatial reasoning in the situated urban experience of the U.S. vs. the U.K.). Of course, in London, everything famous is actually quite close together, so what was most impressive about Big Ben, and many of the famous landmarks I saw on this first walk, was not necessarily the landmarks themselves, but their orientation to each other. So, I first sighted Big Ben down the street, just as you would happen to glimpse any other building between a space between two ordinary buildings. Thus, my reaction when Ann said “And there’s Big Ben” was, somewhat annoyingly, “oh. Shit. It’s Big Ben.” This essentially made me feel like an ignorant yokel rubbernecking AND a cynical boor dismissing impressive scenery AT THE SAME TIME. Confusing, to say the least.
Anyway, we continued over Westminster Bridge, then walked along the South Bank to the National Theatre. Some good shows going up this fall, looks like. There’s also the teen-angst prequel to Hamlet, which is up, delightfully, at the same time as a production of Hamlet. And yes, you can see the prequel in the afternoon and Hamlet itself in the evening. If you know…you…like, wanted to.
Past the theatre we would around to Southwark street and the obligatory Chaucer reference to the Tate Modern, which is interesting not only for the modern art (though I harbor ambivalent feelings there, honestly) but because it’s housed in a MASSIVE decommissioned turbine power station. It’s a very strange space for art, and very interesting. There’s a great looking exhibition on voyeurism and photography that I need to check out. The coffee shop on the third floor also has an impressive balcony overlook of the river, which is amazing given the mix of buildings on the other side.
And a bit further up the river bank is the Globe. It’s…freakin’ awesome to look at, especially given the very modern design of everything around it, including the box office and the Millennium Bridge nearby. Of course, the Millenium Bridge was probably the most disappointing part of the day. It’s tiny. I mean, like, 15 feet across. WAY smaller than it looks in that Harry Potter movie where it gets blown up. Yeah, I went there.
Crossed it nonetheless, and came up on St. Paul’s cathedral. Okay, to hell with Trafalgar Square. St. Paul’s is by far the most impressive building. The thing is massive. We walked by on one side, and it makes you feel small. Very, very small. Sadly, we were a bit too tired at this stage to walk around or try to go in (not that you can afford admission), so we grabbed a double decker bus (huzzah!) back to Waterloo station and took the tube back to Hamstead.
It was fish and chips at the pub for dinner. An excellent close to the day.
Of course, you may be wondering, where are the pictures? Interesting story. I actually forced myself to leave the camera at home for the day. At this stage, I’m trying to keep my looking from being through a camera lens. There’s a number of reasons for this, from “I want to see everything first” to “I’m here for three months” to “I want to frame the best shots later on.” Really, though, it’s both a combination of these and a commitment to my research project, which calls for a number of different ways of looking. Hopefully, that commitment will develop some interesting insight, and hopefully this blog can address some of it with progressively more intelligent language…but for now, I’m perfectly happy with the “golly gee!” tourist tone.
Tomorrow (Friday) is student move-in day. Maybe you’ll hear from me soon or maybe not. Actually, this probably won’t get posted until then anyway since I don’t yet have internet…
While this may not be the most interesting first posting, I thought I’d at least mark my arrival. Granted, it’s a couple days in, but really the first chance I’ve had to write a bit (and the last chance I’ll have for a while, given that arrival day for students is tomorrow).
My flight left Denver on time, no problems. In fact, the only real issue on day 1 came with my curious decision to confuse my seat number with my gate number. Fortunately, there simply is no gate 3C at DIA, which prompted me to hurry back to the train and, eventually, B80 (oddly, the guy at the counter in Denver hassled me more on the purpose of my trip than UK immigration…not sure what the deal is there).
I connected through Calgary, and had to wheel my bags the 50 yards from the claim through customs (a job that really could have been done by a conveyor belt…I mean, seriously, Canada). Hoping for a comfortable hop across the Atlantic, even at my own expense, I asked if there were any upgrade options for the next leg. Apparently, you can only get an upgrade if you have the special red voucher. Not only did I not have said voucher, but the lady at the desk was very careful not to explain how to get one. A bit of an oddity there. I had an aisle seat, so no real complaints.
Which brings me to the point. Air Canada is, aside from the strange voucher thing, absolutely aces in my book. More leg room than any other flight I’ve been on (good for 8 hour flights), along with a free entertainment system, free food (it’s a crime not to feed you, surely), and…drumroll…free booze. Brilliant. If you’re wondering, I finished reading A Star Called Henry and then watched The Losers and Hot Tub Time Machine. I was punchy enough to find both films entertaining, but have no intention of watching them again, lest they be ruined for me (the same experience as when I flew to Germany, where I watched The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift and Talladega Nights…neither of which I ever intend to view again).
Arrival was nice, and though it was still Day 1 for me, it was Tuesday in London, and foggy. With rain. Seemed appropriate.
I took the train from Heathrow to Paddington Station (!), then a cab up to Hampstead. Ann was nice enough to drag me around all afternoon to help fight off the jet lag, which was helpful.
I did get a good night’s sleep, and then it was off to London proper the next day. Which I will write about as soon as I get back from the pub…
