Alright this post will resemble more of the usual blog-type posts because a.) it's 2 am and they involve a lot less brainpower and b.) I was reminded today how important it is to just get the events of your day down and update diaries like blogs more often! So, without further ado, my first trip to London with 7 ASE Summer School students:
First we went to Abbey Road, the site of the famous Beatles album cover, and "replicated" the Beatles' poses. I was John Lennon because I was wearing white. Pictures on facebook. Nuff said.
Then we went to Platform 9 and 3/4 at King's Cross station, which was really located near Platform 8... Lots of fun. Pics are also available.
Next was the British Library, which houses really old manuscripts by famous writers/artists like Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Handel, Beethoven as well as other cool collections like Beatles lyrics on napkins and stamps (called the Philatelic Exhibition). My favorite part was looking at Jane Austen's parody of English history textbooks called The History of England.* That woman had a modern sense of humor, for sure. I used to get bored of looking at old artifacts (continuing a theme from yesterday) but now I'm... well, a little less bored. I at least read the descriptors and gaze in reverence for a few seconds before moving on with my life. That's progress.
Well, that's not even half the day.
Next we hit the Sherlock Holmes museum on Baker Street. Being very unfamiliar with Sherlock Holmes, I sat down to read some of the Holmes books in the museum's bookstore. I discovered that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote 56 Short Stories and 4 novels in the Sherlock Holmes series. At one point, he killed off Holmes so he wouldn't have to write anymore stories but the monetary incentive was too great so he brought him back from the dead in a book called Sherlock Holmes Returns or something like that. I read a few pages of The Hound of the Baskervilles and I think I got the basic gist of the books - Watson's an analytical type of guy whose contributions to solving cases is doing the dirty work so that Holmes can totally one-up him and make great leaps of deduction. Again 2am will probably edit the grammar of that sentence later.
I also hit the Beatles gift shop.
Next was... the British museum. Zoomed through that, but saw some mummies, Chinese ceramics, a textile made of medication pills, ancient coins from across the world.
The Tower of London. Didn't actually go in, but got beautiful pictures of the London Bridge (that's the one on the Thames that apparently looks like the Walt Disney castle, right?)
Last are the major tourist spots: Trafalgar Square, Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey. Needless to say, we were EXHAUSTED. On top of that, most of us dressed for 60-70 degree weather that turned out to be stormy, rainy, and windy. Never have I been more happy to be in a warm, heated train station in my entire life.
The train ride home... good conversations. I really like my ASE friends and everything I'm learning from them. Overall, great experience. Ok done! That was my crazy day.
*Need to check the accuracy of that
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