Thursday, September 12, 2013

Cheapstreet. bread street, poultry?

On Wednesday, we toured the city of London for our history class. The actual city of London is approximately 1 sq mile. It is owned by "the corporation" and thus everything in the city is branded with dragons and the city crest. Her royal majesty, the Queen, is not allowed to enter the city without permission. In the city, it is compromised of almost exclusively businessman, thus our group of 15 Americans stood out in the streets of London. However, we learned a lot and were able to see the monument (dedicated to the fire of London that began on Pudding Lane) which is very cool. In the afternoon, I went to the Grant Museum of Zoology. It was a wonderful, free, small museum that is operated by UCL. The collection is quite large and was founded by one of Darwins professors (who taught Darwin about evolution!). After that, I took the tube to the Freud museum where we had neuroscience class. The museum is in the home he lived in last (for only a year). It was curated because of the efforts of his daughter, Anna. It was cool to see his study and watch some home videos. I had never imagined Freud as an old man, so that was rather strange to see.

Today, I went to the Victoria and Albert Museum for my art class. It is a spectacular art museum because it has an incredibly varied collection. The work we saw was all sculpture, devotional items, etc. so it was nice to have a break from paintings. Afterwards, I went to the science museum and went to the Who Am I? exhibit. It was very interactive and had lots of activities and information. Walking to the exhibit, I realized how large the museum is. Given the narrow block it is on, I had not originally realized how large the museum is.

After all of these museums in the past few days, I am inspired to go to as many free museums as possible! Tomorrow, we get on a train at 8:45am to go to Stratford-Upon-Avon, so I have to get up early to get to the train station by then. I am mostly packed but will finish packing in the morning.

Finally, I am sure you have heard how awesome of a care package I sent Gilly, so I have included a picture below.
Everything together :)

PS. The title of this post is a reference to street names in London. Strange, eh?