St. Paul's Cathedral

St. Paul's Cathedral was the first Anglican Church built in England. It stands out in every way and is in my opinion Christopher Wren's most amazing creation. It's crypts hold artists and vetrans alike. The two biggest tombs being for the Duke of Wellington, who defeated Napoleon at Waterloo, and Nelson, who won the Battle of Trafalgar against Napoleon's forces.

Above the crypt is the most amazing dome. The main part of the dome is painted black and white with 8 pictures of the life of St. Paul, below that are golden mosaics 4 new Testamate Saints and 4 Old Testamate Profits. and below that on the inner alcoves are more golden mosaics of Jesus and his life. 280 feet from the ground floor is the top most gallery. It takes 530 steps to reach this gallery and see London from this perch. These aren't nice easy steps either, most of them are spiral, and if not, then they are very narrowly shoved into rock where you have to squeeze through to have the privilege of walking these 530 steps.

The View you get from the Golden gallery is worth every panting breath it took to get up there. I don't know if Christopher Wren knew if he was building the Perch of London, when he built the Dome. I have a feeling he was more concerned with what the dome looked like from the ground than what people could see from it

After I spent over four hours there, I found myself a pub, and finally had the Fish and Chips I've wanted since before I got to London... and Damn was it good.

The British Museum

Today I ventured out to find the British Museum, and find it I did. This place is huge, housing mummies, the Rosetta Stone, parts of the Parthenon, hundreds if not thousands of books and so, so much more. I used an entire 1GB memory card and didn't even see the entire museum. You can be sure I'll be going back.

Below, there are 280 something pictures of Greek, Roman, and Egyptian artwork, mostly sculptures. Many of the pictures of sculptures are followed by a picture of the plaque discrib describing what the statue is of.

Things of Notice:

"DUM DUM, Bring me GUM GUM?" - You'll know it when you see it.

Rosetta stone, the key to understanding Egyptian Hieroglyphics, and it's replica. Housed in two different parts of the museum, one behind glass and one not.

"Hercules, Hercules, Hercules!"

A King of Egypt or two... or 12, I lost count.

Lots of bodies missing heads, or arms... torsos really, makes me think the Ancient world was more about battle than art.

Gods... and whole lot of them. Of course if you remember that most of the Greek and Roman gods are the same, it pairs the number down a bit, but then you have to add in all those Egyptian Gods and their kings who were thought of as gods... then all those guys who called themselves Gods... Deity Parties must have been packed in the Ancient world.

What would an English Museum be without at least one Harry Potter item?

I will be going back to the Museum to get a better look around. In April they are having a Renaissance exhibit with work from Michalagelo and Da Vinci and all those other names that everyone knows. I can't wait for that one.

Restless

I've been in London for a little over a month now. In that time I've unpacked, organized, done some work (which you all know means my room got very messy) wrote, cleaned, reorganized, and cleaned again. This list of course does not include the part of my stay in which I've been to class or gone out and done touristy things. But the unpacking and the organizing and the cleaning and so on has bothered me the entire time I have been here; I haven't felt comfortable. I've felt like I'm living in a time-share, where I have to keep the room semi tidy, and cook for myself. The maid comes in and cleans things, but I'm just here for a very extended vacation, and because of that I've been very restless, uncomfortable, and a bit uptight.

Contributing to this general unease is the fact that I really never know what to expect. The sun shines brightly in the morning when it's only 2 degrees C. Food stores don't have the same food week to week, and the cash machines do things I've never seen before. I say words my flat-mates have never heard of, and they say things I don't understand... here I was thinking that England and America speak the same language.

Today though, I found peace. I knew what I was doing, and how I was doing it, and by the time I got home and unloaded all the things I had purchased, I finally felt like I was at home. What pray tell could do this?

ASDA

For those of you who don't know ASDA, is owned by this wonderful little company called... WAL-MART. I finally found a store that had everything I needed. They have clothes, shoes, food for miles, stationary, books, even movies and video games (not that I needed those last three but it was nice to see them there). I was able to get my food shopping out of the way, finally find index cards (I've been looking for a while), and they even had a small restaurant in the front. It wasn't MickyD's but what can you do.

When I got back and unloaded all the food from my back pack, and put my room in order I realized I didn't "need" anything. This past month I've had an ongoing list of things I needed: A backpack, index cards, post cards, paper, so on and so forth. I finally got it all, settled in and relaxed.

Now I just have to do my homework, pass all my classes, see London, and write until my fingers are numb... but those are the easy parts once you've finally made someplace your home.

Second Star to the Right...

As soon as I knew I was going to England for sure i made a list of three things I had to see. The Peter Pan Memorial in Hyde Park, the Trolly sticking out of the wall at Kings Cross Station, and 221b Bakerstreet. I have found the first on this list after much walking and searching.

Kris and I departed at 11:30am for Speakers corner, the corner farthest away from Peter Pan. The reason, is that on the weekends, people bring boxes to stand on and speak to you. There is no restriction on this, anyone can find something to stand on, and attempt to entertain the masses. On this particular Sunday, there were four men, three of which were religious attempting to convert the masses, both the Jew and the Christian attempted to tell the crowds that we were most likely going to hell, while the Muslim man spoke some about his faith and then preached on how greed was the reason America didn't have a National Health Care. The fourth man was the most fun. He told us that women were stealing all of men's jobs, and that they refused to hire men, and that women's proper place was in the kitchen. Because of the informality of the situation many shouted back to all four of these men, arguments and taunts. Kris said it wasn't the best speakers corner he had seen, but I found it pretty entertaining.

Even though Kris lives in London, he had only seen small parts of the park. I figured out how to get to Peter pan this time, so I led the way to the reform tree, then past the Norwegian Rock, over the bridge and to the Serpentine Museum. Most museums in England are free, so we decided to take a detour and look inside. The exhibit consisted of odd objects, labeled either on the wall or on the ground. There was a concrete bench, a pair of shoes, a laptop, an office chair, the front bumper of what looked like a yellow Shelby Cobra (but I could be wrong, kinda hard to tell a car from its front bumper) a water purifier, and others. After walking around for ten minutes looking for the actual art, we decided to leave, not quite understanding why someone had decided to fill three rooms with random crap, and label them as if they were from a distant time.

We left the museum and walked down the path, past the ugliest tree in the world, it wasn't labeled as such but i gave it that name, and I am quite sure it alone is what inspired Guillermo del Torro in his art for Hellboy and Pan's Labyrinth. It was past this gnarled tree and down near the water that we found the object of our quest. Peter stands on top of a hill covered in small animals and fairies playing a flute. I felt like a kid again, staring up to my most favored fairytale character.

While this was the goal of our Sunday excursion, it was not the end, we walked out to the gates and walked along the wall where artists sell their masterpieces for a few quid. Kris and I both got Pub signs depicting our favorite pictures (Mine - Robin Hood Pub, his Jack the Ripper).

The tube took us to Harrod's, where we marveled at all of the beautiful things just on the first two floors. I found the most beautiful pen, that rested in a circle of two dragons eating each others tails, one silver and one gold. This beautiful writing utensil was supposed to be sold for 34,450 pounds... I'll let that sink in, 34,450 pounds for a tube of ink encased in a metal pen. I entertained hopes of becoming a famous writer and one day being able to purchase such a beauty, before moving on and finding the two Princess Diana Memorials inside Harrod's.

In case you don't know, Princess Diana was dating Dodi Al Fayed at the time of her death, the son of Mohamed Al Fayed, who owns Harrod's. Mohamed had two memorials erected for his son and Princess Diana, the first, in 1998, was a smaller memorial, with pictures of the two of them, and encased in a pyramid the wine glass from their last dinner with Diana's lipstick smudge on it, and the engagement ring Dodi had purchased the day before they died. The second one put in place in 2005 is a much larger statue of the two dancing on the beach beneath an albatross with the words "innocent victims" underneath. We found both memorials and I even signed my name in the death book that sits behind the larger statue.

We ended the day trying a diner across the street from our school that attempted to be a fifties rock diner. If you learn nothing else from my blog, listen to this: Do not attempt to eat Mexican food in London. Proof... my burrito was shaped like a triangle, and they couldn't give me a just cheese enchilada (it had to have meat in it). Please, just trust me on this, and know that the second I get back to my side of the pond, I will delight in eating nothing but Mexican food for at least two weeks.

The bigger memorial to Princess Diana and Dodi Al Fayed, "Innocent Victims"

The smaller memorial. In the Pyramid, is a wine glass from their last dinner with her lip print on it from her lipstick, and the engagement ring Dodi had bought the day before they died. The ring is a huge gold ring with a bunch of sparkling diamonds.

I found Peter Pan, now I just have to convince him I'm not to old for Never Neverland.

The Ugliest tree in the world... I'm pretty sure it will haunt my dreams for ever.

Kris made a new friend. This squirrel came right up to him and sat at his feet. By the time we could get our cameras out, he was coming for me.