29/1/09

The first class today was Art and Society and we went to St. Paul's Cathedral. It's just a massive building in the City of London, one of those landmarks of London. It's sort of amazing how heavy the building looks. It's perched up on top of the hill and can be seen throughout most of that end.

It was built after the fire of 1666 that wiped out most of the old part of London, so it's not medieval like a number of the churches I'd been in lately. The inside is huge with massive arches and most notably, the dome.

I didn't particularly love the church, it was certainly impressive, but it was almost so big that it took away from it. Our professor gave us a tour of the place, which was great. I really like the guy, he's very knowledgeable and happy to answer any questions. He never runs out of things to say, and all in a very kind old British chap way.

We climbed up some 250 stairs to get to the stone gallery under the dome of the church, allowing us to look down from on everything below. It was much higher up than I thought, and I struggled to go near the edge.

From there we climbed up maybe 50 more steps to the outside viewing area. It was just an awesome view over London, from what the Brits have told me, it's the best in the city.


I was particularly amazed wit the views back toward the city, there are more cranes there than I've ever seen in my life. I've always thought of London as an old town with short, old buildings, but it's really not the case. With the blitz, 1/3 of the city was destroyed so there are all sorts of very modern buildings going up. It's interested to see, although I'd rather have that old feel to the place.

I stayed outside for a while and caught my professor after class and we chatted about London architecture for a little. He's a really interesting guy.

I had about an hour and a half to get to my next class, and since it was a sunny day, I walked back along the river, this time on the other side. It was a nice walk, there were a bunch of people out running.

I got to class exactly on time. For the theater class a director and actor came in and did a workshop for the class. The coolest part was when the actor was told to recite Shakespeare in different ways, using accents, different characters, different settings, and he did. It was impressive. They emphasized the differences between theater and TV and movies, which I hadn't really considered before.

We lectured about the history of theater, and how much of it's origins are in Greece, so it made me look forward to it even more.