12/2/09

For Art and Society we went to the Wallace Collection, which isn't too far from my dorm actually. It's a huge museum in an old mansion. The cool part was that it's basically unchanged since the time he lived there, and one of the stipulations in the museum is that is always has to remain free and nothing can leave the museum.

The art was mostly baroque style, which is really not my favorite. There were some Rembrandts and Rubens, but nothing spectacular. The most interesting part was the decoration of the actual rooms and the hall of armor, which was a really extensive suit of armor collection.

I came back and took the Tube out to St. Paul's, where I met my next class for a tour of Shakespeare's Globe Theater. We wandered around the little museum for a little and then our guide took us to the site of where the original Globe was. It's not more than a couple bricks marked, but it still gave a sense for where all these plays were performed.

But the coolest part of the tour was when they took us into the basement of a huge building that was built in the'80s. They discovered the wooden foundations of the complete Rose Theater, where Shakespeare and Christopher Marlow performed and wrote plays. They redid the building so that it preserved the foundations. They covered it with cement and mud to preserve it, and have it marked off with red lights. It's a strange almost haunting site, like a secret look into London history in a darkened basement. It was a very cool vibe.

The recreated Globe Theater, used using all the same technologies Shakespeare would have had, was a lot more impressive than I was expecting. It was very close together but bigger than I expected. Our guide was really good which made it more interesting. The day started off very sunny, no clouds, but around this time it started sleeting, so we took cover in the upper deck of the Globe for the end of the tour.

Afterward, the professor took us to a pub where Dickens used to drink (which is always exciting) and we all got teas. I ended up telling everyone about Obama and my Beatles connections, they were impressed, the Europeans were particularly impressed with me seeing Obama so many times.

I got a text from the Americans saying there were at Cocomos. A pretty large group eneded up coming, and I knew them all, so it was good. I talked about Greece and a couple of the trips I have coming up I hope. I was pretty tired so I was just sort of out of it all day. We walked from there down to the Best American Pizza and got a personal margherheta pizza for £1.50 (it was really good too). Across the street was Tenneesee Fried Chicken. I thought they were joking when they talked about it, but it was real. We too it around the corner and ate in one of the American's dorm kitchen. In all, it was a long day, but really solid.