British Museum

After a quick lunch at yet another adorable English pub (can you say croque monsieur!) with Megan, Merle and Michele, Michele and I headed to the amazing British Museum. The museum is only a few steps from the Study Center where we are staying. I explored for about 3 hours and was STILL unable to see everything this huge, impressive collection has to offer. I have been fortunate enough to visit Egypt, Turkey, and Greece in the past and the British Museum has extensive collections from these countries including portions of the Parthenon and treasures from Egypt that I was unable to see in those countries because the artifacts are part of the British Museum's permanent collection. I was thrilled to get a chance to see them.


The first thing we saw when we entered the museum was the fabulous Rosetta Stone. How amazing!

Then I moved on the Parthenon Gallery. The sculptures were so beautiful.


I plan to revisit the Museum sometime later this week when it isn't as crowded. The collection is so big I would definitely benefit from an audio tour.

Later I went walking around the West End and Soho area once again. Had some Mediterranean food and pastries for dinner and window shopped for hours. London is a great city for walking. There is always something interesting around every turn.

Tomorrow is the official start of classes and we are all headed to the London Eye and Westminster Abbey!

MJ

As we all have heard by now The King of Pop passed away a few days ago. London is mourning his loss along with the rest of the world. The media coverage of his death by the UK press has been extensive to say the least. We caught wind of a Michael Jackson tribute party at Club Koko in the hipster laden London neighborhood of Camden. We hopped on the Tube at the Tottenham stop and zoomed to the Mornington Cresent stop. This was my first Tube excursion and I loved it. Something about the curve of the walls and the trains themselves, the mosaics and the cool breeze created by the trains had a calming effect on me. We hopped off the tube and frantically darted across the still imposing London traffic we came to a stop in front of Club Koko. There were a few people milling about outside all of which were smartly dressed. We looked around and then at each other and noted that all of us Americans were horribly under dressed. Nate approached a bouncer and ascertained that indeed we were in the right place however there was a cover charge of over 16 GBP! None of us were interested in paying for entrance so we found another pub down the street and had a couple of rounds of drinks. It was a great time.

The next day Michele, Nate, and I stumbled across this shrine to Michael Jackson in front of one of the West End theaters that's running a live production of Thriller.

I have arrived!

Here I am in jolly ol' London! My flatmates and I went exploring and discovered that both the British Museum and the National Gallery are only a few minutes walk away. I'm amazed how central our flats are to the major sightseeing destinations of beautiful London. We even stumbled upon an amazing view of Big Ben across Trafalgar Square! After walking around for awhile we found a great traditional English Pub, called The Tottingham, and sat down to a wonderful English meal. Most everyone had the fish and chips, but anyone who knows me knows that I skipped over that on the menu. I opted for the steak and stout pie and it was great! The portions were huge. I got to try "mushy peas" which were delicious. Sort of like a thick version of split pea soup (one of my faves stateside). Best of all the things we tried was the traditional English drink called Pimm's. It's a gin-based liquor that's mixed with lemonade (which tastes more like sprite than lemonade) and has strawberries and cucumbers in it. I have seen the light! We are all planning to have Pimm's at least once a day while we're here.



I'm sharing my two bedroom/two bathroom flat with 3 roommates (Michele, Merle, and Meagan - I'm already calling them the 3M's). Here is a picture of Michele and I's room. Of course this picture was taken before we destroyed it by spreading our belongings and gadgets all over every surface we could, including the extra bed. We don't have air conditioning (as is common in most of Europe) but the weather has been so beautiful we haven't needed it. It's been gorgeous so far. 75 degrees and blue skies. A far cry from the sweltering heat of Florida to be sure.



The light here is really different from Florida is making for some amazing pictures. Looking forward to discover more of this interesting city.