London

Saturday July 17th was a day in London with the entire BSC and Westwood group there. Each group split and did separate visits until we met again in the evening at Shakespeare's Globe Theater. There is so much in London that I did feel rushed through it (some of the circumstances were not in the majority's favor I might say) like an animal tourist so that I should like to return. I would like to get to the British Museum and see the Rosetta Stone. So we arrived and bought tickets for the hop on hop off transportation (which is also narrated for tourists) and made an entire route through the city. From the bus we saw Big Ben, the parliament building, the Eye and drove over the tower bridge (not London Bridge) over the River Thames. We as in Megg, Casey, Caitlin, Heather and Jen visited Westminster Abbey, which was beautiful and crammed with tombs of famous kings including Edward the Confessor, Richard II (not the lionhearted Richard), Henry III, I believe and some others, as well as the tomb of Geoffrey Chaucer, but I don't know that he's actually in there (Megg says it is speculated). An interesting part was the Poet's Corner in honor of some of England's well-known poets and literary writers- Shakespeare and Lewis Carroll I recognized, but there were many more either in name on plaques or in sculpture.

We also went to the London Tower, also known as Her Majesty's Royal Power and Fortress. This is where the crown jewels are and was a refuge for some monarchs- but we didn't get to explore much. Our group was shuffled into a guided tour and suddenly it was time to go, but it was a pretty interesting place. I felt bad for Casey because she really wanted to see the crown jewels!!

Shakespeare's Globe Theatre was the best part of the day! Casey, Megg, Caitlin, Jen and I managed to eat dinner at Pizza Express which was across from the theater and though it was a relatively sophisticated restaurant, we were surprised to order and eat margarita pizzas with basil within a 20 minute time span and get to the theater in time for the gift shop! After the gift shop we received our tickets and found our designated doorways to enter the theater. The front of the theater is made of a glass doorway, but when you go inside it connects to the theater replicated how it looked in Shakespeare's time ( it burned down on June 29th in 1613) and was rebuilt twice since then but it still looks the same. Note the picture, the stage was at the back, with an open pit in front (for the peasants) and rows of balcony seats in a circular pattern around the stage and open space (for the nobility). Most of us were in the first row of seats through door 4, but Caitlin had a seat on the opposite side on the second or third balcony. I was not familiar with the plot of Henry IV ( I admit all I have read in the past are King Lear and Romeo and Juliet) but it was really exciting to experience the performance- something the English have been doing at this theatre for centuries in his honor. Clearly more than the English perform his plays today but what I mean is that reenacting them in his theatre is such a tradition and it is not going to die off any time soon. I enjoyed the performance and the actors and music were great, I enjoyed the costumes and the simplicity of stage setting changes as well. So having seen the Tempest and Henry IV, and looking forward to seeing a Midsummer Knight's Dream at the Bodleian (performers from from the Globe), I am thinking I am inspired to read a bit more of Shakespeare's plays sometime soon as I would like to be more familiar!