... and continued some more

Anyways, after the London Zoo, I wandered London in the rain with my friend John and talked about life. It was a very nice way to spend an afternoon. We went though Regent's Park again, around the West End, got a little turned around near Baker's Street, and then across London and through Hyde Park. It was quite a walk, but a great way to see the city. That night a large group of us went to a nearby Greek restaurant, I forget the name, but it was delicious.

Saturday, Isabel, Carly, and I went to Camden Market. Carly, who was studying in London, had been there before and took as around. It was a great place to get cheap, interesting clothes, although I didn't end up buy anything. It's also an excellent place for people watching. And building watching, if you're into that. There's a strong punk and goth influence in the neighborhood and especially at the market, but not in an exclusive or disconcerting way at all. It's just a fun market with chatty, flirtatious salespeople and some of the craziest shoes I've ever seen in my life. Heels with zippers, buttons, and neon paint, boots in every shape, size and color. Maybe I should have taken pictures, but it wasn't the kind of place where I felt comfortable looking like a tourist. Not that I ever feel comfortable looking like a tourist, but sometimes its just more acceptable. This wasn't one of those times.

After Camden, we swung by a cupcake shop and then met some friends for a ride on the London Eye. And that was our day. Here are some pictures from the London Eye.

The view on the way up:

And the view on the way back down:

London continued

Sorry for the lack of posts lately, I've been either out of town or swamped with homework the last two weeks.

Anyway, back to London. Friday, I went to the London Zoo. Why travel all the way to London just to go to the zoo you ask? I asked myself the same question.

Reason 1: Opened in 1828, the Zoological Society of London's London Zoo is the oldest scientific zoo in the world.

Reason 2: The cost of ticket was subsidized by Notre Dame's London Program.

Reason 3: ... All my friends were going.

And so I went to zoo.

Highlights:

The walk there took us past the University of Westminster, formerly the Polytechnic of Central London or Regent Street Polytechnic, where Roger Waters, Rick Wright, and Nick Mason met as architecture students and formed the band that would later become Pink Floyd.

The walk also took us through Regent's Park, one of the Royal Parks of London. It was gorgeous. I saw a pink pram near some purple flowers and attempted to document this as subtly as possible, the results are as follows:

One we got to the zoo, one of my favorite exhibits was a large, inflatable tent that housed moths and butterflies. The entrance was a series of, for lack of a better word, drapes, very much like those of a car wash, except these were primarily plastic. The interior was very humid and full of flowers, small children, parents, moths, and butterflies. The moths and butterflies were everywhere, in the air, on the flowers, on the walls, it was very pretty.

I found this butterfly especially interesting because its wings were largely transparent:

And this moth, because it looked dead in person, but it wasn't, or so the sign next to it claimed:

My other favorite exhibit was the BUG HOUSE. It was pretty great. It also housed fish. And yet it was called the bug house. There was an ant display with ropes between various encaged ant colonies. Here are the ants, on the ropes, all out in the open, going about their business:

Look! Ants!

"before you go back to London town..."

And I still haven’t said a word about London.  Well, it was pretty much fantastic.  Isabel and I flew in the second Wednesday of spring break, so close to two weeks ago.  That went fast.  My friend Nick met us at our hostel, the Generator.  The hostel was fine, it was nice enough because it was being remodeled, but it was a little noisy at night because it sat above a nightclub and bar.  But it wasn’t too loud to sleep, so I’m not really going to complain.  It was also crawling with world-traveling hipsters which I will put in the 'pro' column to balance out the noise.  Anyway, Nick met us there and we walked around Soho and the West End for the day.  That night, our friend Mike made everyone pancakes for dinner, I was a fan.  Thursday we did some more walking around, and triumph of triumphs, I finally made it to the Globe Theater! 

 

For those who may recall, I was in London just over four years ago with the HGM and after a lovely two weeks in the British Isles we were getting ready for one of the final excursions, the Globe Theater.  As the precocious young nerd who took her grandfather’s series of Yale Shakespeare books off the shelves late at night to try and read Henry IV part II at 7 years old, I was pretty pumped.  Unfortunately, this day came on the heels of a day of inexplicable and unshakable hunger.  A multi-course Indian dinner at a restaurant near Covent Garden was quickly followed by cheap blueberry cheesecake from a little café stand, which was then followed by a Starbucks smoothie and a slice of Domino’s pizza from Piccadilly Circus, topped off by an uncountable number of chips and bagels later that night in the hotel.  Needless to say, I wasn’t feeling well the next morning but, I was determined to make it.  My stomach, however, was not.  I can't tell you which turnstile I hit just before I threw up on my teacher's shoes.  I can, however, say that I have had the distinct pleasure of getting a guided tour through the employee restrooms of the London Underground.  I was then escorted back to the hotel where I spent the day in bed and never made it to the Globe.  

That is, until now!

 

Yes, I finally made to the Globe, and I paid a pretty penny to get my guided tour, but goshdarnit, nothing was going to stop me this time.  I enjoyed it.  I took a lot of pictures.  I was the epitome of the English-major tourist, and I didn’t care.  I finally saw the Globe.

 

Then I went to the Tate Modern.  That was pretty cool too, and right next door!  I wandered through some rooms with art that didn’t make a lot of sense to me.  Oftentimes, I find looking at modern art is something like trying to speak a foreign language.  Except that I don't speak much modern art.  However, I wish I'd taken notes because after some frustrated wandering, I found this fantastic room where I just LOVED everything I saw.  In this one particular room I got the classic museum experience I haven’t had in a really long time.  I could just sit, stand, and stare at every piece in that room, examine them close up and far away and see something familiar and something novel.  I’d like to think it was a little more than fatigue and dehydration, but they made sense to me.  The first one drew me in because I turned a corner and WHAM, it was Los Angeles on a canvas.  Not in any conventional or obvious way, but I just recognized home, so I looked at the plaque and sure enough it was a collage created by an artist who lives and works in Los Angeles. I’m still upset that I didn’t write down the names and titles, but it’ll just have to rest a pleasant memory until I figure out how to find out what was hung in that part of the gallery.  None of the pieces were by the same artist, and they all looked really different, but they complimented and informed each other in a way I’d never seen before.  I wish I could describe it more carefully and more accurately, but each work would take more time and space than I have, so I hope you can take my word that it was pretty cool.  

More later.