In Which We Speak American...

At this point I'm about halfway through my trip to London with my dad, and am now able to start stories with the following:

I remember this one time in England when I was having a Guinness in a 700 year old pub and....
So this time I attended a play at the Globe and...
I remember this one time I was having afternoon tea at the Tate Modern and...

and so forth. In other words, were having a fabulous time.

London has so many absolute must-sees, it's hard to fit them all in on one trip, and even harder to adequately describe each of them so I'll just stick to a few of the sites we saw that either made me think or exceeded my expectations.

Number One: The Houses of Parliament
First of all, you aren't allowed to take pictures in the majority of it, so I don't have illustrations of the decorations on the inside, but believe me, they were over the top. The current Houses of Parliament were built, for the most part in the late 1800s after a fire burned down the building before that, and were built specifically for Queen Victoria, so there are a lot of portraits and other references to her in the decor. Beyond the ornamentation, which was beautiful, the building gave off, in my opinion, a rather condescending air. Maybe it's just American egalitarianism, but I can easily see how our Founding Fathers tired of all the pomp and circumstance surrounding the tradition of British governance, especially when there is still a House of Lords that is not elected, but rather selected from prominent members of the House of Commons, or other prominent members of society. Not to say that's actually the feel when the ministers are actually governing, but  I do enjoy being able to feel superior about our form of government.

A juxtaposition of old and new

Number Two: The British Museum 

This was a fabulous stop, I adore museums and could have spent days in there. In fact, I spent about an hour in the first hall, before Dad reminded me, that there was another 60 or so rooms to see and we should probably move on. The first hall happened to be a hall of objects from Egypt, and as I'm sure anyone who took Who Owns the Past? with me last year immediate thinks, like I did, 'LOOTING? SHOULD BRITAIN OWN THEM? DOES ANYONE HAVE THE RIGHT TO OWN A BODY(MUMMY)?' At least that's what I was thinking, not only for the Egyptian artifacts, but also the Assyrian wall freezes (my favorites), the ELGIN MARBLES, and many, many other things. This didn't prevent me from greatly admiring everything though, as I said, we spent a very long time there, and I would definitely go back again. It is however something to thing about though, whether the dead really wanted to end up on display in a foreign country. 

Another example of "Jenny always finds something horse related everywhere"

The Rosetta Stone

Number Three: The Globe Theater

Dad and I also went to the reconstructed Globe Theater to see Doctor Faustus which, while not a Shakespearean play but rather by his contemporary Christopher Marlowe, and very good. The theater was reconstructed as it would have appeared back in Shakespeare's day, and the thing that I found really cool about it, was that the interior was very well decorated. The walls and pillars were intricately painted, as were the curtains. I was expecting something a lot plainer, and was pleasantly surprised about how pretty it was. Dad and I splurged and rented cushions for our seats, which were definitely appreciated after a day walking around the British Museum. It was an incredible experience, and would highly recommend it for anyone taking a trip to London. 

Some of the painting in the Globe

Whew, that's all I can type for now, Dad and I have also been to other cool places like Westminster Abbey and Stonehenge, and were off to Buckingham and the Tower of London tomorrow so stay tuned for more pictures!