London-second day

1/24/10
London, U. K.
Walking tour and Museum
Picture: Me, Robert, Lion and Becca.

Casie:
London is the calmest city I have visited so far even though there are a lot of people. There are people of all kinds of cultures and it is so cool. Imagine 3 shops right next door to each other consisting of a Gelateria café, Maharaja Indian cuisine, and American fried chicken. Isn’t that crazy? I never would have thought that about London.

We had a tour today with our professor and looked at some main sites in the more known areas of London such as Trafalgar square.

Trafalgar Square:
This square was the main site of the cinema where they have movie premiers as well as plenty of ticket booths to purchase tickets for musicals and plays.
White Hall Street: center of government and historical center
Parliament square: Westminster’s Abbey, Big Ben, London Bridge and statues of important figures such as Churchill and our very own Abe Lincoln.

There was a WW2 memorial for women. Hunt talked about how the topic of women in WW2 is becoming a more important subject and I am glad for that. Close by stood another memorial, Cenotaph. It stands in remembrance of November 11, Armistice day. Schools still have a 3-minute silence time for that day to remember the date.
I think that is important and awesome that schools still celebrate that in history.

My favorite moments:
I have very many but mainly I loved looking at the sties, buildings, and people. Seeing London is very much like seeing Rome for me. Everywhere you look, it is so beautiful and my eyes have tried to take everything in. I had fun climbing the huge granite stone lions with my friends at Trafalgar Square.

Then we went to the Churchill museum. We got to see his war room chambers. They had rooms for war planning and others for resting chambers so workers could stay late at night and work instead of having to commute. Many described Churchill as a straightforward man and sometimes very short but very loyal and committed to his staff.

My favorite room as well as Becca’s is the MAP ROOM! It is so cool. I felt like I was in on the action planning during the war. It was interesting to see how detailed their maps were. They had graphs made of height, weight and attacks of each bomb and weapons used.

Later on we went for lunch at the pub and I am definitely hooked on the Strongbow cider. It’s ridiculously good! Also, I had the classic fish and chips. Again so very good!
Then we went to purchase tickets for my very first show in London
drumrollllll pleaseeeee…for WICKED! I get to see WICKED with my B!

Cheers friends.

Becca:
Walking tour today of the central city. I love this section of town…so regal. The monuments and type of architecture make me think of DC a little bit. Makes sense that I would love it. Casie already detailed what exactly we saw, and there is only so many times that you want to read that (haha), so I will talk about my favorite part of today….the Churchill War Rooms.

I had already visited these last year when I was in London for JanTerm, and it was one of my favorite things that I did, so I was quite excited to come back and see them again. The audio guide was very informative in detailing the purpose of each room and giving personal accounts from Churchill’s employees and contacts. It was really interesting to see the actual maps that British military officers wrote on and planned strategies for the Allied forces. There was an original Hitler “graffiti” on the conference room map. Pretty cool to see. The best room ever – the Map Room. There were maps and maps and more maps all over the walls with so many different colored pushpins in them marking significant places on the warfront. When I grow up and have my own home, I will have a map and globe room. I’m so pumped. I took a ton of pictures of Churchill’s private room…a bed, desk, and walls covered with maps. Sounds perfect to me.

The rest of the afternoon was devoted to just experiencing London – buying West End tickets to Wicked, eating gelato in an Italian gelateria, and going to a service at Westminster Abbey (one of my favorite places in the entire world). Being in that place is incredibly moving for me, and I was so blessed to be able to see it again, get renewed again. Imperial War Museum and Wicked tomorrow.