Tuesday
We went on a boat ride down the Thames to Greenwich. We saw plenty of great historic buildings but not so many great contemporary ones.
Greenwich has impressive historic buildings that are laid out brilliantly that sit on the waterfront. The buildings lie on the base of a hill that has the observatory on its summit. This is where the Greenwich meantime was developed. We learned about camera obscura and other dorky astronomical concepts.
Afterwards we walked under the river through a foot tunnel and checked out Canary Wharf. It’s a large financial district east of the city that is full of large, new skyscrapers. It has the largest building in London Metropolis, the Canada tower. Its built on three levels, similar to La Defense and even has a large rectangular building in the center. There are canals that go throughout the old docklands and are lined with pedestrian walkways. We found a great pizza place right off the canal after we discovered the tube closed down temporarily.
As we headed back to hostel, I started to feel sick. I went to sleep early and missed out on our own pub-crawl.
Wednesday
We were greeted with lousy, British weather on Wednesday morning. I was well on my way to being sick so I was not too thrilled to see this. We headed down to St. Paul’s and accepted that there wouldn’t be a better day to have good weather to see a view of the city. We climbed up the hundreds of stairs to see the various summits both inside and outside of the cathedral. The inside of the cathedral was outstanding. It has the second largest dome in the world only behind St. Peter’s in Rome. The cathedral was designed by Christopher Wren in 1666 ten days after the fire of London burned down the existing one. He did a phenomenal job for only taking ten days to design it. I felt lousy by the time we reached the top but the views were so spectacular that it didn’t really hit me until we were on our way to our next stop.
We didn’t do too much the rest of the day. We went into it knowing it was going to be a half a day, which I was happy about. We went to Liverpool station but decided to take the long, scenic route in the cold rain walking at full-DuPuy pace. We passed the Gherkin, the funny looking, upside down cone building built by Norman Foster. The ground level has large triangles penetrating that bottom that circle the building. I didn’t realize that it had a circular base but I guess I never thought about the ground level much before. We got lost getting to the train station from there and for some reason decided to stay outside once we reached it. I bought a phone while people ate and tried to stay in some kind of warmth.
My health was fading as the day progressed and did not have much energy to go through the rest of the day’s activities. DuPuy conned us into thinking we were going to end early but we kept on doing more things. We visited the Portrait Gallery and spent about an hour looking through the galleries. He realized that we spent more time than anticipated out and about and treated us to the tea and biscuits on the top level of the museum. It was my first teatime but hopefully not the last. It was quite good.
Teatime gave me time to revive and I chose to go out with the group to see Harrods after class. I forgot how over the top it was from when I visited when I was younger. Within seconds of entering, we were told to hold our backpacks in hand, not the most pleasant greeting. A few minutes later we were scolded for walking together in a group. I left there with Emma soon after. I hated its elitism.
Once again I missed pub time and stayed in to read. I didn’t mind too much. Before, Emma and I had a nice dinner at a pasta house that made amazing penne Napolitano that was down the road from our hostel. It was a good recovery night.
Thursday
Thursday was the first day we went north on the tube. We visited Arsenal Stadium and a contemporary Liebskind student center at a London university. Arsenal Stadium was very impressive. They inserted an enormous stadium in dense urban fabric. The most amazing thing about it is that it has no parking; they are dependent completely on public transportation. We might try to get tickets to go to a game. We have already seen how much of a grip ‘football’, as they say, has on their culture. Pubs are packed when a local game is on. We just bought our first football today to play.
We wandered over to the Daniel Liebskind student center. It’s a funky deconstructive building that is in the camp as Gehry’s and Zaha Hadid’s buildings. It is a toned down version of his Toronto museum. The building isn’t accessible to the public but DuPuy tried to charm his way in and might have gotten us a chance to go inside when we go back to London.
Our next stop was on the complete opposite side of the architecture spectrum: the very historical, very creative/innovative Sir John Soane’s museum. Sir John Soane was a prominent architect and art collector of his time and decorated his house in an incredibly eclectic way. He bought three townhouses on a square in a wealthy part of town and connected all three together. The section of the house is phenomenal. He makes a ton of small spaces and periodically open it two or three stories. The best room is in the back where he connects all three back rooms together, but each have a separate roof structure. A written description could not do it justice, thankfully we drew a ton and took a bunch of pictures. This visit is definitely a highlight as of now.
I was still sick and manage to blow through three packs of tissues that I bought that morning. We headed over the classical Tate Britain. They had a beautiful Turner exhibit. Once again I was unimpressed with the contemporary art. I also was unimpressed with the contemporary addition done by James Sterling. I haven’t seem much contemporary architecture to write home about.
We were let out early again and took advantage of a two for one discount at Wagamama that our London pass provided us. Wagamama gave us another delicious meal. I had some type of spicy, vegetabl-y soup that cleared my nasal passages right up. I’m a fan of the restaurant altogether.
I went out for a little bit in order to celebrate our last night in London to the bar next to our hostel. The beer is fairly cheap, but the food is the better deal. We had a good time. Zach, Chris, Justin, Emma and Jesse went out later to whiskey night but somehow missed out the big dollar-shot discount. I heard all about the next day. I, on the hand, stayed in and packed. Most night I went bed early. I was eagerly anticipating going to Kiplin hall.
No comments:
Post a Comment