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So so much to tell, and probably not quite enough time to tell it in so I’ll have to sum up a bit. Two weekends ago was our trip to the Courtauld institute to see the Impressionist greats. It’s a very small place and there were hardly any people there so when we came to the entrance I really just wasn’t expecting much. Fortunately, I couldn’t have been more wrong. They had arguably the most important works ever painted by Renoir, Cézanne, Gauguin, Cassatt, and even Manet, as well as incredibly important works by Toulouse-Lautrec, Morisot, Pissarro and Monet. There’s something insanely inspiring about standing in front of a painting that you’ve contemplated for years, and that was absolutely my experience standing in front of Cézanne’s portraits, which are painted in an very thought out manner which I’ve always strived to accomplish. On a funnier note, they also had one tiny Henri Rousseau painting hiding in the corner… This past semester in Guelph, my cumulative research essay in my ‘Images’ seminar was entirely based on Henri Rousseau’s body of work… and how if I were ever given the chance I would destroy all of it by painting over it so that
no one would ever know that it had existed. SO- you can imaging the restraint I had to employ not to go ahead with my plan while it was standing there right in front of me. In the end, I decided it was going to have to be justice enough that it was hidden away in a corner partly obstructed by the doorway. Or maybe I’m just all talk.
After the gallery we rushed over to the British Museum to catch up with our Classics field study. Our prof Mike Hughes took us around Iron Age and Romano-Britain artefacts and then took a small group of us for tea. He’s an incredibly interesting old archaeologist and is actually responsible for a lot of the discoveries in the British museum so it was so much fun to pick his brain - although slightly hard at times because he’s incredibly old fashioned and turns out to be the most sexist man I’ve even met (yes - even more than the golfers I work for!). Nevertheless, it was great fun. Just before heading back to the bus, Katie and I took a quick run around a few of the exhibits to see the
Portland vase, the Rosetta stone, and a few Roman busts that I’d studied in Roman Art and Urbanism this past semester - I got a quick photo shot with emperor Trajan, and I think we make quite the cute couple!
Really - this isn’t even the highlight so far - I thought it was at the time but the next weekend was even better.
Katie, Hilary W, Sarah and I decided we wanted to do some London exploring on our own time so we booked a VERY cheap hostel (£9,50!!) around the Notting Hill area for Thursday night. After our class on Thursday we headed to Polegate Station to catch the train to London. On our previous trips to London we’d taken coaches with the castle and I’d thought the views were just gorgeous but the train upstaged the highway by far. Which I guess I should have expected considering the difference between the train and a car on the trip from Guelph and Ottawa.
Once we got to London we bought our Oyster cards for the tube and headed to our hostel. Torquay House was INCREDIBLY sketchy - it was under an overpass, in a definite ghetto, and attached
hyde park
im trying to blend in to my surroundings - but i dont think it works with my where's waldo shirt to a gas station - guess that explains the price. Oh well, it was just a place to sleep. We went out for dinner and got the most AMAZING Indian food I’ve even eaten. The caf at Herstmonceux doesn’t really cater to vegetarians - or anyone who doesn’t want to eat purely fried food for every meal - so I would have been to eat anything that half resembled food, but this just blew me away. After eating much too much we all walked back to Torquay hunched over to support our curry-filled bellies.
After a long digestion period we got dressed for our night on the town. We’ve all become very used to just skipping over to the castle pub in whatever we’ve been wearing all day so it was a lot of fun to be getting excited and dressing to the nines for fancy Piccadilly. We may have gotten a little carried away with this though because once we got to Piccadilly Circus (after a lot of touristy photos on the tube) and had our first drinks at The Duke of Argyle, it was already last call. I suppose we were in the Canadian mentality of getting to
the bar at around 11 30 and not getting home until sunrise - but unfortunately since pubs close at 11, we were out of luck. That was alright though because we just continued touring around town and eventually found a club with no cover which suited us.
In the morning we got up early to visit Hyde park before we met Elyse, Maria and Hilary G who had come in with a very early field study. We walked around Tate Modern - which was amazing if you love modern art, and very boring if you don’t. Next we walked to St. Paul’s Cathedral where Katie and Sarah broke off from us to climb up to the top of the dome, and the rest of us continued walking to Covent Garden. On our walk we passed by St Clement Danes which was built before William the Conqueror in 1066, and still has damage remaining from the Blitz; Australia House, which was used as the building for Gringotts Bank in Harry Potter; and Drury lane, where the muffin min lives! Covent garden was a lot of fun, and I actually got my first tourist and souvenir shopping done there!
After this long
and amazing weekend we caught one of the field studies buses home from Canary Wharf, which is the financial district and is very POSH.
Amazingly enough, this only brings me to Friday, but I’m quite tired of typing and don’t want to bore you either so I’ll sum up very quickly.
On Saturday I had a field study to the Portchester Castle in Hampshire and then to the Roman Palace of Fishbourne. Fishbourne was really amazing - they’ve uncovered 18 mosaics one of which, the Cupid astride a Dolphin, is almost entirely intact. I’ve decided that my next big adventure should be to some archaeological dig in Italy. I talked to Mike Hughes about it and he said that he could probably find me a paying job somewhere - which is obviously a bonus!
On Sunday I had a field study to Eastbourne which is just down the road from the castle. We toured a famous shop, Past Times, and now I’m meant to write a paper on it’s significance to British identity. I don’t think I really understood it because I was occupied shifting through Beatles paraphernalia, so that’ll be quite a stretch. We had quite a bit of
free time to explore before going back to the castle so a few of us went to Primark. I think it’s suppose to be a Walmart equivalent but they had some great deals so I bought a few pairs of much needed jeans (the dryers here don’t shrink jeans like they’re suppose to so I’ve been swimming in mine for a few weeks).
After we got home, there was sleep, and sleep, and sleep.
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Brittany
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Hahaha Trajan! Yes! That is so cool. Strange that no one stopped you for HUGGING a bust. Also strange that this prof guy would not show you the Rosetta stone- that you had to sneak off to see it. Sounds like you have been the busy traveller. Keep up the good bragging, I mean blogging lol.