I've done a few things...

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Hello All!

It's been about two weeks since I last wrote. You haven't missed out on much. Last time I wrote I had just gotten back from Edinburgh, and that was the last big thing I did until this past weekend when I went on a tour to Stonehenge, Salisbury Cathedral, and Bath. But first things first...

The weekend of Oct 25th: On Friday I went to the British Museum for the first time. It was amazing, there was so much stuff to see. I didn't know where to start so I wandered around the first floor starting with ancient sculpture. There was a large section with Egyptian sculpture, there were some tombs, some carvings, some giant heads, and most importantly the Rosetta Stone! I was really excited to see it, although, for some reason I had expected it to be bigger. Either way, it was really interesting. Although, I was listening to some guy explaining to his kids why it was important and he said it was Latin instead of Greek, and I started laughing, so I had to walk away.
Next to the Egyptian sculpture is a large section of Assyrian sculpture, mostly things used to decorate their palaces, it was wild. My favorite things were these large creatures (usually an animals body with a human head, often a bull or a lion) that they used in entryways because they had five legs! When you look from the front you see 2 legs standing straight under the head, and from the side there are four legs carved into the stone under the body. That was interesting.
After the Assyrian sculpture is the Greek and Roman sculpture (some of which I didn't get to explore until my 3rd visit - I'll explain in a moment). There are two large tombs taken from places that had Greek influence, although i don't think they were actually from Greece itself. There was also a giant hall dedicated to the Parthenon! Who needs Greece! No, I'm kidding, it wasn't as exciting as being in Greece, but it was interesting to see how much of it they had there. You could still see most of the carving that had been done on around the top edge and they had some of the sculptures from the tops also. Very exciting.
After exploring all that, I was eager to go upstairs and see more, but most of the stairways I passed were blocked off. So I wandered back into the Great Court to find a way upstairs. While there I found the rooms of "Enlightenment" which were amazing! It was all about the Enlightenment period in England and the collections of curiosities and the beginnings of "science." The walls were lined with bookshelves, filled not only with books but with all manner of shells, sculptures, just interesting things. And there were also displays of things too. You could spend a whole day there!
So, by the time I found the stairs I had already been there for 3+ hours and was ready to go home. I did want to go to an exhibit they were having on Emperor Hadrian, but it was sold out. I decided that I would come back on Sunday to see it and explore the museum more. I also hadn't brought my camera, because I didn't think you could take pictures, so I had to come back so I could photograph everything!

On Saturday, Maggi left for Leeds, so I called Megan to see what she was up to. We decided to get together for dinner. So, before dinner I went back to Hyde Park to take more pictures. It's such a relaxing place to walk around. It was a crisp fall day, just barely cloudy. (My favorite weather.) This time I checked a map before I left and spent most of my time in Hyde Park, but I did go back into Kensington Gardens to see some stuff that I had missed last time. I hope that it stays nice so that I can go back, I can't imagine that it's very nice in the winter since it doesn't snow here. (Oh, but if it did, Hyde Park would be so beautiful!)
After the park I met up with Megan and some of her friends and we got some Chinese take out for dinner and they told me about their trip to Italy, which sounded lovely. I also paid Megan back for tickets to Momma Mia, which we are going to see tomorrow! I'm so excited!

On Sunday I got up early to go to the museum, because it was the last day for the Hadrian Exhibit and I knew that it would be busy. I never imagined it would be as busy as it was - there were people everywhere! I got there an hour and a half after the museum opened and the tickets were already sold out! I tried to walk around, but there were just too many people, so I came home and spent a lazy day doing homework.

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So, as I said nothing else really happened besides class last week until the weekend, so I will fast forward to:
Halloween
Apparently Halloween isn't celebrated much here. It seems that people do get dressed up for parties, and do eat candy, but I don't think anyone trick-or-treats, which is sad (mostly because that means there aren't any candy sales here... I did miss those). So, I spent the day back at the British Museum, which is when I took all of the pictures you will see later. I took a lot of pictures. I also bought a guide book because there is no way I could ever remember what everything was. I spent about 4 hours there, and by the end my feet were dragging. I think if I hadn't gone back to photograph the things I had already seen, I would've made it through the whole museum, but as it is I missed a few things, like the African and North American exhibits. So, I may have to go back. But, I did get to see more of the Roman and Greek sculptures, which had been closed off last time.
I found the stairs upstairs and saw the Egyptian Mummies (it was weird, because the museum was fairly empty until I got to the mummies, then I was surrounded by people), I also saw more pre-Roman Italy and then more Roman stuff and also a lot of British artifacts. It was very interesting, and if you are ever in London I highly recommend it, I think it has been my favorite thing so far. Although the V&A was exciting too.

Halloween night Maggi and I ordered pizza from Pizza Hut (kind of lame, I know, but we heard that it was kind of an unsafe night to be out unless you are in a good group, and neither of us wanted to go with our flatmates). It was nice.

On Saturday we got up early and caught our tour bus to Stonehenge, Salisbury Cathedral, and Bath. We had a nice tour guide (I can't remember if his name was Micheal or Mitchell) and our group was fairly small, so that was nice. He talked about the stuff we were driving by on our way out of London and gave us some English history which was really interesting. I hadn't really expected that, I thought we were just taking the bus to the different places. But he was good, we got a lot of interesting information from him. On our way out of London it snowed for about 2 minutes and Maggi got really excited, she said she had never seen it actually snow before. Oh Texans...
Our first stop was Stonehenge which is quite a ride from London. It was a pretty chilly day and there were a lot of people out, but we managed to get some good pictures and had a good time. I was bummed though because they had an audio guide and I think it would have been really interesting to listen to, but it was really long! And there really isn't anything to do at Stonehenge except walk around out. There were 6 different points for the audio guide and each one was about 10 minutes long, and there just wasn't enough time to listen to the whole thing, so I barely listened to it at all. (It was the same at the Roman Baths, there were too many people there to just stand and listen to the audio guide and each one was very long, so I didn't learn much there either, which was kind of a bummer). Anyway, Stonehenge was really nice and I was excited to go, but it's one of those things that after you see it, you don't really feel like you need to go back. You did it, that's all. I'm trying to think of an example, and sadly the only thing I can think of is the Worlds Largest Ball of Twine, which I have seen twice actually, but I really don't need to go back. But, it was cool.
The next stop was Salisbury for the Salisbury Cathedral. I think this was my favorite part of the day because it was so beautiful and relaxing being in the Cathedral. There were a lot of tourists, but it's a Cathedral, so it was still peaceful. I had a lovely chat with two cute elderly men who work as guides there. One came up to me and while I was taking a picture of a tomb and said that it didn't have a body in it, but didn't elaborate. Then started asking about my camera, he said that he liked Sonys too. Then, on my way out to find Maggi (I had taken a little longer to get through it - so many pictures) another man started asking me about why I was in England and what I was doing there specifically. He told me about his recent visit to the States, he went to both the East and West Coasts. And he asked if I had ever been to Niagara Falls, I said I had, but not in 5 or so years (I guess it was actually about 8 years ago, but oh well). He said that wasn't bad, once in 21 years of life. He said that he hadn't been to Stonehenge in the past 25 years. He also asked if I had ever been to the Grand Canyon. He was talking about how different it is, since Americans think of long distances as 1000s of miles and the English think of long distances in terms of 10s-100s of miles. But he still didn't seem to realize that Niagara falls is about 1000 miles from Minnesota, so just getting there once is pretty good. But, anyway, he was cute and funny. And he was also hard of hearing so he was literally standing 2 inches away from my face, so that was kind of weird, but oh well.
And lastly we went to Bath to see the Roman Baths. That was pretty interesting. I wish we had stopped on the way there though, because it was so beautiful looking down on the town from the top of the hills (it's built on 7 hills, just like Rome). The Baths were interesting, but the water looked nasty. We could have gotten a free glass of the Baths water to drink, but we were too lazy to go get it. I also went to Bath Abby, it was nice, I do love churches.
It was overall, a very nice day out although it was cold and rainy.

Sunday was boring, but Monday was exciting. I spent almost the whole day at museums. I left for the Victoria & Albert Museum at 11 and stayed until 3. It was so neat there. It was a lot like the British Museum but it had different stuff, but kind of the same stuff. It was so beautiful, and building was much more interesting than the British Museum (besides the Great Hall). Look at the pictures, you'll understand.
After the V&A I was pretty tired, but I want to see as many museums as possible. So I was going to go to the National History Museum because it is next to the V&A, but I saw that they are having an exhibit on Darwin in a few weeks, so I decided to wait so that I can see that (I love Darwin).
So, instead of the History Museum I headed back into town to the National Gallery. (My intent was to go to both the National Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery, but I stayed too long at the first one, so I will have to go back.) I got distracted taking pictures around Trafalgar Square. It is a really nice place, but I don't understand why it is such a tourist location, there isn't really anything there. But, it is a nice plaza in front of the National Gallery.
The National Gallery was amazing, of I course love art museums, but this was so interesting. There were paintings from so many different artists from all sorts of time periods. I saw da Vinci, Botticelli, Rembrandt, Renoir, Monet, Manet, van Gogh, everyone who's anyone. Ha, no, but it was really impressive. And not only that, but building itself was so beautifully decorated. It was like being in the Buckingham Palace Gallery, only bigger and more exciting. You obviously can't touch the art, but you can get up really close to it or stand across a huge room and take it all in. It was amazing. I was so bummed that you can't take pictures it in.

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And that's really all I've been up to. Maggi and I went to a Guy Fawkes bonfire tonight, that was interesting. It was basically just like Village Fest only with a bonfire and really bad hamburgers. But it was interesting. If you don't know what Guy Fawkes day is, you should read about it here. You have to scroll to the bottom of the page, but it is a short little blurb about it (it was shorter than the wikipedia article, otherwise I would've linked to that). It's kind of a gruesome and weird holiday, but oh well, who doesn't love a good bonfire?

This month is going to be busy I am going to Amsterdam this weekend with Megan and her friends, next weekend Maggi and I are going to Dublin, the weekend after that me, Megan, Kristi (Megan's friend), and Maggi are all going to Greece, and the weekend after that Maggi and I are going to Paris and Brussels. I am super excited! But, that means I will have to try and get all my school work done during the week. I think I can handle it. But, I will try to write when I can to let you know about what I see on my international travels. I will at least post links to pictures!

And thank you to everyone who has written me letters and/or sent emails! I really appreciate it, and I miss all of you!

Night!

-Manon


And the most important part:
Hyde Park
British Museum
Stonehenge and Bath
Salisbury Cathedral
Victoria & Albert Museum
Trafalgar Square

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Comments

[Michele Jacobs]

Thank you for sharing...
Thank you for sharing your adventures and photos. It really makes me want to plan a trip! Sounds like you are having a wonderful time! I think it is so important to do these things when you have the chance.....I did some traveling at your age, went to Europe twice....and I still remember it being one of the most exciting things I have ever experienced.