Arriving in an English-speaking country is without a doubt the most uncomfortable thing I’ve done all semester. I instinctively tried to talk to customs officers and cab drivers in Spanish, and all it got me was a lot of weird looks, because obviously English people speak English. (Also, I'm calling these posts "England" and not "United Kingdom" because I didn't get a chance to visit Scotland, Wales, or Northern Ireland.)
I got an Airbnb in Tottenham (sorry again Mom and Dad, hotels are expensive), a cute little apartment not far from the Tottenham Hale Station. It’s quite convenient being near a Tube stop since I’ve been doing a heck of a lot of Tubing. Not the fun getting-pulled-behind-a-boat kind, although yesterday I did meet a nice older couple on the Tube who were curious about my ukulele and told me all about a violin maker’s exhibition they’d just been to, so that was fun.
I started off my day today at about 8:00 am because I’m trying to get back onto my standard early-rising American schedule. I went for breakfast in a coffee shop before heading to the Tower of London, one of the places I’ve most been looking forward to visiting. It was rainy and cold all day, but as a history buff I had an amazing time regardless. I spent about three hours at the Tower, walking the outer walls, exploring the Armoury, ogling at Crown Jewels, and trying and failing to take a selfie with one of the infamous ravens. I saw the Traitor’s Gate, where Anne Boleyn was brought when she was imprisoned, as well as a monument on the site of the old beheading block where she, Lady Jane Grey, and several other favorite historical figures of mine lost their heads. I also walked through the personal chambers of King Edward IV, explored the luxurious prison quarters of Sir Walter Raleigh, and saw the personal jousting armor of King Charles II, who, judging by the shape of the armor, had remarkably skinny legs for such a stocky man.
After several hours and seeing literally everything there is to see at the Tower of London, I headed down along the Thames to Shakespeare’s Globe Theater. If there’s one thing you should know about me, it’s that I’m a Shakespeare fanatic. I named this blog after a quote from one of his plays, for heaven’s sake. So when I was lucky enough to be on a tour that was heading into the theater right in the middle of a rehearsal for tomorrow night’s opening performance of “As You Like It’, I just about died. Even though the original building burned down a few centuries ago, the modern Globe is built and run with as much historical accuracy as possible, and seeing real Shakespearean actors rehearsing a real Shakespearean play in Shakespeare’s own theater was a dream come true.
Eventually the tour ended and I decided that I much as I would like to, trying to sneak back in to watch more of the rehearsal would probably incur some undesired consequences, so I trekked across the Millennium Bridge in the pouring rain (is it ever sunny in London?) and up past St. Paul’s Cathedral to the British Museum. After sufficiently fan-girling at the Rosetta Stone and generally all of the Ancient Egyptian wing, I had a great time wandering the Parthenon and Sutton Hoo exhibits. I even spotted the Standard of Ur, which I wrote an extensive research paper on for my art history class last year, although I must admit I was a little underwhelmed by that particular piece.
My inner nerd — oh who am I kidding, I’m an outer nerd. It’s so obvious. Anyway, my proud outer nerd self spent about two and a half hours soaking in the joys of BM before I realized I was actually rather tired and hungry and had been out and about for roughly 8 hours. On my way to the Tube I stopped at Sainsbury’s for wheat pitas and peanut butter and jelly and made my way back to Tottenham. As I mentioned earlier, it was cold and rainy all day, so by the time I made it back to the apartment I strongly resembled a wharf rat. After bathing off the wharf rat and managing to look rather human again, I plunked down for a quiet evening of eating PB&J in bed, blogging, watching Netflix, and being the poster child of my generation.