St. Paul's, Greenwich, and Portobello Road

Here's a picture of the BYU Centre I forgot to put on last week! 

One of the highlights of the week was taking a tour of St. Paul’s Cathedral. It’s enormous and beautiful, and so much brighter and happier than some of the other cathedrals I’ve been in! Our tour included hiking up the 528 steps to the top of the dome, accomplished in three sections. When you get to the top of the first section, you’re in a balcony on the inside of the dome, around the bottom, called the “Whispering Gallery.” Someone can walk all the way to the other side of the dome and whisper something to you and you can hear them perfectly! The next two sections included climbing up tiny, twisting little stairs and narrow corridors crammed with people, but it was totally worth it! The view from the top was incredible.

Step's of St. Paul's ("Feed the Birds"!)

View from the top

Before we got to London, a few girls invited anyone who wanted to go to go see the ballet Cinderella at the Royal Opera Theatre. I’ve had my ticket for a while, so it was fun to finally be able to go! Our tickets were almost in the back, so I had no idea how well we’d be able to see, but they actually turned out to be pretty good seats! And the ballet was so good – the stepsisters, played by men, were so funny.

On Wednesday our group took a river boat down the Thames to Greenwich to visit the National Maritime Museum and the Prime Meridian. Here’s a secret – TECHNICALLY we didn’t actually get to see the Prime Meridian. Our professors set us free as soon as we got to Greenwich, and when we hiked up the hill to the Prime Meridian museum, we found out it would cost ten pounds to get in. That’s almost $20 to see a line on the ground. We were able to see through the fence, though, and you could see exactly where the line would cross on the path, so we stood on it and took a picture. It counts! 

 Standing on the Prime Meridian :)

One of our destinations this week included walking over Millennium Bridge. This will be exciting only to my fellow Harry Potter maniacs. It’s the bridge destroyed by the Death Eaters in the movie Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince!

One night the group went to a Baroque Orchestra concert at the St. Martin-in-the-fields chapel in Trafalgar Square. We’re so cultural! I loved it because they played a song I spent months and months on, Vivaldi’s “Summer,” and I could really appreciate how they good they were. They did a much better job with it than I did :)

This week’s Fine Art’s assignment included going to the Victoria and Albert Museum, the world’s largest decorative arts museum. It’s this huge museum that has pieces from every time period all over the world. It has rooms full of sculptures, ironwork, silver, jewelry, architecture, paintings, glass, and costumes. Honestly, its enormity is completely overwhelming – I was there for three hours and was power walking through by the end. But there were some really cool things! The theatre costume section was my favorite. 

Saturday is officially market day, and this Saturday we went to the Portobello Road Market. This is one of London’s most famous markets, and you may recognize it as the market in the movie Notting Hill. It’s huge – we walked down for almost two hours and didn’t even get to the end. There are so many different things! They have your typical flea market and souvenir stuff, but also a whole section of antiques. And again, the food was amazing. They had all the booths with fresh fruits, vegetables, and breads. There was a store I loved called The Hummingbird Bakery that had the most beautiful cupcakes!

We’ve slowed down the pace a little bit from last week’s non-stop fun. Part of it is because everyone was starting to get just a little worn out! And we also have to spend an occasional night doing homework. But we still do incredible amounts of activities every day, it takes me about ten seconds to fall asleep at night!

Taking advantage of a 20 minute break

Even though doing homework is usually the last thing I feel like doing, I still absolutely love my classes! My professors are amazing, and so easy to talk to. Tonight, Professor Crowe had "cookies and conversation" and a group of us sat and talked to them for over an hour! Plus there are so many smart people in this group, I'm learning so much them. And on Friday I went and did homework on a bench in Hyde Park – that definitely makes homework easier :).