Puddles and St. Paul's

February 23, 2010

Another rainy day in London… I will never again fret over the few days of downpour Madison gets during the semester. Walking across campus with a wet backpack and jeans is nothing compared to traipsing across this city in soaked socks, torrential winds, and freezing rain. And the weather isn’t even the worst part! It’s the huge puddles of muddy street water you accidentally step in, the person that hits you in the face with their umbrella, or the bus that drives into a huge puddle and splashes you with a wall of water… that has actually happened a few times. I swear, the taxis do it on purpose. Ah, rainy days! But what would London be without the endless overcast and misty rain? It just wouldn’t be London. I’m adjusting to the rain. I love London so much, that I refuse to acknowledge that it has any faults, horrible weather included.

It wasn’t all rain and gloom these past few days. There was a bit of dry, sunny weather and even a few stars! But more on that later. On Sunday morning, Viv, Hal and I headed out for one of our always interesting walking adventures across London. They are fast becoming my favorite way to spend free time in this city. Just exploring and walking everywhere. It’s all so accessible. Something new and exciting is always just a few blocks away. We took the tube to Tower Hill and crossed Tower Bridge for the first time. We have almost been here for two months and I finally made it to the bridge that is so iconic to London. And it was huge! Everything was just big and substantial and in your face. No flimsy wire holding this thing up. Big, steel bands painted bright blue swept across the bridge, holding it together. We got a bunch of pictures and it was great.

After, we headed down to the Design Museum! I’ve been really excited for this visit, but it turned out to be a bit underwhelming. There were only two galleries and one was dedicated to an industrial designer that reminded me of my dreaded graphic design teacher from last semester… I got out of there fast. The lower gallery housed the British Design Award winners of all categories. They had so much cool stuff here, and we really enjoyed this show. There was this huge palette of about 100 mini plastic penguins that turned and followed you around as you walked by. And they had really creepy eyes. Ugh, so freaky. There was so much stuff there, I couldn’t describe it all. We hung out for a while, checked out the gift shop, and then headed out into the gloom.

Next was the Fashion and Textile Museum. Another let down… My Benson’s Map and Guide only gave these museums one star. Guess we should listen to Benson from now on. He knows what he is talking about apparently. After that bust, we headed toward the Thames and Hay’s Galleria, which is this huge arcade with shops and restaurants. They really love glass-ceiling arcades in London. You get to enjoy the outdoors without the rain and wind! Perfect! We sat down for a coffee, recharged, and plotted the rest of our excursion.

We hit up another famous bridge next. Heading north over the Thames, we crossed London Bridge! I’m not sure if I mentioned this before, but funnily, the original London Bridge was bought by a billionaire from Arizona. He dismantled it and shipped it out to the desert as a tourist attraction. They built a new one a year later… bizarre, huh? Anyway, we crossed the New London Bridge and found the monument to the Great Fire of 1666 on the other side. The Fire burned down three-fourths of the city, but only like 12 people died or something like that! The monument is this huge tower you can climb, built right on the site of the origin of the fire (an old bakery).

Ah, and the adventure continues… we traveled to the Mansion House, where the mayor of the city of London lives, the Royal Exchange Building, and the Bank of England. We kept wondering until we stumbled upon St. Paul’s. I guess you can’t really stumble upon that church because it is so massive, but we found it and were blown away once again. That thing is so impressive. The second largest dome in the world! It puts all other churches to shame. I hope to go inside when Mom and Grandma come to visit. I’m just itching to see the stained glass.

After St. Paul’s, we trekked across Temple once again and ended up at Somerset House, again, hoping to see a few celebrities or designers hanging out before a show for London Fashion Week. The place was dead! We were a bit confused and didn’t really know what was going on. We left, after taking a few pictures, of course. And we noticed the area was pretty crowded, just not around Somerset House. We followed the crowd and they led to the Royal Opera House. The BAFTA'S! The British version of the Academy Awards. So cool. We knew it was going on, but we thought we had missed the red carpet or it would be too crazy so we wouldn’t bother. It was crazy. Madness! But we weren’t too late for the red carpet. We saw the stars! Not really, we saw where they were going to be walking… in about three hours. And we didn’t want to stick around that long. So we decided to go home and watch on TV because we didn’t have that great of a spot anyway. On our way to the tube, we did see that girl from Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights… can’t remember her name, but her dress was really cute. And we saw Matthew Goode from Leap Year. We is so tall. And gorgeous!

The night didn’t get much better than that. We did homework and got ready for school the next day.

Monday, Monday… BILLY ELLIOT!!!! Finally! I’ve wanted to go to this musical soooo badly since we got here and we finally went for a pound trip with our program. I laughed, I almost cried, and I sat on my feet the entire time because I was in the very back behind a super tall guy… But nothing could have stopped me from enjoying that performance. It was so British! Aww, I just loved it. And, of course, I had to watch the movie as soon as I got home. I’m only ten minutes in because I fell asleep, but I’m going to finish it before spring break! Before Billy Elliot I had class. Nothing exciting to talk about there. And the same for today. My art history class was really boring. I think I might just be distracted by the upcoming holiday. Spring Break!!! In France! I can’t wait!

I’ll try to stop in before we leave! Have a good week!

Love,
Kelly