Sunny Days in Londontown

Hello all,

I figured I should try to get one last post in before my spring break adventures begin--more about that later. As those of you who know my parents have probably already heard, I spent last week in London with them during my mom's spring break. I may have skipped a few classes, but it was definitely worth it! We did a lot, so I can't talk about everything, but here are the highlights.

Best (and possibly only) free thing to do in London--attend Evensong at Westminster Abbey. It's a beautiful Anglican service of prayer and singing, and the boys'/men's choir is phenomenal. You get into the abbey free (though you don't have much time to look around--it's worth paying for a sightseeing visit too) and you can sit in the beautiful old choir stalls by the main altar--where monks and royalty have been sitting for centuries! We went to the service Saturday afternoon as something low-key that wouldn't be ruined by jet-lag, and it was a really fun experience. Oh, and I forgot to mention my favorite thing--we got to sing the last hymn accompanied by the organ!

The "high" point of any London visit: climbing the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral (pun courtesy of my father...). First of all, St. Paul's is beautiful--it was designed by the only British architect with any sense of taste, Christopher Wren. It makes Westminster Abbey and any other Gothic monstrosity look pretty tacky in comparison. The sheer size of St. Paul's is impressive, and the details of the building are stunning. I love that there isn't much stained glass--the clear windows let so much natural light in. We decided to be brave and climb the 400-something steps to the top of the dome, and were rewarded not just with a spectacular view of London, but the chance to look down through the oculus of the dome to the center of the cathedral floor--it was a long way down! It's an amazing building. Too bad there weren't more like it...

The Museum of Things Stolen from Their Rightful Owners by Self-Important Imperialists Who Should Give Them Back: aka the British Museum. This was a visit I'd been looking forward to for awhile, and it lived up to my expectations. But it also made me do a 180 as far as my opinion on where important pieces like, say, the Elgin Marbles (surviving statues from the Parthenon) should be on display. Walking into a cool, almost clinical marble gallery lined with marble statues after an entire corridor lined with other marble statues, admiring them for a few minutes, and then walking out into the display on Egypt and not giving Greece a second thought is NOT a good way to see some of the most important remnants of THE most iconic Greek building ever constructed. How different would it be if you walked down from the top of the Acropolis itself, through sunny streets that the ancient Greeks once walked themselves, into a museum dedicated exclusively to the amazing finds from the Acropolis, up the stairs and into a glass-walled gallery, aligned with the Parthenon, which can be seen just to the right from every corner of the room, and THERE were the statues that once graced Athena's temple! That's how something with that kind of cultural and historical significance should be displayed, not lined up neatly in a room next to hundreds of other rooms with equally important artifacts. I understand the many ramifications not just for the British Museum but for museums everywhere if they were to start returning artifacts to their homelands, but it's a shame that they can't be returned on loan or something so that they can be appreciated properly in Greece.

So that's my rant about the British Museum...went a little longer than I anticipated! It was pretty cool to see the Rosetta Stone (which, to be consistent, would have more impact in Cairo) and recognize Greek words (yes, I looked at the Greek more than the hieroglyphics. Deal with it). It honestly got kind of bewildering after awhile, being surrounded by so much history, but it was overwhelming in a good way. It's like the Louvre--I need a month to see it properly, and even then I'll feel rushed. But it was cool to see the things we did.

Another highlight was Shakespeare's Globe. I would NOT want to see a show there--the benches were uncomfortable even for ten minutes!--but it was cool to see the reconstruction and hear the spiel about how the Globe worked way back in Shakespeare's day.

Oh, and the shiniest things in London: the Crown Jewels. SO PRETTY. The kind of hilarious part of the exhibit, though, was all the crowns that had just been reduced to skeletons with empty holders for jewels because the jewels had been "recycled" in another crown! It was pretty entertaining. Sadly, no reasonably priced replicas of the real things were anywhere to be found, or I would have come home with nothing but shiny stuff in my suitcase...

The Tower of London itself was pretty amazing too, though creepy as only a former prison and execution ground can be. We found the tower where many prisoners were kept, possibly including Anne Boleyn, and even though I'd read that this was the case, it was still a horrifying realization that the window of that room looked out at the spot where executions took place (now covered by a lovely memorial). That's worse than torture--watching other beheadings take places as you wait for your own. See why I found it creepy? The history of the place was pretty amazing though, so I definitely enjoyed it.

Best food in London: High Tea at the Kensington Palace Orangery. SO GOOD. Mom and I went Tuesday afternoon while Dad was at the Maritime Museum, and it was just this amazing tower of plates of pastries, starting with an assortment of cute little finger sandwiches, then a warm orange scone with a pot of cream and jam, then an eclair, then a tart...it was amazing. Overpriced, naturally, but worth it for the experience. High Tea is now my new favorite meal...

At the other end of the spectrum, my dad discovered a newfound love of fish and chips. It was good, the first time. Even the second time. By the third time, well... ;) At least he found something he liked!

The last ugly building we visited was the British Library. After the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin, it was kind of anticlimactic to be honest. No papyri with the gospels on them. Sad. But their collection of Shakespeare (and Marlowe!) was cool, and they had some of Da Vinci's notebooks which were amazing. Unfortunately, there was a "book club" making a nuisance of themselves and standing in front of exhibits without even talking about them, which started to get on my nerves. I wanted to see them! I eventually got to see everything, so it worked out.

Then it was back to good old St. Andrews and lovely Scottish rain. London was sunny, against all odds--apparently my mother decided to make up for the hurricane she brought with her last visit to the British Isles and bring good weather this time! I'm hoping it's still there, since I'm headed back to London this weekend for part of my spring break trip.

My spring break trip is, by the way, the following: York, London, Lyon, Avignon, Nice, Milan, Venice, Florence, Pisa, Rome, Naples, Pompeii. In 16 days. Any suggestions from those of you who've been to France or Italy would be welcome!

I'll try to post London pictures before leaving on Friday, but no guarantees. I still have this thing called...oh what's it called...right, homework, that's it. I should probably do that sometime. But I'll add pictures when I can.

A bientot!

~L

Drab, dreary Dublin....

Hello all,

Well, Dublin really wasn't drab and dreary, at least to those of us who have no objection to our castles being, you know, gray. It seems the Irish have a different take on the subject, but that's getting ahead of my story....let's start at the beginning, shall we?

Brandon and I flew to Dublin last Friday to meet up with a few other friends who are studying abroad. We got in late, basically didn't sleep, and got up bright and early the next morning (after a breakfast that did not, sadly, include proper bacon as we had hoped) to explore Dublin. We started off at Trinity College, where we walked through the main gate, saw a line in front of pretty building, and promptly joined the line. In our defense, there was a sign with an arrow saying "Book of Kells" nearby. Imagine our surprise when we discovered that the line was not for said book, but for the Irish version of the MCAT's! I mean, I'm sure they're fun and all, but not really how I want to spend my first day in Ireland...

So we awkwardly left the line, followed the sign's directions, and ended up at the exhibit for the Book of Kells. It was pretty cool, I must admit, though the exhibit had lots of useless fluff that just filled space that could have been better filled by more books, but that's just my opinion. The book itself was quite impressive, though the fact that it was in Latin made me sad. I was hoping for Greek. I did manage to fall in love with one of the illuminated pages though that has the XP (pretend those are the Greek letters for chi and ro, not something to do with Windows...), the first two letters of Christ in Greek, taking up a full decorated page. It's really artistic and awesome, and I bought a poster of it so it will hang on my wall at school. Yep. I'm a geek. I'm aware.

Anyway, we left Trinity College and wandered in search of a bank, then wandered through some gardens, then wandered in search of lunch in Temple Bar. We found pasties, which are pastry shells stuffed with assorted meat fillings. Brandon and I were excited because we'd made pasties with Eugene last summer, but I must say, the Irish version is much better. Sorry Eugene. :)

Then the real adventure/nightmare started. Off we went in search of Dublin Castle, hoping against hope that it would be better than Stirling Castle, which had been the worst castle thus far. Naturally, we got a bit lost on our way, which made us end up approaching the castle from the rear rather than the normal visitors' entrance side. We kept checking the map, and we knew exactly which direction we should be going, but it's a fairly flat part of Dublin, and without a hill, the castle couldn't be seen over the other buildings. So we kept walking toward where we thought it was. And then we saw it.

The first part we saw was a blue turret-like structure. As in, sky blue. Then we saw a green crenelated wall. And then some red and yellow walls thrown in for good measure.

Now, you might think this was a joke. That someone had constructed a fake Lego castle to lure unsuspecting tourists the wrong way. But as we got closer, we realized the horrible truth: the Irish had PAINTED THE CASTLE.

After lots of epic picture-taking to document this horror (see the link at the end of this post), we ventured inside to answer the burning question of WHY anyone would do that to a perfectly good gray castle. And the answer, according to the tour guide who managed to maintain a straight face while speaking with us, was that back in the 1980's (of course) that area behind the castle was just so drab, they decided to liven it up a bit with some paint. Irish logic escapes me.

So that was the Amazing Technicolor Castle. For a moment, I thought that Dublin was the worst city ever to exist, but fortunately, it quickly redeemed itself with our next stop: the Chester Beatty Library. Travelers, take note: this is one Dublin stop you MUST NOT MISS. It helps that I'm a religion geek and most of their collection is sacred texts from around the world, but seriously--it's awesome. Go see it.

Two exhibits were really amazing, in my opinion. The first was on Manichaeism, a sect of early Christianity similar to the Gnostics that died out early on. However, the library has a fantastic papyri collection of Manichaean writings, and their exhibit does a great job of giving the history and what we know about the beliefs and traditions of the Mani. Since we're studying the Gnostics in Georgia's class at St. A., Brandon and I rather enjoyed seeing that exhibit. The only problem is that now I want to study it more....

But the second exhibit is the one that I practically had to be dragged out of: sacred books. I wandered in, took a left, and ended up in the Christian section with a 1000 year old Gospel of Matthew in front of me, open to a passage that we'd just been discussing in my class on said gospel. I made my way to the next corner of that exhibit room, which had a similarly old Gospel of Mark, then to the next corner and Luke. By then, I was suitably impressed and ridiculously excited, but it only got better. As I continued around the room, there was a little alcove in the back wall, in which was suspended a tiny fragment of papyrus--it was a manuscript of the Gospel of John, in Greek, from around 200AD. AND I COULD READ IT. It was an absolutely surreal moment for me, seeing that little piece of papyrus that had survived 1800 years and being able to understand the words written on it. It was unbelievable. And it made it very clear to me that I chose the right major and minor. :)

Anyway, the rest of the exhibit was pretty awesome too, though it was hard to drag myself away from that papyrus. There were Greek papyri of Pauline epistles and other early Christian writings, all kinds of Latin Bibles, lots of Torahs, Qur'ans, commentaries, etc. They didn't have much on eastern religions, but they had a few interesting works and some beautiful art. I'll admit, I went back to the Gospels section one more time before leaving the exhibit--I could have stayed forever. I then proceeded to talk myself out of spending several hundred pounds on the various books and collections of articles on Gnosticism in the museum shop...

That's a lot of Dublin for one post. I think the rest may have to wait for another day when I need to procrastinate, and there should be plenty of those this week. Still to come: adventures in neolithic tombs, proof that God has the coolest floors ever, and Brandon returns to his ancestral seaside village...stay tuned!

~L

Pictures:http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=191528&id=579896063&l=e624a423af