A Weekend in London

In between finishing my internship, beginning on-campus interviewing for next summer, and taking Spanish for Lawyers classes, I had about 5 completely free days at the end of the summer. My initial plan was to spend some time in Connecticut and come up to Boston for the weekend to visit Camilo. However, I realized I had had a pretty stressful summer with the situation with my grandma, applying for numerous law firm positions, and a lack of time spent at the beach, so I instead suggested to my dad that we go on vacation for a few days. Last year when I returned from Spain in June I had accepted that I probably would not be back in Europe until I studied abroad again, so I expected us to spend a few days in Florida or possibly the Caribbean. When I spoke with my dad on the last day of my internship and asked where he wanted to go, he suggested London. I had already been twice with friends, but he had never been, and since I was dying to get back to Europe I thought it was a great idea. We booked our trip on Monday and flew out of Boston Wednesday evening.

We had a direct flight from Boston to London, so I got about 3 hours of "sleep" during the night. We went directly to our hotel in South Kensington to drop off our luggage and were incredibly fortunate to find out our room was ready for us to check in at 9 in the morning! That allotted us some much-needed sleep before beginning our London adventures in the afternoon.

Thursday

First view of St. Paul's Cathedral

After a 3 hour nap, we were ready to explore the city! The first stop for my dad and me was St. Paul's Cathedral, as I had not seen it on either of my previous trips to London. I was not expecting much, since I have seen my fair share of European churches and cathedrals, but I ended up being impressed. We spent some time wandering around the ground floor, which looked much like St. Peter's Cathedral in the Vatican. In fact, St. Paul's is the second largest cathedral in the world, second only to St. Peter's, and it began as a Catholic cathedral (now it's Anglican), so it was modeled after St. Peter's. Even the main altar in St. Paul's looked strikingly similar to the gorgeous altar at St. Peter's.

We decided to climb up inside the cathedral dome (because that is what you do when you visit a European cathedral). The first floor was inside around the top of the inner dome. The architect made the inner dome close to the ground so that the people standing on the floor could see it and appreciate the artwork. However, he realized that the height would not be sufficient to make the view of the cathedral from the outside impressive, so he built another dome on top of the inner dome. On the first level, the architect made "whispering walls": there are holes in the walls so that you can stand on one side and whisper into them, and someone on the other side can hear you. The second level was at the base of the outer dome. It offered fantastic views of London.

View from the second level

Because there was only one more level, we decided to take the winding spiral staircase up to the top of the outer dome. I'm sure this had great views too, but my dad has never been a fan of small spaces high above the ground, so as soon as he saw that we had a 3 foot ledge to stand on 365 feet above the ground, he practically ran for the exit. I snapped one picture before quickly following him.

View from the top level

Our next stop for the day was Trafalgar Square and the National Gallery. Trafalgar Square (the one with the lion statues) was busy as usual, and we managed to catch a few street performers. The most unusual was a tuba player whose horn shot puffs of fire out the top every time he played a note. He had accompaniment music, but I was mesmerized by the flames and have no idea how he made that happen.

Note the flame about 3 feet above his head

The only painting we meant to see in the National Gallery was "The Ambassadors" by Holbein. I studied this painting in my sophomore year Honors seminar at BC, and am still impressed by the symbolism and games played with perspective by the artist. I made my dad stand at the correct angle to see the skull in the bottom of the painting, and pointed out the crucifix hiding behind the curtain that most casual viewers completely miss. We saw a number of other paintings in the gallery too, as it is almost impossible to figure out how to exit the building. Other famous paintings included the Sunflowers by van Gogh, Madonna of the Rocks by da Vinci, and Bridge Over a Pool of Water Lilies by Monet.

Our last stop for the evening before turning in early was the Westminster area. We passed by 10 Downing Street, the Prime Minister's residence, on our way to see Big Ben and the Parliament building. There was a white building with a black gate and a few guards standing around it, and I thought nothing of it because London had police all over the place due to the Olympics. However, my dad recognized the street sign on the building and was pretty excited that we had found the building.

I think the White House is much more impressive, though I wouldn't mind living here

We finally reached Big Ben- the name actually refers to the bells inside the clock that ring every hour- and walked around the area for a few minutes before grabbing some food. My dad chose an outdoor cafe in the area, and was really surprised at the men holding beers standing outside the pub drinking and enjoying happy hour. Most areas of the USA have liquor laws that prohibit open containers of alcohol outside in public, so to see the businessmen in London wandering around and chatting on the sidewalks outside the pub with beers in hand really amused my dad, to the point that he pretended to take a picture of me so he could take a picture of them.

Enjoying a beer outside

Friday

The next day was the day we saw what we mainly came to London to see: the Olympic Stadium! Unfortunately the stadium was undergoing preparations for the Paralympic games, so we couldn't actually go inside, or anywhere near it really. Nevertheless, we got some great pictures of the outside and it was cool to just be able to say I saw it with my own eyes!

Olympic Stadium! Accompanied by an odd statue to the left

The best views of the stadium were from John Lewis department store, part of a massive shopping mall built next to the stadium. It was both indoor and outdoor and have every possible British store you could imagine. In other words, I was in paradise. Unfortunately, my dad did not want to spend the whole day shopping so we walked around John Lewis for a while and then went back toward the city.

My dad with an official Olympics hat, standing with a stuffed Olympics mascot

A really strange outdoor contraption we found in the department store: I hope someone will make them in America soon

Policemen hanging around the mall holding giant machine guns

Our next stop was London Bridge, or so I thought. I wanted to take my dad to see the really pretty bridge that was shown on TV during the Olympics before and after every commercial break, and I was certain it was called London Bridge because that's the most famous bridge in London. There's even a tube stop called London Bridge that was in the area that I remember the bridge being in. We got off the tube, asked for directions, and walked to London Bridge. I was really confused because it was a normal concrete bridge, and was called London Bridge, but was not what we were looking for. We walked out on the bridge and saw our bridge farther East. It was a little frustrating, but we made it eventually. For future reference, the famous bridge is called Tower Bridge, not London Bridge.

View of Tower Bridge from London Bridge

When we finally made it to Tower Bridge, we crossed the river to the Tower of London. Again, this is not a real tower but a fortress area on the river where the Crown Jewels are kept. The Crown Jewels come out at every coronation and I believe each new king or queen has new jewels they use, plus some that are passed down for each coronation. Unfortunately you can't take pictures, and they are kept in the basement of one of the buildings in darkly-lit rooms with huge vault fireproof doors. Here is an example taken from the Crown Jewels website

Our final tourist stop for the day was the Buckingham Palace area. Tours for Buckingham Palace were completely sold out, which was unfortunate because it's only open for tours in the summer, but we were still able to walk around the outside and see its grandeur. I was excited to see the balcony from which Kate and William made their first appearance as husband and wife, and my dad was fascinated by the fountain and statue because he had watched the marathon for the Olympics end there just weeks before. As we had some extra time, I convinced my dad to walk to Harrod's with me. I love shopping at Harrod's but unfortunately the only thing I can really afford there is the tea. One day I will return to buy a chandelier or a McQueen dress or something. We also bought Lola's red velvet cupcakes! If there is anywhere in the world to buy luxury cupcakes, Harrod's is it.

As a student of international law, I could not visit Harrod's without walking two streets over to the Ecuadorian embassy. The news had been flooded with coverage of Assange's asylum, which was granted by Ecuador the day before. Assange is the techie who released the Wikileaks reports online. He had been hanging out in the UK until he realized the people there were siding with the USA and Sweden, so he appealed to the Ecuadorian government for asylum and had been hiding in their embassy for a few months. When Ecuador agreed to give him asylum, some guy in the British government said they were going to storm the embassy and drag him out. Technically once he leaves the embassy, the Brits can grab him, and the police are all over the place around the building, but infringing on Ecuador's sovereignty and hurting diplomatic relations between the two countries is probably not the best approach. Again, it was really cool to walk by the embassy, see the protesters, and know that one of the world's most wanted men was only a few feet away, but there were about 20 "protesters" with signs that said "Free Assange," not very forceful.

Protesters set up on the road across from the Ecuadorian embassy

My dad and I found a pub near our hotel for dinner that night. He cheated a bit by getting a Guinness, and I cheated more by getting a Kronenburg, but I had to support my city Strasbourg! We did make sure to order traditional British meals though: Hunter's chicken and a steak and ale pie.

Hunter's chicken in the front, Pie with chips in the back

Saturday

My dad has never been a huge football (soccer) fan. He did not understand why I would wake up and run downstairs to watch the World Cup almost every day two summers ago, nor why I was excited when Spain came to the states to play New England Revolution in Gillette Stadium last year. Therefore, I was really surprised when he insisted that we go all the way out to Wembley Stadium and take a tour, and was even more surprised when it was the highlight of his trip. Admittedly, I really enjoyed our morning there as well, but it is more surprising coming from my dad. For example, we were the only Americans in our tour group, and our tour guide asked what our favorite football team is. My dad had a blank look as he couldn't even attempt to name one- I said Real Madrid since it's the team I most care about, and he went along with it. Of course that was probably not the best choice as we were in England, but my other option was Les Bleus, the French national team that did embarrassingly horrible in the World Cup, so I picked the lesser of the two evils.

First View Approaching the Stadium

Sitting at the press conference table

As we were the only Americans, and there was one woman from France on the tour as well, the rest of the people were British. Our tour guide gave us a behind the scenes look at the stadium, and as we were standing outside the room pictured above, he turned to the group and said "now you will probably all recognize this from seeing it on tv" and we went into the room and my dad and I gave each other looks that said "I have no idea where we are, I have never seen this before in my life." However, while we had the news on that night, this room came on and we were pretty excited to recognize it and know where it was, especially having been there earlier that day.

Ronaldo's jersey! Best player for Madrid, in the room with all the Champions League jerseys (Messi's was also there)

View from inside the stadium: 90,000 seats! That's double BC's Alumni Stadium

Another cool area the tour took us to was the Royal Box. We got a picture with the "second" FA cup and got to sit right behind where the Queen and her family would sit to watch a game. I say the second cup because we were told there are four cups. The one we took a picture with is insured for a few thousand dollars. The original, first cup that gets engraved whenever someone wins is insured for a few million dollars, so of course we were not going to get anywhere near that one.

Between the tube ride to the suburbs and our amazing tour, the trip to Wembley took a few hours, so when we got back to the city we only had time to view one more thing before getting ready for dinner that night. We went  back in the direction of Buckingham Palace and bought tickets to go in the Royal Mews. "Mews" according to wikipedia is a British term for a row of stables. The Royal Mews housed all of the royal vehicles, including the wedding carriage that new royal brides ride to the church in (including Princess Diana) and new motorized vehicles. The most beautiful carriage was the coronation carriage. It is only taken out when a new King or Queen has a coronation, and has been used since the mid-1700s. It is huge and covered in gold.

Coronation Carriage

Our final stop on our weekend in London was Shakespeare's Globe Theater! I was disappointed to learn that it was only built in 1998, and so obviously not the original and not even that old, but I'm a pretty big fan of Shakespeare's work so I was still excited to go see an actual play there. The play that night was "Henry V," which I had neither seen nor read before. We upgraded our tickets from standing room only on the floor in front of the stage to sitting tickets, first row almost centered in the flower balcony, which was a blessing when the play ran for almost 3 hours. It might have run for over three hours, but we left at 10:15 as we still had not eaten dinner that night, and King Henry was still very much alive. My AP English Literature teacher in high school was also a big Shakespeare fan, and she explained that if the play is named after a character, it is always a tragedy and the named character or characters always die. Therefore, when King Henry was not on his deathbed after 3 hours I knew the play was nowhere near over. Aside from the length it was really authentic and well-performed, and made me understand even better how Shakespeare incorporated monologues and the audience into his plays. 

Outside of the Globe Theater

Act I, Scene ii Henry V

Overall, I was glad we spent a few days in London. I was desperately missing Europe, and although I had imagined I would be on a beach somewhere that weekend, I feel more satisfied having done something meaningful, especially when I was able to see things I had not seen on my previous two trips. Also, it was the only time ever I would be able to see not only the Olympic Stadium a week after the closing ceremonies, but the whole city still in Olympics-mode.