London within London

Once more, I'm late on my promises of posting on time. But this time, you will receive photos of what I am doing here in London! Yesterday, we got a tour of St. Paul's Cathedral Library. I wrote a blog on it for class earlier and you can read that here. It was really amazing and we got to see behind the scenes at the library.

And of course, I don't have a photo of the front of the building, despite being there three times in three days. I will rectify this situation.

After that, we made an attempt to see the National Gallery but did not have enough time to make it there and back for our reception. We had a welcome reception at Somerset House, which is directly across the Thames from our dorms. It is very beautiful and has been used in several movies. 

The reception was held in the Chapel of King's College, who's decoration is sometimes referred to as a "Victorian Acid Trip" since the architect was a fan of laudanum. And it was crazy but I forgot my camera so I do not have any photos of it. You can Google it, though, if you're especially interested.

The Librarians then went out for more drinks after the reception and happened upon a German bar, where I finally found good beer! Zee Germans know how to make good beer. A do believe a good time was had by all but several of us were not feeling that hot this morning.

Today, we went to three different locations. The first was the Barbican Library, and I will be posting on that in my other blog this evening. It is a very atypical public library that is located in the City of London. The City of London consists of one square mile and it is the boundaries of Roman and Medieval London. Today, it is one of two cities within the Greater London Area, the other being the city of Westminster. I've already been to several major buildings located in this region, such as St. Paul's Cathedral, the Museum of London, and Guildhall, photographed on the right.

After Barbican, we got a tour of a corporate library from an alumni of the course. She now lives and works in London at Linklaters, the fourth largest law firm in the world, in their acquisitions office. I won't say too much about it because they are very private and confidential about their business but it was interesting to see a different side of libraries.

We ended our day at the Museum of London, a place I've now been to three of the five days I've been in London. Most of us didn't stay to see it, but headed instead to the National Portrait Gallery! We saw the Botticelli, Titian, Van Gogh, Monet, Manet, and even a da Vinci! And they really loved to paint religiously themed art so we saw a lot of Jesus and his mother, Mary. It was really awesome but once more, our legs and feet were completely shot from all of the walking and standing. Thus, we headed back to the dorms for an evening of writing blogs and uploading photos.


Speaking of which, here are some photographs of my room! It's small but nice and I like it. Although, the shower seriously gets everything in the bathroom wet for the next six hours. Enjoy!

It's really exciting! I'm sure you're all so jealous.

Tomorrow we head to Oxford and it's an all-day trip so I probably will not be able to blog until Thursday. It's also the 4th of July and we are planning on celebrating our American independence from England in a British pub. It should be a blast. Til next time!

- Kate

I'm Not in Shape for All of This Walking

It’s been awhile since I’ve updated but life has been non-stop since I arrived and with all of the activities I’ve been doing, I haven’t found time to blog. However, I have a free morning and will now regale you with some stories from my first weekend in London. I don’t have the time or space to tell you everything but you will get a taste of what it is like to be in this awesome city.

Museum of London: On Saturday, I went on a tour with several students outside of my class. We got a tour of the City of London. Now the City of London is a very small section of London. Its boundaries are defined by the walls built by the Romans in the 3^rd century C.E. I had a major nerd moment the entire afternoon because I just wrote a paper on Roman London aka Londinium and I was able to see what I wrote about as well as help our guide with the tour (politely). We stopped into the Museum of London for a short period of time, and that is seriously one of the best museums I’ve been to in a while. If you’re ever in London, please see this museum. It’s free and it has so many cool exhibits. It could take anywhere from 2-4 hours to walk through. We only saw a short part of it on Saturday so three of us went back on Sunday to see the rest of the museum.

Shakespeare: I’ve also already seen a play at the Globe Theatre and that was truly amazing. Two friends from the library science program, Melissa and Shannon, joined me for Henry V. We stood in the groundling section for three hours but it was absolutely amazing. We could have purchased actual seats but they were much more expensive and 5 pounds to watch Henry V is a serious deal. Again, if you’re in London, totally check it out.

Beer: Now I’ve been a bit underwhelmed by the beer. I have yet to find a bar that has a dark beer, and have been left to drink semi-crappy lagers. And the one Guinness I got was poured badly :( I hope to rectify this in the near future and I’m sure you will hear more about it. The food has been fine. Nothing spectacular, although I did have a Wild Boar burger and that was quite good.

Church: I went to a church service at St. Paul’s Cathedral on Sunday morning and that was also really cool. They had an orchestra and a choir, both of whom were amazing. The church is stunning and if you go for the service, you don’t have to pay to get in to see the church. So I would recommend sitting through the 1.5 hour service if you’re ever in town.

Class: We start classes today and our classes consist of going on site visits. It’s going to be really awesome and I know we will see some really interesting items. Today’s visit will be to St. Paul’s Cathedral Library. I will have another blog going for my course because I don’t want to mix it up. I will link it here for you all to read. http://proofinpages.blogspot.co.uk/

As you can tell, it’s been a very busy two days. The weather was great the past two days but it is much rainier today. My legs have been in serious pain for the past two days but when you're walking at least 5 miles or more a day, it's to be expected. I will be adding photos to my posts, hopefully later this evening. I’m enjoying every second of this trip and can’t wait to continue to tell you all about it.

-         - Kate