Day 36 – Homeward Bound – Thursday June 28th

The day of traveling was not fun. I traveled for just under 20 hours, including delays, inclement weather, waiting in line, and flight times. All the lines were extraordinarily long, and all of the flights were delayed for hours. Once back, I was tired but happy. The trip had run its course, and it ended when it should have. One more week and I would have been burnt out.

I felt like I really came a long way. Starting off the trip enthusiastically but clearly unaware of the troubles of traveling, how to deal with new cultures, how to safely find my way around, how to travel alone, or who any of the people on the trip were. I ended knowing the answers to all of the above, and I felt more mature as a result, with a few new friends as an added bonus. It was rewarding in a million ways, and I would go again in a heartbeat. With the skills I have learned, I feel like there is no place that I can’t travel to and find my way around safely and effectively.

Thank you Dr. Evans and Dr. Turkett for one hell of a summer experience.

Day 35 – London Day 4 – Wednesday June 27th

I had to get up at 6:00am to get ready for my trip. I took a shower, grabbed breakfast by myself, and headed for the Hilton next to Paddington Station. The Evan Evans tour bus was a little late, but we still made it to the bus station ahead of schedule. The woman running in the show was a horrific sort of woman, speaking impudently while yelling at latecomers. I got in line for my tour and ended up on the third bus that my trip offered in order to avoid the devil woman I head earlier. Little did I realize that my bus’s tour guide could speak Japanese, therefore making my tour the Japanese friendly one. I have nothing against being in a group of thirty Japanese people; the constant repeating of everything said in English in Japanese just simply annoyed me.

It took about an hour to get to Windsor Castle from London, and once there, they said to arrive back at the bus by noon and set me free. I quickly grabbed an audio tour speaker and a map and headed inside the castle grounds. The whole place was stunning. It was something straight out of a movie. I cannot imagine what it must be like for the queen to live there in the late summer. I headed inside the royal apartments. One of the great rooms was closed off for a Rod Stewart concert in the evening, but I saw everything else otherwise. The armor and displays of weaponry were stunning, but with limited time, I really went through rather quickly. I ran to the cathedral for the changing of the guards. The band, much like the one in London, played both modern music and classical songs. The cathedral was very beautiful and of a different stone than the rest of the castle, so it was striking in comparison. Many members of royalty were buried there, and the coats of arms of all the knights of England were hung in the choir room. I really enjoyed that a great deal. I bought some lead soldiers at the gift store and ran back to the bus, grabbing lunch on the way at a place called eat.

Next, we took a two-hour drive out to Stonehenge. The audio tour there was incredibly informative. As much as they claim to know nothing about the stones, they sure offered a lot of information concerning its known origins and theories behind its purpose. I had heard that a large connection between the druids and Stonehenge existed, but the guide mentioned them very little. The most interesting fact was that the stones, while standing, would turn blue when wet, but they would turn red when wet while lying sideways on the ground. For this reason, the one stone purposefully on its side is known as the slaughter stone for its blood red color when wet.

Next was the golden city of Bath. We went into the Roman baths and walked around. The museum of Roman artifacts did nothing for me. I just quickly ran through it. The baths were the main attraction. I didn’t need to be told that Romans used the baths to bath, yet there were still hundreds of people reading the descriptions that literally said nothing more. The baths themselves were very beautiful. One man was dressed in a toga and stayed in character even as I took a picture of him. He was very friendly. Upon leaving the baths, they had natural spring water for free. I tried some but could hardly finish a glass; the water was warm and so full of minerals that it tasted like metal. With the rest of my time, I went into nearby gardens and walked fifteen minutes uphill for a photo of the city. I was unsuccessful finding the view I wanted, but I still got to enjoy the city in the short time that I was there.

I slept the whole ride back. We made into town at about 8pm, so I missed any chance of seeing a show. I just went to Covent Garden and ate at Navajo Joe’s, the place that Brent had taken me a few nights before. When I finally made it back, I ran into my fraternity brothers and sat down with them. We all went to bed early that night. I was proud of myself for successfully proving to myself that I could confidently handle traveling alone.

Day 34 – London Day 3 – Tuesday June 26th

We met in the breakfast room at a reasonable time in the morning to head to Bletchley Park to see the Colossus (a code-breaking computer), an enigma machine, an several other code-breaking machines. We learned all about cryptography and some of its pioneers. They also gave us access to see the mansion on the property and the huts that housed the offices where the code-breaking in World War II occurred. It was incredibly interesting, and the volunteer staff was enthusiastic to talk about the subjects with which they were so familiar. We took the train at 12:30 to get back into London.

The others were hard-set on meeting people not in the class at the hotel before they started the rest of their day. I just wanted to get the show on the road, so I went alone to the Tate Modern. Notice, though, that was the first time I had done anything completely alone on the trip and yet it felt completely natural. In retrospect, it was at this point that the results of what I got out of the trip started to show. I got independence and a sense of ease outside of my comfort zone.

I walked to St. Paul’s Cathedral. To my surprise there was a dance performance outside, so I stopped and took pictures as I watched. The dances were a mixture of modern and vaudeville acts. I’m glad the dancers were there though because I refused to pay to see the inside of the church. After seeing so many churches in Europe, I wasn’t going to start unethically paying to get inside. I walked across the beautiful Millennium Bridge straight to the front door of the Tate Modern.

I went first into the Dalí and film exhibit. It was phenomenal. They had The Persistence of Time and Narcissus. Unlike the Mona Lisa, both of these paintings lived up to their expectations. Though smaller than I imagined, they were still enchanting beyond reason. There seemed to be so much meaning behind the oddities of the beautiful characters and colors of the surrealist paintings. The strangeness of his paintings translated well to film. In the collection of movies and film clips they had of Dalí’s work, I discovered what a surrealist movie looked like. The films ranged from a Spanish silent film to a scene from a Hitchcock film designed by the artist to an animated movie that was a result of collaboration with Walt Disney. I was blown away by the exhibit and spent some time there just admiring everything. I did make it to the modernism, surrealism, cubism, and impressionism exhibits they had in the main galleries, but I was blown away by Dalí’s work the most.

While admiring Monet’s Water Lilies, I was approached by a man in his eighties. He asked me what I saw in the painting and if I liked it. I explained I enjoyed the colors and the abstraction of the shapes. He responded by saying that he preferred more detail but that he could sympathize with Monet because his eyes were going blind in much the same way as those of the painter. We talked for about twenty minutes; he told me about his love of pipe organs and his favorite piece in the Tate Modern, a sculpture called The Kiss. I went to see it after we finished talking, and it was as beautiful as he suggested.

I ate at a Greek restaurant that night. The food was served in small portions, much like tapas in Spanish restaurants. It was very good. I had calamari, a Greek salad, and a lamb wrap. I met the group seeing Othello soon afterwards.

Othello I had neither studied nor read, so I was pleasantly surprised by the show. Seated in the left balcony of the recreated, thatched roof Globe Theater, I could see perfectly. The tragedy was beautifully acted, and I don't think I should ever see another Shakespeare play unless I know the quality will be comparably perfect. It was the best Shakespeare I had ever seen, film or stage production. The black man who starred as Othello was a powerful actor with a powerful voice. His angry scenes were actually frightening; it was wonderful.

I knew I was going to have an early wake-up call the following morning, so I went to bed soon after the play.

Day 33 – London Day 2 – Monday June 25th

Rob and I missed breakfast. We woke up just a bit too late, around 11am or so. We got our act together pretty fast, however, and headed to Paddington Station to exchange money and grab brunch at a bagel place nearby. We took the forty-five minute journey to Tower Hill and quickly went across the street to the tower of London. Tickets were under 10 pounds for students, so we got in for a relatively cheap price compared to other famous sites. Once inside the old castle, we took a tour with an enchanting yeoman.

Our group was made up of around probably sixty people. They did not split up the groups, they only mentioned that another tour would begin in a half hour. He played to our sense of humor to uplift us while he told stories of beheadings and murders. We learned the history of kings, the former zoo within the castle walls, the executions outside and within the castle, and the daring escapes of the innocent captives. One such story was of an archduke that was sent to the castle for execution. His wife came to say her final words, but unbeknownst to the guards, she had brought with her clothes to dress her husband up as a handmaid. Her husband easily escaped with the other handmaids of the wife. She stayed in the room for a time, and upon leaving, she asked the guardsman to leave her husband alone until morning. Though the guardsman found his death the next day, she and her husband, as they say, lived happily ever after.

Next, we visited the Crown Jewels of the Royal Family. The diamonds on those crowns were gigantic. I suppose that was the point, but it just seems so excessive. It made me feel like they should have spent less on tradition and more on the people, but England doesn’t seem to be doing so bad. Either way, I was taken aback by their exuberance. We headed for the White Tower thereafter and saw the armory and a recreation of royal apartments. They were beautiful and excessive, but the armory in Krakow was far ore interesting. I got a little claustrophobic from the slow moving crowds within the tower, so I tried to move quickly through much of it. We finished our tour of the Tower of London with a walk through the old torture chambers of the castle. They had three machines, but that was it. I suppose three is enough when it comes to torture. All the machines really had the same purpose in the end.

Rob and I went back to the hotel quickly to get ready for the show in the evening. Somehow, we ran into Dr. Bob on the way back and rode all the way from Oxford Circus with him. He had picked me up a book about Stonehenge in order to prepare me for my trip on Wednesday. It was a fiction novel, but it had great ideas about what the stones may have represented.

Rob and I ate at the Shakespeare for dinner. Service was horrible. Our waiter left halfway through our waiting time, and it took another half hour for the waitress who took over to realize our orders were never placed. The fish and chips came out in about two to three minutes. We wanted to be mad, but the food was just too good. We made it to the show right on time. The show was a musical called Wicked, which chronicled the life of the Wicked Witch of the West from the Wizard of Oz. It was just wonderful. The woman who played the lead had one of the most powerful voices I have ever heard. It just blew me away. The story was very clever as well; I would recommend the show to anyone. Afterwards, I headed back with a group and went to bed.