With A Little Help From My Friends

Last weekend I joined three Emersonian colleagues in a pilgrimage to the capital of the U.K. - London- partly to see and experience the city, but also to visit my friend Ben who has been living there for about as long as I've been in the Netherlands. We left on Thursday night and found ourselves at Baker St. tube station in the heart of London at 11:00pm. After a small moment of concern after running out of minutes on my Dutch mobile phone and not being in contact with Ben and his roommates, we eventually found each other and made our way back to Ben's humble pad in Earl's Court. Upon arrival we got to know Ben's roommates a little bit, got settled in on the floor of their room and went to slumberland.

Friday morning I joined my fellow Castle-livers in exploring the neighborhood of Earl's court to find some breakfast while Ben had his last class of the week. We then met up and decided to do some touring around. We went to Trafalgar Square and visited a couple of museums. Turns out most museums in the city of London don't charge any entrance fee, which is awesome. We visited the National Gallery that had a surprisingly huge number of 'classics' and what not that I remember studying in my Renaissance art course last year. I had a couple more of those fulfilling moments when you get to see a painting you've studied in the classroom come out of the powerpoint presentation and show you its true features. We also visited the National Portrait Gallery which is a museum that focuses around portraits of all media. I've never really seen art organized in that way; it seems to me that museums are normally organized by movement and/or their date of creation. This museum combined old, new, painting, sculpture, photograph, and blood bust (it's exactly what it sounds like), and housed them all next to each other, their only common feature being that they are all portraits of someone. We then had lunch in Chinatown and split up for a little while until reconvening for some dinner/pubhopping that night.

On Saturday we slept in a little bit and all got up and had a traditional English breakfast with English breakfast tea out at a restaurant nearby who happened to be playing The Beatles' Love. It was delicious. We then took the tube over to the Thames and walked along the river and across the Tower Bridge. We passed by Shakespeare's Globe and some other notable things until we took a footbridge back over the Thames that led us straight to St. Paul's Cathedral. Although (somewhat ironically) it cost us £9.50 just to enter the main section of the cathedral we decided to bite the bullet and check it out anyway and, let me say, it was well worth every pence. It was truly stunning - the largest cathedral I've seen so far in this crazy continent. It was also the only cathedral I've seen that's housed a piece of modern art - there was a sculpture in the back corner of a couple of shapes called Madonna and Child made out of what looked like marble. I thought that was pretty cool. We were also able to climb the many stairs to the top of the building which provided a beautiful view of most of the city of London. Not that London has a particularly phenomenal skyline, but you know, it was still pretty neat. Saturday night was spent staying up late so my Emercolleagues could catch a very early-morning flight.

On Sunday I got some long sought after one-on-one time with Ben Mead. We returned to the Thames to have a long walk exploring the Parliament and Monument areas of town and discussing a many things. Upon returning to Earl's Court we decided to end my time in London on a stereotypically delicious note: steak & kidney pie with mash and a pint.

Europe, you've brought me to one of my best friends, and for that I award you several points, bringing your running total to about 99. Oh, wait... David B. Weaver? Well it looks like you're score's at about... 100 (?!?!?!?!?!?!)

PS - Sorry it took so long to get this up - this past week has been midterms and I've been unusually busy. Also, next week is travel break so I'll be skipping a week of DBW v. Europe.