My First Day Of School

Monday was our first day of classes. My only class started at 10:00 am, and after over two hours of introduction to the idea of censorship and what it means in Britain, I had the afternoon free. A couple of the girls and I wanted to go down to the Thames and see the Houses of Parliament and Westminster. Despite the fact that we've been here for nearly a week, we haven't had much time to do the tourist-y thing, so we were very much excited to be there. The bottom picture shows the London Eye behind the Clock Tower.



I don't think we originally planned on going inside Westminster, but we got there and took our pictures and decided that we did want to go inside. Westminster offers an audio guide, so we each took one and spent the next 75 or so minutes walking around the monuments. It was amazing to see the tombs and memorials of Shakespeare, Dickens, Mary Tudor, Elizabeth I, Newton, Darwin, Jane Austen, Mary Shelley, Chaucer, and Handel, among others. The bottom picture was taken from the cloisters inside the Abbey. The Abbey has a no-picture policy, so I'm entirely sure if I was allowed to take it or not...




After our trip to the Abbey, we went down to Piccadilly Circus and spoke to some of the box offices at the theatres. Turns out they offer leftover tickets to students at the door on the night of the show, so we came back in the evening to see The Rain Man, featuring Josh Hartnett (Pearl Harbor) in Tom Cruise's original role. Being the recently-teenage girls that we are, we waited outside the stage door behind the theatre for a glimpse of Josh after the show. It was worth the short wait, because all three of us were able to snap multiple pictures and snag autographs.




After the show, we walked back into Piccadilly Circus on the way back to the Underground station. Being the London version of Times Square, Piccadilly was lit up and full of people.


The above picture is borrowed from the genius of Alex's photography. I (and the other girls in the group) like her idea of using the marked crosswalks to highlight the double-decker bus down the street.