Covent Garden

I spent a good part of the day on Wednesday conducting site visits with students at their internships. Then on Thursday we had class in the morning and then a free afternoon. I ended up walking around part of West End London. I walked from Piccadilly Circus to Leicester Square. I had been to Leicester Square early in our trip, but I hadn't really been back. This is where movie premieres happen in London and they were setting up for a premiere for tonight.

I went back to the National Portrait Gallery today to look at a new exhibit that opened this week. It was called the Road to 2012 and highlighted people making the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games happen in London. There was a mix of organizers, coaches, and athletes featured in the exhibit. You will have to take my word that it was cool, because I couldn't take any pictures in the galleries.

After walking through Leicester Square, I walked over to Covent Garden. This is a very pretty area with a market and an area that is known for street performers. I enjoyed walking through the stores and stalls in the area as well as seeing some of the street entertainment.

This quartet was a pretty good act to watch. I was impressed that they even danced while playing.

Comedy of Errors

Our second performance as a class was tonight. We attended The Comedy of Errors at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre. It was a great night. The play started a little slow...or I was a little slow adjusting to Shakespeare. It didn't take long for me to get into it.

The open air theatre is a replica of the theatre were Shakespeare's pieces were originally performed. It is a great experience. Luckily, we had seats in the middle gallery. This theatre features a standing only area on the ground level. I guess it makes watching Shakespeare more authentic. I was glad to have a little less authentic experience by having a seat. Three hours is a little long for me to stand while watching a play.

Historically, a flag being flown at a theatre let people now that there was a performance that night. This way people knew to come across the river. The globe still flies a flag for performances.

The view of the stage from my seat.

Look at all of the people standing in the yard, it was packed by the time the performance started. Glad I had a seat!

The theatre is located on the south bank, so I had to cross the river to get there. I decided to take the tube to a station near the theatre, but walk across the Millennium Bridge to get to the other side. I believe this bridge has a connection to Harry Potter, but I am not sure what. Either way it is nice to have a pedestrian bridge to walk across with some great views. While crossing the bridge, you can see Tate Modern and the Globe on one end, St. Paul's on the other end, and if you look up the river you can see the Tower Bridge.

Walking towards Tate Modern, the art museum that is in a building that used to be a power factory.

Looking towards Tower Bridge, do you see it in the distance?

Looking at St. Paul's.

As we left the Globe, the view over St. Paul's was amazing. It looked like a postcard. Unfortunately, my camera (it may be operator error) is not the best at taking night pictures, so this is pretty blurry, but at least you get the idea of what I saw.

Imperial War Museum

This morning I met with Dr. James, the professor supervising the London Program, to make sure we have tied up loose ends as we are nearing the end of our program. We also visited some students at their internships for site visits. After lunch then I headed over to the Imperial War Museum. The museum currently has an exhibit on The Ministry of Foods, which was in charge of war time food rations and food issues. The exhibition had great examples of the propaganda that the ministry produced during the war to rally

The outside of the museum.

The atrium of the museum:

Here are some pictures from the collection:

A replica greenhouse demonstrating home greenhouse uses during the war.

I thought this was a funny ad!

They had different cartoon characters to promote how to ration and why certain foods were important to eat.

The poor pups weren't allowed to have bones anymore either.

This was a wedding cake used during the war. It is made a cardboard for pictures and it covered the non-pretty ration cakes that were allowed for the guests.

I was able to go through several of the other collections throughout the museum, including the Holocaust Exhibition, The Great War (WWI) exhibition, WWII, and modern war collections. I also was able to go through their exhibition of the Blitz Experience. I was able to sit in a replica bomb shelter and experience what it would have looked like, sounded like, and smelled like to be in one during an air raid in WWII.

Science Museum

On Sunday I went through part of the Science Museum. It was a really cool museum with lots of different exhibits and activities. I was able to go through 2 of the floors and also saw an IMAX movie. I saw they IMAX Deep Sea 3D. The movie was narrated by Johnny Depp and Kate Winslet (random, but entertaining!).

I went through the space section (sorry the pictures are a little dark):

This picture is made out of gumballs!

I also went through the household section. I was pretty excited to see a section on the history of household technology in a museum (yes I know I am a dorky grad student).

Evolutions of ovens and toasters.

Stand mixers through history.

Garment steamers and irons.

Sewing machines.

No home is complete without a TV.

The museum also had a section on fashion and how clothes are made. This section also included clothes made from trash.

This dress is made from newspapers. The train is all origami swans.

This is a skirt made from paper.

Victoria and Albert Museum

This Sunday I spent going to two museums, the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Science Museum. The V&A is a museum of art and design and houses many collections from around the world. There were so many wonderful things to see in the museum, I could spend days there! Here are some of the highlights from my visit.

There is a courtyard in the center of the museum with a wading pool water feature. There are also beautiful hydrangeas that line the courtyard.

The V&A has an excellent fashion collection with outfits from many different eras and designers.

This coordinated with the Quilt exhibit that I went to last month at this museum.

Some of the stained glass on display at the museum.

There was some interesting jewelry in the metalworks collection. I really liked these bangles.

The museum had a collection of original artwork from the Peter Rabbit stories by Beatrix Potter.

The museum houses a great jewelry collection, I loved the display of rings.

A a spiral staircase from the medieval and renaissance time period. The treehouse was from the architects build small spaces exhibit.

There was a large collection of ironworks pieces. There were so many great pieces.

In the center of the main entrance area of the museum there is a really cool blown glass piece. And in case you missed my face...here it is!

I thought the glass hall was really cool...and I thought to myself this is probably not the best place for accident prone me to be in...but I still walked through it (and I am happy to report no accidents happened).

One of the special exhibitions at the museum is on Grace Kelly. It was amazing. The clothes and accessories were wonderful to see. Unfortunately I couldn't take pictures in the exhibit, but I could take one of the dress at the entrance.