Cheers Mate!

I have officially landed in the land of tea and crumpets. I've taken the tube, seen the Queen, and heard some wonderful British accents. Well I didn't actually see the Queen, but I did go by her house. On the first day I got here, Nick and I hit Buckingham Palace and Westminster Abbey. The Abbey was really fascinating, as I got to see my first glimpse of all the interesting literary history that London has to offer. Chaucer, Henry James, D.H. Lawrence and T.S. Eliot are buried there, and George Eliot (writer of Middlemarch, a great and famous must-read) has a honorary stone in the ground with the others. And there are many more. Even Charles Darwin! All these people and hundreds of others have stones in the floor (right for us to walk over) indicating their years of birth and death. They are presumably buried beneath the giant church, though some (like George Eliot, who was actually a woman - in real life Mary Ann Evans) merely have a stone and are buried elsewhere. Chaucer's is the best, with an actual grave and casket area commemorating him. Pretty impressive. And then there's the royalty: Elizabeth I, Mary I and Mary Queen of Scots are there. Edward the Confessor and Henry VII have formidable monuments and burial areas, but I thought Elizabeth's was the coolest. She is buried in a side chapel of the Abbey, directly beside Mary I (whom Elizabeth had executed, ironically). They are actually within the very same monument, with a light gray casket cover displaying a laying woman who looks a lot like Elizabeth I suppose. Something interesting - all the statues of the dead people on top of their caskets have small animals at their feet. I know that a dog means "fidelity" - which we saw under many a dead historical figure's foot - but others include lions, deer, goats, porcupines etc. and I plan on looking up sometime what these represent. Anyway, Westminster Abbey was more than anything I even thought it would be - I was really moved to see where all these people were buried, especially my fave D.H. Lawrence and the lovely Chaucer! It's truly a testament to the greatness of Gothic architecture and literary history. I was definitely NOT Westminster crabby on this visit!!

Buckingham Palace was our next stop. I was a little sad I didn't get to see the Changing of the Guards, since it's only once a day, but still got to view the Palace and see some guards from far away. But none of them had those cool furry hats you see in movies. Oh well. The palace is of course gigantic and really impressive, although Nick didn't think it was anything too special - I think we've seen way too many amazing things to be over-impressed by a plain British building anymore! It IS big though, and the prettiest part is the huge fountain out front, complete with statues and swarmed with tourists taking photos of the palace in the background. From the fountain is the "mall" of London, reminding me a lot of the national mall back in D.C. - a long park with strolling people, nice flowers and a half-empty reflecting pool. It was actually a good day for a stroll, and in fact has been pretty nice weather since I've been here. Warm enough for no scarf or hat even! Spring is here!

On Friday night, after Westminster and Buckingham, Nick and I met up with some of his friends from King's College here, who also happen to go to GW. They are really fun, nice people and we had a great night out all together - exploring a new area of the city they hadn't been to, called Old Street, where there were a few cool pubs and dance places. One of his friends is even visiting Florence in a few weeks and doesn't have plans for what to do there, so I told her I'd show her around. And funny enough, we ran into them all again the next morning, in a random part of London at a random food market where we were grabbing breakfast. Small world! It was a very cool place - Borough Market - with tons of food stands for sampling everything from cheese and salami to pastries or meat. It felt so authentic and was a really fun way to see London in action. After breakfast, I just HAD to grab a Starbucks coffee, since they're on every corner here and I miss it so much! Not surprising but, Italy doesn't have Starbucks. Probably because the chain stole Italy's words for grande and venti and turned them into American sizes of paper cups. Paper cups! The Italians would be simply disgusted. Ha Ha, anyway I very much enjoyed my Starbucks mocha as we walked the very Boston-Harbor-like boardwalk along the Thames. In fact, on a random side-note, I'd like to say that I think London is SO similar to Boston it's eerie sometimes. I've pointed this out a few times, and Nick noted very astutely that - duh - the British DID colonize America, namely the Boston area...So, Boston looks a lot like London and vice versa, and it's a very pleasant reminder of home when I pass by areas reminiscent of Quincy Market or the bricked, colonial buildings of downtown. Too bad the T doesn't take after the tube, or the Boston subway would be MUCH nicer.

After delicious Starbucks, we went into the Tate museum of Modern Art. I haven't seen too much modern art in my day, especially not in the Italian world of the Renaissance, so this was a nice change. There was even some Picasso and Matisse there, and a giant iron spider two stories tall that I could hardly walk by without bolting the other direction. It was pretty interesting but not very big, so we walked by the Globe theater then and imagined what it was like there when Shakespeare put on Hamlet or Much Ado About Nothing in the great courtyard within. It costs a lot to do a tour, and the Folger's Theater in D.C. is actually modelled after the Globe, so I kind of already know what it looks like. Plus, little did I know, the next day would be an even more interesting Shakespeare day!

Yesterday, we went to the British Library and the British Museum. Both were equally inspiring. We took the tube to King's Cross station and headed into the famous Library which holds a collection of literary artifacts. These include things like Gutenberg's first printed Bible, pieces of the Magna Carta, Leonardo da Vinci's notebook pages, Shakespeare's own hand-writings, notes from Galileo and Jane Austen, original manuscripts of works by Virginia Woolf, Thomas Hardy and Charlotte Bronte. I almost had a heart attack. Inside the glass cases, withered books were held open to the original pages of Jane Eyre, Mrs. Dalloway, and Sylvia Plath's very first published poem, Insomnia. Pages from Handel's Messiah were on display, beside Beethoven's piano tuner and only a few steps away from lyrics the Beatles wrote on paper scraps. The words to Yesterday, Help!, and Ticket To Ride were scratched in faded pen onto yellowing paper that Lennon and McCartney held in their own genius hands. Across the room were letters Charles Darwin had written to his partner Wallace about the Origin of Species. There was a massive case chock full of first editions of Shakespeare's plays and pieces from the First Folio - the original tragedies and comedies produced in the early 1600s. Truly amazing. I was astounded at how inspiring these old texts could be - to think that Austen and Bronte had touched these pages and Galileo had written his thoughts of the universe in this notebook, or John Lennon read these words that Paul had written so haphazardly. Not to mention the hundreds of religious documents from Buddhism, Zorastrianism and Christianity that held the secrets of historical figures too ancient to even imagine.

I must get back to the wonderful city of London now, back later for more!!