Roman Holiday

After a week of midterms it's finally fall break in London! I'm headed to Italy and Barcelona next week and I might not be able to update, so I'll leave you with some pictures I took when my Business of Art class visited the Saatchi Gallery in London.

abstract art

This was my favorite part of the exhibit- a Chinese artist had recreated lifesize sculptures of political leaders from around the world. He aged them and placed them in wheelchairs to create a pseudo nursing home. The most interesting part of the piece was that the wheelchairs moved around the room and if the leaders had been allies they would avoid each other, but if the leaders had been enemies the statues would crash into one another.

Punks, Goths, and King Henry the VIII

It's the Sunday before midterms, and I've had my nose in The Complete Works of William Shakespeare all morning so I'm taking a quick study break to write the post about Hampton Court and Camden that I promised.

I think I explained this before, but the Syracuse program does weekly excursions to different parts of England every Friday. You pay a deposit to go on the trip, but then you get it back when you get on the bus. So it's kind of free except you already paid for it out of your tuition. Anyway, I went on one of these trips to Hampton Court this past Friday. About an hour and a half outside of London, Hampton Court Palace was home to Henry VIII, Mary I, James I, Charles I, Charles II, William and Mary among others. It is a huge complex with rooms enough for everyone in the Royal Court, incredible gardens and a hedge labyrinth. We started our day with a tour of the royal apartments and some of the other historic rooms. Then they set us loose to do whatever else we wanted at the palace. I had gone on the trip with my friend Megan so we grabbed a quick bite at the tea room and then headed toward the maze. On the way we ducked into the royal tennis courts. To our surprise there were people playing on them (seriously, what kind of special club do you have to be a part of to get to play tennis at Hampton Court)! It seemed much more like squash than tennis, but we couldn't really get a good look because the players kept walking past and telling us to be quiet. We headed back out to the garden and found our way to the maze. We made it to the center in about 10ish minutes, but I couldn't tell if that was because the maze was easy or we just got really lucky. Either way it was fun. We spent a large part of our day just exploring the grounds of the palace which included fountains, topiaries and tons of geese. It was nice to see so much grass! Living in a big city, sometimes it's nice just to see green in all directions with no park fence in sight. After a long stint in the great outdoors we made our way back into the palace to explore the kitchens, clock-tower courtyard and the great hall. The palace is strange in that it resembles a historical Disney World- actors are dressed up in period clothing imitating the aristocracy who would've lived there during the 16th century. They put on shows and pose for pictures- all very strange. I wish we'd had a little more time so we could've gone to some of the exhibits the Palace had about the Tudors, but overall it was a really fun day.

Saturday, we headed to Camden Town, an area of London notorious for its markets and counterculture. It is somewhat of a headquarters for all the punks, goths and tattoo parlors in the city. I feel like it was almost too overwhelming to go on a Saturday- it was so crowded in some places it was hard to move so I didn't end up buying anything other than some sub-par Chinese food for lunch. The vintage stores were all cute though so maybe I'll have to take a trip back on a Thursday. I need to get back to Troilus, but I'll leave you with some more pictures from my weekend:

An Artsy Week

This week started with what my roommate Liz deemed "the artsiest day possible." Picture 15 photo students with cameras attached to their eyes following our professor who resembles a 5 ft. tall version of Santa. We took a boat down the Thames to Tower Bridge and essentially worked our way back up the south side of the river stopping at places my teacher thought were interesting. To be honest, I didn't get the best pictures out of the trip (partially because it was a cloudy, gross day and partially because I had loaded the film in my camera incorrectly...) but I really enjoyed it. The first place we stopped was the Merchant Marine Memorial, which is a really beautiful monument dedicated to the men who died during WWI and WWII who worked on merchant ships, and people come and leave flags in the ground there in remembrance. We continued on stopping at the tower bridge, the OXO building, a pub (where our teacher bought us drinks!), and Borough Market. Borough Market is literally under London Bridge and has every type of food you could ever want. Liz and I both got chicken sandwiches from this funny man who made us do Jazz hands before he would give us our sandwiches. Strange, but worth it. It was quite possibly the best chicken sandwich I had ever had. We finished up the day walking the south bank of the Thames which is where the Globe and National theaters are. Here are some of my pictures from the day:

View from the OXO builiding

Along the river ThamesSundial in front of Tower BridgeMerchant Marine MemorialView of Parliament from the River Boat

I had plans to visit the Tate Modern on Saturday, but it was such a nice day that some of my flatmates and I decided our time would be better spent paddle boating on the lake in Hyde Park. It's only open until the end of October so it was at the top of our priority lists. For anyone planning on visiting London, I would definitely recommend doing this, even if the paddling was a little harder than I had originally anticipated. We only rented the boat for half an hour so after that we got the most delicious waffles from a cart (you can tell how delicious they were by how big my smile is in the picture haha), walked around the park, and visited the Princess Diana memorial fountain.

The rest of my week was pretty average until Thursday when I visited the Frieze Art Fair in Regent's Park. I was required to go for my business of art class and I didn't really know what to expect, but I ended up really enjoying it. It's one of if not the largest art fair of the year so art galleries from around the world bring pieces to try and sell at this fair. Some of the stuff was really strange, but I liked most of it. Even more interesting though were the other people who attended the fair- it was everyone from high end art dealers to foreign tourists to punks with mohawks and funny colored hair. I could've spent days in the fair and still not seen everything, but eventually I forced myself to leave and I wandered around the park. It's finally fall in London and the trees were just gorgeous. Here are some of my favorite pieces from Frieze and the view from my bench in the park.
Friday I went to Hampton Court Palace through a Syracuse field trip and Saturday I explored Camden town, but I'm too tired to post about that now- maybe I'll take a study break tomorrow (midterms are next week) to write a quick post!

Mayerling, Masala and the British Museum

I just got home from the Royal Opera House after seeing the ballet Mayerling with a group of Syracuse students. SU London has this program called the Thursday Alternative for people who aren't traveling on the weekend. They plan something fun to do on Thursday evenings (usually an outing or a show) and offer discounted tickets for students. I couldn't convince any of my friends to go- but that's alright- this show was amazing. Not a typical ballet in the least. It was based off the murder/suicide of the Crown Prince of Austria (Rudolf) and his mistress Mary Vetsera in the late 1800s. Filled with prostitutes, drugs and violence, it was unlike any ballet I've ever seen, but the dancing was amazing (even though there wasn't a tutu in sight). I was WAY up in the amphitheater as I'm sure you can tell from the picture I took of the stage, but honestly my seats weren't totally awful for only having paid £10. Click here for a clip of the show. The rest of my Thursday was pretty uneventful- filled with planning future trips and a visit to the grocery store.

This past weekend Liz's parents were here so they took us to a really great Indian restaurant in Covent Garden called Masala. In London there is a huge Indian population, so the food here is really good and authentic. I had a mild curry and loved it- I need to try the chicken tikka masala before I leave London though- apparently its the UK's unofficial national dish.

Tuesday both of my classes were really interesting- in Interpreting Shakespeare we had a guest speaker come- the director of Troilus and Cressida- one of the plays we had seen at the Globe. He offered some interesting insight into the Globe theater as a performance space and the play itself. My business of art teacher took our class to several commercial galleries in London as well as Sotheby's auction house which was all very new and interesting because I had never seen anything like that before.

Wednesdays I don't have my creative writing class until 5:20 p.m. so I decided to spend some time at the British Museum in the morning. After a quick lunch in their cafe (with sweet tea no less!) I decided to tackle the Africa section of the museum. I'm not sure if I visited the Africa section when my family came to London a few years ago, so it was all new to me this time. I really enjoyed it- I think every Wed. I might try to tackle one section of the museum until I've seen everything. It's literally a 5 minute walk from my apartment, so I don't think it will be too much of a problem!

Tomorrow my photo class has an all-day field trip to the Borough food market and the south side of the Thames river- hopefully I'll have lots of pictures to post afterwards!