Today marks my twentieth day here in London. So for my second ever blog post I decided to re-live a few of my favorite touristing (yes, it’s a new verb) moments. First and probably the most prestigious is Buckingham Palace (image 1). Two of my friends and I discovered the self-guided audio tour of the majestic palace and absolutely LOVED it. It was so hard to imagine the actual age of the palace itself (over 150 years), but that real live people actually live there. The architecture, detail, and “livability” of the place was spectacular. I especially loved the statue in the front where my friend Allison and I climbed up just to pose for one of our classic “funny” pictures! (image 2) The second amazing tourist place I went to was the Houses of Parliament (image 3). One hall of the building is 900 years old, which one of my British friends likes to remind me, is almost four times the age of the United States of America itself. Although my tour guide spent a long time explaining how the government works, which of course is foreign to me, I genuinely enjoyed exploring another nation’s place of power. It’s amazing how much I’ve learned about our own government, yet I have never taken the time to go on a Capitol building tour. This tour inspired me to put that on my “to-do” list when I get home. My third and final spot that I absolutely loved was The Globe (image 4). The hype and almost insanity surrounding it was completely worth it. I was given a “free” ticket from my Shakespeare literature class to go see the play we will begin discussing this week, Julius Caesar, and I loved it. I had never read the play until a few days before and I had never seen it performed and I just fell in love with it. The atmosphere standing in the yard for almost three hours for the play really felt like a throw back to Elizabethan times. The actors really brought the play to life and did a tremendous job with interpreting it. I look forward to going back there and hopefully I will blog about it again!
Great post! So are you an Old Globe ‘groundling’ now?
I am! I’ve actually seen two shows there. I saw Julius Caesar for class and then a bunch of us went back and saw The Comedy of Errors which was amazing! And, luckily, this Friday I get to go back again and get a tour.
Sounds like you are making great use of your time already–back here across the pond at Rollins it’s hard to believe we are already in October!