Londontown - Part One

A new summer, a new adventure. I will be working on a new dig this year but first, my pre-trip experiences with my brother Josh in London, England. Sorry for the delay in posting, but I hope to have more soon. Wednesday, June 26th I had stayed in a hotel the night before but arrived at a hostel in central London on this day. I met with Josh, who had been away from home for several months on a study abroad program in the Netherlands; it was a happy reunion since we hadn't seen each other for a long time. It was about midday when I arrived, and we had yet to plan our trip. The first thing to do was get some lunch, which we did at a Lebanese restaurant nearby. We'd decided to take it easy the first day and use the time to figure out what to do. I had a Top 10 London guide and we could use that for ideas and use the map inside to get around. We read about the London Pass, a card that can get one in to many sites for free, and we opted for the travel option so use of the subway was free. We purchased the pass for the next two days. From the London Pass office, we headed to the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square. Most museums are free in London, so we walked in and browsed the rooms. There are thousands of paintings. We just walked around at random and saw mostly European works; most (but not all) had Christian themes. For example, we also saw Van Gogh's Sunflowers and Monet's Water Lily Pond. I was also glad to see Veronese's The Family of Darius Before Alexander since I've seen it in a few textbooks. The Gallery also had this special exhibition called Saints Alive. It contained several very large sculptures that had kinetic movement. A man named Michael Landy created them, drawing inspiration from paintings of saints that are also in the Gallery - he used the motifs of various stories and applied them to these sculptures. One sculpture was an enormous wheel on the wall that you could turn with a hand crank. It was a sort of wheel of fortune, since there were various predictions inscribed into the wood between spokes (though there was one broken area, and Josh's spin landed here). Mine landed on "You will be taken by angels to be buried on Mount Sinai" which is good, because it very nearly landed on "You will marry someone who considers you less equal." The wheel itself referred to Saint Catherine who was sentenced to death on a spiked breaking wheel - the wheel breaks at her touch but she ends up beheaded anyway. Afterward, we meandered the Square, and took photos there. We were also very pleased to discover Canada House is right next door. It's a sort of cultural centre and also acts as a consulate, I think. We picked up refreshments and walked over to a nearby park - probably one of the Royal Parks since Buckingham Palace was in the vicinity. By this time, most places are closed so we walked back to the subway and returned to our hostel for the night.