Last weekend, I went to London with the DIS optional study tour!
Right after travel break, I began a 6-week course that met once a week called Literary London, which culminated in a weekend-long trip there! In five classes, we covered five centuries worth of history and literature.
I realized over the semester that I hugely preferred the DIS tours because we had opportunities to experience cities beyond the typical tourist traps.
For example, our class' first stop was Shakespeare's Globe Theatre.
We saw the Globe during the international season, where they'll perform 37 plays in 37 languages! We had the opportunity to watch a rehearsal of Richard II in Palestinian Arabic. It was so surreal getting to watch a rehearsal of a Shakespeare play (even if we couldn't understand a word) on the stage of the Globe itself. Afterwards, we participated in a Macbeth workshop with whom I presume is an acting coach and expert in Shakespearean plays.
Next, our class had the option of either going to the Churchill War Rooms or an exhibit for Dickens' 200th anniversary of his birth. I consider myself more of a literature nerd than a history buff, so I chose the Dickens exhibit at the Museum of London.
That afternoon, we reunited for a traditionally English high tea, filled with finger sandwiches, scones, and the tastiest tea I've ever had in my life. I've never even liked tea all that much and it was delicious!
It was super fancy too- jeans and sneakers weren't permitted. It was undoubtedly the classiest place I've ever been... I even learned how to properly hold up my pinky while drinking tea! I was quite sophisticated that afternoon.
Immediately after our super classy afternoon, we head over to the West End to see one of my favorite musicals, Billy Elliot!
I had seen the show on tour in Charlotte last year, but this was beyond excellent. I cried no less than five times.
The following morning, we split up into pairs to complete assignments that we would later present to the class. Some people walked along Oxford Street, looking at how Virginia Woolf's description of the street in the '20's compares to the street today, another group travelled through most of the lines of the Tube to gain a better understanding of London's transportation system. My assignment was titled "Walking the Wall," and our task was to trace the path of the ancient Roman Wall that 2000 years ago, defined the perimeters of the city. This project consumed Saturday morning and it ended up being an interesting, personalized walking tour of the city.
We later met up at the National Portrait Gallery which was far more fascinating than any other museum visit I've been to this semester, largely because of the activities our tour leaders had planned for us. We broke up into six groups of two and each pair of us analyzed a portrait from a different period of London (we did Romanticism) and presented this to the rest of the group.
We ran into this guy:
(he's pretty famous, right?)
That night, we had traditional fish and chips (which aren't actually chips, but french fries. This is something I know I should have known, but it still came as quite a shock to me) at another super posh restaurant. Honestly, the Literary London tour was the classiest weekend of my life.
Oh, did I mention I went to Kings Cross and hopped on Platform 9 3/4? Turns out my letter from Hogwarts was only 9 years lost in the mail.
ahhh, it's the Millennium Bridge! I hope the Death Eaters don't destroy it like they did in the sixth Harry Potter movie!
side note: By sheer luck, out of the nearly 8 million people in London, I happened to run into my cousin, Lauren!
I realized over the semester that I hugely preferred the DIS tours because we had opportunities to experience cities beyond the typical tourist traps.
For example, our class' first stop was Shakespeare's Globe Theatre.
We saw the Globe during the international season, where they'll perform 37 plays in 37 languages! We had the opportunity to watch a rehearsal of Richard II in Palestinian Arabic. It was so surreal getting to watch a rehearsal of a Shakespeare play (even if we couldn't understand a word) on the stage of the Globe itself. Afterwards, we participated in a Macbeth workshop with whom I presume is an acting coach and expert in Shakespearean plays.
Next, our class had the option of either going to the Churchill War Rooms or an exhibit for Dickens' 200th anniversary of his birth. I consider myself more of a literature nerd than a history buff, so I chose the Dickens exhibit at the Museum of London.
That afternoon, we reunited for a traditionally English high tea, filled with finger sandwiches, scones, and the tastiest tea I've ever had in my life. I've never even liked tea all that much and it was delicious!
It was super fancy too- jeans and sneakers weren't permitted. It was undoubtedly the classiest place I've ever been... I even learned how to properly hold up my pinky while drinking tea! I was quite sophisticated that afternoon.
Immediately after our super classy afternoon, we head over to the West End to see one of my favorite musicals, Billy Elliot!
I had seen the show on tour in Charlotte last year, but this was beyond excellent. I cried no less than five times.
The following morning, we split up into pairs to complete assignments that we would later present to the class. Some people walked along Oxford Street, looking at how Virginia Woolf's description of the street in the '20's compares to the street today, another group travelled through most of the lines of the Tube to gain a better understanding of London's transportation system. My assignment was titled "Walking the Wall," and our task was to trace the path of the ancient Roman Wall that 2000 years ago, defined the perimeters of the city. This project consumed Saturday morning and it ended up being an interesting, personalized walking tour of the city.
We later met up at the National Portrait Gallery which was far more fascinating than any other museum visit I've been to this semester, largely because of the activities our tour leaders had planned for us. We broke up into six groups of two and each pair of us analyzed a portrait from a different period of London (we did Romanticism) and presented this to the rest of the group.
We ran into this guy:
(he's pretty famous, right?)
That night, we had traditional fish and chips (which aren't actually chips, but french fries. This is something I know I should have known, but it still came as quite a shock to me) at another super posh restaurant. Honestly, the Literary London tour was the classiest weekend of my life.
Oh, did I mention I went to Kings Cross and hopped on Platform 9 3/4? Turns out my letter from Hogwarts was only 9 years lost in the mail.
ahhh, it's the Millennium Bridge! I hope the Death Eaters don't destroy it like they did in the sixth Harry Potter movie!
This is the tallest building in Europe! London was very strange for me when we first arrived and not exactly what I expected. Even though I've been to 8 countries in Europe now, this is the first time I've seen any skyscrapers! I thought that London was going to have that quaint, European city feel to it, but it ended up being more metropolitan (and overwhelming) than I expected. Regardless, the study tour exceeded my expectations in every way!
side note: By sheer luck, out of the nearly 8 million people in London, I happened to run into my cousin, Lauren!
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