I wrote this blog last week, but forgot to post it! Here it is now 🙂

Last week I made a list of all the weekends I have left in London, all the things I still want to see, and all the musicals I still want to go too. I realized I needed to get cracking or I wouldn’t be able to fit it all in! There is so much to do in London that even after four months here I know there’s going to be a lot of things I still won’t see. However, in the last week and a half I’ve been to a palace, a museum, 2 musicals, and 2 shopping trips, so I think I’m making good progress!

Last weekend I took the train out of London to Hampton Court Palace. It’s one of 5 historic royal palaces that you can visit in London and it was really nice. The palace is interesting because it was originally constructed as a tudor palace for Henry VIII, but in the 17^th century William III had Christopher Wren (Architect of St. Pauls) transform it into a baroque design. Unfortunately, Wren never completed the changes and the palace is now half tudor, half baroque!

However, he best part of the palace for me was the gardens. When you leave the back of the palace there is an enormous garden that goes for acres in all directions. There’s dirt paths leading all around it with these triangular-shaped trees everywhere (see my facebook album soon for photos). It was a beautiful day when I went, albeit quite cold, so I spent a lot of time walking around the gardens. I finished off the trip by completing the Hampton Court Palace hedge maze!

This week I’ve also seen two musicals; Mamma Mia and We Will Rock You. Mamma Mia was fantastic! The musical is just as upbeat and fun as the movie, with the added bonus of it being a live show. At the end of the show the actors all stuck around and sang Mamma Mia, Dancing Queen and Waterloo again for the audience and everyone was up dancing and singing along!

I was supposed to go to We Will Rock You with Rocky and Grant, who were supposed to visit me in London this weekend, unfortunately they’re not coming for a few more weeks yet though. But I went to the show with a friend and although the plot was really weird (pretty much expected), the music was fantastic! There was the added drama of having the fire alarm go off in the middle of the show and having to evacuate the entire building. Luckily it was false alarm and they were able to finish the show.

I’ve been doing some more shopping as well and last weekend I checked out one of the local markets. It’s just this huge open space with dozens of booths set up throughout where people are selling everything from clothing and jewelery to vintage furniture to international cuisine. The highlight of the market for me was finding a booth that was selling all of these hand-sewn dresses made out of African fabrics! As soon as I saw the bright colours and patterns I knew it was African cloth and had to buy one!

Anyways, I’m off to Norway on Thursday to go skiing with Rocky and Grant!!!

Maria

Finding the Prime Meridian

Last weekend I decided to go out to Greenwich to visit the Royal Observatory. Greenwich is still considered part of central London, but it’s a bit farther away and not that many tube stations run there. Unfortunately it took me forever to get there; after waiting a half an hour for a train that never came I finally realized that the tube to Greenwich was shut down refurbishment. This pretty much describes London as they prepare for the Olympics; everything closes down on the weekends for repairs. Luckily I managed to find a bus and eventually got there, although it ended up taking me 2 hours in total!

Greenwich is really nice and the Royal Observatory is located on a hill right in the middle of Greenwich Park; it gives you a great view of the city and the river Thames. The Royal Observatory was built years ago to study the stars in order to create a star catalog. It’s famous today because it is the location of the Prime Meridian, 0 degrees longitude! Everyone in the world sets their watches based on the time it is in Greenwich. I stood on the Prime Meridian and thoroughly enjoyed learning all about how the Meridian was moved 3 or 4 times to suit the astrologer living at the Observatory before it’s location today was agreed upon.

While the Meridian was interesting, my favourite part of the Observatory was the planetarium they have! I’ve wanted to go to a planetarium for years and I finally got to go to one and learned all about the life cycle of stars! There was also a photography exhibition on with loads of pictures of space; they were just incredible!  I ended the day by taking the Thames River boat back to the city center, which was substantially more enjoyable than a 2-hour bus ride!

Happy Chinese New Year

It seems a bit late to be writing about this now, but last weekend London celebrated the Chinese New Year (yes a week late, I’m not really sure why). I was pretty excited to go check out all the celebrations; unfortunately it was a pretty big letdown. Chinatown was decorated really nicely and there were a lot of people dressed in costume dancing around, but there were just so many people crowded into such a small space that it wasn’t at all enjoyable. It’s the year of the dragon this year so I picked up a little Chinese dragon souvenir, had lunch in a small Chinese restaurant with a friend, and then got out of there as fast as I could!

I decided to spend the rest of my afternoon at Buckingham Palace. I’m not really sure how I’ve been in London for more then a month and only just visited the palace. It is located in St. James Park and it’s quite grand. I kept my eyes peeled in case the Queen dropped by or Will and Kate came for a visit, but sadly no luck. I did stumble upon a memorial recognizing the contributions of Canadians and Newfoundlanders in the First World War which was pretty nice though!

Limitless

I spent this past weekend at a youth retreat with the Salvation Army church I’ve been going to in London. About 20 of us headed out to the English countryside to enjoy a weekend retreat. I was thrilled about the timing of the retreat as SASF retreat took place this past weekend as well and I was bummed about missing it. I really enjoyed the youth retreat here though! I met lots of new people and had a great time getting a break from the busyness of the city.

Highlights of the retreat included go-karting and climbing Jacobs ladder. Jacob’s ladder is this huge wooden ladder that starts out with the rungs about 3 feet apart and then they slowly get further apart up to about 6 feet I’d guess. It’s pretty tall and insanely hard to climb up! I really wanted to make it to the 7^th rung, but I’m a wuss and got scared about halfway up. You can see pictures on my facebook page. I also attended my first authentic “fancy dress” party! “Fancy Dress” is just a fancy way of saying costume party. We all had to dress up as something that started with the first letter of our name, so I dressed up as an M&M!

I think the best part of the weekend for me though was when it finally snowed. It’s the first time I’ve seen in snow in London and everyone had great reactions to it! It was one of those really nice snowfalls where there’s no wind and the snowflakes are all really sticky. Well we ended up getting about 5-10cm overnight the whole country just about shut down! Nobody could get anywhere, the highways were backed up, everyone was hoping school was going to be cancelled on Monday; it was pretty dramatic. I understand that London’s not really equipped to deal with snow, but the Newfoundlander in me had a good laugh at all the hoopla over a few measly centimeters of snow. Speaking of which, I hear Newfoundland has been getting killed with snow this winter and I’d love to see some pictures please!

Take care!
Maria

This past weekend was quite long, but eventful! I woke up nice and early on Saturday morning in order to fit in a day of art! It was too early really, I woke up at 5:30am in order to go to the National Gallery to line up for tickets to an exhibition on Leonardo Da Vinci. I met up with another MUN engineering student living in London who told me all about the limited time exhibition going on at the Gallery.

The exhibit was all about Da Vinci and featured 9 of his 15 paintings! The Gallery had many of his paintings on loan from other museums and had collected dozens of his other sketches and works. We had to stand it line for a whopping 5 and a half hours to get tickets, but I must say, it was worth it! The exhibit is here for 3 months, but it’s so popular that you always have to come line up at 6am in order to get tickets.

The surprise of the exhibit was that a new Da Vinci painting has recently been discovered; Christ as Salvator Mundi. It showed up at a private art auction in the States a little while ago and it’s recently been restored. Apparently this is the first time it’s been on display for the public to view. BBC is doing a big documentary about it. Needless to say it was definitely an experience to get to see so many of his paintings in one place!

In the afternoon, we decided to check out London’s very own Banglatown and had some tasty Bangladeshi cuisine. I also went inside St. Paul’s Cathedral for the first time since I’ve been here and I have to say, it is incredible! I didn’t get a chance to go up to the dome, but the inside is beautiful. There was a service going on when we walked in and the organ was just booming throughout the church. It’s easy to understand why it is called Christopher Wren’s masterpiece.

Sunday was not quite as exciting as Saturday, but I still had a nice day. I decided to go to the London Sealife Aquarium; unfortunately it was a little bit of a letdown. It was quite expensive and mostly aimed at kids. I found it interesting to discover that you’re not allowed to keep whales in the UK, so the aquarium was focused on different kinds of fish and sealife; they did have a few sharks though. My personal favourite was the penguin exhibit at the very end of the aquarium. The penguins did everything as a group. They would swim in a formation, jump up on the ice together and then all dive back in the water at the same time, it was super cute!

This weekend I’m looking forward to seeing Les Miserables and I’m hoping to take in the Chinese New Year celebrations in Chinatown.

Much love,
Maria