Tuesday morning, we went to Fleet Street for Media and Society. Fleet Street, contrary to my belief, is known for things other than Sweeney Todd!
Fleet St. used to be the hub of newspaper printing and lawyer offices, before Robert Murdoch adopted electronic technology to print newspapers, essentially cutting out the printing business. After the 1980s, newspapers became consolidated and big corporations so the little printing presses of Fleet Street died out. Now it's really just restaurants and some offices. We're talking about print media in class, so it was fitting we go to one of the most famous places for newspapers. Since he took so long in class to talk about print media (along with a million other unrelated things), we didn't have much time to actually see Fleet Street. We did see the Temple Church used in the filming of the Da Vinci Code-the Knights Templar Church.
We didn't have any time to see anything else on Fleet Street, so our professor took us Ye Olde Chesire Cheese, a 17th century pub where Charles Dickens used to hang out. Casual right? It opened at 12 and we got there at approximately 12:05, so the place was empty. It's really cool and old. It was dark with dark wood and extremely low ceilings (so many people hit their heads on the "mind your head" signs). It just smelled old. We went down to a large cellar, where our entire class took up 4 bench tables and ordered drinks and food. It was pretty good food, but definitely didn't taste authentic (i.e. frozen). Definitely a good thing to check off my bucket list though!
The Pret next door is a nice touch, no?
REBUILT in 1667.
We got a little turned out trying to get home (it was really quite simple...oops), so I was pretty rushed getting to Culture by Design. We had a really uncomfortable discussion about pictures that represent 9/11. We had about an hour discussion about two pictures before our teacher told us that the point of the discussion was to come to the conclusion that NO picture encapsulates it. I don't know, he just went about it in a rather insensitive way, and it put me off. Our outing was GREAT though, we went to the National Portrait Gallery. Our official assignment was to look around this photography exhibit by Taylor Wessing. They were all portraits (obviously) submitted to a contest. I was really intrigued by the first prize winner. It was a picture of an Amish girl. Not sure how many people are aware of the Amish traditions, but being photographed is strictly forbidden. You can tell how uncomfortable the girl is in the photo. Jay told us to go through the gallery once first without looking at the captions, then go back and read them. At first I was unimpressed by the picture that won first place. But after I read it I was really confused. Why would that photographer force the girl to have her picture taken? She's breaking rules-what happens to her after the picture is taken? I was both fascinated and disgusted by the photographer for taking the picture. After we looked at the exhibit, Jay took us around to some of the awesome paintings and pictures in the museum. I saw the only real painting of Shakespeare, plenty of famous ones of the Tudors, and a special on Marilyn Monroe. I love museums, I could've spent all day in that gallery.
On Wednesday morning, we watched Pan's Labyrinth in history. We're learning about the interwar years in Europe and, interestingly, there weren't many interwar years in Spain. They had their Spanish Civil War in the 1930s, which was incredibly brutal, but we as Americans didn't hear much about. The film, for those who don't know, takes place in 1944, and while the Spanish Civil War is over and World War II is going on, there are still residual fascist sentiments. I thought the film was beautifully done, but very disturbing. Unfortunately as soon as my professor turned the lights back on, I got a semi-headache, so I wasn't in a very good mood the rest of the day.
For art history, we went back to the National Gallery after watching a film on Titian. We started looking at Rubens and Rembrandt; for our midterm, we have to pick one of each of their paintings and compare and contrast them. I love my professor and that class in general. On the way back from the gallery, Kara and I stopped at Food For Thought, a vegetarian restaurant I had heard was good. I was really disappointed because they had already run out of a lot of food! It was only 5pm too, which was a bummer. I'll have to try it again for lunch!
After we got back, we had our weekly meeting, then a group of us planned our spring break! I'm going to Italy for a week-Pisa, Florence, Venice, and Rome. I'm SO excited! Italy was one of the places I really wanted to go while I was in Europe, so the fact that we finally booked everything is unreal. We had to watch Romeo+Juliet (by Baz Luhrman) for film, so I did that after. I remember watching it in freshman year of high school and thinking it was stupid and weird. Well, it just goes to show you how much actually reading the play and age can help make a movie better. If you haven't seen it, watch it! If for no other reason, watch it for Leo Dicaprio. It's during his teenage heartthrob days, and he's just beautiful. Plus he's speaking Shakespeare, so how can you go wrong? The movie's just great because it takes what can feel like dry language and puts it in present times-on steroids. It's the same exact Shakespearean words, but in a Baz Luhrman type world. It's over the top, but in the best way.
On Thursday, I woke up and went for a little walk to do some errands, and was HOT. It was about 50 degrres, which was so refreshing. It kept raining on and off, but then it was also sunny. Not complaining!
For film, we talked about Romeo + Juliet for a little while, then went on a walk of South Bank. South Bank has so much history and culture-it's the home of entertainment in London. We started at the BFI (British Film Insitutue). We walked along the Thames, and every now and then Steve would stop and tell us some fascinating bit of history. We saw the Globe, Tate Modern, and ended at the Borough Market. It was a much better Thames walk than the first night we were here, when it was 30 degrees and snowing. The light on St. Paul's was so beautiful:
Whew, that was a lot! I wanted to get everything up to date before we go to Edinburgh tomorrow. We'll be in Scotland for the weekend, and I'm not taking my computer. Tonight we're attempting a progressive dinner in the house-each flat is doing a different country. We'll see how this actually turns out...Cheers!
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