Royal Mews/Tate Britain/Pitmen Painters/Kensington Palace/Tea...yea, we've done a lot of stuff

I haven’t blogged in two days and I feel like I’m so behind.  Ack.  So this post is about yesterday and today.  I’ll start with yesterday-

Our last assignment for the elective class was to go to either a session of Parliament or a court case at the Old Bailey.  Since Parliament isn’t in session we had to go to the Old Bailey.  Our class got canceled yesterday so first thing we did was go downtown to sit in on a court case.  Cami, Kaylee, and I got there only to find out that you can’t have any bags or electronics in the building.  Problem.  We all had bags and electronics.  We didn’t even think about taking turns inside (plus there was only 3 of us) so feeling dejected we left and visited the Royal Mews.  The Royal Mews are basically the Queen’s stables and garage.  We saw some royal horses, a royal Rolls-Royce, and some royal carriages.  The most famous (out of the already famous) that I liked best was the Glass Coach.  This carriage is used for state openings but it is mostly known for carrying a royal bride-to-be with the exception of Princess Kate.  She rode as a commoner with her father in one of the limousines to Westminster Abbey but left as a full-fledged royal in a horse-drawn carriage… Just a little side note.  My other favorite was the Gold State Coach, which is used only for coronations.  Simply looking at the thing you understand why it’s named the Gold State Coach.  It takes 8 horses to draw this nearly 4 ton monster.  And even then it only reaches a walking pace.  It also takes two days just to get the thing out of the stable through a hidden door in the side of the building.  No wonder the rich have to open their homes and gardens to tourists, it’s the only way they can pay for things like golden carriages.  After the mews we hit up Nando’s for lunch cause Kaylee had never eaten there.  After lunch I was planning on going home and doing homework and much needed laundry (which didn’t happen), but ended up going with Courtney, Cami, and Emma to the Tate Britain.  This was a museum that was on my list of things to do but I recently took it off because I heard there was construction and so there weren’t very many good paintings on display right now.  I decided what the heck anyway, and went.  We walked into the tube station dry and when we walked out on the other end it was down pouring.  ‘Bout time I finally got a taste of real London weather.  Of course I was totally unprepared and didn’t have my umbrella or a hood so we had to run through the rain to the museum.  Just one problem though, my boots are worn our and have holes in them.  Big holes.  I don’t want to throw them out until the last day here, but they tend to be an issue when it’s wet outside.  Less than 30 seconds after we left the safety of the underground my right sock was soaked.  Blast.  I didn’t let that spoil my Tate Britain experience though.  I didn’t love this museum but I did get to see a couple of John Singer Sargents and the famous painting Lady of Shalott.

For English 395 Nick bought tickets to the play Pitman Painters.  I was semi-prepared going out this time.  My top half was shielded from the rain by my umbrella, but again, my feet got soaked.  By the end of the night when I took my socks off my feet were extremely pruned.  Anyway I’m sidetracked… I actually really, really enjoyed this play.  It’s based on a true story about some miners who learn how to paint in the 1930’s.  They show the real artwork, and it looks like something you would see in a museum.

This morning we had our last English 300 class!  It feels so good to be done.  We still have history on Monday though so I can’t do my celebratory jig yet.  After classes a group of us went with the Mason’s to tour Kensington Palace.  This palace was a huge let down.  Some rooms were bare and other rooms had really weird confusing displays.  There were maybe two pieces of furniture during the whole tour and even then they had random displays in front of them obstructing the view.  The tour wasn’t very coherent at all and it was super crowded with two-way traffic moving in teeny tiny hallways.  Thank goodness I didn’t have to pay for this tour and the program paid for it cause, in my mind, it wasn’t worth it.  One of the very few positive things about this experience was that I finally found the ornament collection I have been hunting for this whole semester.  The gift shop had at least 8 different Christmas ornaments to choose from but I refrained from buying one because I tracked down and bought one last week.  Plus, I like the one I have better anyway.  Though, of course, I have been searching for 3 months and all this time they were across the street.  My luck.

Top left: The dress Queen Victoria addressed her privy council in the day she became queen
Top right:  a remake of Rachel's artsy photo like this but ours doesn't look as good
Bottom left: this wallpaper lined the way to Princess Diana's dresses.  It looked kinda cool.
Bottom right:  Queen Victoria's wedding dress 

In addition to the tour the program all paid for us to have tea at the Orangery.  I probably wouldn’t have paid for this myself seeing as it was £17.  They gave us an assortment of finger sandwiches, a scone, and two little desserts and, of course, tea.  Don’t worry it was herbal.  Wild berry herbal tea to be exact.  All in all it was delicious and now I can say I’ve had tea, English style.  I waited a couple hours after that before trying out Gourmet Burger Kitchen with Kaylee and Christi.  That was also delicious.  I got the small grilled chicken burger.  Yum.

the burger looks a little out of place but this is the bulk of my food for the day

Well that was the last couple of days for me.  Hope yours was just as fun filled.