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kitewithfishReal posts have been lacking as I've basked in the situation where people cook and buy things for me and keep giving me backrubs. (Yesssss!) Anyhoo, I'm going to try and give a real account now.
Dec 17th- Still in London with Emma, on one of the few days where Emma did not have clear plans for us and she thrust tour books at me the night before to figure out what we should do. I picked out a tour of the Cabinet War Rooms, the bomb shelter section created and secured for the English government in World War II which still contains all the real artifacts from that time, but we ended up not doing that because it was 9 pounds. We did go to see the changing of the Horse Guards at 11am, which took waay more time than seems necessary for any sort of ritual, but was kind of fun to watch. Due to boredom, I took many more pictures of the Horse Guards than I had any real desire to *have*, so that it seems that my trip to England was in fact spent in a stable.
After that, we went to the Tate Modern Art Museum, which is simply everything a museum should be- huge, free, full of great exhibits and lots of places to sit and just watch the art and the people. My favorite was a darkened room of Mark Rothko's work that had been intended for a restaurant- there were good chairs, and Emma found me there sort of sinking into the canvas. There was also some interesting stuff in the Surrealism area. It kind of surprised me just how many small children were there with their parents- Emma said this was not at all surprising to her.
Later that day, Emma, me and another Wellesleyite M. went to see Wicked! It was lovely, and though we did not end up with box seats, we did get some very nice balcony ones. The show was really, really good- the technical aspect was incredibly- the chorus and choreography was incredibly professional and stunning, and the costuming was to die for. I wish I could have taken pictures, but that was a no-no. I rented some little plastic opera glasses for 50p and was very glad of it- they let me get a much closer feel for some of the scenes. The woman playing Elphaba was excellent- the others seemed to have issues with their English accents slipping through the generally American-toned dialog, but she never once slipped, and her voice was incredible. She was also just stunning, even covered in green paint.
Emma was not very pleased with the way the woman portrayed Galinda the Good Witch- she was converted to a very posh English character with a very shrill voice, which made her seem bigoted and dumb. It would have been more appropriate, I think, to start her like that and then show the character arc more clearly, but Galinda's goodness seems to waver and take shape over time- when you're showing her as being stupid while she's having an emotional dilemma, I feel like it makes it hard to trust her in the end of the show. Since she'd wavered before, she could waver again.
But it was still a fantastic show, and I'm very pleased to have seen it.
Dec 18th- My last full day in England was spent almost entirely at the British Museum.
Emma had found out the time to line up to get tickets for the Terra Cotta Soldiers from China being displayed there, so we showed up early and queued up, only to find that there were some Austrian boys in line behind us, studying in the UK. It was kind of interesting how that worked out...
Anyhoo, post purchasing the tickets, Emma had to meet her parents at the airport and get them settled, so she left me at the British Museum unattended. (Relax nothing burned down.) It was really fascinating. I really wish that Boston had more museums like that- huge and free and just packed with stuff. I wandered around a lot and ended up in the highly famous Egyptian portion of the Museum. (Emma advised me that the exhibitions were generally better about places where the British had had an empire, which was good guidance.)
I have to say that part of the appeal was the fact that so many of the things that I was seeing were the originals of things I'd seen so often represented in books and magazines about the subject. There was a cat mummy that shows up everywhere you see anything about mummification. I was most interested in the collection of early Babylonian and Egyptian writing history, which was unfortunately in the state of being moved and repaired so a lot of the items were actually being taken out in a slow stream. There were still some lovely rolling seals.
The Terra Cotta Warriors were kind of fascinating, but so crowded that it was uncomfortable to linger long. They were, however, absolutely beautiful and really interesting. The soldiers did not survive so well, so they'd lost almost all their glazing and paint and were just terra cotta, but there were some figures of administrators that retained more paint, and you could see how subtly the faces were painted pink and looked real. There were even acrobats and strongmen, and a brass chariot that's the only example we have of what the real wooden chariots would have looked like. Everywhere was a display of long painstaking craftsmanship and skill. I'm still a little confused about the process of assembling the figures themselves- it looked like the explanation was that they fired the figures starting with a cookie-cutter figure, and then added details later, but I don't understand how they could have fired the main figure then still have had the later additions stick to the clay. The detail work on these things was intense- all the figures had individual faces and hairstyles.
Dec 19th- last day in London
Emma and her parents and I went to the Victoria and Albert Museum, where I got a freebie ride into the Haute Couture exhibit. The whole thing was focused heavily on the post-war New Look and Christian Dior, but the rest of the museum also has a large section on clothing throughout the ages. You only had to pay for the traveling exhibitions, which is a nice feature of big British Museums.
Anyhoo, after lunch I got myself to the train and got shipped to Heathrow, where I found my way out to my plane and back to Boston. In the bookshop, I bought The Historian because I'd heard good things about it from both Emma and my sister. I've not yet finished it.
Dec 17th- Still in London with Emma, on one of the few days where Emma did not have clear plans for us and she thrust tour books at me the night before to figure out what we should do. I picked out a tour of the Cabinet War Rooms, the bomb shelter section created and secured for the English government in World War II which still contains all the real artifacts from that time, but we ended up not doing that because it was 9 pounds. We did go to see the changing of the Horse Guards at 11am, which took waay more time than seems necessary for any sort of ritual, but was kind of fun to watch. Due to boredom, I took many more pictures of the Horse Guards than I had any real desire to *have*, so that it seems that my trip to England was in fact spent in a stable.
After that, we went to the Tate Modern Art Museum, which is simply everything a museum should be- huge, free, full of great exhibits and lots of places to sit and just watch the art and the people. My favorite was a darkened room of Mark Rothko's work that had been intended for a restaurant- there were good chairs, and Emma found me there sort of sinking into the canvas. There was also some interesting stuff in the Surrealism area. It kind of surprised me just how many small children were there with their parents- Emma said this was not at all surprising to her.
Later that day, Emma, me and another Wellesleyite M. went to see Wicked! It was lovely, and though we did not end up with box seats, we did get some very nice balcony ones. The show was really, really good- the technical aspect was incredibly- the chorus and choreography was incredibly professional and stunning, and the costuming was to die for. I wish I could have taken pictures, but that was a no-no. I rented some little plastic opera glasses for 50p and was very glad of it- they let me get a much closer feel for some of the scenes. The woman playing Elphaba was excellent- the others seemed to have issues with their English accents slipping through the generally American-toned dialog, but she never once slipped, and her voice was incredible. She was also just stunning, even covered in green paint.
Emma was not very pleased with the way the woman portrayed Galinda the Good Witch- she was converted to a very posh English character with a very shrill voice, which made her seem bigoted and dumb. It would have been more appropriate, I think, to start her like that and then show the character arc more clearly, but Galinda's goodness seems to waver and take shape over time- when you're showing her as being stupid while she's having an emotional dilemma, I feel like it makes it hard to trust her in the end of the show. Since she'd wavered before, she could waver again.
But it was still a fantastic show, and I'm very pleased to have seen it.
Dec 18th- My last full day in England was spent almost entirely at the British Museum.
Emma had found out the time to line up to get tickets for the Terra Cotta Soldiers from China being displayed there, so we showed up early and queued up, only to find that there were some Austrian boys in line behind us, studying in the UK. It was kind of interesting how that worked out...
Anyhoo, post purchasing the tickets, Emma had to meet her parents at the airport and get them settled, so she left me at the British Museum unattended. (Relax nothing burned down.) It was really fascinating. I really wish that Boston had more museums like that- huge and free and just packed with stuff. I wandered around a lot and ended up in the highly famous Egyptian portion of the Museum. (Emma advised me that the exhibitions were generally better about places where the British had had an empire, which was good guidance.)
I have to say that part of the appeal was the fact that so many of the things that I was seeing were the originals of things I'd seen so often represented in books and magazines about the subject. There was a cat mummy that shows up everywhere you see anything about mummification. I was most interested in the collection of early Babylonian and Egyptian writing history, which was unfortunately in the state of being moved and repaired so a lot of the items were actually being taken out in a slow stream. There were still some lovely rolling seals.
The Terra Cotta Warriors were kind of fascinating, but so crowded that it was uncomfortable to linger long. They were, however, absolutely beautiful and really interesting. The soldiers did not survive so well, so they'd lost almost all their glazing and paint and were just terra cotta, but there were some figures of administrators that retained more paint, and you could see how subtly the faces were painted pink and looked real. There were even acrobats and strongmen, and a brass chariot that's the only example we have of what the real wooden chariots would have looked like. Everywhere was a display of long painstaking craftsmanship and skill. I'm still a little confused about the process of assembling the figures themselves- it looked like the explanation was that they fired the figures starting with a cookie-cutter figure, and then added details later, but I don't understand how they could have fired the main figure then still have had the later additions stick to the clay. The detail work on these things was intense- all the figures had individual faces and hairstyles.
Dec 19th- last day in London
Emma and her parents and I went to the Victoria and Albert Museum, where I got a freebie ride into the Haute Couture exhibit. The whole thing was focused heavily on the post-war New Look and Christian Dior, but the rest of the museum also has a large section on clothing throughout the ages. You only had to pay for the traveling exhibitions, which is a nice feature of big British Museums.
Anyhoo, after lunch I got myself to the train and got shipped to Heathrow, where I found my way out to my plane and back to Boston. In the bookshop, I bought The Historian because I'd heard good things about it from both Emma and my sister. I've not yet finished it.
