London (Day 3 and 4)

Tuesday, March 24

Up again early for breakfast and setting out to another academic visit. Travel went much more smoothly, as none of us really waited for anyone, and met up successfully at the final destination – which was a PR firm, Edelman. The guy who spoke to us, Luke Pollard, was a pretty interesting guy; had trouble making his presentation about the company and PR very intriguing. I can’t honestly say that I learned much from the presentation, but I learned that Luke is into Twitter and thinks we should all try it, and is running to be an MP from Devon.

The visit was short and sweet and then we had the day until 4 (when we were to meet somewhere) free. Anna and I went direct to Buckingham Palace to take pictures and wait for our compatriots in the other section. We ended up waiting there a lot longer than I would have liked, as their presentation ran late as ours did. They eventually meet up with us, and we do a lot of things that mostly involved seeing the exteriors of buildings. Up close to the Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey. Then we went to Leadenhall Market, where Diagon Alley was filmed for the Harry Potter films, and had lunch at a random sandwich shop. After that we walked and saw the exterior/what was visible from the entryway of Saint Paul’s, as you had to pay to see it and couldn’t even take pictures inside. We walked across the Millennium Bridge, wanting to do a tour of the Globe Theater, but it was nearly 3 by this point – tours were 40 minutes long and we needed to be at the Museum of Brands, Packaging, and Advertising by 4 (in Notting Hill Gate).

So we followed some orange lampposts to the nearest tube station, and had a ridiculous time trying to find this museum. We ran into like ten other people from our group trying to find it. We were fifteen or twenty minutes late, so we “only” had an hour in the museum. We only needed like twenty minutes. It was lame. Just cases and cases of old packaging and such. Kind of interesting, but not in the way it was laid out.

Then we head back to Covent Garden area for dinner. Somehow my friends and I and a few other people ended up totally separate and way ahead of the group, so we got to the restaurant and were seated way before the others arrived. Roasted bell peppers for an appetizer, some weird fishcake thing for the main, and a type of cheesecake for dessert? I only tried the dessert and gave it (male) Alex to finish. Also, pomegranate and berry martini.

The last scheduled thing of the night! Performance of Chicago. It was good, I enjoyed the music and everyone had great voices, but the production itself was weirdly minimalist. And not really what I was expecting. Also really tired at this point, so when it was over Kathryn and I jetted out of there to the tube as fast as we could. Sleeeeep.

Wednesday March 25

Lecture by one of our teachers at the London School of Economics (basically like any other classroom ever). We were supposed to have a guest lecturer as well, but he had been called away to cover some story in Devon. Then we had a group lunch in some hole in the wall café nearby. It down poured as we tried to find the place and we got pretty soaked, which was annoying. After lunch, my section had about an hour free before we needed to head off to the offices of The Guardian, so Anna and I spent like 45 minutes in the British Museum. I really just wanted to see the Rosetta Stone, which was cool. Checked out a couple of other rooms really quickly, then traveled to The Guardian. Also kind of a boring visit – though we did learn that 40% of their online readership is from North America, which is pretty interesting. After this we also had the evening free, so Anna and I met Kathryn, Jenna, and Alex in King’s Cross to be tools and take pictures of Platform 9 ¾.

Then Kathryn, Anna, and I went on a quest to find somewhere with Internet, as the hotel’s had been down for two days. We tried the Holborn public library but the staff was incompetent, so we ended up tracking down a souvenir shop/Internet café in the area that we had heard about. It was really cheap – one pound for half an hour, so we split that and afterward tried to find some shops around Oxford Circus. Basically all just big department stores, so we grabbed some food at another pub (The Spread Eagle), and went back to the hotel.