Churches, Romeo, and Saatchi

Yesterday was one of those ongoing days, but it was really great. I had my GST and Theatre class, but after that things picked up. Amanda and I went to get Thai down the road at Boonchoo. I realized how much I am going to miss the food when I get home. I don’t know how everyone gives London such a bad reputation for food and weather because both have treated us very well while we have been here. We made a very flexible plan of action to see some of the very old, smaller churches in the city. I had 3 that I knew I really wanted to see before I left London.

After lunch, we made our way towards Fleet Street to see Temple Church and St. Bride’s Church.
Temple is well known today because it was the church featured in the end of the Da Vinci Code. It is really cool and has several effigies of knights along the floor. It was a really light church, which was pleasantly surprising – there is something about dark churches that really turn me off. Afterwards, we made our way down Fleet Street to find St. Bride’s Church. St. Bride’s was beautiful and it has a great crypt that was discovered during the bombings of WWII. In the crypt, you can see the remains from the ruins of previous churches that were on the same site. There is even a perfect place that you can see where original Roman pavement once lined the ground. I was so excited to see the layers of history under this incredible and historic church. St. Bride’s is known for its wedding cake like steeple that towers close to St. Paul’s Cathedral. After St. Bride’s, we went to Southwark Cathedral, which was across the London Bridge. It is a gorgeous church, but unfortunately, we were not able to go in because they were having a service. Hopefully I will be able to make it back sometime before I go back home.

After the small church tour, Amanda and I came back to the flat to regroup and eat dinner before going to The Globe. We got to see Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet! It was absolutely incredible and we got standing tickets to make our experience a bit more “authentic.” The performances were great, except Juliet was a bit below par. She was really awkward in speech and movement, but Romeo and the other male roles were so incredible that it made up for her weaknesses. It was possibly one of my favorite experiences while in London this semester.

Today was another Wednesday filled with art and theatre. After waking up to get a bit of work done and such, we went to meet at Saatchi Gallery. Saatchi is one of the best contemporary art spaces in the world, so I was really excited to see it. The current exhibit is called “Unveiled” and is made up of Middle Eastern art. I was nervous about this part because I didn’t know what to expect, but I was so impressed. Many of the artists were working to break the stereotypes that have been created about them. Many of the female artists confronted the stereotypes that surround women in the household, but they did it with so much humor! After Saatchi, we went walking in Chelsea and found a great place to eat called Trafalgar. We went on to the theatre to see Tusk Tusk. I can’t believe that we just saw our last performance in London! The show was incredible and very moving – we definitely ended the theatre class on a great note!