london=towers and... rome?

howdy peoples! i seriously just said howdy because today i realized how much i miss country music. england is getting too classy for me! i need some hillbilly in my life!! hahah never thought i'd hear myself say that. but today was an action packed day so get ready! this is gonna be a longgg post. 
we were off to an early start because even though we don't have class we had a lot of things planned throughout the city today. if you don't get to the big destinations before 10 am you are basically screwed. it was crazy to watch the hoards of tourists and students come in all at the same time. i have been so lucky to have such awesome professors/program directors who keep us doing amazing things all the time and require such little time in the classroom. in the spring they had class here in the centre 4 times a week and for our program we are only in here two times a week! i love it! 
so first off we were off to london tower! i think this place is most well known for the torture of various peoples as well as where a lot of people were killed, but it's actually a castle! the only 'castle' in London, i'm pretty sure. although there are a lot of palaces. it is really big! it's also really freaking old! surprise surprise right? what isn't old here? but it's actually built on the remains of an old roman fortress, and a lot of the structure that still stands today was erected around 1200 ad! that's like the time of the saxons! (i think?! hahaha) it is crazy cool. 

walking to the entrance on the thames... this place is huge! 

the 'white tower' where royalty actually lived 

royal guard! 

i forgot to mention beefeaters! these guys are sweet. they lead little tours but also take care of the ginormous ravens! sorry this is such a bad picture. the person i handed my camera to must struggle a bit. 

the famous ravens of the tower! they are fed meat everyday and have their own little cage. they will fly right up to the beefeaters. fun fact: apparently ravens have the largest brain of any bird! they can count up to six!... whatever that means. hahah

 view of the city within the tower

you can see where they housed the lions. they now have really cool modern sculptures all over the tower to illustrate where the animals would have been.

 it has an awesome location cause it's right by the thames river. so yeahhh. so the exhibits they have all over the place are freaking cool. nowadays the most well known one is the crown jewels! sadly i couldn't take any pictures in there but that display is really intense. they have a lot of the crowns, sceptres, swords.. and surprisingly one of the most impressive things they have on display is the royal family's silverware! everything is HUGE, super ornate, oh and pure gold! the one that was the craziest to me was the punch bowl that was 3 feet wide and could hold like thirty bottles of wine. the ladle was probably the same size as me. so anyways that was cool. 

can't take pictures inside! this is the best i could do.

after that i wandered over to some things i don't remember doing with my mom and sister last time we were here! so i was excited. first off, the royal armory is housed in the 'white tower' which in the main tower. it is also super impressive. they have the armor of tons of different kings, as well as different styles for various soldiers throughout different time periods. it was so cool! i felt like i was looking at set pieces from movies! i have to say sometimes i feel like hollywood kinda just makes stuff up, but they have been pretty spot on with the whole armor thing! it was so cool! they also had a lot of the stuff they used to arm the horses as well as swords and weapons like guns, maces.. all sorts of stuff! it was especially cool to see henry VIII's armor cause he was kind of a round fellow. along with all the armor they have a lot of royal gifts on display. they have a native american head dress from the crazy americans, some cool knives and stuff from ethiopia and japan.. all sorts of really neat stuff. 

okay pardon me while i have a moment of immaturity... but really? hahhahah. 

i guess another thing that insanely rich royal people like to send to each other is wild animals! so they had an exhibit on that as well. i guess back in the day they had all sorts of stuff roaming around... lions literally protected one entrance of the castle, the king of norway gifted a polar bear that was chained to wall but was let out on a rope on a daily basis to fish in the thames... they had zebras, ostriches, tigers, a baboon, snakes, an elephant! all sorts of crazy stuff! they had them all the way up to queen victoria, then moved all the animals into the london zoo when it opened in the 1800s. kinda cool! 
i was cliche and did go to another exhibit on the torture stuff. i have to say it was actually a little unimpressive! i think it is just really talked up because torture is such a gruesome thing and the tower of london sounds and looks like a good place for it. there are a lot unexplained murders that apparently happened in the tower and they told the stories for a lot of those, but honestly i thought the other stuff i saw was a lot more impressive! 
so at this point it was getting super windy and rainy so i decided to hide out in the little cafe and write postcards! kind of a cute moment. it was also getting towards lunch time so i decided to exit the tower to find some food! right outside the main entrance to the tower is a great view of tower bridge! now you may see tower bridge and think that it's london bridge.. but it turns out london bridge is actually now in lake havasu in arizona! after the blitz in world war 2 it was literally falling apart so they sold it to some rich dude in arizona and he put it in lake havasu! hahahah. americans are weird. but anyways the bridge is especially cool right now because they just recently put up the olympic rings on it! it looks sweet! but i got a special treat. when it gets windy they raise the rings up so they don't get blown around! so i got to see the plain bridge as well as the bridge with the rings. haha kinda cool. 

with rings! 

plain bridge :) 

so i wandered around a little bit looking for a place where i could eat a baguette inside because it was so cold!! finally i found one. of course i took pictures of my food. i think it's an american thing. but the baguettes here and all over europe are the best. thing. ever. it is just a really plain, good, french baguette and then whatever fillings you choose. my favorite is just meat and cheese, and today i got ham and jarlsberg. it was so nommmmmyyyy! i could eat one every day. at this point it was like pouring rain and i was freezin. so i went in a super sketchy (and not to mention stinky) souvenir shop and go the best poncho of all time. it's like an obnoxiously bright coral color, has a huge hood that makes me look like a 7-foot-tall gnome, and even comes with a belt! hahaha it is so funny. i tried to take a picture but it didn't turn out quite the way i wanted it to, so i will try some other time cause i'm sure i will be busting that baby out again. 

cutest poncho evaaaa! 

after we all had lunch on our own we met up to go on our second 'london walk'. this walk was titled 'the walls of londinium' and it was freaking cool. frank, our professor didn't talk very much but it was just a cool place. so londinium obviously sounds a lot like london. that's cause it's the same thing! the romans actually settled london around 40 ad and called it londinium. cool right? so what we did on our walk today was follow around a lot of the old roman roads which are now buried underground. what now covers them is the financial district, which has always been a very powerful and important part of london because the merchants have always played such a strong role in politics and the economy. the financial district has a lot of really cool modern architecture because so much of it was destroyed in the blitz. for example it has that big egg like looking skyscraper. apparently it's actually supposed to be the shape of a pickle! fun fact of the day. but anyways not all of this area was destroyed! really cool buildings like the guildhall that holds the mayors office still stands. right across from the guildhall is a newer building that was built in the 1990s. i can't remember specifically what it's for, but they ended up designing the building to have a little art gallery in the basement level. when they were excavating they actually found the remains of a roman amphitheater! there had been rumors of one existing in london but it had never been found. so they basically redesigned the whole basement so that they could build around the amphitheater remains and have them open to the public. it was freaking sweet! it was a really unique display and the whole building had a really cool art-deco feel with all the black and gold and egyptian motifs. i love stuff like that after taking my interior design class. after that we continued our walk. in the financial district it was really cool to also see all of the old churches that were luckily left standing after the blitz. 

so this is three sides of the square where the building that has the roman remains are. it looks boring but this was actually interesting to me because it is really rare in london to get new architecture as well as old buildings. 

okay this picture looked a lot cooler when i took it... but these are the roman ruins! the exhibit was really cool

most people only focus on visiting the really huge extravagant cathedrals but i really enjoy the small chapels. they are really peaceful. one that we went into had a really neat story. so it was actually hit directly by a bomb during the blitz but the bomb came straight through the roof and didn't detonate! turns out the oldest organ in the UK is actually in there and the bomb only missed it by a couple of inches! crazy huh? so basically the moral of this story as well as the roman thing is that history is literally EVERYWHERE in london. it blows my mind!! i can't even begin to wrap my head around it.

oldest organ in the UK!

plaque marking where the bomb hit the floor but didn't detonate... and my cute shoes :) 

oh just an ancient roman wall in the middle of brand new buildings

so finally our walk ended at the museum of london. this museum is awesome. i am not a museum person and i thought this one was so cool. i think a lot of people typically choose places like the national gallery or the victoria and albert and stuff over this one because it's in kind of a random place and yeah i don't know. but anyways it basically tells the story of london! starting all the way back in like 3000 BC. they have a bunch of arrowheads and stuff from like neanderthal people. then it goes all the way towards the present day! i didn't realize until i was basically out of the museum that i actually could've taken pictures and i wish i would've! they had so many cool things!! i really liked the exhibits they had on roman london as well as the great fire in the 1660s that destroyed thousands of homes. our professor, professor jacoby always says that london didn't get back to the level it was at when rome occupied it (until about 400 ad) until about 1500.. and today i think i finally realized that! it is insane how sophisticated and technologically advanced the romans were. and i guess it's still odd to me cause i just don't think of roman empire when i think of london! but they are definitely connected! ahh that museum was so so so cool. i recommend it for sure!

they have the little cake displays in every cafe! kinda hard to resist! 

finally it was time to go back to the centre! my feet hurt so stinking bad! i was so ready to go back. today was our last lecture we had with tim slover! he will definitely be missed. today's lecture was on contemporary theatre! it was super neat. he gave us a list off west end, off west end, and fringe theatres that he always pays attention to. we have a lot of free nights so i hope to be filling those up soon! theatre here in the uk is different from the us. here it is a lot more like the movies. for instance back home when we have a free night, we're like let's go to the movies! here they often go to plays! so yeah, there is a lot more stuff to choose from here. after our lecture we had dinner! todays dinner was kind of funny to me. so at first we had bread and salad.. just like every night... then came out the main dish.. which was... ribs and curly fries? uhhhh... what? hahahhah we were all cracking up. it was good though so whatever! i also checked the mail and guess what i got?! OLYMPIC TICKETS! they are here! it's real! i'm going to the gold medal soccer game for the women!!!!!! BAHHHH. this is unreal. i will probably cry when it happens. 

since then i have just been posted up here in my bed! i am exhausted! i haven't gotten more than 5 hours of sleep since i got here! we all stay up until like midnight then i wake up at 5 am still! it's terrible! a lot of people went out and did fun things so i am just living vicariously through them tonight. some people went and saw mama mia which is great. i have seen it a couple times though so i decided to save some money. then another group went salsa dancing with the spanish speaking ward that some of our RMs are in! how cool is that? i would have gone except i literally can't walk. okay well i can walk but i don't really want to. haha. i just want to sleep for days. but you can sleep when youre dead so i'll party on!! #YOLO. hahahah. i think that is all for today! tomorrow we are going to the tate modern museum which i am excited for! and then i think i will find something fun to do tomorrow night. wish me luck! ttfn! ta ta for now :) 

collages of the day! one is mine and one is from abbie :)