London Redux

Life has been a bit hectic over the last week or so, and I've fallen behind in my blogging. Let's catch up:

We took the students back to London on Saturday 25 February. This was supposed to be a "media trip," related to our spring course. Unfortunately, despite pleas beginning last fall and attempts to leverage all manner of contacts, it appears the British journalists are either overwhelmed by requests from university student groups, or just don't care as much as American journalists about discussing their trade with the next generation. Enough said.

The weather, for February, was absolutely gorgeous. We had sunshine and a high near 60F. We took the Tube to Westminster and ate our sack lunches in Parliament Square, under the gaze of a bronze Winston Churchill.

So our primary task was a tour of Parliament. It began with some excitement in that we lost one student going through security to enter the Palace of Westminster (that's the rather large building under Big Ben where Parliament meets).

In the shadows at the bottom, we can almost be seen!

It seems he had some things in his backpack that were deemed suspicious, and was hastened into an interrogation room for a chat. We didn't know what had happened or where he had gone, but he eventually emerged. The security police kindly offered to keep his backpack for him until his visit was over (actually, it was more of an order than an offer), and off we went.

I'm not sure how Parliament vets or trains their tour guides, but they are uniformly excellent. The tour, which lasts about an hour and twenty minutes, seemed to make an impression on our students. When finished, we sent them off on an assignment that would still give them plenty of free time. Mary and I set off on our own.

First stop was the Museum collection of the Royal Academy of Music. The student worker in the piano room was clearly bored, so she was eager to show us around and even to play some of the pianos for us (though we weren't allowed to touch them ourselves). There were some very early pianos, dating to the late 1700s, that sounded remarkably good. Another was equipped with louvers, like the swell shades of a pipe organ.

Portobello Market on a busy Saturday afternoon

We also visited the famous Portobello Market, which seems to go on forever. And we stopped in once again at the Victoria & Albert Museum, just because there is so much to see there.

After a bite to eat, we rushed to the coach station for our bus back to Nottingham, only to discover that it was delayed for over an hour in some sort of London traffic jam. We didn't get home until almost 1 a.m., but enjoyed a fine day in the big city.