A Busy Day of Tour and Travel

Hello there! My name is Emily Popelka, and I am a senior biology major at the College of St. Scholastica. This is my second trip to London as I had a brief stay in the city to study World War II history during high school. I am excited to have this study abroad experience to learn more about British theatre and literature (two interesting subjects that I have had minimal exposure to).

Today has been a busy day! Although I am a part of the literature group, I was able to go on an excursion this morning with the theatre group to the National Theatre in London. The first thing we learned about on the tour was the architecture of the exterior of the building and the theatres within. As seen in the picture, you can see that the exterior of the building is made of materials such as concrete. By using concrete, the National Theatre creators wished to convey the message that everyone of all classes would be welcome to see performances. The building is also accessible to all public to use the conveniences of the coffee shop, book store, and wi-fi even if they are not there to attend a show.

During the tour, we also got to see some of the awesome props used in National Theatre plays! The play War Horse has been very popular at the theatre, and we saw one of the giant horse puppets that was made for the play. It takes three different actors to move the large puppet and make horse sound effects! I have seen Stephen Spielberg’s War Horse movie, but I hope to go see the play after seeing the interesting prop.

To end my Friday, my friend, Maggie, and I departed for Dublin, Ireland. Right after the National Theatre tour, we took the tube to the Heathrow airport. We got to the airport a few hours early and were able to explore. Heathrow airport is quite massive, and we saw a giant hot air balloon for the store Burberry, which has its headquarters in London. Although the airport was nice, we were ready to leave for our Dublin adventure!