Friday, June 2, 2017

Eye See London

Vandalized sign in the library bathroom states
 "love books not men." 
The trip winds down with a few very exciting events. This, my third and final blog assignment should be a breeze as 2 June was packed with activities. The group started the day with a trip to the British Library where we saw a large treasury of different artifacts from handwritten music to the Magna Carta! One writing I found was on a piece of notepaper next to an exhibit about the Beatles. The note belonged to a man Benjamin Zephaniah. I looked into the writing and ended up finding it online. It is titled "What Stephen Lawrence Has Taught Us." The particular stanza that caught my attention goes as such.  


     Black people do not have
     Chips on their shoulders,
     They just have injustice on their backs
     And justice on their minds,
     And now we know that the road to liberty
     Is as long as the road from slavery.


(link to the poem: http://benjaminzephaniah.com/rhymin/talking-turkeys-3/)

Another exhibit that caught my attention was "Gay in the UK." The exhibit provided and abundant amount of information on the UK's journey toward sexual freedom. It told the stories of individuals who were punished for their sexual orientation, and others who were instrumental for the movement. 

After the exhibition, a few of us found the library's gift shop (which I now hold near to my heart). The gift shop was wall to wall with interesting titles and beautiful knick knacks. Several of us were able to find our way out empty-handed, but many were happy to invest at the shop. 


We continued our journey via Tube to the Embankment station and strolled to the London Eye. I found ice cream to keep me company as we stood in line which led to an air conditioned pod that would carried us to an amazing view of London!

After the eye, Shayna, Alissa and I found food (twice) and we also strolled into a familiar individual. While my photo is awful, look closely and you can see a non-distinct fellow wearing a hat and backpack. The fellow is not other than the Duke from "Twelfth Night" at Shakespeare's Globe. We were quite starstruck. 

The fun continued as we saw "Kinky Boots" at the Adelphi Theatre. The show was absolutely stunning, of course. It had to be to compete with the other productions we have seen thus far! It certainly didn't disappoint. 

2 comments:

  1. I was amazed with all the stuff they had at the British Library. I think the coolest thing to me was seeing a Gutenberg Bible. I studied how these were made in a class this past fall and it was awesome to see one in person.
    I fell in love with the gift shop there, so many cool things to choose from! I took a bunch of pictures of books that I want to purchase, did you see the one called White Trash? It was about class in the United States and I thought it was one you would like to read. I ended up buying a biography about Jane Austen that I found out was actually made into a BBC show so I'll have to find some way to watch that!

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  2. Not going to lie, I was eyeing that ice cream cart next to the London Eye the whole time! It looked amazing in that scorching heat. I managed to restrain myself, as I had planed on eating ice cream later in the day, but I'm glad someone enjoyed some!
    As for your encounter with the Duke, I am insanely jealous!! That would have been such a cool experience to round out the trip with. The play at the Globe was probably one of my favorites! Did you talk with him at all? Or just play paparazzi? (By the way, I love the photo!)

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