London: day sixty-six

Well, today I was supposed to meet my class at the National Portrait Gallery – not the “supposed to.” Here’s the story: my professor told us to meet her at Trafalgar Square next to the War Memorial in front of the Pret a Manger (sort of deli food chain here). So, on time, I showed up in the Square after having finally found the right Tube to get on, but what do you know? There’s two Pret a Mangers at Trafalgar Square. I walked back and forth between the two, looking for someone I recognized, but, finding absolutely no one, I became anxious and started second guessing myself, wondering I had heard the directions correctly. To be safe, I decided to go wait at the front entrance so that I would be able to see my group and professor when they came in. I waited for half an hour, anxiously examining every face and walking in and out of the gallery to be sure I had not missed them. Eventually I begun walking around the Square trying to find them still. After an hour, I was pretty certain that I had sufficiently missed my class and decided to take the bus back to NIDO. Apparently, I had been mistaken for quite some time, believing that the National Portrait Gallery was a wing of the National Gallery (the big, domed building at Trafalgar Square) when in reality it is a separate building that stands on a different side of the Square. I had been at the wrong entrance all along. Thankfully, my professor was forgiving and the issue was resolved (I will simply have to go tomorrow and completely a brief assignment there). However, it was a great source of anxiety for me throughout the day, and I am just glad now that it has been fixed.

Hannah and I were going to go to the Tower Bridge today because it was absolutely beautiful today. Early morning fog had burned off into clear blue skies and by noon it had reached nearly 60 degrees, so we figured it would be a perfect day. However, when we texted Alyssa to see if she wanted to go, she wondered if we could also go to Borough Market. Deciding to go there first, we wandered around the market, looking at the different foods and sitting in the courtyard of Southwark Cathedral for lunch. Ultimately, we spent too much time at the market and were not able to make it to Tower Bridge before it closed. However, we wandered the Southbank for a while and came across the site of the old Clink prison and the museum that stood there now. We decided to go check it out. Even though most everything was replicated and were not original artifacts, the tour was highly educational (in quite a rather morbid way). It is incredible, the cruelty of people. You would scarcely believe how horrible some of the deaths and torture devices were in this place (worse than the Tower of London), and it honestly made my stomach tighten up a bit, just reading about them. I do not care to explain them all here.

After the Clink, we walked down the riverbank toward the Tate Modern Art Museum and crossed over Millennium Bridge toward St. Paul’s. Whilst on the bridge, we got some absolutely stunning pictures of the sunset over the river. We stopped to watch the sun drop down to touch the tops of the buildings before moving on. As we begun to reach the other side of the bridge we came across a curious sight, a man lying on the ground of the bridge surrounded by paints and extraordinarily small brushes with which he was busy at work, face extremely close to the ground. He drew our attention to the ground we were walking on; the grated surface of the bridge had become collected with various clumps of dirt and gum that had wedged themselves into the grated surface – entirely normal and scarcely noticed. However, what this man was doing was painting the tiniest of pictured on those bits of trash stuck between the grating – making something beautiful out of something unnoticed and rather gross. We then noticed that the bridge was spotted everywhere with these miniature masterpieces.

We walked by St. Paul’s and took the Tube back to NIDO to drop off our stuff before going to a bar just around the corner from NIDO. Here, we took advantage of the two for one cocktails happy hour. It was rather funny, I downed four cocktails within the span of probably scarcely over half an hour and felt only the faintest buzz, but not until I stood up, sitting down I felt absolutely nothing. Alyssa on the other hand, determined to keep pace ended up completely drunk on the same exact amount. It was really rather funny having to guide her back to NIDO, especially when we came across a cat on our walk back. I am pretty certain that if we had not drug her away she would have been content to stay with that cat all night. It was quite a lot of fun, and I am desperately going to miss having girl’s nights at the pubs when I have to go back to Idaho; not only are there no pubs, but I also have no friends left in Idaho whom I see regularly enough to hang out and go out for a night with. I am afraid it may be a rather lonely summer.

I have also been working on my new blog quite a bit, trying to get a few posts done before I officially launch it. So far it is going well, so keep an eye out for it soon!