Woke up this morning without really feeling jet-lagged and
pretty excited for the first real day in London.
We had our first classroom meeting, at King’s College, where we received
syllabi, and all started making plans and thinking about paper ideas. Class
doesn’t start in earnest until Monday, when we go to the Museum Library in Greenwich, but this
morning we had an orientation meeting with all of the BSP classes. We got to
meet and get advice from the professors, and heard stories about earlier BSP
adventures.
We had an hour before our walking tours, so Christine,
Allison, and I decided to go to a phone store to get local phones. We really
misjudged the difference from our directions, and then couldn’t find the store
we were looking for. Christine asked some random passerby if he was a local and
for directions. He told us we were standing right in front of the former store
(which is now an Eat!), but that Google indicated there was another farther
down the street. Around this time, we also witnessed a car rear-end one of the
red London buses, which happened maybe ten feet from us, scaring us silly. The
car was completely flattened in front, though both the driver an the bellowing
passenger seemed fine. There wasn’t really time to process that, though,
because we were running late and wanted to get to the phone store. When we
finally got there, we were relieved to see that it was located directly across
from Charing Cross Station. After getting our phones, we jumped on the Tube,
but even though the return trip took us less than half the time it took to get
to the store, we were still five minutes late for our tours.
I went in the historic pubs walk, and we made our way down
along the Thames, seeing some artists making sand art, and musicians playing on the beach. We went across Blackfriar Bridge,
and then down Fleet Street looking at them. I’m always amazed by the history
available in other countries. We were seeing some pubs that had been standing
since being rebuilt after the Great Fire of 1666. It’s also sometimes odd
seeing older architecture details on a building that now houses a Starbucks or
some other chain restaurant. On the one hand, there’s an interesting sense of
weight to the city, but it also looks blasphemous somehow. At one point, passing one of the many red
phone booths, we decided to play “How many librarians fit in a phonebooth?” The
answer is 6, if you squeeze.
When we disbanded at the end of our pub walk, six of us
decided to backtrack and have a half-pint at some of the historic pubs. Five of
us were classmates from the library class, and one was a token accounting
student that we adopted.
We started at Ye Old Cock Tavern, which felt very British.
We ordered some lunch and shared our half-pints, before moving on. The second
pub we stopped at was my absolute favorite of the day, Olde Cheshire Cheese,
which was rebuilt in 1667. We went to the cellar bar, which is, naturally down
three flights of stairs in a place with some of the lowest ceilings for stairs
and doorways that I’ve seen. There was a group there starting a stag night
party, who joked around and sang songs, and definitely provided some local
color. They also recommended the pub’s cider, which turned out to be wonderful.
Cheshire just
had amazing color and history to it. Charles Dickens had worked there for a
time. We then proceeded to Blackfriars, which was the most beautiful of all the
ones we visited today. It had stained glass and copper under the windows, but
it felt modern and lovely, despite being built in 1905 in a medieval style. 
Today was London Pride, so our group decided to make our way
up to Trafalgar Square
to join in the festivities. We spent about an hour at the celebration, before
deciding to seek out somewhere to watch the football match. We ended up
striking out in finding a pub in the area that was showing the game, and
instead we grabbed a bite to eat at the Sherlock Holmes Public House, which had
a really fun themed atmosphere. We ate under the Hound’s head.
We walked home over Jubilee Bridge, stopping to admire the
London Eye in rainbow colors.
Once again, the evening stroll over and along the Thames was one of the highlights of the day, for me. The
weather today was absolutely perfect, warm and sunny, with a breeze. Hopefully
we get a lot more days like it. They’re calling for 79 tomorrow, so we’ll see
how that goes. It was a great first full day in London.
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