SUCH a busy day today! We all met at the Tower of London at 10 this morning and took a guided tour with a Beef Eater (the guys in the red/blue outfits) named Shady who was hilarious. He had a really dry commentary about the Tower, so I throughly enjoyed myself. The Tower of London originally consisted of the White Tower which was constructed by William the Conqueror and was expanded upon by every monarch who occupied it until James II, who was the last monarch to use the Tower as a residence. Most people know it as a prison, but it's actually been a lot of things: an armory, a menagerie, a mint, a fortress, a royal residence, and obviously a prison. The Crown Jewels are also housed there and THOSE are some serious gems. There is a 530 karat diamond set in the front of one of the crowns that we were all agape at. I can't even imagine how heavy that has to be. We also saw the royal vestments used during a coronation, and the cloak worn by the incoming king or queen weighs 80 pounds because the thread used to sew and decorate it is all gold. Luxury at its finest, I guess.
After the Tower of London we headed to St. James' Church in Piccadilly where we saw a piano and recorder concert. Yes, a recorder. That funny looking flute-ish thing that we all played during elementary school. They were both talented, but I can't say I enjoyed this concert. Oh well.
Next we headed to Trafalgar Square where we went to the National Gallery.
The real Monet's, Van Gogh's, and Renoir's are housed here. The building is beautiful and there are lots of interconnecting rooms that are used to display all the art works. It would take a solid day to go through there, but we only had a few hours. My favorite pieces were both by Monet; 'Water Lillies, Setting Sun', and 'The Thames Below Westminster'. All of his paintings are just so beautiful. It sounds so lame to describe them like that, because they're so famous and so widely studied, but they really are just pretty. Surprisingly, you can see texture in both paintings because he used so many layers of paint to get the impressionist effect; the paint is literally thick mounds in some areas where he used brusque strokes. I could have stayed and looked in that room all day, but we had to move on. We then hopped next door to the National Portrait Gallery where we saw the new additions of the portraits of the Royal Family. The official portrait of Princes William and Harry was hung in the front of the gallery and it was very, very good. They were depicted in their military uniforms and looked quite dapper, even in oil on canvas :] It was painted by Nicky Phillips and was just done in 2009, so it was quite cool to see. You can definitely see how much they look like Princess Diana in it; we all noticed that and commented on it.
Finally after this the sun came out in full force and about half of us decided to go to Kensington Gardens, which is attached to Hyde Park. I'm running out of superlatives to describe everything, but again, this was stunning. Everything was green and tons of people were out. We found our way to the middle and Megan, Amanda, Tommy, and myself just threw ourselves down on the grass and relaxed for a bit. I took so many pictures of it, but really they don't do it any justice.
Amanda would like it known that she took the above picture. After 7 attempts. That's all I have to say about that.
After all of this we eventually found our way home and got ready for the evening. Some of our group went to go see Chicago in Leister (pronounced Lester) Square while others stayed in. I opted to come back to the flat and write a copious amount of post cards; you know you're special if you get one! I just hope they get home before I do... Tomorrow we're going to do the London Eye and a few other things, but the Eye will give me another excuse to take an obnoxious amount of pictures. I'll be sure to put too many on here :]
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