I have now been in London for 1 week, and what a week! On Wednesday, our class (which consists of about 13 students, all girls - I guess no "blokes", as our professor calls them, were interested in Multicultural London Literature) went to the Museum of London at the Docklands to look at the "London, Sugar and Slavery" exhibit. It was a fairly small museum but quite interesting , and included an "immersive" area called Sailortown that recreates what the streets would have looked like back when the docks were working and a section where members of the community responded with writing or art to the slavery exhibit. Thursday we took another trip to the Museum of London in Barbican, where we got a tour by one of the curators. The Museum of London in Barbican was absolutely fantastic, and as we didn't have any time to wander around by ourselves I can't wait to go back and spend some more time there. We visited the three galleries of modern London (1666-today) which are very interactive and tactile. I definitely want to check out those exhibits more as well as the galleries of earlier historical periods and the museum's current exhibition on London street photography. Our guide is also involved with curating the Dickens exhibit that will open in December, so I'm planning on visiting again in the winter when that opens. Being able to speak with one of the curators was a great experience - hearing him talk about why the exhibits were set up the way they were, what goes in to choosing what to display, and what kind of responses they get from visitors was a really different way of thinking about a trip to a museum!
Friday we didn't have any class, so I met up with a few of the girls from my course (two American girls, a girl from Austria, and two Dutch girls) to visit Westminster Abbey. It turned out to be incredibly crowded so we decided to come back another day and instead wandered down to Covent Garden, Leicester Square and Chinatown (where you can buy lychee, rambutan and even durian!). Yesterday we visited Notting Hill, where the market on Portobello Road was absolutely thronged with tourists. We walked around for quite a while and then made our way down to Kensington Gardens, which was a lovely bit of greenery after all the city walking we've been doing! We had some ice cream on the grass by Round Pond and napped in the sunshine - after the weather the past week I understand why all the Londoners go outside at even the slightest hint of sun. We spent the evening in Camden where we found a great little burger restaurant called Hache that was absolutely delicious.
Today we visited the Spitalfields market and the nearby Sunday Up Market (off of Brick Lane), which is a lovely little collection of shops and market stalls, especially after the crowds and obvious touristy feeling of Portobello Road yesterday. There was a great collection of food stalls from around the world: Ethiopian food, Spanish tapas, sushi, Indian curries, vats of paella, a stall selling oysters, and plenty of sweets. I'm definitely going to go back to buy both clothes and food - there was a really interesting vibe to the place and the food looked delectable.
Off to read now - we have to turn in a paper next Monday for our class on one of the texts on our primary reading list, so I'm trying to finish Heart of Darkness and Small Island so I can decide what to start writing about.
