1. Eindhoven! This weekend, I went to Eindhoven, well umm I was supposed to at least. I made it all the way to the airport (which requires a bus to a train station to catch a 45 min train-ride) only to stand in line and be denied checkin because I was 3 minutes under the 40 minute check in cut off. What made it worse was that one of the people in front of me in line had each of their 4 kids playing with a different check-in monitor, thus holding up the line for the rest of us. It was VERY frustrating and a very long train ride back to London during which I fell asleep as this all happened before 7am. I was upset about missing my flight, but I was also slightly relieved as all the people I had planned to go with had already backed out. Also, I had never missed a flight before. Oh well, at least it wasn't a whole lot of money lost.
2. British Library = my new favorite place. I went a while back when I had to fill out a bunch of paperwork, was looking for a cafe to sit down at and noticed that a bus ran to the British Library. I went back yesterday because I wanted to go to the Treasures ongoing exhibit, which I knew had the Magna Carta. Little did I know what I was getting into! They had not one, but two 1st ed Shakespeare folios. In a case with about 8 books, one just happened to be a Gutenberg Bible. It got overwhelming at some point. Sadly, the Magna Carta was sort of a disappointment after coming across all the other stuff, simply because the copy currently on view is heavily damaged from a fire. They have another copy that will be out and about at the end of the month, so I'll be back.
They had an entire Beatles section. It was just little scraps of paper where they had jotted down the beginnings to songs. Of the selection, they had, the best was "A Hard Day's Night" which John Lennon had simply used the back of his son's birthday card as his scrap paper. It's always just so strange to see where things come from.
So you know how old documents always look so cool because the person's handwriting is so strangely different, as in we have clearly lost some of the art form of cursive writing to enable us to write short hand quicker. Well, I was in the Treasures gallery, looking at a wall of old documents, when over in the corner was an old paper that looked distinct in that it had cross outs and marginalia. It was clearly a first draft to something, but the handwriting just struck me as so modern-looking, and surprisingly like my own. Turns out it was, indeed, a first draft for a document written by none other than Elizabeth I.
The first time I came to London, I was very young. After seeing a portrait of Elizabeth I, my sister, Helen, told me that that was what I was going to look like when I grew up, since we had the same name. Clearly, that makes no sense, but I was gullible and she was older. Needless to say, I had nightmares about Elizabeth I for years. So when I saw that this piece of seemingly familiar writing was hers, it sent chills down my spine.
I went back to the Library again on Monday because I needed a quiet place to work away from my flat. Also, they have free wifi, that is faster than the internet in the halls. All in all, it's becoming a new favorite of mine.
3. Not really a London Adventure, but I voted today. My flat-mates were understandably confused that I got a ballot in the mail. Hooray! This is my first time voting for a President. Here's me, complete with bed head because I wanted to send the ballot back today:
No comments:
Post a Comment