Archive for month: November, 2017

BY SAVANNAH SHAPIRO

LONDON

It’s already week 2 for us here in London and we only have 11 more days left in England. On Monday, we had our first classroom session which was on the campus on the University of Westminster. It felt like a normal day of class at UCLA, but felt different as Professor Makdisi talked about the streets on London while in London. I started making the connections to our readings we did and the streets we already roamed in London.  

Tuesday was a day for museums. We started our morning off bright and early and took some time before class to visit The British Museum. It was also the first day where we encountered rain. We were lucky enough to have clear and sunny skies for our first week here, but the rain came at last. Luckily, we were indoors which made it the perfect day to tour some museums.   

The British Museum is so large that you can spend hours and hours wandering through all the rooms in the building. There are over 90 rooms that are dedicated to Ancient Egypt, Ancient Rome and Greece, Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. Not to mention, the museum is free! We spent most of our time in the Ancient Greece and Rome rooms, as well as the Egyptian room. My favorite room was the gallery that contained the Elgin Marbles. The marbles that were from the Parthenon in Athens Greece seemed so remarkable that my mind couldn’t fully comprehend what I was seeing.   

In addition to the Elgin Marbles, we saw the Rosetta Stone which was swarmed with hoards of people. The Rosetta Stone was the key for scholars to understand and decode the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. The cluster of ancient hieroglyphics clutter the surface of the stone from top to bottom. Although it was crowded around the Rosetta Stone, it was something definitely worth seeing.   

After The British Museum, it was time for class and we had to meet Professor Makdisi at the Tate Britain. The Tate Britain is the National Collection of British Art and is much less busy than The British Museum. At the Tate, we looked at artwork by Turner and Blake connecting the concepts of our walking tours to the pieces of artwork. We looked at how 18th century was captured both the good and the bad and compared this to the writing of Blake, Hannah Moore and Hazlitt.   

After we finished walking the Tate and finished class for the day, we went back to the dorms and relaxed. We called it an early night and made plans for the next day in Hamstead Heath.  

Savannah Shapiro studied abroad in England on the 2017 Summer Travel Study program “London and the Age of Revolution:” https://ieo.ucla.edu/travelstudy/English-London/

BY SAVANNAH SHAPIRO

The weekends are your free time. Professor Makdisi ends class early on Friday allowing you to fly out or take a train to another country which many students did their first weekend here. We decided to stay in England for our first weekend and travel outside the city into the countryside. We booked a tour where it took us to Windsor Castle, Lacock, Bath and Stonehenge. We had a long day and started the day off early meeting our bus at 7:45 in the morning at Victoria.  

 The bus was air conditioned (thank goodness) and the seats were nice and comfy making the trip on the road nice and comfortable. The whole week, we were always planning what to do and where to go, and this was the first time where someone was guiding us where tog o and when to come back which was something that I liked. It felt like a middle school field trip and it was nice for once to have some guidance on what to do and where to go. We didn’t have to worry about admission tickets inside the castle or Stonehenge, everything was already taken care of through the tours which made things that much more simple for us.  

Windsor was so amazing that it is hard to even put into words. The castle was surreal and the rooms inside packed in centuries of history. The crown molding that ran across the circumference of the wall and crystal chandeliers that hung from the ceilings were restored by Queen Elizabeth and transported you into a different time. There were separate rooms dedicated the knight’s armory rooms and old weaponry. I highly recommend exploring The State Apartments at Windsor which include all the bedrooms, weapon rooms and dinning tables of the castle. Certain rooms are closed during specific seasons of the years, but nonetheless every part of the castle that was open was awe inspiring.  

After our stop at Windsor, our tour guide Doug and driver Ricardo took us through the English countryside. We stopped in a tiny little village called Lacock where little houses sat on cobblestone streets. We were again transported in another time period. The cottages were cozy and tucked away on the long windy cobble stoned streets and we were able to wander up and down the pathways. It was like a fairytale.  

Our next stop took us to Bath. Bath felt like a little piece of Italy with its Yellowstone building and Roman architecture. We didn’t go into the Roman Baths although we could. The line was a little long and we decided that we just wanted to walk around the city and into the abbey that was rigt next to the baths. After going into the abbey, we walked down to a tiny little bakery down by the river and ate some pastries. The bakery was tucked away under a building where you had to crouch your head down low enough to get through the window that was the door. We passed a hand squeezed lemonade stand where you could smell the fresh scent of lemon peel. We stood on top of the walkaway and peered down at the gardens taking in all the sights around us.  

We soon made our way back onto the bus and proceeded to travel to our final stop of the day: Stonehenge. We parked next to a field that was littered with red poppies. The poppy filed alone would be worth visiting. A small little bus took us down the 2 mile path that leads up to Stonehenge. We walked up to the stones and fell in awe. It is another monument that is so historic that you don’t realize you are seeing it until you are there.  

I payed £74 for our trip to the countryside which included all of our entrance fees to the locations and a free lunch. Without a doubt, it was the best £74 I’ve spent so far.