West End Adventures

     So, where was I? Ah, yes, I had just spent 2 hours on a bus with a broken chair and now it was the 1st day of the program. Notice I am recollecting here so details won't be as vivid, but I definitely remember some of the things we covered. If this  day was going to be any indication of how the trip was going to go, then I probably would not have made it! In this day, we covered much of what tourists would see in an entire week, that is to say zone 1 (central London). We started out learning about how town squares originated as a way for people to communally farm land and determine who had control of several estates in the area. We stopped inside of Russell Square which was one of the oldest and discussed the façades on  various buildings, whether made out of wood  or brick was an indication of the ages of certain buildings.  There was talk about how the feudal land system played into  community structures and  who was able to be on certain land.
      Then, there came a line that I will never forget. “The Victorians,” he said, “if they didn't like it,  they would just take any building, put a bunch of crap on the front of it, and call it their own."   We would soon learn that not only was construction material a part of this, but also layout of the buildings, the shapes of the windows, and the roofing material had a lot to do with it as well. As we  toured some of the oldest neighborhoods of London, the whole thing was to rethink  that we would never call anything “old” ever again.
      We saw many famous landmarks of central London, including Queen Elizabeth Tower (or what we layman would call Big Ben, Trafalgar Square, Westminster Abbey (where we would later attend a service),  Houses of Parliament, and many other historic landmarks which leads me to a funny story that happened in this area that I will write about a little later.
      For the time being, though, most of us students were concerned about operating our cameras or the new phones that we had just gotten overseas  that looked like your mom's old Nokia phone from 1990 (hi mom!) So, at that point, we were more than content to be exhausted and do some shopping. But there is one quote that has stuck with me after all this time, and I don't think I could find a better way to end this post.
      So we were headed through the famous landmarks of Trafalgar Square and many people had stopped to admire this very out of place looking statue of a  rooster. Come to find out, it's pretty famous actually. I think it had to do  with one of the Olympics or something.  So  as he's giving us his spiel  about  the area, our instructor says

 “I don't know why there's a blue cock outside, it's not even that cold."

 That still makes me laugh, sorry people!

(Image: Statue of a giant blue rooster in Trafalgar Square.)