London, again!

Since our flight was out of London, we also spent a few days running around this city too. Of course we hit up the standards right away:

Buckingham Palace!

Big Ben/the Parliament Building!

The London Eye! (EYE...  hu,hu,hu, oh Chad)

        

We even drove past St. Peter's!

This time though, I also got to see a few new things as well, or at least things I can appreciate a bit more now being a little older (last time I really toured London was back in high school). Rather than just sprinting to the next site, we took our time and really walked around the Parliament building area. 

This sculpture is of "The Burghers of Calais." Prepare to respect the word "burgher" as a title (even if you still snort when you hear it): So Edward III is laying siege to the city of Calais, while Philip VI of France has told them not to surrender no matter what. Well, the poor people take all they can, but finally, literally starving to death, they are forced to ask Edward for mercy. He says he'll let the city live, but the cost is this: Six of their most prominent leaders must present themselves to him, naked and with nooses around their necks, to be executed. The moment captured here is when, unbelievably, these six half-starved leaders stepped up to be humiliated and die to appease Edward and save the lives of their people. 

For once though, there is a not so tragic ending to the heroic story: the Queen, perhaps secretly impressed with their courage, convinced Edward not to kill them, since it would surely mean bad luck for their unborn child.

In about this same area, we sort of stumbled on Westminster Abbey too- I didn't realize it was so close! About 1050, Sir Edward the Confessor built a perhaps less impressive abbey on this spot as part of his palace. About two centuries later, Henry III (who was a big fan of Edward), decided he wanted to be buried in this place, and so rebuilt the current building we see now.

Since it was Easter weekend, we weren't able to really get into the main part of the abbey, which was too bad. We did walk through some of the open halls and had a look at the courtyard- it had such a cool sensation about it, what with standing in a dark, stone hall while the sun and bright grass was just outside. I'm definitely hoping to get back when my family comes over so I can get a look inside!

That evening we finally got poor Chad some curry (Spain is depressingly without). I might have caved at the first smiley waiter who offered us a free beer (ah, I can't help it!), but fortunately it was a nice, quiet place with kick ass curry. Haha, my eyes were burning after the first five minutes while Chad (god of spice) inhaled the stuff like it was oatmeal. We had a walk back to the Parliament building that night to check Big Ben out all lit up.

Our other day in the city we mostly just tore up every museum we could reach. This might have been my third time in the Natural History Museum, but from outside the building is still probably one of the most impressive to see in London.

Inside isn't bad, either!

We had unfortunately forgotten our dinosaur footie suits.

The really stellar part though was that we actually got there the moment it opened, which meant, for the first time, there wasn't a massive line of children winding throughout the main area waiting to see the dinosaurs. It was still fairly packed with squealing kids, but hey- we finally made it in to see the giant death lizard bones, and it was awesome.

Chillin' with Darwin. As Chad pointed out, the Brits do get major points for having him on their money.

After that we hit up the V&A, which houses London's biggest art collection. I already mentioned the Canova works that it holds, but I'll throw out two more I was excited to see:

Remember Bernini? The V&A had one of his, and it's a good one. The sculpture is of the sea god Neptune and his son, Triton, who is the merman blowing the trumpet. Again, there's that recognizable twisting motion in the figures, and it seems a moment caught in motion. 

You have to love Neptune's face too; it's exactly what a deadly, determined god of the sea should look like, so intensely focused, his beard and hair and manly 'stache whipping back in the foamy wind. Oh, and just in case your poor self confidence needed a quick kick in the shin: Bernini was in his early twenties when he did this.

 The other piece I really enjoyed seeing wasn't really by a huge name (poor guy barely has 100 words in Wiki). In fact, by my understanding, this was the only piece that really earned him any major attention, and this was also largely because it was such a huge hit at the 1862 International Exhibition in London (which was a massive deal). However, it really is a beautiful piece, and I think it deserves a few words. It's by Raffaelle Monti, and part of the reason it caused such big waves at the exhibition was because of what it symbolized.

"The Sleep of Sorrow and the Dream of Joy"

It was, in short, a comment on the state of Italy at the time, where a kingdom had just been established in 1861. This kingdom played a massive part in the "Risorgimento," or "Resurgence." The sculpture is essentially an allegory, representing how the artist felt about the unification of Italy, all of its areas, unique socially and culturally, being meshed together.

Sorrow sleeps beneath, a sort of goblet having fallen out of her hand and tipped over. Joy, perhaps the dream of Sorrow herself, launches into the air with her face veiled, just beginning to take flight.

Maybe the most impressive aspect of the piece sculpturally speaking is the incredible detail of the veil over Joy's face. Apparently, this was Monti's very oddly specific specialty: sculpting faces with veils over them. It's incredible that he manages to make it look so sheer; you can actually get a sense of the cloth's texture and thinness.

Finally, we moved on to the third museum of the day: the National British Museum. Part of what makes this one so cool is not necessarily the British stuff they have, but rather the sweet stuff the British *ahem* "borrowed" from wherever they happened to... "explore." Well, regardless, it has awesome stuff, and was definitely my favorite of the three.

Hahaha, only took us about five times to figure out if you turn the camera long
ways, it will actually get the top of the building in the photo. 

So, in short, perhaps my three favorite things: first, the Rosetta Stone. Not, "oh hey, sweet replica of the Rosetta Stone," my friends; that is the REAL DEAL, and that is incredible. I don't know how to express how essential this stone is to our knowledge of history. Imagine, all the world fascinated with the impossible mysteries of ancient Egypt, the pyramids, the sphinxes, the dark tombs and most frustratingly, the infinite but unreadable carvings which we knew, knew revealed the secrets... And then, suddenly, this single surviving chunk of rock, from freaking 196 BC, is accidentally rediscovered in 1799 by a bunch of French soldiers. The best part? They found it as they were knocking down old walls to make room for a new fort. The thing had just been being used as building material.

Of course, the Rosetta Stone was the stunning lead in to an equally impressive exhibition of Egyptian artifacts- I imagine the Louvre itself would love to have half the stuff they had in here.

Second was another Chad-discovery (a "Chadiscovery," if you will). These are two massive pieces from the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus. Guess what? It wasn't called the "Mausoleum" because that was the vocab word for a massive tomb at the time, it was because the guy buried there was named Mausolus. This tomb, designated as one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, was so impressive that every other massive tomb afterwards was called a "mausoleum" after this one.

Finally, my third favorite were the sculptures that the British had taken/rescued from off the Pantheon in Greece. There were hundreds of odd bits and pieces--somebody's shoe here, somebody else's nose there--but the really biggest haul they had walked away with were a series of 92 "metopes," each one a stone square displaying one clip of an epic battle between a centaur and a human Lapith.

Basically, King Lapith was having a big party to celebrate an important wedding, and somebody talked him into inviting the centaurs- admittedly, they are occasionally very civilized (like half the time, say... half man/half horse...). As with any good wedding after-party though, the booze immediately started to go around, and as it turns out, the centaurs are lousy drunks...

Well, the centaurs continued to get completely wasted. Alarmingly so. Actually, they got drunk to the point that their arse of a leader actually tried to kidnap the bride. Finally, the Lapiths were like, "You all have got to go- just take your freaking car keys and get out." The centaurs at this point though, weren't having any of it. What resulted was a massive, all out brawl to the death between the Lapiths and the centaurs:

Finally, the Lapiths won out, but it can only be assumed what with all the casualties, the party atmosphere had probably dissipated at that point.

Mainly, this story was probably depicted because the temple was dedicated to the goddess of war- the centaurs, though they could also be very civilized, do represent that violent, unpredictable, barbaric side of man. Plus, you know, a massive centuar vs. humans battle is just really cool.

However, there is also a theory that this story has a sort of political metaphor to it. When the people of Athens first tried to build their goddess a beautiful temple, ironically commemorating a victory over the Persians, who showed up but... the Persians! Awkward... Needless to say, they didn't appreciate the temple much. The army (under King Xerxes) crushed, stomped, and burned the original temple into the ground. Well, a few decades later, the Athenians decided to try again, and using the ruins of this temple they built the Parthenon. Archaelogists have speculated that the centaurs might represent the Persians, rude invaders who go around ruining the party for everyone.

I have to admit, London is not amazing in the way Paris is amazing; Buckingham Palace ain't got nothing on Versailles. However, the city still has its own very unique personality. The history seems to function so smoothly within the throbbing life of the modern day people. Centuries-old buildings exist nonchalantly amid the cell phones and laptops; they are confident, refined, and sturdy, coexisting happily even with new constructions like the Eye and the Gherkin.

While of some places you might say the people are "connected" to their past, or have a strong awareness of it, it seems that the British extend into the future directly from their own history... very rarely have I ever seen that sort of raging "USA! USA!" sort of pride you get in the States on average, but there does seem to be a deeply engrained sense of what it means to be British. Whatever this is (I've been struggling to put it into words since I got here), London certainly embodies it, not just in the historical sites, but in the shopping, the food, the city itself as it both creates and is created by the people.

Curious note:

In 1883, a much smaller version of the current "Harrods" building was completely gutted by fire. The date, tragically, was December 6. However, with their name on the line and hundreds of customers trying to decide what to tell their kids when the pre-ordered "Santa" gifts did not arrive on time, Harrods pulled out a spectacular Christmas miracle and somehow managed to deliver every single package on time. The result was that not only did the fire give the company the chance to rebuild on a grander scale, the overwhelming (and well earned) customer loyalty after also played a huge role in growing the company's reputation.