Routemasters & Raptors

Monday morning Carolyn and I awoke to a dreary, damp, and frigid London. Perfect way to start off the week! After a short lecture about the history and development of London transportation (did you know that London has the world’s oldest underground system and the longest in-route length of any in the world!?), we made our way to Convent Garden, via the tube of course! The main focus of this week’s field trip was the London Transport Museum, located in the heart of Covent Garden. The iron and glass building it’s located in originally housed London’s flower market (immediately thought of Kathryn) but has since been transformed into the museum. Carolyn and I were like little kids, running through the museum looking to collect the next punch-out on our “stamp card” and taking pictures in all the vintage route masters and trains.

 

Afterwards, our teacher talked a little more about the history of Covent Garden itself (while we stood in the freezing rain) before letting us go for the day, free to explore more of the area. The indoor market is already beautifully decorated for Christmas and we looked around at the stores briefly before heading to our targeted lunch destination: Wahaca, the Mexican restaurant we fell in love with on our trip to the Westfield Mall. We had been dying to go back ever since, so our field trip location coupled with the weather could not have created a better opportunity. I could eat Mexican food every day… SO good. After lunch, we of course needed something sweet, so we headed back to central Covent Garden where Carolyn had a beloved Ben’s cookie, and I got a mini red-velvet cupcake and hot tea from a little bakery next door. Both definitely did the trick. We headed back on the tube to South Kensington where we (finally) were able to scratch the Natural History Museum off our to-do list.

The building itself is incredible, made from exquisite terracotta stone; I guess the 70 million items aren’t too shabby either. We managed to cover pretty much the entire museum (granted we don’t stop to read anything... we just look), and the dinosaurs were pretty amazing. The most entertaining moment, however, was amidst our visit to the Large Mammals Hall. We saw people surrounding a small raised platform… which turned out to be a scale… that compared you to one of the large mammals in the exhibit. Considering we were surrounded by whales, giraffes, elephants, and the like, Carolyn and I could not hold in our laughter, having no interest in being compared to an elephant after our 2 month (to be 3 month) eating marathon.

 After our visit, we headed to the library at Harrington to pick up books for our architecture paper due in two weeks before heading back to Courtfield. At this point it was 3:30 so we spent the rest of the afternoon and evening catching up on the blog and getting our lives organized before heading back to work tomorrow. I can’t say either of us are thrilled to get back, but at least tomorrow officially begins the second half of our placement!
             Cheers,
             LC