Like I have said before, we take a decent amount of field trips for classes. The past week or so we have gone on a few trips, and while they don't exactly warrant a full blog post with all of the information, some of it is interesting.
First, we went for a tour through Parliament for our British Culture and Visual Media class. We walked through the House of Lords, which uses red as its color, and the House of Commons, which uses green. Everything that is associated with each house follows these colors from the leather seats to the carpets, the monitors with the days agendas, the wall hangings, and the leather bound books with the hard copy daily briefings for the entire year. Unfortunately the only part of the tour we could take photos of was Westminster Hall and the exterior of course.
Westminster Hall is the only surviving part of the original Westminster Palace which burnt down in 1834. King William IV immediately offered Buckingham Palace to Parliament in hopes to have the home taken of his hands, as he disliked the palace. There were several other places that were considered for relocation, but the tradition and importance of Westminster was to important so the palace was rebuilt.
Big Ben has become a national symbol over the years. "Ben" is actually the name for the largest of the five different bells that ring inside the clock tower, the other four bells ring every quarter hour, but Ben only rings on the hour. At one point during both world wars the clocks were dark and during World War I the bells were silenced to reduce it's visibility from the sky in order to ward off attacks.
The next day we took a trip to Hampstead, just outside of London. This trip was for History of Modern Design, where we are currently looking at the Modernist movement. We took a train to Hampstead to see a few examples of modernist buildings to reinforce what we had learned in class. Each building had the clean lines, streamlining, large window panes, simple color schemes, and non-load bearing walls that we had talked about in class. While the architecture doesn't enthrall me, it is nice to see examples of modernist buildings rather than just read about them.
Isokon Building
Hampstead is one of the most affluent areas of London people like Paul McCartney, Madonna, Judi Dench, and Elizabeth Taylor lived here at one point or another.
Our most recent class trip was to Greenwich for British Culture and Visual Media. Again, we went to observe the architecture of the town and explore more of the London area. Again, we took a train but this time we actually walked from the train station to Greenwich, by way of a tunnel under the Thames River, which I found extremely impressive considering the size of ships that can still make their way up the Thames.
Right out of the train station I noticed that the area we were in was much different from architecturally from other parts of London I had seen. Our professor explained to us that this was the financial center. Morgan-Stanley, Citibank and Bank of America all have offices here.
The Old Royal Naval College is on the bank of the Thames River and has served many purposes in its history. First it was the Greenwich Hospital which was used to house and care for injured sailors. Eventually the sailors were relocated and the complex was used as a training center for the Royal Navy. Since 1998 the building is now a tourist attraction, and has been used in several films, Pirates of the Caribbean IV included.
From our view of the Royal Naval College we walked under the Thames River though a tunnel, while not very pretty to look at, I was still impressed by the tunnel.
Along the path up the the Greenwich Observatory.
The Shepard Clock and standard measurements. The clock is a 24 hour clock which is controlled by electric pulses from a master clock inside the observatory. The standard measurements is a set of pins marking 1 yard, 2 feet, 1 foot, 6 inches, and 3 inches. At 60 degrees Fahrenheit a rod measuring exactly the appropriate measurement will rest perfectly between the pins.
Some of our group in the front courtyard of the Old Royal Navel College.
Overall the trips were fun, educational of course, but of all of them I am definitely interested enough to revisit Greenwich and explore the market, the stores, the park, and the Royal Observatory in greater detail. Our professor suggested that if we were to visit again to come on a Sunday when the market is in full swing and people are walking around the town.
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