Westminster Abbey, St.Paul's Cathedral, and Shakespeare's Globe Theater

Thursday and Friday:

Yesterday we went to the Globe theater to see Hamlet. It was an awesome experience to watch a Shakespeare play the way it was intended to be performed. The acting was great and it was very entertaining. However, we got ground seats so we had to stand for the whole time.... 2 1/2 hours.... it was a feat! I think all of our feet were in serious pain after the play. I think it would be such an honor to perform at that theater. The play helped me to enjoy Shakespeare much more than I had previously. I think I would enjoy Shakespeare's other works much better if I saw all of them as plays rather than read them.

Westminster Abbey was enormous! There were tombs everywhere, which I thought was very interesting. It's hard to believe the many of the skeletons of England's royalty for the last thousand years is in a church. It was amazing to be able to walk where Kate walked for the Royal Wedding. There was a small chapel that had pictures from the Royal Wedding. Those were neat to see.

St.Paul's Cathedral was even bigger than Westminster Abbey. We had the opportunity to climb to the top of the Cathedral and look at London from the top. It was 529 steps, which may not sound like a lot, but it was! I thought I would be better prepared because I have to climb five flights of stairs to get to my room everyday. However, I was not! I was ready to sit down and take a break after the climb.

We also went to the Somerset House today. I thought it would be a small house but instead it was a very grand building with a huge water feature in the center. It was really surreal to see paintings by Monet, Manet, Pissarro, Cezanne, and Seurat in person. I have learned about these painters in humanities courses but seeing the paintings in the book was nothing like real life. A lot of them are huge and thought the dimensions are usually included in text books, it can just not convey the grandness of the painting.

We have free days tomorrow and Sunday and then we will be traveling to Paris for six days. I'm excited to see what Paris is like!