End of London

Let's see, since I last wrote in detail...

I was playing badminton with the girls that Hillary is a nanny for, and shortly after that I typed up the blog entry about going to the British Museum. Hillary's bed is against the wall, but the mattress doesn't go all the way up to it, so I was leaning in a kind of funny position. Then, I set down the computer after I was typing, I got up to grab something, and bam! My back was dead. I actually just stayed in the flat the next day because it hurt to move so much. After that, I spent two days in the National Gallery and surrounding area. It was really amazing. They have my favorite Rembrandt portrait there... I stared at it for an hour straight at one point (including blinking time). I thought it was about the most fantastic museum in the world until today, when I got to the Louvre, but more on that later.

On Friday, the day before I left London, I made it over to Westminster Abbey, the place where Chaucer's buried, along with T.S. Eliot, Tennyson, Ben Johnson and several other major poets. It was pretty interesting--a lot of monarchs are buried there as well, which was less interesting to me. Something is a little eiry though about being literally surrounded by decay(ing)(ed) corpses. After that I went to St. Paul's Cathedral, the place where John Donne was once the dean. That was really a treat. FYI: although almost all of the museums in London are free, the churches are expensive! It cost me 10 and 12 pounds to get into those churches... St. Pauls was much nicer than Westminster. The whole place is absolutely covered with beautiful sculputres depicting famous English generals dying on the battle field, often held by angels. William Blake is also buried there, which was very interesting.

Something sort of strange occured to me in London on a philisophical note. I was really excited about going to England to see the home of my language. I really identified myself with the British in that way, that we speak the same language and are thus united on a spiritual level (sort of an abstract theory, and sort of intangible). I realized while I was there that we really don't speak the same language. Probably the most valuable thing about that week was the realization that the cultural differences that exist between the US and the UK have are rooted in linguistics... kind of interesting.

I'm running out of time for the internet, so I've got to wrap this up... I'll talk about Paris in the next entry, probably tomorrow or the day after.