Day 5: A London Adventure

Today Dr. Ross, Brandon, and I left the Spencer House at 8:00 a.m. to catch a coach to London. We knew, prior to leaving, that we wanted to see Parliament, especially because Brandon had never been, so after the two-hour bus ride, we hopped on the Tube and saw the Parliament buildings, Big Ben, nearby Westminster Abbey, and St. Paul's Cathedral. We had all the best intentions to go to The Globe to see Timon of Athens, but when we walked out of the Tube to see that the rainy weather of England had finally caught up with us, we elected to check out a couple museums instead. So we headed to the Tate Museum of Modern Art, where I was most intrigued by the Picasso paintings, especially this one entitled The Kiss:

I was first introduced to Picasso's works when I took Humanities in high school, and I remember being really intrigued by his works then. I remember particularly enjoying the art from his Blue Period, such as The Old Guitar Player. Then my freshman year of college, when I had the opportunity to go to Washington D.C. with the Honors American Government class, I saw some of Picasso's paintings in person for the first time in a museum there. Then when I went to Spain last summer, I had the opportunity to see more of Picasso's work -- the most famous of which was Guernica. Ever since then, Picasso has held a special place in the artistic corner of my heart. Today proved to be no exception. Dr. Ross looked at one Picasso painting with me, and we discussed it in terms of Modernism and he prompted me to begin applying what I have been reading about Modernist literature in my copy of The Cambridge Companion to Modernism to the painting. I was really starting to piece together, in a more meaningful way, how Picasso's work connects to Modernism as a whole. The particular piece we looked at dealt a lot with fragmentation of the self and how re-connecting with the true, inner-self was possible (to some Modernists, at least) through primitivism, so obviously the piece was influenced by Picasso's time in Africa. It was really exciting to see art and literature and history come together in that way.

After visiting the Tate, we headed to the Imperial War Museum. We walked through the World War I and II exhibits. The third floor had a Holocaust exhibit, which was very effectively put together but incredibly emotionally draining to go through. TVs were set up in nearly every room with recorded interviews with Holocaust victims telling their stories. Each one was so overwhelming. At the end of the exhibit, one man said that it had taken him twenty years to begin talking about the trauma he had endured, and he only began talking when his daughter finally said to him that she knew he had lived through the Holocaust and knew how hateful the Nazis were to the Jews and wanted to know what his experience was. The man said that he realized if he couldn't tell his children, then he could never pass on his story, could never inform future generations about the trauma that had been inflicted upon him and fellow Jews. He realized that failure to tell his story would result in the loss of it and the lessons to be learned from it.

After visiting the Imperial War Museum, we took the coach home to Oxford. We decided we were going to go to the pub for what would be Brandon's and my first English pub experience. Dr. Ross thought it would be fun to go to the Eagle and Child, the pub where C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien used to meet, but when we got there, no seats were available. So we went to the Dew Drop Inn, a pub in Sommertown, instead. I tried Pimm's and Lemonade, a traditional Oxonian drink that Chelsea has told me so much about, for the first time, and I'm a huge fan. Brandon and Dr. Ross partook in fish and chips, but since I'm a vegetarian, I went for a baguette with cheddar cheese and chutney along with some chips (fries) instead. It was a splendid first English pub experience for sure.

Photos from the day here.