Europe Tour Blog

The National Gallery

The dark gloomy clouds hung over us as we waited for the National Gallery to open. Everyone penguin huddled in a circle to keep our bodies warm from the harsh blizzard set upon us. Icicles started to form on the lids of people's eyes. Quickly we were becoming more and more susceptible to frost bite. Mateship was the only thing that allowed us to hang on to our dear lives. Then suddenly the doors started open, we were saved.

Ok so I might have over exaggerated a bit. Our visit to the National Gallery started like any other day. We caught the underground to Trafalgar Square and waited for the museum to open. When it did everyone seemed to enjoy the fantastic ride on the revolving doors. Some of the well-known paintings that we viewed included Baptism of Christ, Monet Snow in Argenteuil and The Rokeby Venus. After admiring the pieces we sat down for bite to eat in the gallery's restaurant. There we indulged in some beautiful food that made our taste buds say, "thank my bountiful master/mistress for allowing us to party with such food".

We went to the opera house to see Don Giovanni. This was problematic as the opera is Italian and the subtitles were in French, meaning that no one knew what was happening despite our overflowing knowledge on the subject. However, neglecting these small cons, it sounded good. And the seats were comfortable.

From Hannah ^.^

We went to the Palace of Versaille in Paris and it was magical. There was gold everywhere and the garden was magical. We arrived at the garden at about 11 am and we went through the garden first and we all felt like royalty as the classical music played. The fountains display was amazing and I'm sure we all would want to live there; the secret café, the statues in the caves and the square trees made us feel so lucky to be inside. The palace itself was giant; there were massive painting/murals, amazing mirrors and really big windows. I'm pretty sure we all spent heaps of money in the gift shop to try to be like royalty but the best part was all the pictures we took.

Bread for the Win!

The Paris Norm

Monet's Garden

This is the very same scene from the famous painting. It's better live.

The Gardens of Versailles

The View from The Eiffel Tower

Mia's Party in Stratford-upon-Avon

Europe Blog - Josh

On Tuesday, 17th April, our 14th day on the trip we began the day with a visit to the Musee D'Orsay. After a long and annoying wait in the pouring rain being forced to listen to 'gypsies' yell "umbrellaumbrellaumbrella!" repeatedly we finally made our way inside the vast building that was formerly used as a train station. The walkways through the sprawling central space was fill with sculpture carved from different stones and occasionally done in metal. The galleries were trough doorways that lead off of the walkways around the edge each into their own individual exhibits one of which was on Van Gogh. It was also interesting to find that one of the galleries was filled with wood carving, the majority of it assorted furniture but at the back there was an animal section with a polar bear carved out of what looked like marble, it seemed a little bit out of place but it looked wonderful.

The sculptures were definitely the standout of the Musee D'Orsay and after collecting possessions from the cloak-room and a small adventure through the two-story gift shop I think that most of us left satisfied with what we had seen.

Victoria and Albert museum

Hi everyone,
 
Today we woke up like zombies, all looking really tired and unattractive from our 6 hours sleep after watching The Tempest by the Royal Shakespeare Company, except for Dr Irving who looked 35,
and caught the tube to the Victoria and Albert museum (V&A). The V&A is the largest museum of applied arts in the world and we went on 2 seperate tours of the museum, the first an interactive of the history of performance and the second a general tour.
 
The performance tour taught us of the roles of the producer, promoters, stage designers and costume designers. We saw a recreation of Kylie Minogues dressing room and tried on some traditional acting costumes, not hers. We looked at the apsects of promotion and the effectiveness of these factors. Costumes on display included The Lion King, Adam Ant, Elton John and Mick Jagger. There was also dioramas  of set designs of Sweeney Todd, Don Giovani (which we are seeing later in France), Hamlet and many more.
 
The general tour of the museum took us through galleries filled with artifacts ranging from Tudor to Victorian eras. There were many prints, ceramics, furniture, clothingm jewellery, relics, stained glass, paintings and metalwork on display.
 
A highlight of the trip for many of the girls was the jewellery collection and the costumes.
Other galleries we explored included the Chinese, Japanese, and Middle East sections.
 
Jack
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Photo, Shoreditch

This is just a sample of the streets of Shoreditch

At Shoreditch, Photo

Note: Sorry about poor quality of photo - it's a photo OF another photo.

This was the day with the shopping, you may call it what you like, as the itinerary demonstrated, "retail toursim" or "exploration" and whatnot. We were going to do some Marxy gravy thing at Highgate cemetary, but nevermind.

 

Shoes.

 

In any case we went to spitterfields markets, where Londonian Hipsterdom unfurled itsself in front of us in all it's glory and knitted sweaters. Seriously, the amount of small, half-grown moustaches that looked like they'd been squeezed out in about three minutes was both surprising and frightening on the most primal level. Like a skinny-chinoed lovecraftian horror was always behind us, prepared to devour both our bodies and nice jackets should we ever look it in the eye. We were going to go to Camden markets for the entire day but that was too mainstream, this was the point that we realised tht we ourselves had also turned into hipsters, and the slow erosion of our souls began. Also I bought some hats, hats are nice.

 

It was quite amazing really, there were bangladeshi peacock feather salesmen lining the streets (or rather there was one) and people trying to get all the passing hipsters into their restaurants and at the same time trying to out do the other restaurants, each trying to get people in with more and more ludicrous deals, ranging from a "buy-one-get-one-free thali" to a "come-inside-our-shop-and-we-will-give-you-the-shop." For some this was their first experience with heckiling, some people were so inexperienced with the affair that they ended up paying more than what they started out with, not really, that was not true, from now on I'll be honest. I bought some coat tails, coat tails are nice.

 

After this we went to Camden markets, which as it turns out, had been burnt down in 2003 and converted into a tourism district. There were a large amount of touristish things but tucked away in the alcoves were some nice shops that looked as if they were unchanged since 1880, which is how all things should be in my opinion, and we should all be wearing beaver hats, coat tails and cavalry boots.

 

Pablo El Cid

(Hayden Cooper)

 

Photo, Day 3, london eye 3

Photo, Day 3, London Eye 2

Photo, Day 3, London Eye

Front of the British Museum, Photo, Day 4

St Pauls

Photo, Day 1, On the bus away from the airport

Day 4, London, Saturday

Hey everyone,
 thankyou very much for being so patient with the blogs we have been doing so many things that we're practically dead on our feet!  It's just past 8.30 pm over here and we're all dead and penniless from a whole afternoon shopping down Oxford Street (AKA. tourist shopping paradise).

I will be blogging about our trip to the British Museum earlier today and frankly, it was amazing. Put it on your bucket list of things to do before you die, trust me :)

After brekkie at 8, we trecked it through the Tube to arrive at  the museum around 10.

Now, for those of you who don't know much about this place or have an extreme aversion to wikipedia, the Bristish musuem came to be in 1753, after Sir Hans Sloane (a prominent and, i assume by his wealth, aristocratic scientist) bequeathed his entire collection of approximately 71000 objects - thousands of book and manuscripts included - to king George 2nd, and nowadays transformed into a collecteion of over 8 million permanent objects, as well as many more millions coming in and out from all around the world.

Sorry, if I bore you, I'll get to the point now.

After roaming the museum for 2 hours in groups and picking at the gift shop as much as possible (BTW, 2hours is never enough exploring time, if you plan to go there yourself oneday. it is just so amazing), we divided into two groups and were given a tour with wonderfully kind and informative guides of the prestigous Greek Collection in residence. This slightly interconnects with the oncoming 2012 London Olympics, as Greek has a long running history with such events.

We were taken and shown different exhibits and had their rich artistic explained. We were introduced to sections of carvings controversially imported from the Parthenon and were explained the artistic imagination and genius of the architects of the time. We were also introduced to various Greek Myths.

We saw famous artefacts such as the Rosetta Stone, real Mummified remains (better than it sounds) and the last remants of ancient civilisations that you cannot find anywhere else in the world.
The British Museum is truly a breathtaking experience to explore, and the beauty and cultural significance of many of the artefacts made me want to cry sometimes.

Not to worry, worried parents, your children are safe and happy, as well as enjoying the cultrual experience of a lifetime that is both rare and precious.
Thankyou so much, from the United Kingdom!

Ash

Master and Margerita

Hi Everyone,

On Thursday we woke up early and had an 8 hour tour of London. We saw many sites and though it was extremely busy it was amazing seeing the sites. We got back to the hotel at about 4 so that we could eat dinner and get ready for the play The Master and Margerita. The play has three storylines, the first about the devil who arrives in Moscow during the time of Stalin who uses Black magic on the people who cross him. The second storyline follows the story of The Master who is kept in an insane assylum  as he has been claiming to see the devil. The third storyline is about the crusifixion of Jesus Christ. The play was extremely enjoyable and entertaining i was intrigued the whole time. The dynamic between all of the actors was very effective and the use of camera to portray different effects was very entertaining. Over all a fun and interesting day and play.

From Remi

Picture at the Globe

Picture of the Globe

The Rose and Globe Theatre

Hi everyone,

 We had a fantastic day yesterday visiting the Globe and Rose Theatres. We arrived early and all of us got a chance to walk along the Millenium Bridge (a.k.a. the Harry Potter bridge). Then we met our glorious guide, Val, who took us around the area and explained all about the past history and how the street names reflect that. We visited The Rose first and we saws the ruins of the original stage underwater lit by red lights.

 Next came The Globe where we got to sit on the benches and listened about the history of The Globe. After the tour finished we went into the exhibition linked to The Globe and we walked around for an hour and some of us even participated in some showings. The exhibition contained props, costume, basic history of The Globe and lots of people.

 After we had lunch close to the London Eye and walked around a little section of walkway close to the river. Luckily for us, there was a book stall open and lots had a very good eye-balling of those books. Once lunch was over we continued on to the London Eye and had a very interesting look at London from above.

 We came back to the hostel for dinner and left for The Most Incredible Thing, which Mia and Chloe are writing about.

 That's all from me, missing everybody back home
Emma

Hey Everybody!

 

Last night we went to the contemporary ballet performance of "The most Incredible Thing" at Sadler's Wells. It was based on the story written by Hans Christian Anderson, with the music written by the Pet shop boys. The storyline was about a competition held by the King, to find "The most incredible thing." The reward being half of his kingdom and his daughter's hand in marraige. We found the dancing amazing- it really was INCREDIBLE! We loved having the chance to dress up and go out to the theatre and it was definately a fantastic night and a highlight of the trip so far.

 

 Chloe and Mia

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SVAPA Alive @ London

A first attempt to report from the centre of the world!!

Tour Blog Underway

The beginnings of our journey