On Saturday I headed over to Greenwich with two other girls to stand on the Prime Meridian (ooh, ahh). We walked through some tunnel that is supposed to be significant and battled through the horrible cold (it's pretty much reached New York lows; it's even snowing here right now) to the top of the hill where the Royal Observatory sits. There's a special clock that the rest of the world sets time by (and another one, which I think is just the digital version) and and a line (the Meridian) leading up to a sculpture that might have had a plaque of explanation, but I didn't see one.
I wanted to go to the Trafalgar Tavern because Dickens and Thackeray (Vanity Fair, for you non-Victorian-lit-buffs) spent time there, but it was so freakin' cold and windy (it's right on the Thames) that we just gave up. We walked back the way we came, through the Greenwich Market. It had a roof but was effectively outside, so it was still frigid. It was a lot like any street fair in the city over the summer, with a bunch of international food and little booths set up selling scarves/leather goods/jewelery/other stuff. I bought a pretty scarf and we got food at the little stands and ran back to the Tube to warm up.
Then today, Sunday, I did a little Harry Potter Nerd tour with the friend who turned me onto the books. We went to King's Cross and took pictures in front of Platform 9 3/4, which they set up with a little sign and a cart that's cut in half and pushed up against the wall to look like it's going through. The thing is, it's not actually between Platforms 9 and 10, so I'm pretty sure this was just a diversion planned by some crafty wizards to keep Muggles away from getting in. We probably should have done more investigating...
Then we took the Tube to Leavenhall Market, which posed as the entrance to Diagon Alley in the movies. Everything was closed, which was odd (maybe it's a Blue Law-type thing?), so we snapped a few pics and moved on.
We managed to finish our mini-tour really quickly because there was nothing else in particular that we wanted to see, so we went to Covent Garden for lunch. This place is so funny because it's what Quincy Market/Fanuil Hall in Boston were modelled after, so it looks pretty much exactly the same and I felt like I was back at school. Unfortuantly, this is where I had my first experience with awful British food. Well, it wasn't really "British" food. I got a hamburger. And you'd think, how the hell can you mess up a hamburger? Well, these people managed. It was gah-ross. And there were green things in it. And other things. Yick.
And now, back to homework. I have to write a 1000-word paper, styled as an op-ed for The Economist, discussing what U.S. foreign policy should be. Seriously. In only 1000 words. Because apparently, it can be summed up in two pages. And also, apparently, I'm a foreign policy expert.
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