On Sunday, Alice and I got up early to go to Speaker's Corner in Hyde Park. This is a section of the park where people stand up on soap boxes to talk about whatever they want -- politics, religion, being nuts. Alice's friend told her that when she went, it was mostly just racist people ranting. Unfortunately, that happened when we were there too. There was only one guy speaking when we walked up to the crowd that had assembled, and I heard the phrase "Jewish terrorists," followed by "Israel" and "the liberal media," and immediately walked away. It made me less angry that this idiot was up there speaking this garbage than that he actually had an audience to spew his bigotry at. I wanted to yell something like, "Why are you morons actually listening to him? What's wrong with you?" but I really just wanted to get away because I didn't want it to ruin my morning.
We walked around the park for a while and enjoyed the sun. It was really nice out, but the park isn't really anything special. It's bigger than it looks on the map, but it's just pretty much open. It's not like Central Park with all it's woodsiness or Boston Common with it's gardens. There was one little garden, though (if you can call it that -- there were just some flowers around a fountain), where we sat for a bit. There was a baby playing and I got really excited because 1) I'm freakin' baby crazy and 2) it was just too cute.
We went back to Speaker's Corner on the way back to the Tube, and I was happy because the a-hole wasn't the only person talking anymore. All the regular crazies had shown up. I love the crazies -- they're why Marsh Plaza is my favorite part of BU. There were a few religious zelots, including one guy who stood up on a chair and chanted with his eyes closed, and another woman who was blathering on about trees having feelings.
After trying to go to Westminster Abbey for the second time, resulting in the second fail (the first time wasn't our fault because it was a holiday we couldn't have possibly known about, but this time it was a Sunday and we were trying to tour a church -- morons), we went back to the other end of Hyde Park where the Peter Pan statue is.
The plaque says something about "the boy who would not grow up."
We exited the park pretty close to our dorm, passing Royal Albert Hall and the memorial thing for Prince Albert. I'd only seen it from far-ish away before, and it was really pretty close up.
Not everyone had such a good weekend. One girl was visiting Dublin with friends and got all of her stuff stolen -- money, credit cards, phone, passport. Lucky for her it's an English-speaking country, but that still sucks big time.
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