I still have a nasty habit of not writing about things immediately after they happen, but I'm always really tired after field studies. One of the main features of Saturday's cultural studies trip for all of the upper-year undergraduate and law students, along with watching 'Othello' at the Globe Theatre, was a sight-seeing tour by coach. Unfortunately, I neither took any notes (or at least a list of locations) nor photographs (ones taken from buses are awful), so you'll have to take the tour description with a grain of salt -- I probably AM remembering some things incorrectly, if I didn't forget altogether.

Saturday morning's cultural studies trip in London began with another extremely early two-hour coach ride to London. Unlike Friday, I actually had time to run to the cafeteria ten minutes before we left to throw together a wrap for my packed lunch (which also included a commercial Rice Krispies square instead of the KitKat bar I got on the Brighton trip the precious week). As usual, I fell asleep on the ride, and when we arrived in London, we must have taken a somewhat different route than we did on Friday, as we went through a semi-circle tunnel and saw some different buildings. Also, that old castle near Tower Bridge I mentioned regarding Friday? Er, that was actually the Tower of London, which I stupidly failed to recognize. Whoops.

As always, the coach parked at Cleopatra's Needle on the Victorian Embankment on the side of the River Thames across from the London Eye. We had arrived about ten to fifteen minutes early at 10:00AM and the tour guides wouldn't arrive until 11:00AM, so we had an hour of free-time until we had to get back for the sight-seeing tour, if we wanted to go on it. I contemplated just running-off to the Imperial War Museum myself for the day, but figured that I could always do that later while this was the only time I could (and would) do a tour.

An hour isn't a lot of time though, especially with how far Cleopatra's Needle seems to be from anything worthwhile. I walked down the same route as I did on Friday towards the Palace of Westminster, then took a left at Westminster Bridge so I could check-out prices for the London Eye and maybe see if the London Aquarium was one of those free or by-donation places or if you had to buy a ticket -- it was the latter. It was a surprisingly long walk (maybe twenty minutes?) from the Victoria Embankment, so even if I could have gone in for free, I would have had ten minutes tops to look around.

There was quite a bit of open space between the aquarium and the Thames, so I walked across there and looked at the banners and the fantastic view of the Palace of Westminster -- unlike the view from right across the river I went for on Friday, this one allowed me to take pictures which didn't necessarily require a panoramic camera. As far as the banners go, there was one that intrigued me, as it advertised a Star Wars exhibition in the aquarium's County Hall, which seems to be an area for children. A Cafe Manga also amused me for some reason.

As I walked closer to the aquarium's entrance (and noticed the sign for those with pre-paid tickets to line-up), I saw a very curious site -- a pair of Imperial Stormtroopers of Star Wars fame. One couple was taking photographs with one of them, and I contemplated taking photos, but that seemed too tourist-y, so I continued walking, found-out I needed a ticket to get into the aquarium, and then walked back towards Westminster Bridge.

As I walked past, there was a HUGE flock of camera-wielding tourists snapping photographs of the Stormtroopers. I thought, 'Why not?', and took one great photograph of a single Stormtrooper with the Palace of Westminster (including the clock-tower) in the background. It is the most awesome and surreal photograph I have ever taken, and yes, I will post it eventually.

By then, I definitely had to start walking back to Cleopatra's Needle if I wanted to go on the coach tour, so I hurried across Westminster Bridge and back down toward the embankment. Along the way, but still far away from the obelisk, there was a group of strangely costumed men doing a traditional dance of sorts on the open ground by the Thames. I leaned against the railing and snapped some photos (which I'll post later), and a man who was dressed in a VERY elaborate costume came-up and explained that they were doing a 600 year old traditional dance, and would I like some traditional cake that he had in a pan attached to the base of the sword he was carrying? He was also wearing a bag that said 'Moulton Morris Men' on it, so I guess that was the name of the group. I have a photograph of him offering cake to a sitting couple, and I'll post that later.

After that, I REALLY needed (more like wanted) to use the toilet before going on a two-hour tour, and there were supposedly public toilets somewhere on the embankment, but they weren't clearly marked. I ran into a threesome of other Castle students coming out of Embankment Station and asked them where the toilets were, and they said they were closed and went to the Starbucks ones instead.

I don't like Starbucks, but I really like toilets. Unfortunately, I had NO idea where the Starbucks they went to was except for vague hand-waving in its general direction. I had very little time left to get back to the obelisk in-time (and like I mentioned earlier, I have a problem accurately estimating walking distances; keep that in mind), but since I'm usually very good at finding things for myself, I went back under the sketchy bridge and walked around purposefully until I saw the Starbucks.

I wasn't sure if this was one of those 'only paying customers may use the toilets' Starbucks, but I didn't want to embarrass myself by finding-out that it was and having to come to a spur-of-the-moment decision of something to buy. I got in line, had to wait for awhile, especially as the cashier didn't seem to know what to do for awhile for the customer in front of me. Another worker finally arrived at the other register and took my order, but of course I had to wait for it (and I was seriously running-out of time). I also had to wait for the toilet to free-up, which also led to an awkward moment as I thought the door would lead to separate men and women's toilets when it was actually just one and that's why I couldn't open the door.

Finally used the toilet, got my ridiculously over-priced drink, and also proceeded to accidentally crack my straw as I made it burst through the top of the wrapper. Excellent. Also, by now, I had less than two to five minutes to run back to Cleopatra's Needle, which was MUCH farther away that I had anticipated. As I got closer to where the coaches were parked, one of the four drove by -- it looked like the one I was on, but there were two coaches that had L.J. Edwards or whatever emblazoned on the side, so while I had a bad feeling it was Coach A (ie. the one I was technically on), I figured there was a chance that it wasn't.

I approached the other coach that had the same company name on it, and it turned-out to be Coach B. Coach A WAS, in fact, the coach that had just left. I asked if I could join Coach B for the tour then, but Dr. Lloyd said that it looked like they were full and that I should try Coach C. Coach C, however, had already closed its door, so that left Coach D, and I was getting very desperate by then. Coach D, however, still had its door open, so I told Tom that I'd missed my actual coach and that Coach D was the only left, so could I please join them? That was all right, and that coach was relatively empty, so I hoped on just in time for our tour guide to introduce himself and start the tour.

For an entry about nothing at all, this got surprisingly long, so I'll have to leave the tour I don't remember very much of and the Globe Theatre to the next entry. I really have to get started on HIST 289 (England Since 1851) readings (even though I'm only auditing the course now) on Victorian cities and Jack the Ripper, as well as do the readings on British comedy for IDIS 304 (British Studies I) and write as much of my paper on the Palace of Westminster and British identity as possible. Thus, I will probably continue writing about Saturday after returning from the reading room, as I doubt there's much to write about regarding studying anyway.