London: Day Two

Yesterday Erika and I woke up bright and early, at seven o’clock. Two fellow travelers from Alabama, a brother and a sister, were getting ready to depart, and inadvertently woke us. It was such a beautiful, bright morning that we really didn’t mind. Turns out, they know a girl from Mary Washington that Erika also knows. Talk about small world. Unfortunately, today was to be their only day in London, and they were going to take a bus tour to see the sights. Had they had more time, we would have invited them to Salisbury with us tomorrow.

We went down for breakfast, where we had tea in the bar and watched the news. A serial killer, calling himself the “Crossbow Cannibal” has recently been apprehended for murdering three prostitutes. He was actually caught on CCTV cameras chasing down a girl and shooting her with a crossbow. It’s really strange. All the papers have been running front page articles about it, allowing me to keep up by reading discretely over peoples’ shoulders on the tube, or just by nicking leftover papers outright.

First stop this morning was the Victoria and Albert Museum, which was my favorite for the day. They had a huge collection of Medieval and Gothic artefacts, from early alters to huge golden chalices. I took at least two hundred pictures there. Additionally, they had a huge display of jewelry, including Lalique art-nouveau, all of which I wanted to steal. The most interesting display, however, was of Walpole’s Strawberry Hill estate. He was, as Erika termed it, a trip. He loved to collect things from the Gothic and Medieval eras, and basically turned his estate into a mini Gothic castle, designing every detail to be authentic. I was really sad I couldn’t take pictures.

After the V&A, we went to the British Library. We weren’t expecting them to have a whole lot beyond the original Alice manuscript, but they had TONS of stuff, including the oldest manuscript of Beowulf! I was definitely impressed. We spent about two hours in the room, looking through manuscripts, including a few Oscar Wilde letters.

From there, we went to the Museum of London, which traces the history of London from prehistory, to roman Londinium to modern day. Pretty interesting, but by this time we were pretty museum-ed out. We went back to the hostel, then out to get Indian food at a really nice place down the street. That night, we went down to the bar beneath our hostel and had Snakebites (beer, cider and black currant) with a few people we met. They were from South Africa, and we taught them to fist-bump, like true Americans.

Today we head out to Salisbury and Stonehenge day trip, then back to London! :)