Today was a busy day! Rachel and I got up early and went to get breakfast because we are running out of food here and don’t want to get more. We also went and picked up our free t-shirts from the FIE office. They weren’t in yet for the day so we had to stop back later and pick them up. They say FIE London on the front and on the back they say, “Interaction between people of diverse cultures is the basis upon which empathy among nations is built.” It’s a pretty cool shirt.
After that we went to the National Portrait Gallery. There was an exhibit there by Annie Leibovitz. There were many amazing photos she had taken of many famous people as well as photos of her family. Some seemed like photos I could have taken but some were truly amazing.
After walking through the Annie Leibovitz exhibit our professor recommended that we start at the top of the museum and work our way down. That meant we were starting at the old portraits and working our way to the new ones. It was an interesting perspective to take, but the older portraits were not quite as interesting as the new ones. We only had about 45 minutes to get through the museum so we booked it through pretty fast. It was not quite as amazing as Tate Modern so I’m not sure we missed too much.
We had a quick lunch at a pub across the road and then met back up with our professor to walk to our next tour. We got a formal tour of the inside of St. Paul’s Cathedral. We have been there a couple times, but this was interesting because we got some history with it. We also got to go up to the whisper dome of the cathedral. It is a huge dome that if you whisper into the wall of it can be heard on the other side. It was pretty amazing. We also went farther up the dome where you can go out and walk around. That gave some amazing views on London, but was pretty chilly up there. We took a few pictures and then walked back down the 160ish stairs!
On the way back we bought a couple groceries to get us through the rest of our time here and now we are watching the inauguration. I think the coverage of Obama is more intense here than it is in the US. The British are very excited for the change and George Bush really gets bashed in papers over here. Obama is the alleged savior for the US. Many people have said that the US has been lost for the last 8 years and now it has come back to life. It will be interesting to see what is in the papers tomorrow!