A Quick Update

Last Saturday, we went on a trip organized by NYUL to go visit Windsor Castle. Windsor Castle is one of the Queen's many castles and is actually the oldest and largest occupied castle in the world. The castle is beautiful inside and out, and even though we technically weren't allowed to take pictures inside, we all snuck some with our sneaky snapping skills. Some photos:

St. George's Hall, a large hall with shields painted all over the ceiling

outside the castle in the garden

group photo

Queen Mary's Dolls' House.. apparently even the toilets in this huge dollhouse work

This past Tuesday, Charine and I had to head to London's City Hall near the Tower Bridge to meet with our class to visit the Fashion Textile Museum and the Design Museum. Unfortunately, we left our dorm a tad bit late and ended up not meeting with our class for the first half of the visit. We finally met them at the Design Museum and there were some pretty cool pieces in their, though apparently one of the interactive works was not on exhibition that day, which is quite unfortunate.

Designs of the Year 2011

an interesting array of LED panels

that fold up in reaction to motion

charine rolling around on an interesting-looking chair

And finally, yesterday's weather was pretty nice as well, around high 50's, so Charine, Lynn and I decided to pay a visit to J+A Cafe, a quaint little restaurant that one of our suitemates raves about. I have to say, I was not crazy about the Irish soda bread they had (personally, I like the ones that my mom used to buy from the supermarket better), but the soup I ordered was pretty good and the cafe was cute, so no complaints.

cute, huh?

my latte

chicken soup with vegetables

buttered Irish soda bread

After our little lunch, Charine headed over to Oxford Circus for some shopping and Lynn and I decided to walk around a bit and enjoy the nice weather. We went to Bunhill Fields and there was a burial grounds, in which we saw William Blake's grave, among some other peoples' graves whose names sounded a bit familiar... kind of cool.

William Blake, the poet/painter

the cupcakes Lynn and I got from J+A

On the way back to the dorm, Lynn and I decided to get out at King's Cross Station to find the 9 3/4 platform from Harry Potter. Unfortunately, they had a lot of construction going on and all of the walls were lined with construction panels, so they must have created a temporary fake brick wall and attached the cart to this makeshift "platform." Oh well, I'm not that big of a Harry Potter fan anyway...

Overall, it was a great day and I'll have to create another post for my adventure today!