I started out my free day with a tour of the Palace of Westminster, aka Houses of Parliament. Sadly no pictures were allowed, but the interior reminded me of the grandness of Westminster Abbey and St. Paul’s Cathedral. It was not the interior that was the most interesting to me; the traditions and differences in government systems. The one thing my Blue Badge guide stressed was the “non-political” sides of the government. For example, the House of Lords, although selected by an entity separate from Parliament, serves more of an advisory function. Lords are selected for their experise in a certain area. Umile senators in the States, Lords are only payed £300 each day they show up to Parliament. Attendence is only expected of Lords when there is a debate about issues they have knowledge on. There are not enough seats in both houses to sit all members, since there are so many members in Parliament, many more representatives than in the US. The lack of career politicians in one house of government with instead experts in particular areas seems like a useful element of government instead of having two different, yet similar houses of government. It would be interesting to look up how effective this style of government is compared to our federal system.

I thought my free day trip to Brighton was interesting. Firstly, it wasn’t plan ahead because I changed my mind on going down there mid-week. Then I woke up on Saturday and changed my mind again and went to Waterloo and purchased my tickets and left. It took quite a bit of effort to jump from platform to platform catching three different trains to get to Brighton. The first thing I went to see in Brighton was the Royal Pavillion. I thought it was a unique building when I learned about it in Jackie’s class last year and this would be a good opportunity to examine the architecture of the building. The pavilion did not look too impressive from the outside because of the newer buildings being a bit taller hiding it’s breaking the hierarchical of me h pavilion. However, the inside made me felt so small. The dome was so grand that I felt dwarf within the space. Besides the oavulkion, I went I the pier, walked around and embraced the cold weather by the ocean.

I visited the Tower of London with Nic and Keith on Friday and thought it was very interesting. One thing that caught my attention was the snort that are on display in the White Tower. Prior to my visit to the tower, I thought the white tower would be an an exhibit that shows the living quarter of the king when it was the royal household. It was completely different from what I thought in my head, but I was impressed by the amount of armors they were able to preserve for hundreds of years. Prior to going into the tower, I thought the tower was very ssmll, but when I actually went inside, it was a lot larger. I thought it was cool to be able to walk inside a really old castle and to be able to see some hidden doors along the way. One important thing I learn after visiting the tower is, there’s more than one crown jewel! Before that, I thought it was just one that gets pass down from one ruler to another.