Day 4 | Brenden Alkire

A group of us started off day 4 by going out and finding a little donut place to eat breakfast. I ate one of the best glazed donuts of my life, and drank a pretty okay cup of hot chocolate. We decided to go back to the British Museum as early as possible because there were a couple things we missed, but we also wanted to stop by the gift shop and buy a few souvenirs.

After spending too much money, we trekked to Borough Market to eat lunch. I will say, Borough Market was a bit of a let-down only because I figured there would be some other shops instead of only food, but that was partially my fault for not doing enough research. I had a pretty good bacon, egg, and sausage sandwich along with some chips. Probably the worst part of the day was trying to find somewhere that sold something to drink, but we found one eventually. It was an interesting experience because there were so many different food joints to choose from, and that kind of style isn’t typically something that is found here in the US.

We explored downtown London some more where there were some of the prettiest sights I have ever seen. My favorite was a little plaza about halfway between London Bridge and Tower Bridge that gave off a very modern vibe, yet was right across from old school London. This was a great example of a paradigm shift in the architecture of the city by showing new building style versus old.

After taking a ton of really great pictures, we made our way to the British Natural History Museum. To get there, we had to walk through one of the local universities which was interesting. It was neat to see some of the shallow differences from OSU and other US colleges, as the one we saw in London had a lot smaller and more of a modern technological emphasis. I do realize, however, that this was only one college and it probably isn’t a good representation of all London universities.

The Natural History Museum was definitely my favorite museum I have ever been in, pretty easily beating even the British Museum. I have always had a huge interest in natural history, and even wanted to be a paleontologist for a long time, so it wasn’t really surprising that I had such a great time here. My favorite area of the museum was obviously the dinosaur exhibit, but it also had other great ones that had to do with the human body and geological history. It was nice to walk through the museum and know what they were presenting for the most part, not only due to this class but also other biology and history classes I have taken.

We ended the day by going to Kensington Gardens and Palace. It was a really pretty place, along with Hyde Park, with maybe the biggest collection of birds I have ever seen. I wish we could have spent more time in this area, but after such a long day of walking I think most of us, definitely including myself, were pretty physically tired. We headed to a very nice restaurant called Steak and Co. where we had to cook our own meal, effectively rendering going out to eat useless. However, it was probably the most enjoyable and highest quality out of all of the restaurants I had on the entire trip, so I would highly suggest it.

After looking back through every day, I can undoubtedly say that this was the best day of them all.

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