Simply put, London was a whirlwind. Each individual day felt long, yet in retrospect, our time here couldn’t have flown by any faster. After landing at Heathrow on the morning of May 8, 2015, I slept – that’s right, I spent the 70th Anniversary of Victory in Europe Day sleeping – for around twenty hours. Finally awake, I was able to begin my early explorations of London on May 9, along side my friend from home, Taryn, who was able to join me after taking the train down from St. Andrews in Scotland. Together, we hit tons of London’s famed landmarks by foot and by tube: we walked through Hyde Park, saw the Wellington Arch, shopped around Harrods, stopped by Westminster Abbey and Big Ben, explored the West End, and eventually ended up at Buckingham Palace where we were even able to see the breaking down of their V-E Day commemoration events (which was really cool to see).
Yet, in what seemed like the blink of an eye, Taryn had headed back up to Scotland, and the day we had all been looking forward to – May 11th – had finally arrived. After convening at the Lancaster Gate Hotel, our entire World War II Maymester program had begun. Together, we rode the tube to Piccadilly Circus and walked to Trafalgar Square from there. Honestly, we really couldn’t have experienced more perfect weather while we were there. Itching for ice cream, Keith and I stopped by a small stand in the Square that was next to the British National Portrait Gallery where we got the most delicious custard-like ice cream cones. From there, (as seen in order from right to left, in the painfully obvious selfie-stick photograph) myself, Megan K., Josie, Laura, and Taylor all walked to the British Museum. The museum quite nice and was full of amazing artifacts (such as the beautifully ornate headpiece from Burma, as seen above) that had been acquired by the U.K., however throughout our visit there, I had a hard time fully appreciating everything I saw because of the ever-present sense of imperialism that the British Museum conveyed without ever addressing the topic directly (or really at all).
By the next day, the theme of England’s strong embrace of their Imperial Empire had become even more present to me, especially during our visit to the British Imperial War Museum (pictured to the left). Housing World War I, World War II, and Holocaust exhibits, I found myself appreciating every second I spent there. It is safe to say that the IWM easily became one of my favorite museums that I have ever visited and was somewhere I both wish I had had more time to explore, and would love to return to (which is a lot for me to say, because I often find that I loose my patience very quickly at museums as a result of my short attention span and inclination to always want to move on to the next thing). The exhibit that resonated the most with me was the IWM’s Holocaust area – prior to this trip I had been to Holocaust museums and memorials in both the States and in Israel, but hadn’t really seen one presented in such a logic format as it was there, versus the usual “Never Again/Never Forget” type of theme presented throughout them.
Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely loved London – it was like Manhattan, but better (and definitely cleaner). Moreover, I have only the best things to say about the tube, its system just made sense to me. After growing up in San Diego, where our public transit is laughable and nearly everyone has to rely on cars to get around, I had never really understood the benefits and successful usages of a large-scale public transportation system (as well as the amazing possibilities one could experience with the city being so walk-able) until coming to London. For example, (as seen above, and listed from left to right) Cam, Tommy, Matt, Keith, Peter, and myself all were able to board the HMS Belfast on the Thames River that overlooked the Tower after successfully navigating the tube to get there. However, not everything was just peachy while in London. The imperial tendencies that helped build the U.K. into what we know it as today seemed to really play into the ever-present “greater than” tone that I felt when encountering some British people, and was only enhanced through many of the city’s cultural attractions (ie: the British Museum’s massive displays of beautiful and historical artifacts they had acquired from the nations they once conquered, such as the headpiece pictured above; and the Harrods experience as a whole spoke leaps and bounds about the uppity nature we experienced throughout parts of our stay in London.