Holy moly, Batman, this city is sprawling! I left ATL International at 7PM on the dot Thursday evening. My plan was to nap on the plane, skip to the hotel at 7AM and drop my bags, then wander around the city until checkin. Welp. On the upside, I made a friend on the flight. All seven hours of it. And caught up on Crimes of Grindelwald and Venom.
Once I got in, I went to find the Tube. I thought I did right, picked up a Zone 1-6 week pass. Come to find out, 59£ is a bit too much to spend on not actually going back to the airport for two weeks, so some kind gents got me refunded and set me straight. I learned there is, in fact, a “direct” route from Heathrow to Paddington (as long as you don’t take the Express, which be expeeeeensive!) that stops a few times but eventually gets to the major station. Then it’s either a hike to a small shopping center or back the other way to the hotel.
I managed to find a Starbucks WiFi to borrow a minute and CitiMap my way “home.” The receptionist was super sweet, and not only let me check in early, he also swapped my room for me! My original plan was to swap rooms in the morning into the class-reserved rooms, but now I don’t have to! 😀 My room is super tiny – a twin bed and desk with basically a cubby for hanging things – but at least I have a private toilet!
Since I didn’t sleep on the flight (and my body was convinced it was 7AM after three weeks of no sleep, and not nearly 11), I took a power nap. Or rather, I set my alarm for “power nap” and ended up sleeping four hours. Still, it was enough to catch my wind back and go for supper and exploratory ventures. After much deliberation, I grabbed a breakfast plate at Mimo’s Cafe for £8 with a Diet Coke and headed over to the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Holy actual hell, the V&A is huge. CitiMapper suggested I follow a route above ground (later I realized that’s the front door), but there were also signs for it pointing down a tunnel, so of course I chose to be a Horror Movie White Girl™ and go down that way. Turns out, the tunnel was super well lit and actually kinda cool, with giant ad placards giving the history of the stop. Follow the signs some more, and you enter the V&A and can immediately head into the European 1500-1900 gallery, albeit “backwards” in time.
Turns out, if you come in the front door, you can choose to start at the beginning of the time zone the gallery describes, but if you start at the tunnel entrance, you get to see the cool Bonaparte stuff first. The fabric work was amazing, and I’m so impressed by how well all the materials have held up. Archivists, y’all. Im-Press-Ive.
So there’s this “globe” thing in the Europe gallery. It’s made out of wood, seems like, and is shaped as a half-globe with a kind of tunnel coming down into the center of the room (almost like a movie-style air duct). It’s basically the equivalent of the best acoustic center outside of an opera house, and sits about 20-30 people around the edges. They’d set up a baby grand, and, magically, there was a musical performance tonight!
A gentleman working on his masters in music sang for an hour, accompanied by a damned good pianist. It was pretty operatic-feeling, but not in a bad way. The sound was perfect (and this coming from a sound guy’s wife). Legit, there isn’t a bad place to sit inside the globe – I was, in fact, behind both musicians, and when I closed my eyes, I was first row, pit, at the Fox or something. Intense, amazing acoustics. The rest of the basement held the sound really well, too. I skipped out about halfway through since the bench started to bring my pain back, and I could hear him most of the way through the basement. My favorite song was “Vagabond,” with lyrics from Robert Louis Stevenson’s poetry, composed by Ralph Vaughn Williams.
After Europe, I hit up Asia. I was wearing out by then, but I did manage to make it through Japan and Korea. They’re smaller displays, but no less worth the view. Kimchi jars half my actual size, y’all. What is this.
Oh. Right. The Cast Courts. There are these two rooms (really much more than rooms, actually, but wordmouth) filled with cast facsimiles of original stone artwork. Statues of gods and burial chambers and angels, grave markers from ASE and Old Ireland, the Offa Stone. There are two actual towers in one section that are in pristine shape – after chatting with one of the staff, apparently they come from Rome, and not too long ago, archivists came from restoring the Roman originals to make cast copies from the V&A’s! The amount of work — it’s astounding, really.
I’m wiped, though. I really need to request accessibility access for the flight back. It was helpful coming on, but I left too quickly and ended up screwing myself out of a bunch of energy I could’ve used. I did, however, take a load of pictures from the last x hours. Since I’m probably running close to my photo limit on this blog already, here’s a link to the Google Photo Album today’s pictures are in. They’ve also made an appearance on my Facebook page, and some highlights to @ladynerd3580 on Instagram.
Check y’all later!
The Crafty Medievalist 