Old Brick Lane

Apparently our friend Michael here nicknamed me The Nerd because I go to too many museums. So naturally today I dragged Maddie along with me to the Natural History Museum. It's just a five minute walk from our dorm and it is the most BEAUTIFUL building ever. Pretty much every major museum in London you could spend days and days in... and we were on a strict time limit since we had class in a couple hours so we decided to just check out the dinosaur exhibits and the Darwin exhibit (these combined make up maybe 10% of the entire museum). The Darwin exhibit was slightly disappointing, but the cool part about it was this awesome structure called The Cocoon that they built inside the museum that you enter and walk through for just the Darwin Exhibit. So going into the Cocoon made it worth it though the exhibit itself was a letdown. The dinosaur part... now that was awesome. They have a life-size T Rex recreation that moves and roars at you... very entertaining. It reminded me of when I went with the family to Universal Studios when I was 3 or 4 years old and I was terrified of the King Kong ride. Except the T Rex didn't scare me as much this time.



A small part of the Cocoon.

The back of the Natural History Museum as seen from the inside.

The T Rex that moved, roared and even looked at me.


Last night my Travel Writing class took a field trip to Old Brick Lane in the East End of London. We're reading a book about Old Brick Lane right now. East London is extremely interesting because it is a place of major and very rapid change and has a lot more history to it with tons of mixing of different cultures from around the world. Although it has traditionally been a rougher part of town (mostly because of mixing of so many different religions in the area), its distinct cultural history has started to make it a point of interest and tourism in the area has started to increase. Thus, nowadays you see old, run down abandoned buildings next to completely brand new glass structures for businesses and expensive up-and-coming designer shops popping up all over the place. Unfortunately this has also started to run a lot of the original inhabitants out of the area as housing prices are starting to increase significantly and thus the cultural diversity and history is coming to an end just as interest in the area for this very reason begins. The most interesting building on the entire street shows how much change this area has witnessed over the past couple hundred years... the French Huguenots moved to the area in the late 1700's to escape religious persecution in France and thus this particular building first began as a Protestant Church. In 1819 the church was converted to a Methodist one. In the 1890's it was then converted to a Jewish Synagogue and just in the 1970's it was converted to its current abode as a Muslim mosque. So it's pretty much seen everything. It was cool to finally see the building since I've been reading about it so much. Throughout the 20th century most of Brick Lane was a Jewish community but nowadays it's predominantly Bangladeshi... Brick Lane is said to have the best curry in all of London and a particular strip of it is known as "curry mile" because it has over 50 Indian restaurants within this short strip. The Old Brick Lane market used to be famous as one of the largest markets in London and you could pretty much find anything there... they even used to sell baby lion cubs. However, over the past ten years as fashion designers have started to move into the area and prices have increased, the market has apparently really shrunk and a large part of it now consists of vintage clothing lines... quite different than the original market. However, a lot of Richmond students seem to like this and every Sunday all anyone talks about is heading down to Brick Lane. I haven't made it there yet for the market day (it's only on Sundays since Saturdays are holy for the Jewish and it was originally a predominantly Jewish community), but I'm anxious to see it soon.


The cover of my book... apparently lion cubs really were sold at the market back in the day. I think this picture is adorable if you look at all the expressions in it... the cub, the kids and the dog.

Our teacher ended the walking tour at a local pub in the area. It was so strange to sip a pint with my classmates and teacher during our normal class hours, but when in London...