Day 16 - Striding through Hyde Park

This is a late entry, as is the last one, because time has been so short in the span of this week.

For now, I'll briefly summarize, like always, the events of the day with best of my memory!

Today was spent on Theatre class and the Contemporary Britain class, which the latter involved an interesting tour around Hyde Park.




The most remarkable thing that struck me about London this week was the weather. I've been told that spring time is unique because of the changing weather, so to see the sun out signaled a shift in our whole dynamic overall. We were all just basking in the sun and even spent part of Theatre class in a small park.

Later was the trip to Hyde Park, which became a noticeable change in environment altogether. With some of my classmates, we quickly looked around the area and found ourselves in a peculiarly flashy, yet culturally diverse part of London.

Our professor, Mike, points out that certain neighborhoods are occupied by people that are from "conspicuous" money, while other neighborhoods are of "respectable" money. The whole area seemed to encapsulate so many different intersecting ideas of life in London, especially since Hyde Park is essentially the "backyard" of Buckingham Palace.

We looked around at many monuments that represented some 20th and 21st century events. Some were topical, others ambiguous. What we were to think on was how each one works, which ones do the job, and which ones don't quite do it.

One of them involved a monument to the Royal Air Force, pictured below.

Closer view of these "men"

A statement on the monument.

We didn't get a chance to see the ones for Princess Diana and another one because time was cut short, but we were given the option to take a look for ourselves another time.

One thing I also noticed was the fact that people could rent horses per the hour and ride them, so I'd see them out and about. That's one of the things that fascinated me in London; so much history and contemporary things that intermingle in any place you walk by that gives the city its distinct culture.