{"id":122,"date":"2016-08-30T16:24:34","date_gmt":"2016-08-30T16:24:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/adventuresacrossthepond\/?p=122"},"modified":"2016-08-31T07:09:17","modified_gmt":"2016-08-31T07:09:17","slug":"care-cuppa-pint","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/adventuresacrossthepond\/2016\/08\/30\/care-cuppa-pint\/","title":{"rendered":"Care For A Cuppa? Or A Pint?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Ready
Ready to meet the Queen… just kidding! This is the Queen Victoria memorial in front of Buckingham; the building in the bottom corners is the palace.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Buckingham Palace was phenomenal! I feel very lucky to have been able to visit it during my free day this past Sunday. They only open it for tours during the summer when the Queen is on holiday in Scotland, and in celebration of her 90th birthday, there was an exhibition called ‘Fashioning A Reign’, which was all about the Queen’s style over the years and included the largest collection of her clothes ever to be displayed to the public under one roof. Each piece had a fascinating backstory, ranging from the symbolism of the flora on her wedding dress to the innovative purple dress she wore to China designed\u00a0to keep her cool. There were hundreds of pieces, including the baptismal gown originally made for the daughter of Queen Victoria in the 1800s that has since been used by a plethora of royal children.<\/p>\n

\"We
We loved the adorable china at Caf\u00e9 Bella Maria!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On Sunday afternoon, I met my friends at the Churchill War Rooms (side note: while walking through St. James’s Park on the way from the palace, it started pouring, and it felt wonderful!). We spent several hours there; in addition to the museum portion dedicated to Sir Winston Churchill, we could walk through the Map Room and occupants’ quarters, most of which remained intact, just\u00a0as they had been left after the celebrations of VE Day in 1945, for over 30 years! They were finally declassified in the late 1970s, and the British government authorized the conversion of the space into a museum. While cataloging the contents of<\/p>\n

\"Novelty
Novelty condoms!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

the rooms, they even found three sugar cubes left in the desk of one of the officers! Wouldn’t want to put those in my cuppa… Speaking of tea, after we explored the War Rooms, we walked through Westminster and stopped at Caf\u00e9 Bella Maria, an adorable caf\u00e9 and tea room, where we paused to rest our feet. We also looked through some nearby tourist shops – we figured we had to at least scope them out once! And look at what we found!<\/p>\n

\"The
The Canterbury Cathedral. We were there during the midday prayers, and everyone stood still and quietly and respectfully, even if they had different personal beliefs. It was beautiful.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We followed in the footsteps of thousands of pilgrims yesterday as we sought to find Canterbury. We’ve been reading and writing analytical essays about Geoffrey Chaucer’s The\u00a0Canterbury Tales <\/em>for the past few days in English Lit, so this day trip was especially fun, since it was far faster (and involved fewer horses and less long-distance trekking) than Chaucer’s pilgrims! The grounds of\u00a0both the cathedral and the abbey were stunning, and it was very peaceful in both places. We had a discussion<\/p>\n

\"Canterbury
The Abbey, which has clearly fallen into significant disrepair, but retains an aura of how it used to be.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

about one of our recent\u00a0reading assignments in the abbey (but still outside since it’s mostly in ruin), which we later found out was once the royal quarters of King Henry VIII’s fourth wife, Anne of Cleves. In my opinion, she had the best fate of any Tudor, with the possible exception of Queen Elizabeth I!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Cheers\"
Cheers!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Last night, a group of us went out to a pub called The Nags Head (a nag is apparently a rather archaic name for a horse), which had a very cozy and inviting atmosphere; knick-knacks and photos literally covered the walls, peppy jazz seeped from late 90s\/early 2000s faux-wooden speakers and the woman working at the bar wore her hair in voluminous curls secured by a small clip. The drinking age is 18 here, so tonight\u00a0was the first time I’ve ordered a drink from a bar! It was quite fun. On our way there, we found Wiz Khalifa’s Bugatti! For the uninitiated, Wiz Khalifa is a really popular rap artist. Great end to a great weekend!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Wiz
Now that’s a sweet ride!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Tonight, I’m off to see A Midsummer Night’s Dream <\/em>at the Globe Theater with everyone. More pictures to come!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Buckingham Palace was phenomenal! I feel very lucky to have been able to visit it during my free day this past Sunday. They only open it for tours during the summer when the Queen is on holiday in Scotland, and in celebration of her 90th birthday, there was an exhibition called ‘Fashioning A Reign’, which … Continue reading Care For A Cuppa? Or A Pint?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7979,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7R7eI-1Y","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/adventuresacrossthepond\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/adventuresacrossthepond\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/adventuresacrossthepond\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/adventuresacrossthepond\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7979"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/adventuresacrossthepond\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/adventuresacrossthepond\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":135,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/adventuresacrossthepond\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122\/revisions\/135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/adventuresacrossthepond\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/adventuresacrossthepond\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/adventuresacrossthepond\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}