{"id":164,"date":"2016-09-05T20:53:26","date_gmt":"2016-09-05T20:53:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/adventuresacrossthepond\/?p=164"},"modified":"2016-09-06T20:23:04","modified_gmt":"2016-09-06T20:23:04","slug":"burn-baby-burn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/adventuresacrossthepond\/2016\/09\/05\/burn-baby-burn\/","title":{"rendered":"Burn, Baby, Burn"},"content":{"rendered":"

I began my Sunday with a morning trip to Costa’s (the UK equivalent of<\/p>\n

\"View
View from the charging station at Costa’s. Best. Cappuccinos. Ever.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Starbucks, except less commercial) to work on several assignments for my English lit class – including one highly entertaining essay justifying my use of a completely random photo of one of my friends as the cover for Spencer’s\u00a0The Fairy Queene – <\/em>while<\/p>\n

\"This
This is the picture I defended as the perfect cover image for The Fairy Queene; it was a very fun assignment!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

enjoying some smooth jazz. There’s a Costa’s just up the road from Scape, across the street from Mile End (the nearest tube station). It was a lot of fun getting to appreciate the local atmosphere and people-watch while being productive!<\/p>\n

In the afternoon, I met up with a group of friends to go wander through Chinatown\u00a0and Soho before an event in the evening… More on that later. Chinatown is very ornately decorated, and polycultural despite it’s specific faction-oriented name. It is because of this synthesis of cultures that we happened upon a delicious (and inexpensive) lasagna restaurant\u00a0sandwiched between bubble tea shops and Asian markets. From Soho, we wandered south toward the Thames.<\/p>\n

\"The
The model of London calmly bobbing on a barge in the Thames.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Yesterday marked the 350th anniversary of the end (roughly) of the Great Fire, and in celebration, a giant fire was started. Except, unlike the original,\u00a0last night’s fire was on a barge in the middle of the Thames, and instead of acres of land or logs, a scale model of the affected portion of the city in 1666 was consumed by the flames. The riverfront was absolutely packed;\u00a0an estimated\u00a0200,000 people lined the streets to watch, and from where we were standing, that<\/p>\n

\"The
The fire begins… The actual fire began in a bakery, after someone accidently left a pie in the oven too long.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
seemed very accurate! The crackling of the flames engulfing the model resonated\u00a0over the water, and the heat could be felt even from several hundred feet away. It really made me understand the scale of the Great Fire; while I felt surprised at the effects of a relatively small inferno, it<\/div>\n
\"The
The last of the blaze!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

was nearly\u00a0impossible to\u00a0imagine two-thirds of the city awash in fire. The\u00a0constant\u00a0glow alone would be enough to set people on edge, not to mention\u00a0the added stress of protecting one’s livelihood and family.<\/p>\n

Today was slightly more structured, with the addition of a pseudo English lit class in the morning. Rather than hosting class in our usual classroom at Into London City University, we met in front of the Globe theatre to take a tour and learn about Shakespearean-era history. This was made a more interesting experience due to some delays on the tube, which rendered\u00a0it necessary for my\u00a0friend and\u00a0me to sprint from Blackfriars Station, down through the financial district and\u00a0across Millennium Bridge toward the Globe in order to make our appointed meeting time. Even though it was a bit stressful, it was a gorgeous route!<\/p>\n

After touring the Globe, several of us headed over to a large covered<\/p>\n

\"Yum!
Yum! It was called a saab pie-neer.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

pavilion that houses the Borough Market to find lunch. It was packed with people, and the stalls ranged in types of wares from French cheeses to local flora. I tried\u00a0an English\u00a0vegetarian pot pie with\u00a0spinach, paneer cheese, potato, mango and peas… Yum!<\/p>\n

\"This
This mural graced the window of a very cute card shop in Soho.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

We then went back to Soho to do a bit of shopping (mostly of the window variety), stopping in any places that suited our fancy. We also happened upon the Bag O’ Nails club, which is where Paul McCartney first met Linda Eastman in 1967, in addition to where The Jimi Hendrix Experience first played in 1966! Very cool!<\/p>\n

\"The
The world-renowned club<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

I’m currently hanging out in the common lounge area at Scape with a bunch of friends watching Casino Royale; hence… 007, out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I began my Sunday with a morning trip to Costa’s (the UK equivalent of Starbucks, except less commercial) to work on several assignments for my English lit class – including one highly entertaining essay justifying my use of a completely random photo of one of my friends as the cover for Spencer’s\u00a0The Fairy Queene – … Continue reading Burn, Baby, Burn<\/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":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-164","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-2E","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/adventuresacrossthepond\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164","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=164"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/adventuresacrossthepond\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":185,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/adventuresacrossthepond\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164\/revisions\/185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/adventuresacrossthepond\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/adventuresacrossthepond\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/adventuresacrossthepond\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}