England

The beginning of the whirlwind trip through Europe

June 4^th

The first day of the trip and it was incredibly eventful. There were many headaches and difficult situations to contend with not to mention many exhausted and sweaty college students. But our first day in London, England was amazing despite everything. The day was started late by my groups late arrival from the states but we hopped on our bus and headed towards our hotel. We were able to drive through the center of London and received a mini tour from our tour director Margaret. It was really great because I know that it helped me to get my barrings for the city a little bit. I fell in love with the architecture that is in London, the buildings just have so much character and I really loved the ones with the glass domed ceiling that artists mainly live in. To me that is an interesting history of the building and the city, it is some of the things I like to know about the place After we dropped off our luggage and our bus we gathered everyone back together and took the DLR line to the center of London. This was my first experience really using a subway type station in a completely foreign city so I was slightly nervous but everything worked out wonderfully. We went straight to Hyde Park and had the choice of lunch or going to the Palace. My group opted for lunch first and then we walked through the park to Buckingham Palace. We took the obligatory pictures and then just kind of stood around for a few minutes and took in the area. I think this is when I kind of realized that I was in a foreign city, but at the same time the fact that everyone was speaking English fooled me into thinking I was still in the states a little bit. After that we headed off towards the Imperial War Museum. I was really excited to see my first museum of the trip as that is what I would like to do for my future career. Margaret left us to go on our own and we got a little lost on the way I think. But we finally made it to the museum and I was surprised to see that there was a section of the Berlin Wall at the museum. It made sense for it to be there because the museum was about war and WWII and the wall was a result of the was. I was surprised but I also felt that it was appropriate to have it there for the above reasons. The museum itself was well done and had interesting exhibits. Margaret recommended that we go see the Holocaust exhibit, the trench experience, and the blitz experience. I loved the holocaust exhibit, as strange as that sounds. As someone who has been to the huge museum in Washington D.C. I was expecting the same thing, but the museum really took the time to make it different. While the timeline is the same, the IWM I think took a slightly different spin on it. They focused more on the persecution of the Jews before the expulsion to the camps. They also seemed to focus more on the lives in Europe and on several individuals, making it seem more personal than the vastness of the D.C. museum. I liked the trench experience, even though I knew that it was fake and it looked fake, I really felt like I had some sense of what it was like to just be in the trench. They even had a strange smell that to me added to the realness of the experience. I did not like the Blitz experience at all. They first have you walk into a shelter type room and you sit there in the dark while bombs drop around you. That part was fine and I thought it was a good representation. Then the (insert name of the warden type person) comes and ushers you out to the “street” but the street is dark and there isn’t really anything to look at and no one knows where to go or what to really look at. There was also nothing to point towards the exit which made the whole thing even more confusing. I think it is a good concept, but was poorly executed. The museum also had a wonderful exhibit about the children and their experience during war time. That was probably my favorite exhibit and it was very well done. I wish I had been able to go into the ministry of food exhibit but they charged to go onto it and I did not want to pay the money. I thought that was interesting that for certain exhibits they required an admission charge. I never would have thought of that and I wonder if it is common in many large museums in larger cities. I have heard of charging to see a museum but not just one exhibit. Overall, I enjoyed the visit of the Imperial War Museum and was able to get some really great propaganda post cards.

We then headed to Covent Gardens and Piccadilly Circus to shop and waste some time. It was really fun to explore a little bit of London in the short time that we had, after that we headed to dinner and then back our hotel. I think all of us were glad to have the day over with. It was an incredibly tiring day coming off a full day of travel. We all slept really good that night and needed our rest for the even fuller day for the next day.

June 5^th

Another full and crazy day in London. Our tour guide Stuart met us at our hotel with a bus and driver. Stuart was probably my favorite tour guide of the trip nto only was he knowledgable but he had a wonderful sense of humor. We began our bus tour of London near our hotel in the docksides and east end of london. I knew that the East End of London had been brutally damaged by the Blitz of 1940 but did not realize it until I was in the area and Stuart pointed out all of the new construction in the area. The old dock area has now been turned into fancy apartments, but some of the buildings did surrvive the war. The first place we went and got out of the bus was a park with a memorial ot those who died in London during the Blitz. It was kind of sad because the memorial itself is not well taken care of and had grafity all over it. But I personally loved it, it is a black block with a dove carved out of the middle of it. I loved the simplicity of the memorial. Reading about the Blitz and London during 1940 in particular helped me to really appreciate all that the people went through during the endless months of bombing. Being in that park really brought alive for me a little bit of the war and was one of my first aweing moments of the trip.

We continued our tour of London and went to St. Pauls Cathedral where there is also a memorial to the firefighters who worked tirelessly throughout the blitz so that the city would not burn down completely. St. Paul’s was an important symbol to Londoners during the Blitz and Churchill specifically said that St. Paul’s must be preserved. So Stuart told us about the insanity that occurred to keep St. Paul’s standing. Volunteers would be all around the Cathedral even up on the roof and if an incindery bomb landed on the Cathedral they would take sand and water and run up and extinguish it as quickly as possible. Every day with St. Paul’s was still standing and the dome was visable served as a morale booster for the Londoners. We drove all over London and talked about the Battle of Britian and the role that many buildisn played during that time. We talked about Parliament and how they alternated meetingplaces during the war. Londeners were never broken but they took many precautions including evacuating many of their children to the country. The Royal family and paritucaly the Queen and children were highly encouraged and many plans made to evacuate them out of London. Yet the Queen refused to leave her husband as well as London and the princesses also got involved in volunteer work. This was important because it also helped to boost morale because they Royal family were equally involved in the war effort. We ended our tour with Stuart at the Battle of Britian memorial which was a tribute to the Royal Air Force and it was awesome that they honored the pilots.

After our tour with Stuart, we went to the Churchill War Rooms. I was indifferent to them when we got there but I really enjoyed the museum it was one of my favorites. It was continually emphasized that after the war everyone just left the room and did not go back in for many years. The museum was opened in the 1980s and they did an excellent job of preserving the rooms how they were and it really is like stepping back in time. I did hear a comment that someone wished that it was more a living history rather than the mannequins perhaps. But I felt that with the audio guide and the mannequins it was more of a stepping back in time. I feel that if it was more of a living history it would lose some of its timelessness I loved the audio guide. I did not listen to every single thing, but for that museum it was better to have an audio guide rather than text to read for several reasons. First, putting up text panels everywhere would take away from the authentic feeling of the War Rooms, and secondly it would slow down the visitors and create congestion in very narrow areas. I did not get to visit the Churchill Museum inside the war rooms, but I was impressed with the store because they had a lot of unique information that I had not seen yet. For instance, I was able to acquire many propaganda poster post cards for a decent price that were not available anywhere else. Everything they had there related to the war and the time period.

Then I went to Westminster Abbey with Dr. Butler, Maggie, and Nicole. The abbey was beautiful and there was so much to see. Thousands of Kings, Queens, and other people connected with the royal family are buried or honored in the Abbey. It was fascinating to experience this famous church and to see everything that was in one of the most famous and historical buildings in London. One thing I thought was odd was that Elizabeth I and her sister Mary were buried together. Even though the reasoning was that as sisters they would be reunited in the after life. I can not help but think that if they really knew how they were resting in death that they would be very upset because they hated each other that much. The Abbey also had audio guides which helped so much with understanding who was buried where and what graves and rooms were. The guides also allowed me the opportunity to really look and examine what I was looking at rather than reading text and then looking at the graves. I was disappointed that the Coronation was not there, the sign said that it was being restored, but it would have been amazing to see the chair that the current Queen sat in during her coronation. The Abbey was also damaged during the Blitz and although they repaired it back to its original state, they did leave one small part with just glass in it to show where some of the damage was located in the back chapel. Through the (idk what it’s called) there was a small museum with various artifacts relating to English Royalty. The museum contained many wax figures that apparently were used funeral and my personal favorite was the coronoation chair used by Mary of William and Mary. The chair had been gratified all over by boys who were part of the Westminster Abby Boys choir in the 1800s. There were also other artifacts that contained similar graffiti. I though it was funny how the view of these objects were so different back then especially with the young boys who I am sure did not care about the historical significance of the object and wanted to leave their mark. Yet it also gives the object a sort of charm and greater historical value rather than pristine economic value. Another strange part of the Abbey to me, was the burial of Charles Darwin inside. For the man who came up with the theory of evolution, which denies that God had any part in creation of the world, to be buried in a church was just strange.

After the Abbey we went to Piccadilly Ciricus to meet up for dinner. After an interesting Indian meal, some of us headed to the Jack the Ripper tour with our tour guide Stuart. We began at the Tower of London and walked through the east side of London where the murders took place. One of the most interesting places we went to on the tour was a former religious mission that had a separate entrance for men and women. I did not really know anything about Jack the Ripper before the tour and I really loved the approach that Stuart took with it. He gave us the facts and the theories, letting us really make up our own minds about what happened. As a history major, I appreciated not having a crazy embellished story told during the tour. We also got a sense of Nineteenth century London with some of the narrow streets we went through. The tour was one of my favorite parts of our time in London.

June 6^th

D-day. We woke up, loaded up, and headed to Portsmouth. After a several hour drive we arrived and dropped off our luggage at the ferry. We went to the D-day museum and saw the World War II tapestry which is called the modern day Bayeux Tapestry. The tapestry was really amazing and detailed. It traced from about 1940 to 1944 and was full of the major events of the war. I looked through the tapestry and then it was time for the presentation of the Secrecy of the Preparations for Dday and how they kept it secret. The talk had interesting information that I did not know, such as the allied forces used clever camofalughe paint as well as wood and rubber decoys and misleading messages. All of these tactics were employed and the speaker gave good information, but he reminded me of a British Mr. Tingley which totally distracted me from the presentation. I wish I had instead talked with the veterans that were there, especially after I found out that there was a British Army Nurse who was there. That would be my biggest regret of the trip, not talking to the Veterans. After the talk we sped through the exhibit that the museum had set up. It was a pretty good exhibit, and even though some parts were better than others, the overall effect was awesome. I thought it was really cool to come out of the exhibit and see many of the vehicles used in the D-day invasion. The most poigniont for me was the transportation boat that was used for the soildiers in the Channel. I was standing inside and got the amazing sense of the conditions and what they were feeling as thousands of young men headed to the beaches of Normandy. I got to see the cramped quarters they piled dozens of men into for a very wet journey that day.

Unfortunatly for me the group I was with rushed out of the museum and wanted to head to lunch, but there were still many sights to see. We wandered around Portsmouth and just took in the scenic town while take our time heading to the Spinnaker Tower. We stopped inside a very small church that had the roof bombed off during World War II. It was really small and pretty with just a few volunteers inside. The part that was left intact was the alter and where the choir sat. The stained glass was interesting because it showed many of the important Kings and a Queen ofEngland. After we left the church we found a statue that was dedicated to those who decided to leave England in search of a better life in the United States. I was not expecting to find something like that in the middle of this small town, but I believe Portsmouth was one of the main ports for those leaving to the United States so it does make sense. The statue was of a family packed and waiting for the ship and was set in an area that I believe used to be the port from which they would depart. There were also other interesting areas of the town that I saw from a distance but was not able to investigate further because of time constraints. I was surprised by how much there was to do in such a small little town. From the historic dockyards, to the boardwalk area, and the various historical monuments and buildings, Portsmouth was definitely one of my favorite places of the trip. I am really glad that we were able to add it to our itinerary and spend time there.

We boarded our ferry that night and began our journey to Normandy, France. The ride over was much shorter than I and most others anticipated, and for many of us it was a short night.