I was in two places at once!

We were to meet at Waterloo train station for Art & Architecture yesterday for our field trip, but first I had to walk to Kingston to print out my essay. I took the bus to Surbiton Station and made it in time to take the fast train. (The different speeds of trains have greater or fewer amounts of stops. The fast train has no stops along the way and is the best way to travel into London.) I was really excited because I made it to the station early and had time to get some coffee and donuts!

Our class traveled to the Hampstead Heath area to visit Kenwood House. It was a beautiful estate that was remodeled in the 18th century by Robert Adam and houses a great collection of paintings by Rembrandt, Turner, and Gainsborough.




We finished there by 1:00, and I was going to go back to Kingston for some shopping. I texted Joanna and found out that she was also in London. We decided to meet up, but by that time I was already on the train. So, I got off at the next stop, which was Vauxhall and waited for another train going back to Waterloo. Once we found each other at Waterloo, we planned to go to Greenwich. We took the tube to Canary Wharf, but we couldn't figure out where to go from there and ended up taking a taxi to Greenwich Park.

Once we got up the hill to the Royal Observatory, we queued so that we could take our picture standing in two hemispheres at once!



We explored the museum about the history of the observatory and then walked around the park more.



We passed by the Queen's House, built by Inigo Jones between 1614 and 1617 for King James I's queen, Anne of Denmark.


Last night, a group of us decided to go bowling in Kingston. The Brits are much more reserved in that aspect too. All of the other lanes were very quiet, and there was very little celebration. In our lanes, we cheered when anyone knocked over at least one pin! It was weird because the bowling balls were in kilograms, not pounds. So, we had to figure out which ones were the best to use through trial and error. None of us thought to look up the conversion factor on our phones! It was definitely an eye-opening experience too see a group of North Americans compared with the locals in a social setting like that.