Saturday 15/1/11

Today was full of museums! After our full English breakfast, we had our group meeting and ventured off to the Tate Britain. 

We did a couple presentations at this museum (Amanda presenting Ophelia) and had a snack for lunch and then the group met up again before starting off towards the Imperial war museum.  The Tate Britain was not my favorite museum thus far.  It did not strike me as the breath taking museum that I thought it would be.  It was nice and had a lot of nice exhibits but I am excited to go to a different one tomorrow. (The Tate Modern)  So after we got done there, we took the tube to the Imperial War Museum.  This place was very nice. It had a lot of....war exhibits.  It had a lot of old airplanes and sources of transportation (including the submarine), bombs, guns and real soldiers themselves.  (As shown in the following pictures)

This museum also included an exhibit on the Holocaust.  This was a very moving exhibit.  It told stories from the survivors point of view about the concentration camps, and also talked about how Hitler got to be in power and how the Nazis killed the Jews.  The most gruesome thing for me to look at was the pictures.  They were shown in such detail of how the Jews were killed and if they weren't, how they had to live in horrible conditions with very little food and water and not much clothing to keep them warm in the harsh winters.  One of the pictures was of a big pit filled with thousands of naked corpses just piled on top of each other.  The Nazi people didn't even bother to bury the dead.  There was a survivor that talked on this subject. He said he was about 13 years old when they killed his father and just left him in the street.  So he dug a hole himself and put his father in it.  He also found a rock and a piece of wood in which he carved his fathers name and the date he died in it and put it in the ground where he buried his father.  When I heard this I was speechless.  So after that glum exhibit, we left that museum and found our way back to our hotel.  We had to take the long way back because our short route to our hotel from the Imperial Museum was blocked because of protests.  So we went a different route and got to our hotel just the same.  After we got back to Russel Square, Amanda and I went to a diner and i got a take away meal which consisted of a Chili burger and fries.  It was a really good burger, spicy but good.  After that, we came back to our room and i ate my burger and Amanda ate her pizza she took away yesterday from our pizza dinner.  Once we were rested up, we gathered up a couple people and went to Marquis Cornwallis (a pub) and relaxed and talked about our day.  I really like this pub because it has a real "British atmosphere". Amanda and i went there before and we were the only Americans there.  Tonight, it seemed like the same thing.  It sounded and looked like everyone around us was British! It was very fun.  Tomorrow is the Millennium Bridge!! I cant wait! But until then, im outta here!

Father and daughter at the Tate Britain

 Cheerio!

Question of the Day: What was the thing that disappointed you today? 
Truthfully, this museum was disappointing to me.  It might have been because of the renovations that were going on, or just the art work in general, but I don't think this is going to be on my list of my favorite museums.  It did have some good art work there but nothing that really caught my attention.