London's Calling in Retrospect

London's Calling in Retrospect

Nine days. Twenty kids. Seven adults. One thousand eight hundred twenty pounds of luggage. Five thousand four hundred seventy one miles away from home. Eagle Rock High School Drama Department, widely known as Eagle Rock Stage, embarked on an overseas adventure to the British Isles. Mr. Copley organized the trip through Worldstrides USA, an educational travel school.

A city with a life. A city that I would never think to visit. London is where Los Angeles meets New York. Where Los Angeles is just suburban enough to not get lost on every street corner, but New York is just urban enough to have a brilliant public transportation program. Throw in a little Chicago weather and we've got the perfect Spring Break.

The Tower of London, right next to Tower Bridge, is the castle that houses the one-of-a-kind crowned jewels. I do believe that I saw the diamond that would make every girl's mouth water - the Star of Africa. That diamond was nearly the size of my eyeballs when they fell out in awe of the size and workmanship of it. Sadly, there are still prisoners there today, but they aren't people; they're ravens. You see, there's a legend that says that if there were no ravens in the Tower of London, the castle would fall. Don't worry, it's not animal abuse or anything, the birds are kept very happy and well-fed.

We went to St. Paul's Cathedral and it's a marvelous creation. I can see what an architectural genius Sir Christopher Wren was. A few friends and I climbed all the way to the tip top of the cathedral. I counted that we took 974 stairs to the top, but I'm pretty sure I miscounted. It was winding staircase after winding staircase and once or twice, there was a narrow hall that scared me out of my wits, but it worth it to make it to the top! The view was breathtaking. Anyone who didn't go up missed out on the best view of London for miles and miles. My stay at the top of the world was short lived and I went down 975 stairs to the bottom, but I'm quite sure I miscounted that too.

London was a beautiful city and to talk just about the trip to London is unfair. We went to Stratford-Upon-Avon for a day to check out Shakespeare's birthplace and went shopping around town. We saw The Royal Shakespeare Theatre and the street fairs. We saw Chinese restaurants with outrageous prices and Sausage Sandwich Boats that are kind of like a taco trucks, my absolute favorite.

I seemed to have picked up a better British accent, and Daniel Cristante picked up a very strange Irish accent, but hey, it's not Vegas, what happens in London, follows. The group seemed to be very good at traveling via the "tube" or the London Underground where we had to "Mind the Gap" between the subways or trains and the platform. I am certain that if anyone didn't have a ride back to the hotel, the 88 bus to Vauxhall was somewhere around the corner.

My favorite day was when we went the Globe Theatre, not the first one, nor the second one, but the third. Even though it was an especially cold, windy day, it put a smile to my face when I saw how ancient the stage was and that the art of a thousand years, still exists in its most classic form. We took a Romeo & Juliet workshop that emphasized the many contradictions that occur within teenage minds. We had a good chunk of the cast of the production at my high school there, including myself, so it was just an extra little "umph" we got to add some spice to our show.