More free time = more frequent blog posts.

With my seminar winding down I’ve had a lot more free time. I’ll pick up where I left off on Monday, September 8^th. After class we went to the Royal Society. We have been talking about this Society throughout the seminar. The Royal Society is the oldest scientific society in existence as well as producing the oldest publication in the world. Many of the people we had to research for our papers and presentation were members of the Royal Society. Because of this, the Library of the Society had different artifacts from our ingenious people. I got to see an original letter written by William Herschel, one of my ingenious people, discussing his discovery of a new comet. We also saw one of the death masks of Isaac Newton, who has played a major role in our seminar. There was also a copy of History of Fishes, which was the first publication financed by the Society, which was such huge failure that it nearly bankrupted and destroyed the Society. While we were there, a couple of us applied to be readers at the Library, which is pretty cool, considering all of the other important people who are too.

Tuesday it was my turn to give my presentation, which went very well. After class we went to explore a couple of the museums near where we are staying in Chelsea/ South Kensington. We started at the Science Museum. We actually saw a couple of the mirrors that William Herschel made, which I discussed in my presentation earlier that morning. There was a really cool part of that museum that was more designed for children, but we had a really good time in there for about an hour. There was a station where you could play with these huge bubble wands. There was also a infrared camera with a screen and a part where you could wire electrical circuits in a way that kept you from electrocuting yourself. They had another exhibit on the history of computers and math, including the difference and analytic engines, which James discussed in his presentations. They were designed by Charles Babbage, whose brain is actually in the museum. Apparently it used to be a big thing to preserve the brains of really intelligent people and dissect and compare them to see if there was a difference between them and average people. When they were done dissecting Babbage’s brain, they gave it to the museum, which still has it on display. After we browsed through that museum, we went next door to the Natural History Museum. It was your basic natural history museum, complete with fossils and massive dinosaur skeletons.

Wednesday we had a free afternoon, so Ryan, James, Zoe and I went and experienced the London Eye. It’s basically a massive ferris wheel that is right along the Thames, near Big Ben and Parliament. It took about a half an hour to go the whole way around, but it was well worth it to get such a great view of the city. When we got off the Eye we decided to go and explore Harrods, which is a massive store. It was 6 floors in total, with its own grocery store and concierge desk. Everything it was horribly overpriced, including a £136 beach towel. I did end up buying something there. There was a Waterstones bookstore, which is not owned by Harrods, and was therefore, reasonably priced. I got a Student Survival Cookbook set, which has come in pretty handy. That night we had tickets to see Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream at the rebuilt Globe Theater. The Globe was the building that Shakespeare had all of his plays preformed during his lifetime. We were groundlings, which meant we were right up front near the stage, but we had to stand the entire time. The play was really good though, so I didn’t mind standing.

Thursday, after class we went to the Soane’s house museum. Basically, Soane was an avid collector of everything. He was also a well known architect. In his will he provided that his house and collection be turned into a public museum so that it would never cost anything to enter. It was a little unsettling for me to be there. It wasn’t very well lit and there were all kinds of masks hung on the walls. Some parts of it were very cluttered, including the part of the basement where the sarcophagus of Seti I of Egypt is kept. We also found out that the way the house was set up, with everything displayed like a museum, was how the house was set up while Soane and his family lived there, which struck me as odd.

Friday we took a day trip to Bath. We started out at Paddington Station. It took about an hour and a half to get there. After we arrived around 11 am, we walked into town and went through Bath Abbey, which is one of the oldest Abbey’s in the United Kingdom. One thing that I really remember from the Abbey was that there was a tomb for the wife of an important man in Bath. She died before he did, so he made arrangements for both of them to be buried in the Abbey. However, after his death, someone else decided to burry him somewhere else, so his wife is in the Abbey and he is not. After we went through the Abbey, we took a tour of the Roman Bath’s, which is where Bath gets its name from. The Baths are the only hot spring in England and were so warm in some parts you could see the steam rising from the water, even though it was a really beautiful day. Outside the Bath’s there were some really good violin players, so it was cool to hear the music while I was walking around the Baths. At the end of the tour, we were each given a free glass of purified water from the Baths. It smelled and tasted like fish and sulfur because the water comes from deep underground. Needless to say, I didn’t finish my glass. After taking a break for lunch we walked up to William Herschel Museum, which is located in the house that William and Caroline lived when they discovered Uranus. Our tour of the house started out with a short movie that recounted William and Caroline’s story. I actually found some of it funny because how the movie was telling the story was different than how I had learned it. They were only little details for the most part, that, and although I had already given my presentation, I’m fairly certain I was the only one who noticed. It was still really cool to be in the house that they worked, although I may have been the only one who really enjoyed it. Here was where we went separate ways from some of the group. Meghan, Cheryl, Zoe, Alice, Ryan and I, set off for the Jane Austen Center. Our tour of that museum started off with a 15 minute introduction session, which was very interesting. After that we walked through the museum, which was mostly comprised of costumes from a BBC movie about Jane’s life. After the museum, we decided to have high tea in the tea shop above the center. It was really fun and actually really good. Throughout the whole day we noticed these statures of decorated pigs that were all over the city. We learned it was a local legend about one of the first king’s of Bath, where a prince of Bath contracted leprosy, so he was sent off to live with a pig farmer. He noticed the pigs also contracted the leprosy, but then went into a mud puddle from the water from the roman Baths and were cured. Bladud, the king, noticed this, bathed in the water, and was cured of leprosy. After this he returned to the throne. Overall, the day was a lot of fun. The whole area of Bath was really pretty and overall it was a really good day. To keep this from getting too long, I’ll stop here for now and finish updating to what I’m doing currently within the next few days