London Trip – October 2023

A la Une, Actualités Générales, Section Américaine, Sections Internationales

24 intrepid students from Mr. Lee & Ms. Rousset’s Terminale group embarked on a 5 day trip to London. Here’s how it went, from the students’ perspective.

Class Photo

Tuesday

 We started the day by visiting the British Museum. After a long walk guided by Manoah, we finally arrived at the museum. We visited the museum for two hours and we discovered multiple objects full of history from multiple regions in the world. We could see the differences between each era and region, it was really interesting. The sculptures from the Chinese regions were so detailed while the jewels from Europe were so minimalist.

Around 1 PM, we had free time to eat and discover the neighborhood. It was a sunny day so it was really pleasant. 

We then went to the Tate museum where we discovered some more modern artworks. It was really different from the British museum which is more centered around ancient artworks while the Tate museum really focuses on the creativity and artists of nowadays. It was definitely different and interesting. It could go from immense artworks which went from the ceiling to the ground to really minimalistic ones. There was also a really good exhibition on black lives matter and afro-descendant populations especially in the Carribeans. Some were quite disturbing however, such as the panel with flashing lights or the short films displayed.

Afterwards, we grabbed something to eat and walked to Big Ben, where we took many pictures but we didn’t stay long because we needed to be at Shakespear’s globe at 7pm. It is an ancient open theater, fortunately we were seated and it didn’t rain, but it was still cold. We saw Shakespear’s comedy : As you like it. (Rosalind and her cousin escape into the forest and find Orlando, Rosalind’s love. Disguised as a boy shepherd, Rosalind has Orlando woo her under the guise of « curing » him of his love for Rosalind.) The director took a modern twist, with the choice of the actors and the funny costumes. They also sang contemporary songs such as Marry You by Bruno Mars, making the play feel like a musical, which many of us liked.

We headed back quite late to the youth hostel, everyone was tired but content!

Lisa, Nafissa, and Lili-Eve

Lovely London weather

Wednesday

It’s been two days since we arrived in the English capital and, as yesterday, the schedule was packed: we visited the National Gallery, Camden town, the Tower bridge and Greenwich. After two sunny days, London was showing us its true colors, and as we arrived at the National Gallery at 10 am, the grey sky was greeting us with the first drops of the day. We were supposed to visit the National Portrait Gallery but instead we visited the National Gallery but thanks to this lucky mistake, we had a great time. We were able to see many famous paintings such as Sunflowers by Van Gogh. The activity for this museum was to take pictures of paintings according to precise criteria, for example take a picture of a portrait that made us think of a character of our syllabus.

Next, we headed to Camden town, a colorful and cosmopolitan neighborhood with artistic buildings which had sculptures of many kinds on the walls. We spent three hours there during which we enjoyed the open market and many food choices that Camden had to offer. 

The weather became more and more cloudy and as we arrived at the Tower bridge, the rain and the wind were so hard that our umbrellas were susceptible to fall into the Thames as we crossed it. Once on the other side, we decided to stop at Hay’s Galleria, an open mall not far from the bridge and waited for the rain to pass. Unfortunately, after 30 minutes of waiting, the rain was showing no signs of stopping anytime soon and we had to abandon our visit of Greenwich. We went back to the hostel where we played board games and waited for dinner.

Kyria

Van Gogh’s Sunflowers in the National Gallery

Thursday

On the 4th day, which was Thursday, we had quite a busy day. First, after everyone got ready and ate their breakfast, we left for the Imperial War Museum. The job of getting us there was given to Jade and Clémence (it seems Ms. Rousset was the source of this decision). After walking to the station, we took the District line to Embarkment where we changed for the Bakerloo line which took us to Lambeth North. Finally, after just a small walk, we finally reached the museum.

The Imperial War Museum was great. It had many displays about the two world wars which were really well portrayed. The exhibition about the holocaust was especially terrifying and showed well the horror Jewish people had to go through during this period. A few people cried, most people were silent, but no one laughed. Furthermore, the museum also had two temporary exhibitions about spies and the war between Ireland and Great Britain. The former gave us good knowledge about famous secret agencies and spies, and the techniques they used. We even got to see an enigma machine – the one decrypted by Alan Turing. The latter gave us insight on the struggle of the Irish people to gain their independence, thus explaining Cillian Murphy’s death stare at Prince Harry.

The rest of the day was of less interest. After lunch, we were to meet in front of the National portrait gallery – to which some people arrived late. There were some pretty paintings and photographs. Harry was present for the opening of the Wind Rush exhibition. Then, we walked through Regent Street to get to Oxford Street. We all ran around for two hours to shop in places such as Hamleys or the Lego store. Then, we finally came back to the hostel to eat and, after playing wereworlf with M. Lee and rs. Rousset, we went to bed so we could be full of energy for the last day.

Dorian, Clémence, Jade, and Ilhan

Friday

On Friday, unfortunately our last day, we packed our suitcases and deposited them in the hostel whilst we went on for our final day. We then had the choice between 3 museums located in the same area: Victoria and Albert museum (fashion and sculptures), the National History Museum, and the Science museum. We were then given an hour to eat and to meet back before leaving back to the hostel to gather our luggage before heading to St Pancreas Station. We then went to grab a few snacks until it was time to finally say goodbye to London and take the Eurostar.

Joshua, Harry, and Clara

The Natural History Museum entrance hall

And that’s all folks …