May 25, 2014
So this morning began bright and early! As always and It was so bright WAY early! I woke up at 4ish because the light streaming in the windows started at 4 in the morning.
Super bright and we can’t close the curtains. Lame I know.
So we started walking at nine. We caught the underground to a station that is about a half hour away. It took a really long time. But Darrin was talking up a storm with how great the markets are and that they are a fusion of old and new and talking up a storm.
Yeah we got there and it was a flea market. Straight up.
I have seen better deals in El Salvador. Everything was 5 pounds and up. This equates to to like 7.50 or something like that. Yeah not happening plus there wasn’t anything that screamed out to me.
Honestly not that impressed.
We had a bit of free time after the markets and so we looked around for a second before jumping back onto the underground and making our way back home. We ended up going to the grocery store yet again for some food so we could have some type of lunch and then we could sit for awhile and breathe.
After lunch we were told to meet and start walking at one.
Yeah… We ended up waiting on Darrin yet again!
1:05 came and went
1:10 came and went
1:15 We’re off!
So we literally walked around the corner to the Victoria and Albert Museum where there is so much history it is unbelieveable!
We got split into groups again to do more pattern work. I was paired with Sam Hart and Sara Mcneil. They were fun to work with. We went into the museum and were struck with the incredible magnitude of the exhibits. There was so much from all over the world from hundreds of years ago. We visited the asian exhibits that extended from south asia into japan and china.
We went upstairs into the British part of the museum that extended from the 1500’s to 1760ish. It covered the reign of King Henry VIII all the way through the reigns of the various king georges. It was cool.
I saw the melville bed that we saw in history and we saw the various pieces of furniture and the evolution of the furniture through the ages. The tapestries were incredible! All the stitchery work and needle work done centuries ago has survived.
When we walk through the museums and the palaces or the old houses or buildings. Just imagine the structures and buildings we use daily as a part of our normal routine and in two or three or even five hundred years from now, museums could be made from them and people could be imagining what our life was like.
We look into history and see the romanticized version of kings and palaces. Servants waiting on call for the royalty and the extensive gardens and lavish parties.
In five hundred years what will they say about us? What romanticized history or dramatic tales will they tell about us? Granted there probably won’t be guillotines in our future hopefully but still we have the fight for racial equality, socialist agendas being pushed into congress and even the economic crises that have been occurring and will more than likely continue to occur.
how will we overcome such hardships? What lies in our future and what does the future hold?
I walk through the museums and palaces and can’t help but wonder what they would say if they saw their homes and palaces turned into such tourist traps.
Seeing these places first hand has been very enlightening and I have honestly learned so much but at the same time some of the majesty and grandeur has worn off by having to experience the crowded rooms, the hot and stale air or the tired feet and hostile tempers that could flare at any moment.
The places we visit will always be indelibly linked to history, which is why they are historical treasures. But the majesty and romantic notions are best viewed through the looking glass and not in the crowded rooms where it is hard to breathe.
Being able to see and feel something can diminish the dream and ideal of what that object represents. It’s like being back in rome where people are surrounded by the Colosseum or the Forum or the aqueducts or any of the monuments that makes Rome so famous. They see it as commonplace and everyday.
In a way our own freedoms that we enjoy in the United States are taken for granted in that we have it all the time. We enjoy the things we do because of the history and past that we do. But the idea of freedom, the majesty and beauty of the radical idea of democracy embraced by the founding fathers has lost its value. It has diminished throughout time as people are so used to having it.
All these thoughts keep running through my head as I see so much and remember what people had to deal with.
Needless to say, it makes you think.
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