London: The Finale

Sunday was our last day in London.  In the morning, I again attended church at St. Paul’s Cathedral.  There was a special performance of Hayden’s Missa Sancti Nicolai with the London Symphony and the choirs.  The music was beautiful.  I love the acoustics in that church so much. 

After service, I had my final meal in a London café.  One of my favorite things about London were the cafes everywhere providing cheap and tasty food, caffeine, and plenty of street viewing opportunity from the window seats.  It was always nice to take a break from our busy schedule and just relax and enjoy the atmosphere.

Our final group activity was a trip to the Romantic poet John Keats’ house.  Out of the second wave Romantics, he is definitely my favorite.  The house was located in the Hampstead neighborhood.  It was very yuppie, but also very charming.  From the outside Keats’ house seemed rather plain, but inside it contained a great deal of “scope for the imagination” as Anne Shirley would say.  It was full of charming rooms, windy staircases, and stone floors in the basement.  In Keats’s time, a wall divided the house into two separate living spaces.  When Keats lived there, he fell in love with the girl next door, named Fanny Brawney.  Tragically, Keats died in his mid-twenties and never got to marry his love. Below is a picture of the front of the house with Laura Fittz and me!

The house is also where Keats composed “Ode to a Nightingale” while sitting under the famed mulberry tree.  The tree used to be there until recently.  We improvised and had Christian Kim hold an umbrella and be the tree while Elisabeth Fojtik recited the poem from memory.  She did a great job!

We then hiked to Hampstead Heath, which is a nearby park.  It was beautiful.  Unlike the other parks we had been to, there was no cultivated beauty.  Instead there were ponds surrounded by willow trees and trails leading to the heath.  The heath was a huge hill of uncut grass.  From the hill you had a spectacular view of London.  Many families were out flying kites (many of us started singing the kite song from Mary Poppins).  The wind was blowing and the sky was overcast adding to the wild, untamed beauty surrounding us.  I enjoyed seeing another side of English landscapes, and it got me excited for the Moors of Bronte fame that we will see later on the trip. Views of the Heath:

Another wonderful aspect of the park is that there were dogs everywhere! I saw an English Springer Spaniel, which made me miss my own.  Later in a bakery, a man was holding a black poodle.  He noticed my excitement in seeing the dog, and offered to let me pet it.  I told him I had a poodle at home that I missed, and after a few minutes, he asked if I felt better after petting his dog.  I said I did.  I really enjoy the fact that British are such dog lovers (and horse lovers).  They actually have a statue in London dedicated to the dogs and horses that served and fell in WWII. 

For our final night, I watched part of the EuroCup game in the pub.  While I went more for the experience than for love of either team, I was rooting for Italy because their colors are blue and white and Spain was red.  From a young age, I’ve been trained to think blue=UK=good and red=UofL=evil.  I wasn’t that invested though, so when Italy lost all was still right with the world.  It was fun to be in a pub though and see the atmosphere and watch everyone get excited.  Made me miss basketball season back home. 

It was a great last day in London, which is definitely one of my favorite cities.  I will miss it, but I am excited to see what the rest of England holds and the adventures that await us.