Second field trip - 7/7

Well, Thursday is our field trip day. I had originally planned to take my students to the Tate Britain Museum of Art and then to the Harry Potter movie premier at Trafalgar Square - to let them catch a glimpse of the stars. As I mentioned yesterday, the second part of that fell through. Instead, we went to Westminster Abbey. It is an impressive place. It reeks of nationalism, and has the trappings of heroism in the guise of the monarchy and the military monuments, and it contains poets corner with its memorials to many of Britain's greatest writers. It has quite a bit to do with the course aims.

First, however, we went to Tate Britain Museum of Art. There the students observed an exhibition of paintings by Romantic artists. Their assignment was to select one of the paintings on display that reflected some element of the Arthurian ideals that we have discussed thus far and explain how the painting conveyed that idea to the student. Since many of our readings to this point in the course have been written by writers from the Romantic period or have been influenced by those writers, this seemed like an intriguing assignment. Most of the students seemed to dig right into the task. Probably the best part of this piece of the field trip is that several of the students mentioned to me that they intended to go back to the Tate because the relatively brief time allowed by the field trip plan was not enough. I must admit that cheered my Liberal Arts teacher's heart! The drawback to this phase of the field trip is that it was raining, and several of the students were or had been ill. I worried about exacerbating their conditions. I also did not get any photos of the museum or the students while there. (I simply forgot to take any.)

The second phase of the trip, after a quick lunch, was a trip to Westminster Abbey. I truly believe that no one should come to London and not experience this incredible place. Anyway, we had to stand in the rain a little bit while waiting to get in, but the dreariness outdoors was quickly erased by the majesty of the abbey interior. Regrettably, there are absolutely no photos allowed in the abbey, so I don't have a picture of the students' faces when they first encountered the abbey. As spectacular as Winchester Cathedral had been, Westminster Abbey was even more so, and their faces showed it at once. By the end of our time in the abbey, the sun had come out, and it appeared to be a splendid day. Here are some of the pictures I took of the abbey and surrounding sites.



the big window over the east door (main entrance) to Westminster Abbey

 

the exterior of the north door and north transept to Wesminter Abbey



the iconic Big Ben

parliament building across from Westminster Abbey

the statue of the Iceni queen, Boadicea, a Celtic warrior queen who fought a bloody war against the Romans in the first century AD - when finally defeated and captured, she and her daughters committed suicide instead of letting the Romans humiliate them through rape - the Iceni were one of the Celtic tribes in the area around what became London