Tags
Charles Dickens, Guy Ritchie, history, London, Shakespeare, Tower of London, travelling by train
Its good to be a man of the world.
Right now, I’m on a train on my way to London. I love trains and I’ve had some pretty fantastic scenery passing by out the window, it feels pretty good to be travelling in such style (not like being on a plane at all) and I don’t think this will be my only trip to the capital.
Thats why I’m only going for a couple days. I know there is too much to see to get it all done before Thursday, so I’m not even going to try. I’ll do my tourist thing during the day; I’ll try to visit the British Museum, the Tower of London and a few other places. During the evening I can catch up with Dimitri and we can see a bit more.
London never had the same draw for me that Edinburgh has. London has been the cultural and financial capital of the UK for most of the millenium; there has been a city there since the time of ancient Rome. London was home to many literary greats and scientific pioneers. The city is probably depicted more in books and movies than any other in Europe, probably even more than Paris. In terms of History it should be more interesting than Edinburgh because of all that has happened here. I guess its probably because London has reinvented itself many times over its history. I know I’m not going to the city Shakespeare or Charles Dickens wrote about, but I’m not really sure what to expect.
Its probably not like a Guy Ritchie movie either. I was watching Rock’n Rolla on TV last week with my roommate, and I thought it was a little bit of a sacrilege that he did not know about the greatness of Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch as he has been here much longer than me. He went to school here but apparently he didn’t attend any of the Guy Ritchie classes on creative violence and swearing. Snatch was one of the first english movies I saw that had english subtitles.
