Vincent Acri London Week 2 – Fund for Education Abroad

Hello everyone!! This was my second exciting week in London and I could not be more happy with my experience thus far. I wanted to talk about my exploration of the city and some new places, and also touch on my classes and how they started out this week.

I was excited to acclimate to a new sleep schedule and get to know my way around the city more. Last weekend, I went on a walking tour of central London with my friends Charlie and Emma. We started out at Westminster Abbey, which I learned was closed on Sundays for tours due to church services being conducted during the day. Big Ben was also covered by scaffolds and its iconic bell did not ring out. Albeit these setbacks, I was still excited to explore this area and take plenty of pictures in this section of London. We explored some different parks and buildings along the river. We ended the day by going to Buckingham Palace, where we met up with some of the other girls from our flat. I was the group photographer for the afternoon, and the girls had my take their pictures hundreds of times during this stop, much to my annoyance. Sunday was the start of a heat wave going through London, which made the weather clear skies and 80+ degrees the entire week, which is rare for this time of the year in this city. It was a beautiful day to spend walking along the palace grounds and parks.

I started my classes on Monday, and I could not be happier with my professors. Each one is awesome in their own unique way, they are very funny and down to earth people who are doing their best to make our experience in the classroom one that extends to helping us understand and see more of the city. Our classes each have several field trips that will take us to new places in and around the city that I was looking forward to seeing in London to begin with. I am especially looking forward to touring the Globe Theatre and Wimbledon, since I love Shakespeare and tennis these two trips are of extreme interest to me.

I did take a field trip with my food and culture class yesterday to a large and historic food market, Borough Market. This included a two hour walking tour around the city learning about the history of food in London which ended at the market. I tried new foods including a Scottish egg and a sausage roll, both of which were extremely delicious and terrible for my stomach to have eaten together.

Speaking again on the nice weather, Hyde Park is a short 8 minute walk away from my apartment. I spent the week with my friends renting out bicycles in the park and riding them around the massive park grounds. We laid in the sun and read books, ate ice cream, and fed ducks on the bench. The weather did make the non air conditioned apartment brutally hot this week, especially at night. We are looking forward to the weather coming back to normal this week and be nice and cool outside.

This next week I plan to visit the Natural History Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Science Museum. All three are located a short 15 minute walk from my apartment. I did visit the Natural History Museum already but it was very brief as it was crammed in a busy day of walking around that area and my friends did not want to get to Soho late and miss our dinner.

I plan on my next submissions being Vlogs, as I will have an opportunity to record myself doing things around the city with my friends in new and different places this week that we plan to visit. Attached below are two pictures taken from Sunday, both of which were taken at Buckingham Palace.

I look forward to sharing my next post which I plan to make in a couple of days. I am going to post two blogs next week, I have a lot planned to do and I would like to share as much as I can with everyone.