Harry Potter and the Rosetta Stone-Day 46-February 24th, 2018

After going to bed relatively early, I got a really solid sleep for one of the first times. I heard Sebastian getting out of the bunk bed above mine around 9 AM, and decided to get up too. The hostel had an all you can eat buffet, but it cost 4.5 pounds.

Our plan was to stuff ourselves on food, then use a plastic bag to steal some for lunch. The buffet was amazing and featured: croissants, pain au chocolat, toast, muffins, and sandwich materials.

Here’s a picture and this was only round one

 

Harry and Jonathon ended up meeting us downstairs for breakfast. Nick had left the hostel early to do a day trip to Stonehenge. The rest of us didn’t want to spend the money and wanted more time in the actual city. I ended up making a ham and cheese sandwich that I put away with a pastry for lunch. My lunch fit perfectly in my shoulder bag.

After eating an unhealthy amount, I naturally had to lay down for a bit. While doing this, I planned out what I wanted to do during the day. My plan involved going to the Murakami x Virgil Abloh exhibit at the Gagosian, going to some clothing stores with my friend Ryan, and then a Harry Potter walking tour at 2 PM.

Harry was going on some other tour around 12 and Jonathan did some exploring. I felt bad because Jonathan wanted to come to the exhibit, but I had completely forgotten to grab him because he was napping. He met up with him later and I apologized. He said it wasn’t a big deal.

Sebastien and I hopped on the tube to go downtown. The exhibit was on Davies Street and was literally one room. I was excited because Takashi Murakami is one of my favorite artists and Virgil Abloh was one of my favorite clothing designers. I was grateful to be in London to see their exhibit.

Murakami had just opened an exhibit at the Boston MFA which I got to see last semester. He is known for his use bright colors and his famous cartoon flowers and imagery. He is also designed the cover art for Kanye’s Graduation album, which is where I first learned about Murakami. Virgil Abloh is the creator and head designer of the brand Off-White. This brand features a lot of industrial imagery that features stripes, large X’s and other symbols. Seeing both of these style together was really cool. I had a fun time explaining all this to Sebastien.

Here is some of the artwork from the exhibition.

 

After we finished, we met up with Ryan. There was a bunch of stores we wanted to check out in the SoHo area. I know SoHo in NYC is named after South Houston street, and I am curious to know what the London one is named after.

I am way to broke to buy anything, but we got to check out a lot of cool clothing stores. The Burberry flagship store was very cool and had a ton of stuff from their runway show the week before. We also stumbled upon some random art gallery that had a ton of cool pieces.

Here are some of my favorites:

 

After a while, it was time for the Harry Potter tour so we said goodbye to Ryan. We meet Jonathan and Harry at the tour starting point.

The tour ended up being really nice because we got a mix of both London spots and stuff from the movie. Most of the scenes filmed in London were from the later movies, but we also got too see areas that inspired J.K. Rowling for certain locations like Diagon Alley. Our tour guide had a binder with images from the movie, so we could compare it to the real life location. Apparently getting these busy areas shut down for the movie was an expensive and tedious process.

Here are some pictures from the tour with some non-Harry Potter stuff thrown in.

This is where Diagon and Knockturn Alley were inspired from. The actual sets are at Warner Bros studio, but I could really see the resemblance.

 

Here’s a London Theatre that holds the record for the longest running show, Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap.

 

They also had this really funny sign.

 

Here is the theatre where Harry Potter and the Cursed Child was playing. If I had more money and was able to get tickets, I definitely would have gone.

 

We ended up ditching the tour halfway to go to the British Museum. This was cool because the museum had a bunch of controversy for pretty much stealing some of the artifacts from other countries in the early 1800s. This most valuable of these items was the Rosetta stone and half the statues from the Greek Parthenon. Either way, this made me even more excited to see the objects.

There was also a new temporary exhibit on Haiti, which was interesting to check out because both of Sebastien’s parents emigrated from there. Sebastien knew a ton of information about the items in the exhibit and was a great source of information.

We went to check out the Egyptian section next, which was awesome. Despite the big crowds around it, the Rosetta stone was cool to see in person. It’s crazy that this one rock is the sole reason why we can translate Egyptian Hieroglyphics. When the stone was made, the language was already three thousand years old. Because the stone had the same decree in written in three languages, researchers were able to understand the hieroglyphics.

Here’s the Rosetta Stone

 

The rest of this section had a ton of very cool sphinx’s, carsophocuses and of course mummies. Mummies are still cool at any age.

Here’s some of those items.

The museum was closing soon, we quickly check out another exhibit or two and called it a day. We were all pretty tired, so we just took the tube back the area we were staying in. Before going to the hostel, we stopped at the super market to get more supplies for dinner. Tonight we were doing scrambled eggs with ham, brussel sprouts, and onions for dinner. All the vegetables were left over from the night before.

Nick returned to the hostel shortly after us. Nick and Jonathan cooked dinner, but the kitchen was too cramped so I volunteered to do dishes again. While they were cooking, I face timed Karan for a bit.

A bit later, dinner was finally ready and met my friends downstairs. Rather than, cooking the mix-ins in the eggs, they fried them all individually in oil to be added in while eating. This made the eggs tastes super good and I will definitely utilize the strategy in the future.

 Our dinner.

For dessert, we had Jaffa Cakes which are a British cookie. I had never eaten them before, but my British friends always rave about how good they are. We split the package between the five of us and they definitely lived up to the hype.

Jaffa Cakes

I cleaned the dishes after we finished eating. The whole kitchen was essentially in a three feet wide, very cramped hallway. This made cleaning up super crowded and difficult. There was people everywhere trying to use the same space, and it was impossible not to break a glass. They should definitely make a cooking show where multiple chefs have to operate in a very tiny kitchen. I’d watch it for sure.

When I went back upstairs, we made plans to meet my ZBT friends Alex and Will at a pub near them. Some other hostel people were kind enough to give us a boxed wine they didn’t want. You’re not supposed to drink in this hostel, so four us all got into one bunk bed and discreetly drank the wine.

Here’s a funny photo of this happening.

 

After finishing the wine, we headed out to the Kensington area of London to find a pub called Gloucester Arms, this I where I planned to meet Alex and Will.  At the pub, I got a tall pint of Amstel beer for five pounds. Ten minutes later, Alex and Will arrived. It was nice to catch up with them and we made sure to send a picture to our frat groupchat.

Here’s that picture

 

It was interesting to compare how our study abroad experiences were different so far. They lived in dorms and their program was significantly bigger. BU had sent 350 kids to this London program compared to the 20 we had in Grenoble. We also were in Europe for a month longer than them.

After a while, we were all pretty tired and decided to call it a night. I said goodbye to Alex and Will, then we headed back to the tube to get to our hostel.

As soon as I got back to the hostel, I immediately got into bed and fell asleep. Travelling really takes a toll on you.