O Londinium! Walking Around Roman London

Yesterday morning our professor left it up to us to find the way to the start of our Roman London walk. Luckily, Qualls had confided in a few of us that were up earlier that the one Tube station was closed on Sundays. Actually, lots of things are closed Sundays, pubs, Tubes, stores, etc. After going in the wrong direction for a few minutes, we finally found the Tube station. We arrived at Tower Hill (where Sarah and I were the day before that walking) and began the tour.

When you exit the Tube station, there is an impressive looking ruin of an old wall to your left. This was one of many existing pieces of the old Roman wall that used to protect the entire city. in 43 A.D. the Roman settled what they called 'Londinium'. The wall was built around 200 A.D. to protect the city. It was 2 miles long, 6 metres tall and 8 metres thick. After the decline of the Roman Empire, then the Anglo-Saxons came and then the Danes.

Throughout the day, we wandered to random parts of the city where pieces of the old Roman wall still stand, one being in the back of a fancy hotel's parking lot. It was a very interesting tour and I find that often many people forget the Roman past of London and how truly ancient of a city it is!

A neat little marketplace in the city.

Then to continue our Roman education, we went to the Museum of London. The exhibits there consited of Roman and Medieval findings. Most of it focused on 1666, the year of the Great London Fire. The other parts were displays of Roman ruins and you could even walk through a part of Roman London, and see their workplaces. That was the neatest part of the exhibit for me, but other than that, the museum, I felt, was rather scattered with its set-up.

Our group split up and some of us were going to another museum and the other half was going on a walking tour of the area around our hotel, Bloomsbury. Upon arriving back, a friend and I stopped for lunch at a pasty shop (pronounced pah-sty). We both got spicy chicken pasties and they were delicious. Then, as if I hadn't walked enough in the past 2 days, I did a 3 hour walking tour of Bloomsbury.

Apparently, many famous writers, people lived around Bloomsbury, such as Virginia Woolf and T. S. Elliot. "The Bloomsbury Group" was a group of writers, artists, etc that lived unconventional lifestyles and often believed in free love. We went to about 5 different parks, one being on top of old cemetaries. We saw the hotel where King George III stayed when he was getting medical treatment in Bloomsbury and the hotel where Karl Marx wrote his communist manifesto. I can't believe this is all "in my backyard"!

Virginia Woolf and I.

I finished up the night by going out to the pub with a few of my friends and talking over pints and traditional British food. We all traipsed back to the hotel and spent the rest of the night reading for today's class discussion.