Week #6

My second week in London I managed to visit three different districts. The first district that I was able to see was Westminster. Buckingham Palace, which is where the queen lives is one of the places that I got to check out. This palace is filled with lots of cool architecture, but unfortunately tourist is not allowed in it. At the palace, guards stand still and do not move all day except for their guard change at 11 AM in the morning each day. Along with this, I was able to see Hyde Park. Hyde Park has been the highlight of my trip in London so far and contains a lot of cool things to experience here. To start off with, I got to see a cool statue of a tooth that was lined up with a statue of a horse. Both architectural statues are lined up with Kensington palace off in the distance. In Hyde park I had the chance to visit the Serpentine Gallery, which was full of art that reflected on African Americans in America. This was a cool experience because it was full of art in London that was made for America, showing the two culture be brought together through that.

The second district that I was able to visit this week was the Southwark Borough. In this district I had the chance to visit Leadenhall Market. This market contained a set building used in the first Harry Potter. Unfortunately, it was a let down because this building was now just a sunglass shop. Besides this, the Leadenhall market was a very upper-class market. When I was there, it was filled with a ton of bankers on there lunch. They were all dressed up in suits and boy was I underdressed for it. Besides that, the food was fantastic, and the locals were very interesting to talk to. Next, I had the chance to visit the Borough Market. This market was very different and had a lot of cool buildings within it. I managed to see a pirate ship and a church here. Besides that, I was able to try a bunch of different foods here and they were all phenomenal. Lastly, I was able to cross the Millennium Bridge. This was a bridge that was used in the filming of Harry Potter and the Half Blood prince. It is a very iconic bridge because of that, and tourist from all over the city come to see it and the views from the bridge are fantastic.

The last district that I was able to visit this week was the Lambeth district. In this district, I had the chance to do the London Eye. The London Eye is a Ferris wheel that gives you a 360 view of the whole city. This is a huge tourist attraction in London, and so far has been one of the most enjoyable things that I have done in London. Along with this, I was able to do Tate museum of art. The architecture of this building is really something else because on the backside of the building it has bricks going sideways to support it. Along with this, the art in the museum was special. One of the rooms in this museum has a statue of radios put together to form a giant piece of art.

London is a very rainy city. Locals have told me that they get around 300 day of rain in a year. So far, out of the two weeks that I have been here, I have seen very few Sundays and it is in the summer here currently. London is home to around 8.8 Million people. It has around a 59% English population, with the rest of it being Black or an ethic minority. Compared to Barcelona, which had around 1.6 million people. This I crazy because when I stayed at Barcelona, I though the city was huge, but it is small in comparison to London. Along with this, Barcelona has a much higher ethnic population, with a small percentage of white people living in their city.