Today we awoke to spectacular news… Our flight to Rome had been cancelled… the massive snow storm of two inches shut down the entire Gatwick airport (We should show these people over here some Northwest weather!). This really wasn’t the worst thing in the world; we did gain an extra day in London and were able to experience it in rare form, covered in white. We were going to have our museum day in London which was led by a few different students. I got together with my group of three and we mapped out our excursion for the day. We planned on going to see the Tate Modern Museum and the Museum of London.
We started on our way and each of us stared blankly at the all our compilation of road maps, bus routes and underground (subway) locations. We finally got our route figured out and made our way to the nearest tube station. Our first task was to walk across the Millennium Bridge
and the weather was beautiful. This Bridge crosses over the Thames River, and with the unique weather, it provided for some great photo opportunities. After taking nearly 100 photos we were ready for lunch, so we stopped for some Pizza (if we couldn’t get to Italy, we would bring the Italian lifestyle to us). After a long and delicious lunch we made the quick walk to the Tate Modern Museum.
None of us really knew what we were getting into when we were walking into this museum—it really came as a surprise. I know for myself, modern art is a foreign language to me. To be honest, my initial thoughts were something like this, “Wow, generations after this era are going to look back at this and say, ‘these people were nuts!’” I found myself staring at some of these pieces trying to make sense of them; it provided some great conversation within our group.
I did come across two different pieces that were very interesting. The first was a statue called “The Kiss.” It was made from marble and resembled something that we would have seen the day before in the British Museum. This piece was a man and a women kissing and I couldn’t believe the detail of each of them. The next piece that I found intriguing was a line of three arms coming out of a wall. These arms looked living, it was pretty incredible. They even had hair on the knuckles of the fingers, and sticking out of the wrists. My group and I started talking about this piece and noticed the uniforms that the people were wearing, and the positions the arms and hands were in. These arms were in a Roman Saluting position and my mind immediately went to Nazi Germany. Next I noticed the height in which these saluting arms were placed on the wall. They were much higher than my eye level and I had to tilt my head back in order to look at them. It made me feel so small, which is rather interesting because of what we have been learning in our lectures. The Greek idea of humanism and how rational art made me people feel worth something, this was the exact opposite. It was very fulfilling for me to go through this process and feel like I really understood this piece (a very unique thing for me to feel in this particular museum).
Once our minds couldn’t handle any more modern art, which came soon after, we left for the Museum of London. 
This museum was really fun for me, because it taught a lot about the history of London and its development. We looked through early human life in England, and they had artifacts like arrowheads, bow and arrows, old fire flints and many other things that they had found in the London area. This museum covered a vast variety of material, ranging from myths of dinosaurs to a walkthrough of a rebuilt home from the first century under Roman Rule, it was quite fascinating. After we had spent a good deal of time here we decided we should probably head back to the hotel, we did have our homework to do…
It was a long day full of interesting experiences, beautiful scenery, and great conversation. London has been great, but we’re ready for Rome, we’ll see how the weather treats us tomorrow.
--Mitchell Bailey
