Museum of London, St. Paul's crypt & climb, and "The Revenger's Tragedy" 7-14-08

The day started off with a tour of the Museum of London by Jon Cotton, Senior Curator of Prehistory. We first had a PowerPoint presentation which went through the history of the museum. The museum was built in the 70's with the merging of the Guildhall Museum (which opened in 1825) and the London Museum (which opened in 1911). The Museum of London has two other "branches," which include the Museum in Docklands, at Canary Wharf, and the London Archaeological Research center (Archives).
It is the world's largest urban history museum. Fifty percent of their visitors are Londoners, 10-15% are from the UK, and the rest are mostly English-speaking tourists. The museum covers 19th century Victorian London, Tudor period (16th & 17th century), Stewart period, Roman history, as well as prehistory (which is the time before written records in London or the time before the Roman history). Prehistory includes information on survival in the wild, adaptability, pottery, monuments in landscape (such as Stonehenge or Sea henge).
We also learned that they have found quite a few items in the Thames that hint at the prehistory of the city, such as pottery, weapons, etc.
He also briefly discussed the update of the look of the gallery, including color scheme and texture, and how they incorporated that with the important issues of climate, surrounding the subjects of the river, people, and legacy.

http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/english/

Next another library student and I returned to St. Paul's in hopes of visiting the crypt. We got the opportunity to do that, see the rest of the cathedral, and climb to the Whispering Gallery, 257 steps from the floor, then the Stone Gallery, 376 steps up, then finally, the Golden Gallery, 528 steps up. The climb was well worth it, since we got a gorgeous view of the city skyline. The only problem we had was that during the climb down, the fire alarm went off, so we had to rush our descent.
That evening, after a bit of resting, I walked the short walk to the National Theatre from our dorms with a Children's Lit. student in hopes of last minute tickets to "The Revenger's Tragedy". We got £10 seats, which were very good seats, and got a chance to see a very intense performance. I really enjoyed it, and particularly enjoyed the fact that this was a smaller theatre than the ones I am used to, so I had a really good view of the action on stage. Although the play was violent, bloody, and contained some nudity and sex, it was very similar to some of Shakespeare's tragedies, such as Titus Andronicus. I was very glad I had the chance to see this production.

http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/revengerstragedy