And a merry old soul was (s)he!

Oy! Two weeks in London down already! Craziness.

So what have I been up to, you ask? Well, to be honest, the first week or so, not much beyond data collection during the day and frantic data formatting in the evening to run analyses to write my AAPA (American Association of Physical Anthropologists) abstract for next spring's conference in Calgary. Yep - my first weekend in London was spent holed up in various coffee shops and libraries while I worked. But, per usu, I'm getting ahead of myself.

My last update was posted in the waning hours of my time in Kampala - from thence I headed to Entebbe airport and on to Addis Ababa for a rather long and boring evening layover before a 1am flight to Heathrow. I arrived in London early morning and dragged all my luggage onto the tube system and out to the nabe of Dalston/Hackney, where I booked a room with an absolutely lovely couple. My hostess offered me the option of dinner for an additional fee most nights, and I took her up on it because she is a fabulous cook. So, I go to work at the museum all day and then come home to amazing home-cooked meals. Score! Their house is also literally across the street from Hackney Park, where I've gone for several runs on the weekends. The neighborhood has a sizable Turkish population, so there are great Turkish cafes and grocery stores.

Due to an internal conference at the British Museum, I couldn't start working until the Tuesday after I arrived, so I spent Monday getting settled at NYULondon, where I am a Global Research Institute fellow this semester. As the NYUL buildings are in Bedford Square right next to the British Museum, I decided to take a few hours and tour the galleries because I knew that even though I'd be spending a month working in the museum I wouldn't get many chances to take a leisurely stroll around. The British Museum houses many famous artifacts, including the Rosetta Stone, the Elgin marbles from the Parthenon, an impressive mummy and Egyptian collection, and lots of other great stuff. One of my favorite rooms is the one housing the Enlightenment collection - it basically looks like a wealthy person's library, with scientific instruments and objects displayed in between books housed in huge floor to ceiling wooden and glass cabinets. The room just has a really unique feel to it for a museum.

Tuesday I started work in the collections at the British Museum, where I am working with a large archaeological sample from Sudan. The bones are overall in really great shape, although many of the skeletons have not yet been processed much post-excavation and so tend to be fairly dirty. The hours are limited for researchers, but I knew this ahead of time and scheduled four weeks there to give myself a cushion. Today I hit 30 individuals, so I should have no problem hitting my desired sample size of 50 by the end of next week, even with taking a day or two off when my parents and sister come to visit (they are all coming on Sunday! Yay!).

Last weekend was spent in abstract prep and writing, but I did manage to fit in a tasty meal at the Dalston Yard Street Feast, which was in its final weekend. (I managed to fit this in because it was taking place across the street from the Dalston CLR James library where I was working...). I had some great fancy spicy tacos from one food truck, some fried sweet plantains on top of a Caribbean salad at another, and a great local lager from a third.

Tower Bridge, view from the South Bank

Given that the Street Feast was the only exciting thing I did during my first weekend in London, I decided to pack some touristy goodness into this past weekend. On Saturday (after a lengthy perusal of maps, bus routes, and hours of operation over a late and leisurely breakfast), I headed down to Tower Bridge, which is located next to the Tower of London. I want to visit the Tower at some point (crown jewels, etc), but it seems like you need a few hours to do it properly so I decided to put that one off for another time. I walked across the Tower Bridge and then strolled along the South Bank.


Based on the recommendation of one of the museum staff, I visited the Borough food market, which was absolutely packed on a Saturday afternoon with hungry people and tasty treats. I had a great brat from a German deli stand and then bought several yummy biscuits from the bakery with the owl shortbread. Cookies should be both delicious and beautiful.

Crazy pile of meringues and other goodies, Borough Market

After wandering through the market a bit, I continued my stroll along the Thames, eventually passing through Hay's Galleria, which used to be large warehouse and wharf and is now a touristy area. There are many pubs and cafes strewn along the river's edge, and lots of people were out and about in the (relatively) clear early autumn weather.

Another entrance to Borough Market

Hay's Galleria

After stopping to enjoy a chai latte by the river, I made my way down past the Globe (I bought a ticket to see Macbeth in a couple of weeks!) to Tate Modern, the modern art museum housed in a former power station. Modern art museums don't usually make it onto my travel itineraries, but over the past few years I've been inspired by my friend Priya and I've tried to be more accepting of modern art. I feel like I can appreciate it now for how it challenges me, even if I don't particularly like most of it.

Ruins of Winchester Palace, South Bank

Outdoor art sculpture, 'Endless Stairs', Tate Modern

After visiting Tate, I walked across the Millennium Bridge back to the North Bank and walked around the grounds of St. Paul's Cathedral. It was getting kind of late, so I couldn't tour inside, but the gardens have some nice waterfalls and sculptures scattered about.

 

St. Paul's Cathedral

This weekend was Open House London, in which many famous and not-so-famous buildings, houses, etc that are normally closed to the public are open for tours. There are hundreds of listings, so I decided to focus on something close to where I was staying, and on Sunday I visited St. Augustine's Tower, just a short walk from where I'm staying. The tower is all that remains of a parish church from the - get this - end of the THIRTEENTH century. Awesome. You can hike your way up a series of winding stone staircases to get to the top, where there are great views of a big portion of London. I met a lovely spry elderly lady on the roof who pointed out the new constructions from the Olympics (and told me what a pain they were for the people like herself who live nearby) as well as landmarks such as the Gherkin and the Shard. It was a fairly clear day so we could actually see all the way out to the marshes. She also recommended that I visit Sutton House, a Tudor manor house located in the neighborhood that was also participating in Open House.

St. Augustine's Tower, Hackney

Interior stairs, St. Augustine's Tower

View of the Hackney Central Overground from St. Augustine's Tower

After walking through the St. John at Hackney churchyard gardens (this is the church that replaced St. Augustine), I found Sutton House just around the corner. Luckily, it was opening just as I got there! This house obviously sees many tours going through because there were many placards of information. You could go all over, from the top floor to the cellar, and it was very interesting to read about how the manor had changed over the years. If you look in the first picture below, you can see where a small panel over the fireplace has been let down to see the original stonework behind. In the second picture, you can see a cool little figure etched into the stonework, presumably around when the house was built.

Sutton House, interior

Etching over the fireplace of a figure of guy wearing a pack and holding a grid-iron, potentially a good luck charm to keep the devil from entering the house via the hearth!

Ceilings were short back in the (Tudor) day!

Taking my friend Connie's advice, I went to Old Spitalfields Market, a vibrant collection of designers and vendors selling a mishmash of clothes, jewelry, art, accessories, antiques, etc. To top it all off, there is a performance space in the center which yesterday contained a huge half-pipe where guys were doing tricks on dirt bikes to a thumping bass soundtrack. The whole atmosphere is mildly chaotic and loads of fun. After some lunch and shopping at the market, I headed to the Geoffrye Museum, a former almshouse that now documents the changes in the homes and furnishings of the middle-class from the 16th century onward. There are period rooms as well as household objects on display, and behind the building there is also a series of small period gardens. Fun fact: the sofa, while long a mainstay of aristocratic households, did not become a staple in middle-class homes until the late 18th century.

Grounds, Geoffrye Museum

Stay tuned: further adventures in Blighty to follow!