Summer Lovin’: One Girl. Four Countries. Twenty-Five Days. (Part 4)
”Fight the future” is a shy cupcake who lives in her own little world. A pop culture geek, lover of languages and different cultures, and professional daydreamer, her mind usually takes her to mind-blowing places. She is fearless. If she sets her heart on something, she knows she will get it… or that’s what she likes to believe.
I wanted to get a ticket for Billy Elliot the Musical. Usually I don’t like musicals, but this was based on a film I adore and it received really good reviews. It was the right choice. I was blown away with the quality of the play and the richness of the characters; the talented cast performed as if it were the last show of their lives. Little did I know that one month later I would find myself comparing the miners’ strike and the clashes with the police portrayed in the play - which occurred in 1984 – with the images of the riots sweeping the country. Our world has changed so radically!
On the only sunny summer day in London, I went to Hampton Court Palace. If you’ve seen Showtime’s The Tudors you may recognise Henry VIII’s residence from the show. I took the train, crossed the bridge and went to the ticket booth. I walked into the palace and was greeted by a group of actors who, every two or three hours, would be playing out a scene in the courtyard or halls as if they were the characters who lived there in its glory days.
After spending the next day at the British Museum and at the Imperial War Museum, I desperately needed to relax. I wandered through the streets of Piccadilly’s Circus, Trafalgar Square and Leicester Square, and I already felt at home. Maybe it was because I learned so much about that particular city in my English classes when we covered British culture. I was assigned books set in those very streets and I studied European history later too. I had never stayed long in such a diverse society, so I felt I could mind my own business and be left alone. Nobody knew who I was, where I came from, and they didn’t care. I felt I knew where I was going, as if I was walking with a purpose and not like any other tourist.
I was in London and I was free.
On my last day history came alive in a different way during my stop at the Tower of London. I was under my umbrella, looking around in the pouring rain, as I entered the first tower and I was completely overwhelmed by what was in front of me. I could picture the prisoners held there waiting to die, turning to a higher power, searching for hope or salvation within those walls. Their carvings in the stones, 500-year-old graffiti, are still legible as a testament of the horrors they endured.
Around five in the afternoon the gates were closing so I went to the other side of London, across the Thames. Once I crossed the London Bridge I got to see a different side of the city and my imagination traveled back in time. I saw it as a place where artists, prostitutes and alcoholics used to be accepted. A place where the dark tunnels and alleys reminded me of something I might have read in crime stories. (Not all that scary in the daylight, but quite mysterious indeed!)
Later, I arrived at the Globe Theatre — I couldn’t leave without setting foot in that place! I loved listening to behind-the-scene stories of how productions happen today and how it was back then, in Elizabethan times. Then, I crossed the Millenium Bridge (a scene from Harry Potter came to mind!) and there, without even trying, I had found the most perfect view of London — St. Paul’s Cathedral.
My trip was now complete. I had gone to all the museums; I had been to all the landmarks and I had managed to make time to sit back and enjoy what was happening around me. It was time to say good-bye, pack my bags and return home.
… tune in tomorrow for Fight the future’s final reflections.
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One Girl. Four Countries. Twenty-Five Days. is part of our Summer Series.
