Field Trip

On Thursday we went on a field trip to see the Supreme Court and the Houses of Parliament. The Supreme Court was supremely boring. It's the final court for civil cases in the whole UK, and criminal cases in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. The Scottish Criminal system is based on Roman law, and so it's different enough that it has its own final court. Anyway, you'd think that the cases would be interesting, but by the time they get to the Supreme Court, all the interesting stuff is over, and all you get is a bunch of barristers sitting in a room with some old judges who used to be barristers, and none of them seemed to be concerned about talking loudly or clearly enough to be heard by the audience. So it might have been interesting if I could even hear them, but I couldn't. Luckily, I have an e-book reader, so I started reading a novel. I was holding it low enough that no one in front of me could see it, so I actually looked more engaged than my classmates, who were all quite visibly falling asleep.

Then we went to the Houses of Parliament. After much griping about how I'd already done a tour last summer, it turned out we weren't even taking a tour. We had a nice chat with the guy in charge of the UK department for dealing with the EU, and then we got to watch a bit of a session in each of the House of Lords and House of Commons. It was pretty fun, although I must confess I only watched a few minutes. Neither house was talking about issues that particularly interest me.

After Parliament, we were left to our own devices, so my friends and I headed over to the Tate Britain. I hadn't been inside the Tate Britain since I was 14, but I remembered liking it a lot back then. I was somewhat less impressed this time. I remembered there being lots of John William Waterhouse, but this time, I only saw the Lady of Shallot. Still, it was cool, being somewhere I haven't been for nine years.

After the Tate Britain, we got dinner in Chinatown, and then I went to the ballet. I discovered the balcony of the Royal Opera House, which has a pretty neat view over Covent Garden. The view from my seat was not so good, but I guess that's what you should expect when buying cheap tickets to see the Royal Ballet perform a ballet like Romeo and Juliet. Despite the fact that I couldn't see all of it, the ballet was amazing! I love the music, and I really like a ballet where I don't have to wonder what's going on. I know Romeo and Juliet very well, (I've seen the Leonardo diCaprio version too many times) so I didn't have any trouble following the plot, which is often a problem for me with ballet. Even during the Nutcracker I was sometimes thinking to myself, what's going on? which is silly, because the Nutcracker really doesn't have much of a plot. 

The really cool thing about Romeo and Juliet (the ballet) was the sword-fighting. The dancers were dancing to the beat of the swords hitting each other. Technically, I suppose they were hitting their swords together to the beat from the orchestra, but whatever. It was really cool. 

There is a short preview of the performance on the Royal Opera House's website, since they were actually filming Thursday night to show in cinemas: http://cinema.roh.org.uk/content/romeo-and-juliet-live-22-march

That guy's big head was blocking my view of the stage!