I'm so excited to write about what I just saw an hour ago that I don't know if I can find the patience to relate everything that happened before!  Come to think of it, why should I worry about working chronologically?  I'll go from back to front today!  That should be a nice change of pace.  :-)

So where, you ask, was I standing an hour ago?  The British Library.  Not the most thrilling place in London, you say?  Ha!  Just wait until I tell you what I saw.  It was the end of a long day for me, and I dropped by the library during its last hour open just to browse and see what it had to offer.  I took a brief look around each floor and was amazed at the amount of important information the library houses.  I didn't have a "reader's card," though, so I couldn't go into any of the reading rooms.  Thinking that I wouldn't be able to see anything really interesting without a card, I wandered back down to the ground floor.  I saw a sign pointing to some exhibition galleries, so I decided to check them out.  Imagine my surprise when I realized that I had discovered the room where hundreds of the world's most important original documents are held!  First, of course, I had to take a look at the Magna Carta.  Apparently, there were actually four original Magna Cartas (all of equal importance), and two reside at the British Library.  I got to see them both, etched in tiny writing on sheepskin.

I then decided to look around the rest of the room.  As I did, my heart began to beat faster and faster.  I could have plopped down in the middle of that gallery and cried for joy!  Please don't think that I'm a silly, emotional basket-case; I just want to emphasize the magnitude of what I was seeing and the effect that such an overload had on my senses.  I passed document after original document and could barely take in all that I was seeing.  Finally, I pulled a piece of paper out of my pocket and jotted down the manuscripts that had the greatest effect on me.  Here is the very impressive list (and yes, these are all ORIGINAL, mostly HANDWRITTEN documents):

"Alice in Wonderland"

"Persuasion" (sitting atop Jane Austen's actual writing desk)

"Middlemarch"

"David Copperfield"

"Jane Eyre"

The Gutenburg Bible (The original, produced in the 1400's!!!)

Wordsworth poems

"Beowulf"

"The Cantebury Tales"

"The Aeneid"

Kipling poems

"The Messiah" (Handel's original manuscript; this sent thrills up my spine although his handwriting is awful!)

A manuscript of musical tropes dating back to 970

A Bach Prelude (Bach had beautiful handwriting!)

A Mozart piano concerto cadenza

Beethoven's 9th Symphony

A Chopin manuscript (He had lovely handwriting, too!)

I also saw some original Elgar, Mahler, Williams, and Britten music manuscripts, but I was only able to glance at these since a security guard was booting me out of the library at the time.  :-)  I could have kicked myself for only arriving an hour before the library closed.  I definitely plan to return soon and experience all the thrills even more deeply and fully!  I've studied these great works my entire life, and seeing the real, true originals really stirred me somehow.

Alright then; continuing backwards.  :-)  Before the library, I had been strolling through Regents Park.  When I went to the Open Air Theatre last week, I discovered that the inner circle of the park (comprised mostly of "Queen Mary's Gardens") is absolutely gorgeous!  I came back today to admire it in depth.  I couldn't stop shooting photographs; everything was so lovely!  This is definitely my favorite park here in London; it seems so natural and beautiful and unplanned.  Little trails wind this way and that over rustic bridges, past little waterfalls and duckponds, beneath Weeping Willows, and around gorgeous fountains and flower gardens.   I ate my dinner (a large orange!) beside a duck family on the banks of a little river.

Before that, I had visited the Royal College of Music's Museum of Musical Instruments, and I must admit that I was a little disappointed.  The college is very small and the museum is even smaller.  It's comprised of three rooms; one dedicated to brass, one to strings, and one to pianos.  They did have some neat things on display (Stradivarius violins, letters written Mendelssohn, harpsichords, square pianos, etc.), but the exhibits were dark and deserted.  I actually had to lift the covers on all the piano displays in order to get a look at them!  At least it was wonderfully cool in the building.  I found a room with a plumpy couch and took a delicious 10-minute nap until a group of kiddies came tromping noisily through the room ("Mummie, why is that person sleeping?").

Let's rewind a bit more now and find ourselves un-buying a sandwich for lunch (we're watching everything backwards, remember?), logging off a school computer, and touring, in reverse, the Wallace Collection.   STOP!   Now we'll press the "play" button again.  :-)  After class today, my teacher took us all to the Wallace Collection.  The Wallace Collection is a famous group of paintings housed in the elegant Wallace mansion.  The art was lovely (and many paintings were very historically important), but I enjoyed just taking in each room as a whole.  Each was lavishly decorated in Victorian style, and each had enough overhead chandeliers, draping curtains, and beautiful furniture to overload the senses.  Unlike the palaces and castles I've toured, though, this place wasn't as ostentatious as it was simply elegant.  I could completely imagine rich, 19th-century Wallace ladies and gentlemen living there!

At 1:00, my class gathered and listened to a presentation on some paintings of King Charles IV and an actress/writer he admired (Mary Robinson).  We've read some of Mary Robinson's poetry, so it was interesting to see paintings of her and to hear a bit more about her life.

Before that, all I'd done was attend class.  Class went very well today; I was a bit less tired, and, again, I thoroughly enjoyed the subject matter and the way our teacher presented things.  I got to chat with her a bit as we rushed through streets on our way to the Wallace Collection, and she is so delightful.  She's absolutely brilliant and perpetually bursting with energy.  She's been teaching English for years and years, she has three young children, and she's so delightfully British in her attention to word choice and phrasing!  I couldn't be happier with the course.

That's it!  I hope you were able to follow this topsy-turvy account of my day!

P.S.  I'm beginning to think I may not be an utter failure when it comes to a sense of direction!  I found my way around strange sections of town beautifully today just by following the feelings in my bones.  :-)