Shakespeare and the Shard

The great UK tour day 3: more London! In the morning we set out to have a full English breakfast, but when we saw blood pudding was included we chickened out and got the vegetarian version. Then we went to see the view from the Shard, the tallest building in London. Apparently all of the skyscrapers are required to be placed and designed in a way the will preserve lines of sight between important London landmarks (mainly to St Paul’s Cathedral) so they end up having some peculiarly shaped buildings. The Shard is a glass skyscraper that is shaped like, well a shard of glass. I love panoramic views of cities from high up so even though it was expensive, we went for it. We learned all sorts of tourist facts like the London Bridge looks boring and it is actually the Tower Bridge that is the iconic bridge in London and it is not the clock tower that is called Big Ben but rather the bell inside. After wandering through the financial district and stopping by Saint Paul’s Cathedral, we dropped by the Tate Modern and enjoyed their exhibits on media and materials. The modern art highlights included learning about the Guerrilla Girls, seeing a piece made with old TV’s and electromagnets showing Nixon giving speeches, a room with projectors showing liquid crystal slides with rotating polarizers, a huge exhibit made entirely of human hair rope and chrome car bumpers, and a sideways urinal titled The Fountain.

Hendrik on the Millennium Bridge with the Shard in the background and Nancy at St Paul’s Cathedral.

In the evening we went to see The Taming of the Shrew at Shakespeare’s Globe theater. This year is the centennial of the Easter Rising in Ireland and so the Irish director and cast had set the play in 1916 Ireland and reinterpreted the relationship between Katherina and Petruchio as Ireland and England, all the while using the original dialogue with Irish folk music and dance mixed in. We thought it was an amazing performance.