Category: The Culture Dash. Armed with a Flip camera, a brain full of misconceptions, and a Underground map, the team started our journey by outlining our topic: The effect of Princess Diana on British culture. To be sure, with the requirement of a five minute video due in week 7 relating our experiences into social frameworks, this wasn’t just running around London for the fun of it (although, it was quite fun!).
First, the team stopped at St. Paul’s Cathedral. To our dismay, pictures and video weren’t allowed in the cathedral. Given our time constraints, we were unable to take the tour to learn about the history of the cathedral, but by the same token, we probably wouldn’t have been able to get any one-on-one time with a docent to answer our questions anyway.
Next, the team moved on to Kensington Gardens to the Princess Diana Memorial Children’s Playground. At this stop, a theme was emerging: just because it is a weekday, doesn’t mean you can just waltz right up to ANYTHING in London and get in. There was a pretty big line to get into the playground, but video of the crowd from outside did make the point we were looking for: Princess Diana’s legacy is everywhere in England, and while the children may have not cared about the background of the playground, you could tell that the adults were just as excited to be there as the kids.
The highlight of the day, vis a vis the actual video assignment, was a ticket/greeter at the Kensington Palace and Court Dress Collection. I won’t spoil the surprise here, but we got quite the perspective from a “common Londoner” about what Diana means to the general public! This conversation alone makes our video.
After seeing the playground and the outside of Kensington Palace, we moved on to a more adult playground: Harrods. After seeing Sarah in her element, I think we might have been hoodwinked! Yeah, there’s a Princess Diana memorial fountain in the basement, but looking back I’m thinking that the trip was more for our “cultural” (I use that term very loosely) enjoyment. Did see a really nice watch there though, so I might need to go back and see if my hypothesis holds. (To my wife, sorry. I swear, this is the last watch (for the trip)).
At this point, it was about 5 p.m., 3.5 hours after the team started the journey, and starting to get into the night. The team took the tube to Westminster Abbey, and boy did we get an earful. It seems several of Team Fuqua had already been sniffing around the Abbey, and the gentleman we talked to was none too pleased! Lobbing threats of legal action if anything he said makes it into the tabloids, the team decided that perhaps it was time to retire for the night…
…but we didn’t. Unfortunately, there’s that whole class thing again getting in the way of my literary genius, so you’ll just have to wait until later to find out what happens when you try to find a Mexican restaurant in London ;o)
Sisters (and I’ll go out on a limb here, wives) also like watches from other countries. Especially for Christmas. Hint, hint…