Today was quite a day. During art and architecture we went on a trip to Greenwich, which is where the Queen's House and an observatory were located. The Queen's House was built in 1616 and was one of the first building of its style in the UK because it was modeled after Italian architecture. When we went inside we learned that the staircase "the tulip staircase" was the first freestanding spiral staircase in the UK, which I thought was pretty neat. Lots of historical figures in paintings and portraits were on the walls of the Queens House (which has been turned into a history museum basically). One room, my favorite, showed paintings of Tahiti, originally known as Sandwich Island (same guy who invented sandwiches found tahiti). The paintings were unique to the time because they were painted when mr. sandwich (sorry forget his first name) was actually in Tahiti. Normally painters would wait until they returned from their voyage to paint what they saw. This made the paintings have a unique freshness, more like photos then recall or from memory paintings. After the Queen's House we walked up a HUGE hill to the observatory which is where the prime meridian of the earth is! Here I am standing in both the eastern and western hemisphere at the same time. pretty great (and dorky) if you ask me.
After exploring this area, we walked through a tunnel that goes under the Thames river. The tunnel was extremely creepy and smelt pretty bad.
I decided to search for a synagogue while I was here to go to services on Rosh Hashanah. I ended up going to the West London Synagogue and it was quite an experience. I have not been to services in years, but surprisingly remembered many songs and prayers. The synagogue was beautiful with high ceilings and the cantor was an awesome singer. The rabbi talked about superheroes and since superheroes and superhumans don't exist, we have to be humans who are super. I'm really glad I went to the service.
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