***The Street***
post 2

My favorite encounter with "the street" came last Tuesday on our second trip to London for the Oscar Wilde walk and the Museum of London. Not only was I extremely excited to see places featured in The Picture of Dorian Gray, I was really looking forward to just spending some free time wandering around in the city. Both of these things turned out to be really rewarding. The Wilde walk took us up and down the Strand, seeing some famous hotels and theaters. The Strand all on its own is fascinating enough; when you have some sights in particular to add to the history of the place, it's the museum meeting street!
Our other wanderings took us to the Texas Embassy for happy hour. This experience was hilarious. Probably one of my favorite moments of the day was walking in with our group and seeing another kid from the trip, Doug, sitting in there alone drinking a frozen margarita! I don't know why this was so hysterically funny to me, but it was. We enjoyed some crappy Tex-Mex together and had margaritas. It was interesting to see what the English think Tex-Mex is- not very good, but the tortilla chips and salsa were enough to make us happy!
We then continued on and found Chinatown, which was really interesting. I mean, I didn't even know London had a Chinatown. Do all big cities have an area like that? Anyway, Doug and I split off while the rest of the group ate Chinese. We got a little lost, but it turned out to be a good experience. Neither of us had a map, so I had to ask directions quite a few times; mostly to try to find Soho. I was given incorrect directions twice, which took us to some interesting areas of town. In getting a little bit turned around, I had the pleasant opportunity to see a free glockenspiel performance in a Swiss square. It was delightful!
Eventually, we found the part of London called Soho- a cool part of town central to gay culture. I hope to go back there the next time I'm in London and spend a little more time looking around because by the time we found it, we only had about 30 minutes to check it out. We then made our way back to the meeting point at Covent Garden. This ended up being my favorite part of the whole day- the last 20 minutes or so before I had to be back on the bus. This proves my theory about myself that my favorite times in a new place are always the random ones that occur; they're never planned, and they always involve people-watching! Anyway, we were walking back to the bus through Covent Garden, and there were several musicians playing in the square. One was a man playing "No Woman, No Cry" by Marley, all by himself. It was an otherwise quiet evening in the square and there were a few people listening calmly. There was an old gray rasta man sitting at the bottom of a gorgeous ionic column, quietly singing along and bobbing his head. It was such an awesome experience. As we moved a little farther away, there was another musician, a guitarist, playing what sounded like an adaptataion of "Minor Swing" by Django Reinhardt. Really, it's times like these that make me glad I'm studying ethnomusicology, but make me sad I don't have my own recording equipement! Talk about a scrapbook! How fantastic would it be to be able to take those sounds and memories home? I really didn't want to walk the extra 200 feet to get to the bus; I could have stayed right there all night. However, I know I won't forget that calm moment in the square listening to these two men play as it has proved to be one of my favorite "street" experiences thus far.