Seek and Hyde

With our feet firmly on English soil (beneath the asphalt), all of our bags accounted for (huzzah), and the sleep cleared out of our eyes (momentarily), we made our way through a few Tube stops to our destination, largely no worse for the wear. (N.B. The London subway system, or “Underground” is also called “The Tube”).

 We also endured schlepping our bags up and down a lot of Tube steps (not all stops on the Underground are handicapped- or luggage-friendly) and we found our way to our hostel.

This is primarily a student hostel, and we have a single room where we all are secure and our belongings and persons are together and lockable. The quarters are tight, with six sets of 3-bed-high bunks, but comfortable, clean, and safe. Almost like we are on a submarine, except this is much more conveniently located in the heart of London.

Since our flight was delayed by 8 hours, we weren’t able to spend the afternoon at the British Natural History Museum, as planned. We will still have ample time at the museum, however, later this week, including a tour of the Spirit Collection - stay tuned on that. After settling into the hostel, we set out for Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens, only a few blocks away (on the map, our hostel, Smart Hostel) is on the NW corner of Hyde Park, and central London attractions are all nearby). We enjoyed the walk in the green, stopping for a photo at Speke’s Monument. Speke was one of the British Explorers of Africa who we learned a bit about before our travel.

In the park we saw 18 (new to most) bird species (you can view the eBird checklist here), 3 species of mammal (humans, domestic dog, and gray squirrel), and lots of species of shrubs and trees. The gray squirrels are the same species as ours in the US (Sciurus carolinensis), for like five of the bird species we saw, it is a non-native and human-introduced species. One of the (non-native) bird species we saw, the rose-ringed parakeet (Psittacula krameri), is acclimated to eating food from humans. We partook.

Shannon was among the first to entice the birds in.

Although she seems unsure, Rebecca was a favorite of the birds.

Siarra had a particularly handsome fellow on her arm.

This isn’t some random British woman, this is my mom, who is also a (full-paying) “student” in this class and on this trip. Don’t worry, she is auditing, so I won’t be grading her.

The birds preferred apples to oranges, but Steph got this one interested in some citrus.

Rachael had a dinosaur fight on her hands.

Finally, we ended our walk through the park at the local and historic pub, The Swan. This pub has been in operation since at least 1721, and is reputed to have been the place where lots of convicts headed to the gallows had their final drinks. Some of us had our first British ales there, along with nice plates of fish-n-chips with smashed peas, bangers-and-mash, and sweet potato pie. After that, we all headed back to the hostel and crashed.

The pub isn’t all that big, and we had to split into three tables - this was the troublemaker table stuck behind the bar.

Tomorrow we head off on a cross-country adventure to the town of Down, to Darwin’s home.
A brief note on the photos - attributing them to people is tough given the platform I have for posting this blog, but the nice bird photos are from student, Devon Hains. I am sure many of his photos will be showing up in the coming weeks, but we will have to try to get good photos of him too.