Hey Tomorrow

A trip to the Foyle Reading Room of The Royal Geographical Society  (RGS) this morning marked the final program visit of our time in London. While it's sad to see our time coming to a close, it was lovely to spend the morning with Eugene Rae, the principal librarian of the reading room.  I, unfortunately, did not bring my phone (ie. camera) into the room and so do not have photographs of this experience. Apologies for a text filled blog post! By Steve Cadman [CC BY-SA 2.0  (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons On a large table in the reading room, Eugene laid out many documents and facsimiles from the RGS archive. Using these to illustrate his stories, he told us about s ome of the grander voyages undertaken by members of the society.  Using photographs of key players, maps highlighted with routes, and genuine artifacts he told us about the journey to find the Northwest Passage, the African expedition to find the root of the Nile River,

Panorama of the main square Up close and personal with the castle Joy from street fair perogies and beer The Memorial to the Victims of Communism by sculptor Olbram Zoubek and architects Jan Kerel and Zdeněk Holzel John Lennon Wall We didn't know whether or not you were encouraged to eat the pub pretzels, so took photos instead Token night shot of the Prague Castle and Charles Bridge because it's just so darn pretty We spent the last day in Prague wandering around Divoká Šárka before our flight

Tucked into the Covent Garden Piazza is the London Transport Museum  (LTM), housing a collection of over 450,000 items related to London's history of urban growth and development as it ties to its transportation. I went to this museum to find out more information about train travel and timetables for my research paper, and though I was disappointed to learn the library is closed because they are in the process of moving their collection, I was able to find out lots about the evolution of all forms of London's transportation and their projections for the future. They also have an excellent website with lots of information about their library's physical and digital collection which has filled in a lot of gaps for me.  According to their website, the LTM library "holds a unique collection of over 14,000 books, journals and special collections covering the development of public transport in London – past, present and future." Online users have access to

St. Paul's Cathedral is on the must-see list of everyone I have talked to about London, so it was great to see the visitor points of the Cathedral but even more great to get the behind the scenes "attic room" tour. Our guide, Yvonne, was an informative and lively woman who has been with the St. Paul's for 12 years. She shared with our group the history of the Cathedral, saying that what we see today is actually the 5th iteration of the religious space, having most recently been replaced after the 4th cathedral burned down in the Great Fire of 1666. It took Christopher Wren about 40 years to complete this project, finishing in 1710.  A facsimile of the cathedral made by Christopher Wren After bringing us up to the triforium, or what she dubbed "the attic", Yvonne showed to us some of the treasures the Cathedral has no space for in their main areas. Included here were daring paintings, Viking tombstones, and stones from former cathedrals (ie. a pil

It was the day before the Jericho Street fair in Oxford and the block had on it's finest Punting in Cambridge. Most of these people tried punting for the first time this day and fell into the water. We went for the pro punter. I don't entirely understand how time zones work, but here's the start of it in Greenwich! A moody night for food and drinks in this random suburban market  My only Sunday goal was to procure Sunday roast Part of the festivities at the Marylebone Summer Fayre The greatest thing of my life where I discovered all of my favourite music has been written by the same rock-opera hero

Our trip to Bletchley Park was the one that I was most looking forward to, having a vague idea about the covert activities that occurred there during the Second World War thanks to shows like The Bletchley Circle and  movies like the Imitation Game   (which takes bold creative liberties, it turns out).  We were there to see the National Museum of Computing ,  which is actually a separate entity from Bletchley Park though they share a space and a history. The location was chosen because it is only a train ride away from London without being conspicuously close .  Our guide, a mathematician and rocket scientist named Sheridan, led our group through a history-rich tour, detailing the advancements in computing science with various iterations of computers and objects like memory storage devices. He went into detail about the great minds who contributed to codebreaking during WWII, like Alan Turing, Bill Tutte, and Tommy Flowers and the machines they designed, like the Bombe a