We reached London at 8am after a long night in the bus. We were all tired but very excited at the same time to visit the amazing capital city of Great Britain. The programm was planning to make us see the business center of the City, Tower Bridge, Covent Garden and so many prestigious places! I can tell that we were back at our 6 years old at that right time.
We first stopped at Mc Donald's so as to have breakfast. But, English breakfasts are so different of ours... Sausage or bacon Mc Muffin, two yummy choices for french people. But I can tell that it was a great experience after all.
Then, we went to the famous Imperial War Museum. I have to say, that we felt kind of surprised about this place. I admit that I never liked much museums (Emma) so I feared it to be a bit boring. But it definitevely was not. The two wars are big parts of our history school programm so in this place, we could understand a bit better everything we learnt at school. We finally had some clear ideas about what was a war like. I think, I will always remember about the trench reconstitution, it was much bigger than I imagined in class. Moreover, there were also noisy reconstitutions of the constant explosions that suffered the soldiers and then I finally realized about ther truce of all the testimonies I have read about this horrible War. Even the reconstitution was scary so the real ones must have been terrible.
We could also see the many weapons used during this war, and that was scary as well. Huge cannons, sharped baïonnette guns, risky grenades: so many deadly weapons.
Because of these dangerous arms, the soldiers had to protect themselves so they wore some sorts of masks in order not to be touched by the gaz.
I would say that the WW1 museum's part has been for me the most interessant part because we worked a lot on the subject in history class as well as in European English class. Thanks to this museum I am nowadays able to have a better vision of what happened and how catastropohic the situation was.
The WW2 exhibition was really striking as well. It is important to say that this war was based on deshumanization so the consequences it had were really moving for us. As opposed to the WW2, it wasn't the fighting experience which was the most touching part but it was the Civils' experience. We were both really striked by the last floor's exhibition where we had to stay quiet in order to be respectful for the victims. At this floor, we had a tribute to the millions of discriminated against people who were massacred during the WW2. There were lots of pictures and we didn't feel really good in there. This part illustrated pretty well the Holocaust.
Then we ate our pic nic in a room inside the museum and we already thought about what we would do on the afternoon. There were 4 groups, each group was with a teacher. It was a reaaly good idea to separate the class to visit London. At the beginning we listened to the audio guide made by a few students. It was interesting to know some new facts about London but it was also difficult to understand what the students said on the recording because of all the noise around us.
We spent some time at the National Gallery of London which is located on the famous Trafalgar Square. The building is absolutely beautiful and fits pretty well all the treasures it contains. Alice and I were separated in two different groups but we agree that this visit was really enriching for us though I admit I don't know much about art. Once the visit of this monument was done, we carried on visiting London with our groups. We stopped at Birmingham Palace to have a look at the Queen's place of residence and we saw her guards all red and black-dressed. We also went to 10 Downing Street where Theresa May, 1st Minister of England, is actually living. London is a city full of surprises.