London Day 3

We started the day with a quick trip on the tube to Canary Wharf where we met Mr. Mark Morris, Head of SME Real Estate, Commercial Banking at HSBC. We had met Mark earlier at the wine and cheese reception at Harlaxton. Mark lives very near Harlaxton and for the past 8 years has been commuting to London to work at the headquarters from Monday - Wednesday and then he travels to visit some of the real estate sites on other days. In addition, every semester since moving near Harlaxton, Mark (and his family) has been a host family to a student or two from Harlaxton during the regular school term.
HSBC is a British multinational banking and financial services company headquartered in London. It is the world's third largest bank by assets (behind two Chinese banks, held by the Chinese government). It originated from the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC) which first opened branches there in 1865. The headquarters are located at 8 Canada Square tower, which is where we met Mark for a discussion of his bank and a tour of the building. Interestingly, the bank considers both the United Kingdom and Hong Kong as its "home markets".

HSBC has over 6,600 offices in 75 countries with over 60 million customers. Mark was able to discuss with us how the company is organized, how it has grown and where it is prepared to go in the future. In addition to a great discussion, Mark also provided some great food. Breakfast breads and coffee at our arrival and a huge spread of very diverse food at lunch. Everyone left very full.

 I got in trouble with taking a picture of people going through security. This happened most of the trip for me.

 Mark took us up to the 41 floor to look out at the view. It was wonderful to see the city spread out before us (and to not have to pay 25 pounds to get the view at another tower).

 Here we are just starting on the first round of food at lunch.

 Here we are leaving HSBC with Mark Morris.

 Next we headed to the Museum of London to meet Anthony Robbins, Director of Communications. Anthony gave us a wonderful tour of the Museum while focusing on the challenges of operating a museum in the heart of the City of London. He was able to discuss the marketing segmentation that the museum uses to try and increase visitorship. The museum itself was wonderfully interactive and all of the students felt that they wanted to spend more time exploring it.

 This is the Mayor of London's carriage, used during official parades and the like. It is still used today which means storing it in the Museum is a hassle mainly because it needs to be easily accessible.

 Here is a picture I took out a side window of the museum. The ruins in the foreground are from a Roman fort built around 110 AD. I like how it is next  to a new modern financial building.

 Here we are waiting for the tube. Each station is very different in character (size, smells, temperature, numbers and types of people). Very fun way to travel, especially on off-peak hours.

After the museum tour, everyone headed off for a dinner of their choice. The three professors headed to Chinatown and had a wonderful Chinese supper.

I flew to Belgium early the next morning and did not get to finish the trip with the class. I am waiting on photographs and notes from my students on their last day in London to complete the blog.
Thanks for reading.

London Day 2

Once again we had a free day. All ten students purchased a hop on/hop off bus ticket along with a London Eye ticket. They were able to see most of the sights they wanted to see. Here are a few of the photos taken during their day around London.

 Changing of the Guards at Buckingham Palace.

 The London Eye. They were able to have their own pod because one of them is slightly claustrophobic. Typically, they put over 30 people in one pod. The ride takes 30 minutes and they all felt is was wonderful.

 They got back on the hop on and hop off bus. They felt it was one of the most fun times of the day.

 In addition, they went to the London Dungeon. It is a new amusement ride/attraction that is not recommended for anyone under 16.

I went to the Tate Modern Art Museum, had lunch at a Greek restaurant in the shadow of the Globe Theater and then watched "As You Like It". It was wonderful to see Shakespeare at the Globe theater. I only bought a ticket a hour before the show and got a great seat with a backrest (only the back row have back rests). It rained and hailed during the performance but with my seat, I never got wet. You can choose to get the standing 'seats' for 5 pounds each but you are out in the weather.

 

London Day 1

We left Harlaxton around 9am on a rainy Monday morning. Because of traffic and the weather, the normal 2 hour coach trip to the hotel in London took 3 1/2 hours. There were only 13 of us on the coach built to hold over 60.

After checking into the Royal National hotel, we all had free time the rest of the day. All of the students took off for a long walk around London. They eventually found Camden Market. They all had supper at a Chinese restaurant.

The three professors also took a walk around London focusing mainly on SoHo and the West End. We ate lunch at a lovely pizza place and toured a more historic and upscale shopping area of London. I stayed in the West End and saw the play "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time".

On the first free afternoon, the ten students headed up to Camden Road to visit the market area.

All ten students (plus a friend in London) had a great evening hanging out together.

Note: I am waiting on pictures from the students from their free days and I will update the blog again. In addition, the hotel we are at does not have wifi so I ended up posting this while sitting in the Tate Modern Art museum (very nice place to work on a computer). I updated this while sitting in Hearthrow airport.

Church and Woolsthorpe Manor

We started the day with a class period devoted to student presentations. Every student was asked to become our resident expert on each site we visited during our class tours. This was a great way to learn more about each site visit and provided a great introduction into discussions of what they liked and didn't like about each site.
After class we all walked into Harlaxton (the village) and attended church at St. Mary and St. Peter Church. 

 Here we are on a footpath through Harlaxton (the village) that runs behind some houses in town.

This church dates to 1185, when William the Conqueror's granddaughter, Matilda provided the land. There were approximately 40 parishioners already at the church when we arrived. We chose to sit on one side of the main aisle but within two minutes of the start of the service, the Rector Kevin Hanson, asked that we "even out the church" and moved us all into the center aisle.

We stayed through communion but needed to leave before the service ended to make sure we had time for lunch and to catch our taxis to Woolsthorpe Manor.

Woolsthorpe Manor is the birthplace of Sir Isaac Newton. During the plague years of 1665-1666, he returned to the family farm and produced some of his most important work on physics and mathematics here, including his crucial experiment to split white light into a spectrum of colors. We could even see his famous apple tree.

 One nice part of visiting during May was that the apple trees are in bloom. The main apple tree split in 1840 but the roots were fine and the current tree grew out of the roots. The low two foot barrier was only put in 4 years ago to protect the root structure of the tree.

 Here is the Newton farmhouse. The floors are original and the National Trust is beginning to have issues with thousands of tourists walking on the very fragile upstairs floors made from a combination lye and straw.  We were still able to tour the entire house, including upstairs.

 In addition to the original farmhouse, the National Trust has converted one of the barns into a science discovery center. The students had fun playing with all of the toys teaching basic physics.

 We also met with Jeanette Warrener, the conservator (main administrator) of Woolsthorpe Manor. This is a very small site with only two year-round, full-time employees. She gave a wonderful overview of the marketing structure the National Trust employs at each of their sites. In addition, she shared her vision for a much larger discovery center to highlight the importance of Newton to modern life.
For dinner this evening, Harlaxton hosted a BBQ in the conservatory for all summer students. In the following picture you can see the conservatory with all of the white framed windows on the right.

 I took a walk around the gardens and loved the views from the Italian gardens.

 Here are the girls having fun in the gardens at Harlaxton.

We had another hour class, this time focusing on London. We will be leaving tomorrow for our last four days in the UK. Our time at Harlaxton has been great but very quick. I think most of the students would have liked to spend a few more days here.

We are off to London!!

The Royal National Hotel we are staying at does not have very good internet service so the blog might be put on hold. I will try and update it when possible.