Wednesday, August 14, 2013

Tour, After Tour.... Unexpected Stop


During this visit abroad, we’ve taken a few walking tours, all of which have been great!  Okay, if I stuck to that, I’d be lying; let’s try again.  All the tours we’ve taken having been informational, with a few peaks of interest, nonetheless boring. What made them boring? I’d say the guides, who weren’t very enthusiastic.  They talked with a mellow tone, as if they were giving a presentation that they had no interest in.  The tours were long.  I guess you could expect that, because you can’t bundle all of the British history into one hour, but two hours plus, is a pretty long time to be on a tour.  Sometimes, they didn’t really have much relevance to what I was learning in class, so I would sometimes be lost when they talked about specific people, and especially when they talked about these unknown people for so long, it’s like I zoned out!  I had gotten tired of tours, so starting this particular one, I had a pessimistic mindset.  I wanted to lag behind without even giving this guy a chance, in fact, I did lag behind.  Once we finally stopped at our first attraction, it was the least expected, which instantly caught my attention.  He stopped us at a corner, told us a bit about the art he was about to show us, as we looked around dumbfounded because there was no art in sight, then he finally point to the top of a street sign post where a small, handmade, metal bird was sitting.  He said this object was made by an artist that we wouldn’t be able to find online; he’s local.  He makes objects like this, and puts them on top of poles throughout the neighborhood.  On this tour you will see lots of street work by local artists, he informed.  With that suspense, so early in the tour, we knew the rest would be awesome, and it was!

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