Showing posts with label benares. Show all posts
Showing posts with label benares. Show all posts

London | Day N° 20 | Knightsbridge, Mayfair, and Oxford St.

Sunday, August 18, 2013




My last day at LSE – and the day of my final exam! I woke up quite early to study in my room, reviewing as much as I could. It’s so much material to understand in such a short period of time, but I can only do my best. I let Eli catch up on sleep while I went down to study at the New Academic Building on LSE’s campus for a little while before I took the test.
One of the differences in schools here (or at least a difference between William & Mary and LSE) is the strictness of exam-taking. At W&M, all students sign an honour code and are then trusted to be faithful on their exams and schoolwork; many tests are completely un-proctored by the professor or any kind of instructor. Here, the regulations during an exam are extremely strict. You must turn your mobile phone off and have it under your desk during the exam. You can only use LSE-approved calculators, and you aren’t supposed to have anything else on your desk during the exam (drinks, etc.). Your student ID card needs to be out on the desk so the invigilators (such a better name than proctors!!) can come around and mark you down several times throughout the exam. No one is allowed to leave during the exam, and in the last fifteen minutes, no one is allowed to leave, even if they’ve finished. I’m not complaining, it’s good that cheaters are so discouraged, but it’s quite strange.

Goodbye room..... 
Anyway, after I had finished my exam (and officially finished my program at LSE!), Eli and I met up with my friend from LSE and did a quick shopping trip to Knightsbridge, yet again. We didn’t get to spend much time there, but I felt that Eli needed to see Harrods while she was in London. We had a quick late lunch at the Caffe Concerto across from Harrods, and then had to scurry down to the tube to meet our friend for dinner. He (very generously) treated us all to a fantastic Indian meal at Benares in Mayfair. The restaurant was so beautiful, modern with black stone and fountains and colourful candles. We had the strangest assortment of dishes: my first course was a lotus kebab with lavender yoghurt (very spicy!), the entrée was jackfruit biryani (the jackfruit was almost flavourless and kind of had the texture of an artichoke heart or aubergine), and dessert consisted of tandoori pineapple (incredible) and Earl Grey ice cream. My friend also recommended a passion fruit and chutney martini, Benares’ signature cocktail, which was so interesting: quite sweet but with a rich spicy undercurrent in each sip. Every single thing I tried was completely different from the Indian food I’d ever had before; it was definitely a culinary adventure! Such a great recommendation and experience.  

Passionfruit-chutney martini   
Eli, my friend, and I then walked the few blocks down to Oxford Street. This is another busy shopping district, perhaps more accessible than Knightsbridge. We looked through a couple of British (maybe European) shops that I’d never visited before, Primark and River Island.  I wish we had more European stores like this in the US: our clothing shops are either very cheap and horrendously unfashionable, or very fashionable and expensive. H&M is the one of the few common shops that has low prices but supplies us with European fashion, but I wish we had more!

It was quite late at that point, but when we returned home (and after I said my goodbyes to my friends from LSE!), Eli and I stayed up for a bit planning out our trips to Oxford and France. We went through many opetions before finalizing all our various means of travel: bus, train, cab, shuttle, airplanes… This will certainly be an interesting trip, and we will definitely be experiencing many different aspects of Europe! It’s strange for me to travel so much without a car, which I’ve always had, and have to submit to the schedules and fares of public transportation; honestly, it’s much more of a pain too. But it’s a part of the experience!  
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