Spending two weeks in the United Kingdom did not seem like two weeks at all. The long-waited UK tour has finally arrived after the exhausting exam period. This tour gave me a brand new angle in experiencing the culture and the life in Britain, which was nothing similar to tours organized by local travel agency. I was very impressed by how British people treated their culture and immersed it into their daily lives.

By seeing the great number of various museums spreading all over London, and the museum-goers enthusiastic and serious faces when they carefully examined the exhibits, I knew people in the United Kingdom embraced their culture and history more than Hong Kong people do. Visitors did spend long periods of time in front of a piece of drawing or sculpture, looking at every single detail until they got the full picture of the artwork. Some people even brought along with their own drawing tools and sketch books to make their own copies of the masterpieces. I was quite surprised seeing these scenes that I thought it was almost impossible to find people doing the same things in Hong Kong. Museums in Hong Kong are not always seen as major attractions for tourism just like those in Britain do, and people in Hong Kong usually spend a few minutes only on a piece of work without thoroughly study all the details of the work and its cultural and historical background. Even though I was not completely sure about the reason behind for the different habits in visiting museums between people in these two places, this was certainly a surprise when I found out about British people’s in-depth visits of the museums.

Another remarkable experience of the tour was watching plays and operas, which was some unique activities to do in Britain that I enjoyed very much. I have watched Much Ado About Nothing and Phantom of the Opera during the trip. It was my first time to watch live performance of such classical works. The quality of the performing crews was excellent that they could catch your breath as the story went on, without boring their audience for one second. Moreover, I could hardly distinguish whether I was watching a live performance or a movie since there was not any traces of error which should be unavoidable in live shows. My friends and I did really have a great time enjoying the shows that how much we wished to have more time watching other plays.

Although we have visited many impressive places in the United Kingdom during the two-weeks tour, I still found it not enough and wished that I could have more time to dig deeper into its rich culture in my next visit.