Guy Fawkes Celebration

Guy Fawkes is like the American Independence Day, sort of. At least, they have fireworks. Last night, Matt and I went to Alexandra Palace and Park which was going to have a big fireworks show, and it was really nice. There were some interesting ones. When we lived in Cambridge, we would always take the train past this huge building on a hill, that looked like a cross between a church, school, or palace, but it had a radio tower on the side, so we were really confused about it. Yesterday we found out, it's Alexandra Palace. It has a very weird history. It was first built as a "public palace" in the late 19th century, basically like a Victorian entertainment hall. It had a skating rink and shops and things like that. But 16 days after it opened to the public it burned down to the ground! Two years later, fully rebuilt, it re-opened and served its function for a while. Eventually BBC Radio bought it and began transmitting from it (hence the radio tower) and they stayed there doing all their radio and TV broadcasts until 1956. After 1956, there was another fire and half of the palace burnt down again. Finally it was rebuilt, an ice skating rink was put in and now it's an open place again with a big green park area which might be nice to walk through on a long walk. It's really nice because it's up on a huge hill, it's probably the highest point in or near London (why the BBC chose to broadcast from there) and you can see over most of the city below you and because it's Guy Fawkes weekend (and fireworks are legal in Britain) you can see people setting their own works off all over the city. We thought we could see all the way down to Battersea Park on the southbank, because they were supposed to have a big show too, and each little municipality likes to put its own show on. These all go on all night. We came home and sat in our flat and we could still hear echos of bangs. Obviously there were also a lot of ambulances rolling around.