The Globe, Tate Modern, Tower of London, and Billy Elliot

Seeing the Globe Theater (12/14) was pretty amazing (if you don’t know what that is it’s where Shakespeare’s plays were performed back during his time). It was very weird because there was no roof and it was like stadium seating? I don’t know it’s hard to explain, just look at the picture. The guy taking us around was explaining to us that the theaters unique design effects how the actors perform which I thought was very interesting.

After exploring the theater and doing an acting workshop, we went to the Tate Modern, which I had been looking forward to the entire trip! It was one of the best Museums I’ve ever been too! I loved it! They had all my favorite artists including Monet, Pollock, Dalí, Lichtenstein and… ANDY WARHOL! They ad an entire Andy Warhol Room! It was awesome :D

Yesterday (12/15), we went to the Tower of London. It was such a fiasco getting there. Basically, there was a ton of construction and delays on the tube, and Randy, Amy, Emily, and myself were about half an hour late. Patsy was not happy about it to say the least, so we had to pay for our own tickets. Patsy reimbursed Randy though so I need to e-mail her about that.

Anyway, the Tower of London was great! We saw the Queen’s crown jewels and Henry VIII armor and just walked all around. There were a lot of guards so we finally got some great pictures that we had been looking to take. We also saw the London Tower Bridge, which is so beautiful.

Later that night we saw Billy Elliot and it was phenomenal. I can’t even believe how good it was. I was crying during half the show; all the parts when he talked about his dead mom, and the talent of these kids was just so unreal. That show just made me wish I could do what those kids could do. I felt like such a dork crying during the show, but that’s just me for ya :)

Later that night a few of us went to a dance club called TigerTiger, which was a lot of fun. We danced and hung out and Steve tried teaching me how to Salsa, but that clearly didn’t work so well. We’ll have to try that again in the near future!

Today (12/16) was a day off so I slept in until about 1PM. Faryn had already left to go shopping. I considered going shopping myself, but I looked out the window and saw rain and lost my motivation. I finally submitted my Mother Courage review, so now I just have one more long review and one short review. I’m definitely writing a long review for Billy Elliot! Since its been a little while since Seize the Day so I might just do a short one on Peter Pan or War Horse since those are shows we’re seeing this week.

All of done today is THINK about writing my Billy Elliot review, and bought some groceries and went to Pret A Manger with Kamara. Don’t hate on me for being lazy, I’ve been doing so much! I bought myself a premade dinner thing so hopefully its good (trying to save a little money!) speaking of which, I’m all about of pounds! I need to exchange some ASAP. Don’t know what’s the plan for tonight. More to be continued!

Impressionist Paintings and Our Crazy Running Late Fiasco!

I actually got some sleep last night. I think I’m getting used to these shitty beds! Wooh!

Today (12/3) at 1 we went to the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square which had a lot of famous paintings including Monet and Van Gogh!! The impressionists are some of my favorites, it was so great to see some of the paintings I’ve been familiar with for so long and actually see them up close. The textures, for example, were so great! The museum had a lot of medieval and renaissance paintings as well, but they were mostly of Jesus and Mary so it was getting a little redundant if you catch my drift.

Afterwards we went around the corner to the National Portrait Gallery which was mostly photographs from today. There were pictures of a lot of English celebrities, like Keira Knightly, Kate Moss, and Twiggy which was cool to see. There were some disturbing pictures too, like a woman with a stab wound in Rwanda that I couldn’t look at for too long because it was just so sad. The woman in the picture was crying and it make me really upset :( we had the rest of the afternoon off, so the lot of us went back to the room until the show that night. We also stopped in some church between the museums, but I really can’t remember the significance to be honest! Hehe. It was pretty boring compared to the others.

So being the irresponsible group that I guess we are, Myself, Faryn, Steve, Randy, Emily, Amy, and Kamara as well, we were running late getting to Covent Garden where the Woman in Black was showing at the Fortune Theater. We got off the train around 7:45, which was the time we were supposed to be at the theater! Then after running around like maniacs not knowing where this theater was, we finally made it. But we were late and the show had already started. Since the show already started Patsy left our tickets at the box-office for us, which wouldn’t seem like a big deal right?

So we get to the box-office and I tell them who we are and they say they have our tickets. The man counts the tickets and there are only 6 tickets although there are 7 of us!! We were like shit what the hell do we do!? Steve said he would wait out here until things got figured out (despite the fact that we didn’t know if things would get figured out).

The rest of us wait until we are aloud in the theater which takes a good 10-15 minutes. Luckily one of the ushers filled us in on what we missed before showing us our seats. We finally sit down and Patsy immediately notices that Steve is missing. Randy tells her what happens and she immediately gets out of her seat! Next thing we know she’s back and said she got it figured out, thankfully. Apparently the theater didn’t print out the last ticket and she didn’t notice because she kept it in a stack. Nevertheless, Patsy called Steve, and he he came into the show during intermission.

Despite the fiasco, the play was okay. I enjoyed it and I was scared at times, but it wasn’t my favorite. We walked around afterwards because none of us had really eaten anything, and we ended up walking around forever because the restaurants close so early here. Finally we find a really good Italian restaurant. We played never have I ever and it was a cute, bonding experience. we took the bus back instead of the tube for the first time because the tube stops running after 12. Overall it was a good day, which was definitely what I needed after the previous day. Onward to shopping tomorrow!!

St Paul's Cathedral, Inherit the Wind, and definitely not my finest hour

I woke up this morning (12/2) and actually got some sleep the night before! Yay! I finally figured out a way to feel comfortable at night; I take the blanket and rap half of it into a ball and rest my head on that to make the pillow softer, then rap the rest of it around my body to keep myself warm. I know that sounds weird but it’s the only way I’m comfortable!

We started our day by heading over to the tube station, and of coarse I forgot my oyster card that allows me to get on the train. I had to pay for a single ride ticket which sucked because it was £4! For one way! So expensive… that was really frustrating and I was pissed about it.

We went to St. Pauls Cathedral in the City of London. Yes, that is different than London. It is the old, historic part of London. St. Paul’s cathedral was designed by architect Sir Christopher Wren, and apparently Memorial Chapel at school is based on his design! What was also really great about the Cathedral was that it is in the Engl

ish Baroque style, and I actually knew what that meant after just finishing the Baroque music class! I thought it was really great being able to understand that first hand. The church was very beautiful, and the fourth biggest in Europe.

We also went to the Museum of London. It wasn’t anything truly impressive to be honest. All I really saw there were some really old artifacts that were thousands of years old which actually was cool and a bunch of stuff on the fire of 1666 and plagues and whatnot. Nothing very exciting.

We then had the rest of the afternoon off to do whatever we wanted, so myself, Steve, Faryn, randy, Emily, and Amy (the 6 of us have kind of formed our own little group) took the tube to Waterloo, which is where we were the day before (on the south bank of the Thames River). We went to a really good Italian restaurant called Strada which is all over England. I got a kind of margarita pizza that was really good. I took about half of it to go because it was too big to finish. (keep this in mind for later)

So when we left the restaurant we finally got a hint of the London weather; it was DOWNPOURING! There were lots of booths of candy and food and whatnot, so while we were standing under train tracks to keep warm, Steve ran to a gourmet candy booth full of candy that Emily and I had been eying the day before. He bought so much candy it was actually ridiculous; I think he ended up spending £45 worth of candy! We kept walking around and we found a little café to sit in to pass the time, and all of a sudden I realized that the stuff in my hands felt light. I look down to find that the paper bag that was holding my leftover pizza got so wet from the rain that the pizza fell through the bag! It was actually really fun, but frustration. I guess I’m just having one of those days…

Later that night we saw Inherit the Wind, which was starring Kevin Spacey as Henry Drummond. The play was really great and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I’m pretty sure it was the first non-musical I’ve ever seen! All the British actors also have American accents, which I thought was really cool. Because I read the play in high school I’m going to write my first theatre review for it (has to be 2 pages single spaced, ugghh). Oh well at least I’ll have the first one out of the day done with.

Later in the evening I checked my grades for the fall term, which I probably shouldn’t have done because it made me sad :( oh well. Tomorrow will most definitely be a better day! I've never been that person who always forgets something, but I did have a little bit of an off day. But no worries, I am in London after all!