I really feel pressured to come up with awesome titles for my blog posts and I never can. Deal with it.

So finally I have gotten bit by the tourist bug I think because I’ve done about 80 zillion things in the past few days. One night (I don’t remember which night) we went as a group to a play at the National Theatre called “The Power of Yes”. AWFUL. I did not like it one bit. It was about the financial crisis. The play was less of a play and more of a documentary. The play was about the author talking to different people in finance and them telling him all these confusing things. So I was unable to follow what was happening after about 15 minutes. And I tried really hard to follow it. I was bored the whole time and the only thing I really gathered from the play is the bankers are the reason that the world is falling apart. A bit extreme, right? Well that’s how author David Hare really portrayed them. But I am not letting this blog get political, so let’s suffice it to say that the play was boring and one sided. And extremely uncreative.

One redeeming factor of the play was that it had another Harry Potter actor in it! Jeff Rawle played two characters in the play who’s names I could never tell you, but he plays Cedric Diggory’s dad in Goblet of Fire. So cool! This trip is like Harry Potter to the extreme.

Then we went to the Imperial War Museum. This museum starts with World War 1 and then chronologically goes through each war or conflict that England (or the British Empire) has been a part of through the years. Most of it was about England’s colonies trying to get out from under their power (although there was no mention of when America fought for independence…).

The museum was very well done. Dad you would be proud of me because I stopped and read most of the plaques although I missed having you there to explain everything to me (Now I will know whether or not you actually read this Dad). They had an entire floor devoted to the Holocaust as well. I’ve never been in a Holocaust exhibit of this magnitude so it was a very hard experience. Also they had interactive things like a trench experience and a blitz experience. The line for the blitz one was too long but walking through the fake trenches was actually kinda scary. That night we went and saw Wicked, but you want a full and separate blog post for that right? Thought so. Then, a couple of days ago I went to Platform 9 ¾!

Huzzah! Actually right now they’re doing construction at King’s Cross station so it wasn’t actually between Platforms 9 and 10, but that’s a minor detail. King’s Cross was surprisingly ordinary really. I wonder if they actually film there or not?

Anywho, right after that we went to the British Library. Of course I love libraries. They had a lot of cool artifacts. They had the other copy of Shakespeare’s first folio (I saw the other in Stratford), handwritten Beatles lyrics, and a copy of the Magna Carta to name a few. Actually my favorite part was a section about music and it had several handwritten copies of famous pieces including Handel’s Messiah and The Wedding March from a Misummer Night’s Dream. So what did I do but rip out my iPod and follow along with these old pieces of sheet music.

That night we went to Harrod’s. Really impressive place but also terribly out of budget for me! One weird thing they had was two separate monuments to Princess Diana and her secret boyfriend Dodi whose family owns Harrod’s. The monuments were tacky and just strange. They had like a wine glass from the limo with residue in it. Gross.

Yesterday I went to Camden Road Market. It was really cool! They had typical touristy stuff but also like vintage clothes, antique and everything you could imagine. The market used to be stables, but now the market operates 7 days a week there.

After that I went to Westminster Abbey. It was really neat. I went there the last time I came to England but I had forgotten how impressive it was. Every king and queen is crowned, married and buried there. Literally buried there. There were so many coffins of Kings and Queens dating back to the 1200s. Coolest of all was the Mary Queen of Scots is buried there (but her monument still has her head on her shoulders). Also located in Westminster Abbey is poet’s corner, which is where many famous authors are either buried or have a monument in their honor. That afternoon I stayed for Evensong. I’d never been to an Evensong before and it was really neat. We actually got to sit up in the choir area because there wasn’t really a huge crowd gathered there for Evensong.

More importantly, last night the Rebels played Arkansas! Pig soooooieeeee! Gross. But the Rebels pulled out a win! Highlights: 1. Jerrel Powe went in at fullback! What a man of many talents.

That's not a picture from last night, but it's just shows his greatness the best, I think. 2. Being able to hear the crowd chanting "HOUSTON NUTT!" over the commentator's mics through the internet and into the earbuds of my headphones. Houston Nutt for president!

3. Winning a game. Sad that my highlights have come to that, but its the truth! Go Rebs!

No Time For Titles

Alrighty! So sorry it's been so long since I have posted. We've been internetless again and that makes things difficult! But now I've got free Wi-Fi so here we go again!

So we took a 6:30 am flight to Manchester, which means I had to get up at 3:15 AM. WHAT?! Well, I was actually ok until the after noon when I like died of exhaustion on the bus. So be forewarned the following pictures were taken under delirious conditions. Oops? So we arrived in Manchester and immediately got on our bus and drove through Wales. First stop, Tintern Abbey.

It was beautiful, although it is just a bunch of ruins honestly. It's probably most famous for Wordsworth's poem that mentions it.

Anyways, it was emptied around 1600 something because Henry VIII was changing the national religion from Catholicism to Protestantism, I think. Like I said, I was half asleep so...

The delirium resulted in experimenting with the unused features on our digital cameras...

After that we journeyed to our final destination of Bath, England. It is a gorgeous city made completely out of one certain limestone.

It is most famous for...the Roman baths that were located there. It's strange to think that people bathed in these actual places and that the water that's there now, still flows from the same hot spring. It was very authentic...

I especially enjoyed the audio tour...

But not as much as I enjoyed my bath!

Then we went over to Bath Abbey. I have now seen like a million churches so they all run together a little bit. One that stuck out about this one was what was carved onto the outside front facade. It depicts Jacob's ladder, the story in the Bible where Jacob saw angels climbing up and down the stairway to heaven. That was pretty cool.

Also, little known fact, Dumbledore's real pensieve is now being used as the baptismal font at Bath Abbey. So, now you know.

By the way, I'm kidding. The church is really old and you can look through a grate in the floor and see where the original Norman floor and columns were built on top of.

Outside of the church there was some street performers. Now in England and Ireland there are street performers EVERYWHERE. And beggars, which is kind of sad. But for some reason these guys caught my eye and I really wanted a picture.

They were statues. The man kept reaching out his hand and I didn't know what he wanted (I had already put money in his cup) so I just shook it?! I wasn't entirely sure what was going on...

Next we hit up the Jane Austen Centre. Ok, every one of us were huge Jane Austen fans, we love her works and the movies etc. Well this place should be renamed the "Make You Pay A Ridiculous Admission Fee To See Nothing That Is Related To Jane Austen". Yes, it was that bad. They had one letter written by her and that was the coolest thing there was. She only lived in Bath 5 years. The "museum" is not even in the place where she lived. I breezed through that place in like 5 minutes. They even had a silhouette that said "probably Jane Austen." I mean, come on.

Mary Helen was not a fan either. The thing that I found most interesting was a letter written by actress Emma Thompson to the Jane Austen Centre. She was Elinor in the movie version of Sense and Sensibility (also Prof Trelawney in Harry Potter among many other things) and she sent them some pictures from the movie or something. So that was the best thing there.

The last thing we did was the Fashion Museum! It was cool. They had collections from lots of British designers as well as clothing from the 1700s. Try this on for size...

They had some pieces that were actually famous. They had a dress worn by Queen Victoria and they had this cool suit that was worn for the coronation of one of the King George's along time ago. Like 1700s maybe? Like I said, I was tired and not paying much attention to dates.

The museum also had a place where you could try on corsets and hoop skirts! I love adult dress up!

Obligatory middle school mirror pic...

Hot.

I am definitely bringing this fashion choice back.

Well that put an end to an exceedingly lengthy day. The next morning we got up and drove to Stratford-Upon-Avon the birthplace of Shakespeare. I spent the day today just walking around but we'll be taking classes here at the Shakespeare Center and seeing lots of plays done by the Royal Shakespeare Company. I am in English major heaven!