The Village People, Mr. Darcy and Harry Potter

As far as tourism goes, things have really slowed down for me here in London. We’re all tired of museums at this point and so we spend a lot of time just walking around in various parts of town. That’s really cool because every area of London is so different from the next. Last Monday I did go to the National Portrait Gallery and finish that out. There’s basically just a zillion pictures of royalty and other statesmen there. They wee doing a photograph exhibit on the 60s but I wasn’t going to pay to go in there. That afternoon I went to the Museum of London, which is actually pretty boring. They’re undergoing a major expansion so there wasn’t much to see. We had class 3 days this week and so that takes up a huge chunk of my day.We dressed up and went out on Halloween!

Actually people don’t celebrate Halloween as much here. They are more into the scary aspects of Halloween than trick or treating—most people were dressed up as like zombies with blood on their face and nasty things like that. I was member of the Village People.

It was a fun night, but I missed not having like buckets of candy to eat :) and they actually don’t even have candy corn! Is this a civilized place?! Someone save me a bag…

Yesterday was my ultimate tourist day. I first went to the Natural History Museum. It was pretty cool.

Then I went to the Victoria & Albert Museum. It’s a decorative arts museum. A lot of it was boring just because there was so much stuff in there. They had a selection of Raphael cartoons, and some other famous things. They also had a theatre museum that I really enjoyed with costumes worn by the likes of Judi Dench and Maggie Smith.

That night I went to the celebration at Regent Street to turn on the Christmas lights around London. The picture above shows just how many people were there. There were 3 locations around London and they were all going to be turned on at the same time. It was also a celebration of the new movie “A Christmas Carol”! So I decided to go to the celebration where Colin Firth was turning on the lights (Jim Carrey and Bob Hoskings (?) were a the other two). I got there early and was in the front. Daniel Merriweather, the London Community Gospel Choir and The Noisettes all perfomed as well as Jodie Pringer who's playing Nancy in Oliver! on West End.

Then the man of the hour Colin Firth came on! That guy is almost 50 years old and he is still just really ridiculously good-looking. Everyone was freaking out about him. Grown women were screaming!

It was really cool and so crowded and it got me all pumped up about Christmas!

That night we went to see a play called “Our Class”. It traces a class of students in Poland as the Soviets and then the Nazis invade and occupy Poland. It was really sad and really graphic. It showed how neighbors can turn against one another and what humans can do to each other. The play was in a very small theatre and performed in the round. That made the action so much more intense as you feel like you are really intruding on the action and the history of these people.

One thing about this play was that there was no weak link among the actors. The play only had 10 characters and there was no real main character and each performer was fantastic. Actually Stan Shunpike, driver of the Knight Bus from Prisoner of Azkaban was in it! That was cool to see him. These plays have been filled with Harry Potter actors! Love it!

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!

It's a Rick Pick!

This week as we have been set loose in various places with no schedule and no agenda we have begun to rely on Rick Steve's guidebooks to Great Britain. Hence the title of this post because each of Rick's 3 diamond (not stars!) recommendations have been dubbed a "Rick Pick". Here is us posing with Rick. Moving on.

After leaving Edinburgh we went to the lovely town of York. The only thing really to see in York is the York Minster. It is a giant cathedral built on a Norman Cathedral, built on a building used to baptize a Norman king, built on a Roman building. So lots of stuff going on there.

It had some of the coolest stain glass windows and carvings and statues.

The giant window they are famous for was not even there. They are repairing it piece by piece and apparently it's going to take 15 years to do it! So now they have a giant photograph where it was. Actually the photograph alone was impressive. They had to get HP to make a special printer in order to print this thing!

After we toured the Minster we got to hike up the York Minster Tower. It took about 10 minutes to get up the tiny spiral staircase. But the view was totally worth it!

The next day we headed out to the town of Cambridge. First we stopped at the American Military Cemetery. I have never been to a military cemetery before that I can remember. The experience was humbling and a bit overwhelming. Seeing the graves of a fraction of men and women who died for our country in one place makes their sacrifice more real to me. Reading numbers out of a textbook is one thing but seeing graves is another.

There was also a little chapel there that had a cool mosaic as well as a giant map showing the different squadrons (? I don't know my military terminology) from America that were stationed around the world. Fun fact: The architects for this cemetery were also the architects for Furman! Such a weird connection...

Then we finally hit Cambridge. Its a cool city. There are about a zillion colleges and pretty buildings there. We were all so tired that it was kinda hard to take in everything in under 24 hours.

Coolest thing we found in Cambridge was this random alley with a sign that said FU (for Furman University of course!). So we absolutely had to take a picture!

That night we had dinner at the Eagle's Pub. This was so cool because it is a place where the RAF (British air force) and American Air Force hung out during WWII. There are patches and stickers of all the squadrons around the room and they wrote on the walls and the ceilings. Also this is the place where Watson and Crick would hang out and they even announced their discovery of DNA from this pub.

We visited King's College the next morning and guess who's camera died. That's right, mine. Here's my one picture of the outside.

Then we drove to LONDON! Woo hoo! Downside: we had to say goodbye to our lovely bus driver Seamus. It was heartbreaking. He said goodbye to us and started crying. Ahhhh I hate goodbyes!

So yesterday we spent the day exploring London a little bit. We took a night walk as a group to get oriented and here is my first picture from London...I thought that was kinda a milestone, right?

Today I did nothing really. Slept til noon. Got out of bed at 1. Left the hotel room at 2. Then I just explored the city. I found my way to the main shopping area of town (I think I have a natural sense of finding my way to places where I can blow my money). Picture this--two H&Ms within 4 blocks of each other. Yesssssss!!!!!!!