As much as I love the rain and cloudy days here in London, I am starting to ache for sunshine. Last Saturday we got a taste of [hopefully] what is yet to come. SUNSHINE. Michelle and I revisited Cafe Diana with Kira and Brittany for brunch. The first time we went was the very first day we got here. Happy to say that it was just as good as I remembered.
SUNSHINE!
Then we headed off for a nice long walk. We walked through the ever-beautiful Hyde Park, over to Buckingham Palace, wandered a bit through some nearby streets to complete one of our London Walks (class assignment), and finished with a nice cup of hot chocolate in St. James Park...I spilled on myself. Of course. I loved how the sun was out, and it was "warm" enough for me to go out without my black coat, which I wear pretty much every day. We continued on to the tube station, and saw some people taking a picture with a phone booth and Big Ben in the background. We felt really silly doing it, but we stopped and posed too.
That night about 18 of us went to Zizzi for some great Italian food, and to celebrate Sarah's 20th birthday. Perfect ending to a sunny day.
I didn't think it was possible to top Phantom. Well...
My list of musicals that I wanted to see while coming here included the following:
- Wicked - Les Miserables - Phantom of the Opera - Lion King
Notice that Hairspray is not on that list. Well, I decided to go with a group on Thursday night, since some other girls had gone already and raved about it. We got there, and ended up getting £85/$130 seats (best seats in the house) for £22.50. Thank you International Student ID Card. "premium seats"
The show started, and I swear I was smiling, laughing, or applauding throughout the entire show. If you ever get the chance to see Hairspray, GO. You will not regret it. The characters Edna and Wilbur were the best. During "You're timeless to me" they started improving, and apparently they do a different improv bit every night. SO HILARIOUS. They couldn't even keep it together. *Sigh* So there's my plug for Hairspray. Pure, joyous entertainment. Arrin and I before the show
On Saturday night, Michelle, Sarah, and I ran down the street to the London Center after returning from our few days in Ireland. We were certainly excited to be back in London, but Dublin was fabulous. We took tons of pictures and Sarah is an avid video-er, so that was fun. Here's my best description of our days in the land of the Irish.
We had a smooth trip over, and arrived at our hostel sometime around 8 or 9 PM. We had a room with three bunks, six beds, and so we opened the door to find a couple of roommates from South Korea. They didn't talk much, but were nice enough. After a trip down O'Connell Street to check out the area, we turned in to rest up for the next big day.
Thursday morning was certainly eventful. Sarah made the mistake of volunteering to be the first one to take a shower. After a few minutes, Michelle and I hear her say, "WOOOOW...AH! AH! Uhhhh...oh OW oW oOWWOWOoow, ok I'm getting out!" Basically, the shower had such high water pressure that it shot horizontally, and when she tried to decrease it the pressure by, get this, turning off the cold water...she was scalded by the boiling hot water that took its place. Poor Sarah. After getting ready, we headed out to O'Connell Street to meet our day trip tour bus. This turned out to be one of my favorite things from the weekend. Our driver was named Martin, and was born and raised in the Dublin area. We also had a couple from France, Spain, a few women from Austria, and a few other Americans. First Stop - Dun Laoghaire - I would pronounce it correctly for you if I could.
We then drove further South into Wicklow County, and drove by Bono's house. You know, just another day in the life of me...seeing Bono's house. Whatever. After we got more into the mountains (which should just be called hills) we stopped on the road where a scene in P.S. I Love You was filmed, and got a great view of Guinness Lake.
Some more driving and listening to Martin's Irish music, and we stopped at our main destination, Glendalough.
This is me participating in an Irish "tradition". If you can wrap your arms around the cross, then you get a wish. My arms weren't long enough. Oh well, next time. Then we walked over the Round Tower, and decided to hug that, too. Then we took a walk to see the lower and upper lakes, and also Poulanass Waterfall (we joked a bit about that name). It was gorgeous, and reminded me a lot of Oregon and Waterton, Canada.
After leaving the nature of Glendalough, we stopped for lunch, and had our pick of a few pubs and coffee shops for lunch. The three of us headed over to a little shop called Glendalough Fayre, and it was fabulous. The people were really friendly, and my soup was hot. Success. A few more stops on our trip to get more views of the hills, lakes and animals summed up our trip. We actually stopped near a field full of sheep, and they all full-on sprinted over to the fence to say hello to us. Although, once they saw that we had no food, the turned around and trotted back over to the other side of the field. We took a break in our hostel to warm up and rest our feet, and then headed out to find some dinner before our pub crawl. We had dinner at a boxty house, and I had some fabulous potato dumplings with red bell peppers. Yummmmmm. The pub crawl was probably my favorite thing about our entire trip. Loved it loved it loved it. Basically a couple of musicians led us around to three different pubs, and we had our own room where they would just talk about their instruments and play music for us. There was a group of about six other Americans who were there celebrating Kevin's birthday. They even had matching I <3 Kevin shirts. A very entertaining bunch. It wasn't long after they found out that Sarah was from Utah that they pinned us as Mormon students. I guess the fact that we were only drinking diet coke tipped them off, too.
On our way back to the hostel we stopped in a little convenience store so Sarah could find some batteries for her camera, and the greatest thing happened - we found crispy M&Ms! Yep, we bought 2 big bags and proceeded to consume moooost of the when we got to the hostel. I think the last time I had crispy M&Ms was probably on a family drive to Canada when I was 12 or something. We called them our "happy pills".
The next morning we started off doing a "hop on hop off" bus tour of London. It was surprisingly entertaining, especially the live commentators. Stops of interest included St. Patrick's Cathedral, Guinness Storehouse, and Phoenix Park. Most of the time we just rode around on the top level of the bus and ate more M&Ms.
After we finished our time on the bus, we stopped into the Hard Rock Cafe, did a bit of shopping, and bought movie tickets to "Valentines Day" for that night. We took it easy for the rest of the afternoon, ate dinner in a pub, and then went to the movie. It was a good, relaxing day.
On Saturday, we had to check out of our hostel in the morning and carry our giant backpacks around with us all day. It was dubbed our Museum-ing day. First stop: Trinity College and the Book of Kells.
Second stop: St. Valentine's remains at Whitefriar Church. Third Stop: Dublin Castle.
Fourth Stop: Lunch at Bass Ass Cafe and some wandering around Temple Bar.
Fifth Stop: National Gallery of Ireland. Sixth Stop: St. Stephen's Green and Oscar Wilde monument.
Seventh Stop: River Liffey to wait for our driver to pick us up for the airport.
Hanging out at the airport...typical.
The trip home was good, but long. By the time we got back to the center we were all really wiped out. Actually, by the time we got onto the Gatwick express we were wiped out. But it was a great weekend. It was one of those things that everyone had been looking forward to since before even coming to London, and now that it's over, I almost can't believe it. Two months from today will be our last day in London.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Well, I am packed and ready to head off to the airport here in just a few minutes. But, I don't want the first few days of this week to be overlooked, because they were great. Monday was a class day, but after classes I went out with Les-bum to get tickets to a London Philharmonic Orchestra concert in March. We went over the Millennium Bridge and got some hot chocolate, because it was really cold out. The tube ride back was rather eventful...a lady came on and was crying...long story...it was a mess though. Then later that night we went to Phantom of the Opera! Hands down, my favorite musical yet. So so so so so fabulous. Even from the top back corner of the balcony. Yesterday was our day trip, since our extended weekend is...well...today (Wednesday). We went to Runnymede, Windsor Castle, and Stoke Poges. It was a relatively short day (we got home around 5 PM instead of 7 or 8 PM) and Michelle, Leslie and I went to Giraffe for dinner. Came home and watched P.S. I Love You, because I'm going to DUBLIN today! wahoo. Bad news...I woke myself up last night because I was uncontrollably shaking. After a couple of minutes of this it finally hit me...Oh, I have to throw up. Yes, my friends. Giraffe gave me food poisoning. Gross. Good news. I feel perfectly fine today! Thank goodness. Looking forward to spending my time in Dublin with Michelle and Sarah. and...off we go!!
As promised, I am putting up some pictures from Wednesday's day-trip. I guess they are pretty self-explanatory? Hopefully.
At the beginning of our Culture and Community class this semester, we learned about culture shock. There's about five stages: 1. Honeymoon 2. Blue/Hermit 3. Irritation 4. Acceptance 5. Bi-cultural Last week I convinced myself that I was in the hermit stage. I was fine with staying inside, and didn't feel all that motivated to go out and do things (of course I still did things, I just wasn't the one to initiate it). Lucky for me, I'm pretty sure that yesterday (Friday) pushed me out of the hermit stage straight on into the irritation stage!!! YAY! No yeah, but seriously. Ya know?
5 February was a wonderful day. Definitely makes my top three favorite days here. We always have a group outing on Fridays. This week we were going to the Banquet Hall and The British Museum. We were told that the Banquet House wasn't very impressive, and I had already been to The British Museum three times. Needless to say, I woke up a little less than motivated. How foolish I was. We all arrived at the Banquet House at 10 AM, but there had been a military party the night before and the cleanup wasn't finished...i.e. we couldn't go in yet. With and hour left to kill before meeting back up again, Michelle, Brittany, Kira and I headed over to St. James' Park and Buckingham Palace. The morning sun had burned the clouds away, and it was a gorgeous day. The morning got better and better as we fed the squirrels peanuts, watched the ducks, and walked closer to Buckingham Palace.
I didn't really have a picture in my head of what the Palace looked like, but once I saw it, I was very impressed. I couldn't help but think of that scene in "Cool Runnings" where Yul Brenner has a picture of Buckingham Palace, his dream home.
Anyway. The Banquet House was...neat. Big room, cool ceiling, good party venue. We laid down in the middle of the Hall and played the "Ha" game.
A bunch of us went to Pret a Manger for lunch. I had spinach and nutmeg soup, and the best banana I have ever had. I'm not kidding. This was one delectable banana. We were about to head down into the tube and over to the British Museum, but we had a bit of time and the sun was out. So what did we do? Climbed on the lions at Trafalgar Square, of course! Once we made a complete spectacle of ourselves (and had random people taking pictures of us...wierd) we got off and headed to the British Museum.
My fourth time in this museum was splendid. There's tons of stuff there, and I'm sure I'll be back again at least once or twice before I go home.
As I said, the sun was out, and some would say it was even warm outside. So I went for a nice run around Hyde Park. I feel like I've finally been able to get back into running since coming here. For some reason, last Fall I sort of fell out of my usual running routine. But now I'm getting excited for my second round of the Ragnar Relay Northwest Passage this July. I've been making my training schedule already, and looking up other races to get me prepared. I even got Leslie (my lovely roommate that looks like Emma Watson, or Hermione) to agree to run a half-marathon at the end of the summer with me. One of these days I might be crazy enough to try a full marathon, but that day has not yet come. Yes, well. The rest of the afternoon was good, and then that evening almost everyone in the Center headed over to the Hyde Park Chapel for a YSA Dance. Oh my, it was so fun. Picture 30+ American girls dancing like crazy in the middle of the dance floor, and everyone else sort of dancing around the sides. My favorite was when "Party in the USA" (Miley Cyrus) and "Empire Sate of Mind" (Jay-Z) came on. I'm sure we looked completely ridiculous. So that was yesterday...
And I know I'm in the irritation stage of culture shock because today I was very angry with the public transportation systems. From now on, I prefer to leg it.
