London Overdue

Hey everybody!
So, I'm going to attempt to fill everyone in on my trip since my last post, which I realize was half the trip ago. I'm sure my apologies will seem empty, so I will just get to it...since it could take awhile :-)

Previously, on Chelsea's European Tour:
Chelsea was visiting friends in Germany, and was taken to the airport by Uncle Klaus where she flew to London and had 3 days to recuperate before the second half of her classes for spring quarter began...

And that is where I'll start:
On May 1st, which was a Friday, I decided to visit the Beatles Store, which is right next to the Sherlock Holmes Museum on Baker Street. Since Eric is a big Sherlock Holmes fan, I resisted the urge to go inside until he comes ;-) The Beatles store was very cool though. Since one of my best friends is a huge Beatles fan, I got her a really cool birthday present there (and today is her actual birthday, in fact. It's also my cousin Jessica's birthday. Happy Birthday Jessie and Kaylie!) I also visited Regent's Park, which is quite pretty.



On Saturday, May 2nd I decided to start working on my final project for Art, Architecture, and Society. Since one of my favorite musicals is Cats, and the poems it was based on are written by T.S. Eliot and take place all over London, I decided I'd make a scrapbook of all of the different places mentioned in Cats that involve UK culture and/or history. I was really ambitious and planned to visit those places and take pictures of them in addition to doing research. So, I took the tube to Hammersmith ("In Hammersmith and Putney, people shuddered at his name"- Growltiger's Last Stand). When I got there, I walked around in a loop and took a picture of a sign that said, "I love Hammersmith". That evening, I went out to dinner and drinks with a friend from the program, Elise, who was back from her trip to Italy. We went down near London Bridge to the Dicken's Inn.



Sunday, May 3rd was the last day that my group from my theatre class had a chance to meet in order to see a fringe play. Each group was required to see a fringe play together and report on it the next week in class. We were group 3 and the next week was our turn, but everyone was on holiday when we were supposed to have seen our fringe play. We had tried the week before everyone left; a group of us went out to a play that was supposed to be in a club somewhere. However, it ended up being some sort of gentlemen's club (possibly gay), and they were quite confused when we asked if there was a play going on. So, we all went out instead and vowed to find another play when we got back. Sunday comes around and I get a call from Alexa asking me to please look up a fringe play. 3 of the 5 of us ended up meeting in Camden Town at the Oxford Arms Pub for the fringe play which was playing in the theatre above the pub. It was called Holiday Vacation and was absolutely hilarious. London is definately the theatre capital of the world. It has very high standards, and even the actors in little plays off of the beaten path are completely brilliant.

On May 4th, classes started again. We had a really fun class with Fran, a professional actress and the daughter of one of our professors. We just did some acting exercises and talked about acting. At 7:30, we saw the play A View from the Bridge, by Arthur Miller. Not only was it a great play, but one the actors from one of my favorite TV shows played one of the characters. If anyone has seen BBC Robin Hood and knows who Will Scarlet is, then you'll know what I mean. I was excited :-) (Photo: BBC)



Happy Cinco de Mayo everyone! Today, I didn't have class until 2:00, so I stayed home in the morning to finish writing my mid-term paper for Contemporary Britain. After class, me, Spenser, and Selena came back to our house and made nachos in honor of our Mexican friends. One of the things that England lacks is a wide array of good Mexican food. In fact, one of the first things my roomate did when she got home was to stop by Chipotle and get a burrito. But, back to my travel log...

On May 6th, I had class at 10:00. We went to Winston Churchill's Cabinet War Rooms which I had no idea existed until then. They were really cool. The whole thing was essentially a bunker where Winston Churchill and other leaders, particularly in the military, ran the show during WWII. The rooms were set up exactly as they would have been during the times that they were in use with items that were originally in the rooms. When we were done there, we had free access the Winston Churchill Museums, so most of us went through that. When we were in the gift shop, two of my friends from the program came in and told us that they had almost literally run into Bill Gates and said, "Hey, we're from Seattle too". Well, we all ended up seeing him in the museum. It was kinda funny because he was almost inconspicuous. At 2:00 we met with our AAS professor for a walk through the Wren Churches. Sir Christopher Wren was a famous architect during the 1600's, and a lot of his work can be seen around London. He's also one of our professor's favorites. That night, I went out with my friends Meron and Ruth to a club in Piccadilly Circus. They had been in London last summer and had some friends in the area. One of their friends was having a birthday and he told them to invite their friends. They invited about 5 of us, but I was really the only one that went. It was a lot of fun, although I have some pretty interesting stories...ask about them sometime. It was a late night, I took a night bus home because the tubes stop running at about midnight. Good times. Before the clubbing, when I was waiting for Meron and Ruth outside the Piccadilly Circus station, I met several people, one of them being Ash. More on him later.





On the 7th my AAS class met at 2:00 at St. Paul's Cathedral. It was designed by Sir Christopher Wren, but since it is so huge and popular with so much history, we used up the whole day to see it. It is a magnificent church and rivals even Canterbury Cathedral. We took a guided tour there, and then walked up into the dome and looked out over London. It was a fantastic view!




On May 8th I stuck around the house to register for classes. Hooray.

On the 9th, my friend and roomate from this last year at school was in town for the weekend. Lillian had been studying in Spain for spring quarter. She had no phone with her, so we had been facebooking each other, trying to meet up at the Swiss Cottage tube station which is near where her hostel was. The Swiss Cottage station is on the Jubilee line of the underground, and when I got to Paddington to change to the Jubilee line, it was closed (of course). So, I had to take the Metropolitan line to Finchley Road station, which is one station beyond Swiss Cottage, and walk. However, I was late and Lillian (and the other friend that she was meeting) weren't there. So, I waited, walked back to Finchley Road, walked backed down to Swiss Cottage and then decided to walk for awhile and ended up walking all of the way through Regent's Park (which is quite big) to Baker Street Station and then on to Oxford Street. I spent the rest of that afternoon doing laundry and watching Family Guy with Jeremy. I was disappointed that I missed seeing Lillian.

Happy Mother's Day all you mums! At 2:00 I went on a date with a neurology research doctor named Ash. He was a friendly and charming guy who I met in Picadilly Circus a couple of days before. The date started out well, but got progressively weirder. It wasn't a bad experience, except that I didn't feel like starting a relationship with him or moving to London which he suggested would be a good idea. So, when the time came to leave and he told me to call him, I simply said, "We'll see" and went to Leicester Square where Spenser, Selena, and I saw the new Star Trek movie. Ok, so I'm not that into sci-fi movies, TV, books are anything really, but I thoroughly enjoyed this movie. It was exciting and the Empire Theatre was awesome. Every time there was an explosion, our seats would shake!



The 11th was my mother's birthday, so Happy Birthday Mum! My theatre class went on a tour of The Globe, which was fun.



On the 12th, we had theatre at 2:30 where we were discussing Romeo and Juliet. Before class, me, Spenser, Selena, and Kelsi went to King's Cross Station where we found Platform 9 3/4 and took pictures running at the wall to get to Hogwarts. Actually, there really is no Platform 9 3/4 at King's Cross because the numbers don't go that high, so they had one built in. I've been told that J.K. Rowling made a mistake when writing it and was actually thinking of Charing Cross station, which would have room for Platform 9 3/4. At 7:30, we watched the Royal Shakespeare Company perform Romeo and Juliet at The Globe. It was sooo good, except that we had the 5 pounds tickets, which meant that we stood in front of the stage for the entire performance. It was kind of exhausting.



After class on the 13th, Selena and I went back to The National Gallery to see the Monet, Degas, and Van Gogh paintings that I had not seen yet. After that, we went up to the Maida Vale tube station and walked over to Abbey Road. It was fun to see, although it is not a tourist-friendly area. You can't just leisurely walk across the crosswalk since people are actually driving through.



On the 14th, we visited the Tate Britain Museum with our AAS class which is full of British art. After that, we took a walk through Nash's London. Sir John Nash was another famous architect who built Buckingham Palace and Marble Arch to name a few famous and interesting places. After dinner, me, Spenser, Jeremy, Lucy, and Louis played volleyball in the backyard. However, we didn't use a real volleyball, so it bounced and poor Louis had to keep combinig over the fence into the neighbor's yard to get it.



On the 15th, Spenser and I met up with Selena and went back to Portobello Road Market, after which we went to Chinatown to get some Chinese food. We walked to Trafalgar Square to see the fountains. Up until just a few days before, the fountains had been under repair, but the scaffolding had finally been taken off and they were flowing again, yay!




On the 16th, Spenser, Selena, Jeremy, and I went down to London Bridge to go to the Borough Market. It's a really fabulous farmer's market type deal where you can buy the most delicious food. It's right near Southwark Cathedral, which Shakespeare attended, so we popped in there to have a look around. We went home and Spenser, Jeremy, and I watched The Wedding Crashers while we ate dinner. After that, we walked down to Muswell Hill where we saw the Star Trek movie at the theatre there. I thought it was better the second time, and Jeremy enjoyed it for his first time.



On the 17th, I walked to Muswell Hill to go to the grocery store, but I pretty much stuck around and did homework for the rest of the day. Yippee.

On the 18th, I went down to the East Putney Station to meet with my Contemporary Britain class. We went to the mosque to learn about the Muslim community and how it functions in London. It was quite interesting. The people there were very gracious and kind, and afterwards they fed us some of the most delicious food. At 2:00, we had to meet for our theatre class and discuss our final projects with our group.



On the 19th, I did not have any class so I met Selena at the Charing Cross tube station and we went to South Kensington to visit the Natural History Museum. We were literally in the museum for at least 5 hours; it was such a fabulous place! I'd highly recommend it to anyone.





On the 20th we had to get up super early to meet the bus outside of King's Cross on York Way at 8:30. We were spending the night in Stratford-upon-Avon, which is where Shakespeare was born. On the way there, we stopped at Anne Hathaway's Cottage. No, not the actress, Shakespeare's wife. We settled into our Bed and Breakfast (called Lin Hill B & B) and then had a walking tour of Stratford where we saw the "American Drinking Fountain", Shakespeare's birthplace and the museum there, a ton of Elizabethan houses and architecture, several old churches and gardens, Shakespeare's grave at Holy Trinity Church, his son-in-law's old house and office (he was a doctor), etc. We were all exhausted by that time, but we managed to find a place to eat and hang out before we went to the theatre and saw a performance of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. It was probably my least favorite performance that we've seen so far, although the character of Brutus was done quite well by another of the actors from BBC Robin Hood: Sam Troughton who plays Much. After the show, some of us went to the Dirty Duck which is where the actors like to go after the show. By the time they got there, we were getting a little too silly and were leaving, but I did speak to Brutus/Sam/Much on my way out the door, so my evening was complete.




On the 21st, we packed up early and went to Mary Arden's house, which is still a working farm after some hundreds of years. Mary Arden was Shakespeare's mother. There's a working falconry there and the falconer showed us a demonstration with one of the birds, an owl named Angus. I got to hold and feed him, it was fabulous! I also almost put a goat to sleep (not the death kind of put to sleep), and it's a good story that requires some facial expression, so ask about that later. After Mary Arden's house, we spent the rest of the day at Warwick Castle.





On the 22nd, I got up really early again and went to Dover with Selena. We saw Dover Castle and the beautiful white cliffs. It was such a gorgeous and clear day that we could even see all of the way across the English Channel to France! One of the coolest things that we saw was the Secret War Tunnels and the fort-like area that was built in the early 1900's and was used to man the operations of the Dunkirk Evacuation. There are actually 3 1/2 miles of tunnel spaces underneath the hill that Dover Castle was built on, the origianl tunnels having been built by Napolean! It was sooo cool!






On the 23rd, I decided to be ambitious again and work on my Cats project. While Spenser and Selena climbed the Monument, I went to Putney and a few other places, then got really tired of it because there are constantly repairs being done on the tubes during the weekends and holidays, so it made traveling extra difficult.

On Sunday the 24th, we took the train to St. Alban's which is a beautiful place just outside of London. Our AAS professor, Peter, lives there and he hosted an amazing lunch for us at his home. It was a really hot and sunny day, so the tour we had of St. Alban's was really difficult to pay attention to. After the tour, we went back to Peter's and ate and then went to Clarence Park and played ball in the sunshine for a little while.



On the 25th, we had to turn in all of our response papers for our theatre class. I got a 4.0 on all of those, which was good. Afterwards, my group met in Red Lion Square to practice our final project. For our final projects, we did what was called Lunatic Fringe Theatre, which means we had to write, direct, and perform our own plays based on experiences that we had during our stay here. Ours was a really hilarious skit based on the homestay experience of one of my group members. We had a really interesting time practicing.I think there must have been some kind of Renaissance Faire going on or something because there were a bunch of people dressed up in really weird costumes.

On the 26th, I met with my group to practice at 12:30 after which we had class at 2:00 where we discussed the Samuel Beckett play "Waiting for Godot". That evening, we went to the Royal Haymarket Theatre where we watched the play being performed. It starred Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart as the main characters, so, needless to say, it was an amazing performance.

On the 27th, my Contemporary Britain class met at High Street Kensington to go to Kensington Palace, which was interesting except that it was a very cold and stormy day. After that, I met up with some of my friends from the group that live in my area, Meg, Naomi, Katie, and Sarrah and we went into Muswell Hill to a famous fish and chips place called Toff's. We all had fish and chips and then decided to order Spotted Dick for dessert, just to say that we'd all had it. As you can imagine, hilarity insued.



On the 28th, our AAS class went on a walk through South Kensington, which is famous for its Victorian era influences. We broke for lunch and then went to the Edward Linley Sambourne House, which is now set up as a museum of the famous cartoonists life. I went to my friend Selena's house in Kensal Green to help her group with their project since one of their groups members was not particularly helpful or good at making himself available. We ended up changing their skit into a musical and had so much fun. When Spenser and I got home, we made cookies and were excited because a little cat decided to come to the door which we named Smalls. We let it in and played with it for a bit. That night, Jeremy was supposed to be home by 8:00, at least that's what he said when he called to tell us he was out with his colleagues from work. Our host family was away on a camping trip that week, so we made dinner and saved some for him. We had to get up early the next morning because we were spending the weekend in Newquay with Selena. However, Jeremy didn't get home until midnight...a hilarious story insues here, so ask me about it sometime.

On the 29th, we met Selena at Paddington and took a lovely, 6 hour train ride to Newquay. Newquay is a gorgeous little surfing town in Cornwall, in southwestern England. We stayed at a really cute B & B that was owned by some of the nicest people we've met on this trip so far. We essentially spent that day, as well as all of the 30th and most of the 31st on the beach or body-surfing in the Atlantic. It was perfect, beautiful, sunny weather without a cloud in the sky. Sooo nice! Aside from the masses of drunken stag parties and the fact that there really is NOT a shower in the public bathrooms near the train station, Newquay was fabulous and we had so much fun. It was interesting to see all of the people playing British sports on the beach. I got invited by some guys to join their cricket game, but politely declined. On train rides, you often see European wildlife. On the way home, I saw some rabbits, some pheasants, and a fox.




On June 1st, we essentially just went to theatre class to turn in our final papers, practiced with our groups, and went home to do the mass amounts of homework that we had accumulated over the course of the trip because we had forgotten that we were really in class.

On the 2nd, we had our last theatre class and performed our skits for the rest of the class. Needless to say, all of the skits were hilarious and very well done. I was complimented many times of my performance, and told that I had a great future as a dominatrix (I played an evil host mother who carried a whip).

On June 3rd, we had our last Contemporary Britain class and turned in our final papers. We all went out to lunch at a pub called The Perseverance with our CB teacher. At 2:00, we went on a tour of Modern and Post-Modern London and then to the Docklands and Canary Wharf with our AAS class after which we turned in our AAS journals and our final projects. Since we had an AAS exam the following day, Spenser and I went to Selena's with her to study for the test.

On the 4th, we had our last day of AAS class. We took the exam and went out to lunch at The Rugby Tavern, which is where we ate lunch on our very first day of class. Then I went out with a few people to celebrate. Elise and Erin wanted to do a pub crawl, so I accompanied them, Megan, and Molly to a pub and got Ale Trail maps. They invited a British friend, Matt, along. More and more people from our group kept showing up until the end of the night when most of us were together. It was a really fun way to say goodbye!

On the 5th, Spenser and I decided to visit the Tate Modern museum, but first we had to say goodbye to Jeremy because he was moving out and leaving for Devon. We had croissants and coffee with him, his mum, and Lucy, then said goodbye on our way to the museum. That was the first difficult goodbye...the Tate Modern was fairly interesting. Some of the stuff I really liked and some of it I really disliked. I guess that's how Modern art goes for me. That evening, we went out the The Flask in Highgate for a drink with Ed and Lucy.

On the 6th, early in the morning, I had to say goodbye to my roomate Spenser. That was my second difficult goodbye; we've gotten to be such great friends! My host family has been kind enough to let me stay with them until my dad and brother come on the 14th and we head for Edinburgh so I have just been hanging out around here, trying not to spend too much money. I can't wait to see the other places around here, but I'm also excited to see everyone back at home. My life has kind of been on pause for the last couple of months. See you all soon!