Pretty ladies (and Jeff) all in a row

Our intent last night was to go see Phantom of the Opera - we being

Maria, Bre, Jeff and myself.






We get there after a few small bumps in the road to find our ambitions thwarted. There are no student seats left.

So now we are dressed up in a big city on a Friday night. What would you do?


We don't have a ton of money, but some of us were willing to spend a little money for a nice sit-down dessert, so that is what we did.

But first we walked around Leicester and Picadilly Square being completely indecisive. And taking pictures. Like this one.





We took the tube to Charing Cross (Trafalgar Square), where the St. Martin's tea house is.
The tea house itself is down in the crypt, so we were enjoying our dessert on people's graves. Very old graves. But graves, none-the-less.












This is Maria and I in the crypt.
And the dresses we both bought at thrift stores... mine was about $14 - American. Heck yes.

In the crypt they had a brass rubbing center. We thought it would be funny if I blocked the "brass" part with my head, and we could have "The London Rubbing Centre"... we didn't realize exactly what we had done until we got home... take a look...

New dress, new shoes

Today we went to the National Gallery, Imperial War Museum, a cheap shoe store, and wandered about in fancy dresses, because we thought we were going to see Phantom, but it was sold out. More on that later, now here are some pictures for you.




Me and a shell to the giant guns behind me. Heck yes.

The guy wasn't supposed to be in the picture, but this was like my 100th try, and I didn't want to spend the few hours I had trying for one good picture. Still - biiiiig guns.

This tank is named "Monty"... can you see it? I did get a close-up of the name plaque (on the right of the hatch), soon to be available on my Yahoo Pictures site :o) Of course Small Dog would have a tank... he's a spoiled bratt-dog!

London has the coolest shoes ever. I bought these today for about $14 (American). They have a little heal, but are wicked comfortable. The whole intent behind them was so I could wear them with the Gap pants Gordy got me, but I think I'll be wearing them all the time.

Just not right now, because after tonight, the balls of my feet are the size of my calves. They are all sorts of swollen.

Holy U2, Batman!

Today we went to Notting Hill and shopped the market that only appears on Portabello Road on Saturday mornings.

And it may be my new favorite place in London.

Seen the movie Notting Hill? It's just like that, amazingly enough. Perhaps because it was filmed there?

The place was PACKED with tourists.

I bought some fresh, fat purple grapes for a pound. They were soooooo sweet!

They have everything at Notting Hill...






Hence my prized find - The Joshua Tree record (I mean, I only have it on CD, tape and Paul... why not record! You'd think I like U2 or something!)






This is a picture of my "fireplace" mantle - I've even labled some things for you.



ToA is Taste of America (sent by Leslie), and the pink hippo has 2 friends recently sent to America - Wes' is blue (and in pieces) and Leslie's is off white :o) They came from an indian store in Camden. And the cutlery was borrowed from the Houghton cafeteria and mailed to me by my dear friends... hehehe.

Samwise the Brave!

So today I got 2 packages - because people love me.
I got one from Leslie and one from Erica!
Erica sent me Halloween in an envalope - candy, candy, funny letters and cards, some decorations, and candy. Then the smartones here put the packages on the radiator that they turned on. So some of the chocolate was smooshy, but not messy, so I put it in the refrigerator and all is good.
Leslie's box had a nice letter, lots of drawings of random monkies and such, JONES SODA!, TASTYKAKES! and sunflower seeds, a colorful scarf thing, a sad excuse for why Wes didn't write me a note, fireballs!, and

SAM!

That is right - Samwise is in London. Craziness.

Not much else exciting has happened.
Unless of course I didn't talk about Les Misearbles... and I don't think I did.

Monday we were talking about going out to see Les Mis. So Monday night we got dressed up and did just that.
On the way there we passed the Premiere of Corpse Bride - I didn't see anybody famous, though Tim Burton was there. And had Johnny Depp been there, I would have been in jail, so obviously I didn't see him either. But jail may be worth being able to say I jumped on Johnny Depp. Or at least tried.

Les Mis. was amazing. And we got good seats for cheap, because in London, everything has a student price, and they really do understand how poor students are.

This is a picture of myself, Maria, Liz and Bre after the musical:

Clowns to the left of me; Jokers to the right

Here I am, stuck in the middle...
This is Bre, Liz, myself, Amy and Christy on the River Liffey in Dublin, Ireland.
This was day 2, so we didn't quite smell like the locals at that point (because they smell like B.O. - it's all the rage in Dublin...).

Ireland was great. Dublin is filthy, but the food was great (lamb & potato soup and Bailey's and Guinness, and roasted potatoes everywhere). The guys were pigs, and we won't discuss them.
Seriously, I wish I could tell you there was more than potatoes and Guinness, but that is all there really was. I'm dead serious.
Of course we went on the Guinness Storehouse tour. At the end of the tour you get to enjoy a "complimentary" pint while sitting in a 360 bar. And thus this picture came in to being.

On Sunday, Bre and I decided to go to Wicklow, because on a flyer we had picked up and (foolishly) belived, it showed Wicklow. Some of the attractions you could see in Wicklow were places where scenes from Braveheart was filmed, Bono's house *cries*, and a cute little town like place. Promises of scenery and the true Irish experience danced in our heads. Well, the tour bus cost 22 euros. But you could catch the train for 14 euro. Awesome. So we hop the train, which drove along the coast. The ride was amazing. Wicklow not so much. Or as we started to call it, Buttmunch, Ireland. There was NOTHING. We thought others were coming to meet us on the bus, so we stayed in Buttmunch for a couple hours. It was raining (surprise, surprise) so we sat in a little restaurant hotel thing that had guys drinking in it (at like 11am on a Sunday. Someone is going to hell.) and amazing coffee. And amusing little packets of sugar that taught you Gailic, much like fortune cookies teach you chinese. Seroiusly, I can say "kiss my butt" in Gailic. You learn something new every day... And a nice man cooking at the hotel gave us free roasted potatoes for lunch. We must have looked pathetic. Or American. Possibly both. When 2pm came and went, so did Bre and I. Having gave up hope on our friends, figuring they were lost to the Irish abyss, we asked the train station operator how to get somewhere that wasn't Wicklow. He asked what we wanted to see, and I am afraid we couldn't think of much more than rocks to climb on and sheep. Needless to say, he laughed at us. He also directed us to Rathdrum, which was (supposedly) 5 minutes from the national park. And as he was saying this, the train arrived. Score! We hopped on and rode down to Rathdrum. Which is where this picture was taken. True to the man's word, we found sheep and even a stone wall I did attempt climbing. We never did find the national park, because all roads appariently lead to Rathdrum. We would walk up one hill and wind up in the exact same place we came from. So the day was filled with pretty scenery and hills like you wouldn't believe. We hiked everywhere, something my back is still not letting me forget, but it was SO worth it. We even found some good mushroom soup and awesome bread for dinner. And that tour bus that we didn't want to spend the extra 8 euros on passed us while walking on the road. Oh the irony of it all.

So no, I did not manage to find Bono's house, but on the behalf he was in America on the Conan O'Brien show that night, I doubt it would have done me much good. But I probably would have taken a chunk out of his front yard and run with it.

Monday was our last day in Ireland, and we went souviner shopping, Christmas shopping, and picture taking. This picture is from St. Patrick's cathedral. I took it because I wanted to take that puppy. Not as cute as Monty, but beggers can't be choosers.

We also visited a castle that some smart one PAINTED the sides of. And not just painted. In the words of Bre "whomever decided to turn this castle into the lego playhouse should be flogged."

Because the (outside) walls were vibrant red, green, blue and yellow. It pains me to think about it still.

And I leave you with the best picture ever. I have to explain to you that Liz hates birds. And the pigeons around here are ratty. This one bird was advancing towards Liz despite her yelling at it to shoo. There was going to be a smackdown at St. Patrick's.

Where did we leave off?

Yesterday, which was Friday, Jeff, Emily and I decided to venture off into the city to take pictures. We started at the Temple Chruch, which is one of the oldest buildings in London. It was built in 1186 for the Templars (founded 1118), who were sworn to protect Christians traveling to Jerusalem. Actually, only the Circle church was built then - Henry III added the rectangular piece in 1240.


There are many people buried here, but it is most well known for the Templars, who are in the Circle church. Unfortunately, they aren't looking all that well, since the church was severly bombed in WWII. Still pretty good considreing how very old they are.
If you read the DiVinci Code, you may remember this church and the Templars popping up at quite the crutical moment of the book. This picture is from the rectangular section looking in on the Circle Church. Between the pillars are Templars, if you look closely on the ground.

Templars

After taking plenty of pictures in the Temple church (which was in the highest class neighborhood of all London, so we left quickly), we decided to walk along the Thames and see what we could see.
We found Cleopatra's Needle; but more interesingly some Sphynx statues. Emily and I were trying to keep our trousers dry (it rained, shocker) and have Jeff take pictures.
Then we walked as far as Parliment, where we took picutres of Big Ben. And I started singing "We Can Fly" from Peter Pan, because it fit the moment.
Since we spent the day waltzing about London, we decided not to go out dancing.



The story and pictures of Canterbury will have to wait for another day. I am tired, and Blogger has decided I can not upload any more pictures into this post. Had I the energy, I would override the html, but I don't, so I will leave you in suspense!

And with this: