Days 35-38

Day 35:

Had classes for 6 hours, so not much happened! But 5 weeks in London today! I can't believe it!

I saw Wicked the night before. I really enjoyed singing Wicked again since I hadn't seen the musical in a really long time or listened to the music in a while. I forgot how much I loved the music! It wasn't as good as the first two times I saw it in the states. The cast was not very good as a whole. Glinda tried so hard to be funny that she just wasn't...nobody was laughing most the time. Fiyero was kind of a pansy and Madame Morrible couldn't sing a note. Elpheba was good though and the Wizard was the best one I had seen. So it was enjoyable, just not spectacular.

Day 36:

Wednesday we had class until noon and then free travel weekend began! About a third of us opted to stay in London for the weekend with the Queen's Jubilee coming up and all the shows that are here. After class I spent the day just walking around London and exploring a bit with Lauren. We went to the National Portrait Gallery. It was really fun to see portraits of so many famous people and to see how they were portrayed. Jane Austen's portrait was tiny, about four inches across. It was done by her sister Cassandra and is the only portrait we have painted in her lifetime. Turner's portrait was interesting because he didn't like having portraits of him painted so one of his friends painted one by memory after he died. I enjoyed seeing Handel's portrait; it was very large and grand. Byron's portrait was interesting because he was wearing a turban and holding a pipe. It was neat to see Dickens and the Bronte sisters. Dickens surprised me because it was painted of him when he was younger. I didn't know until later that he began writing and became successful when he was in his twenties. Some of the other portraits that I liked were Princess Diana, Jagger, and Shakespeare.

After the Portrait Gallery we walked around Covent Gardens. We walked into a store with just macaroons. We tried lemon, raspberry, caramel and sea salt, and vanilla. They were so divine! It was fun to walk around little bookshops and stores.

That night we went to see the musical, Top Hat. It is based on the old Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movie. We bought tickets for the very back row on the balcony because they were so cheap. Not enough people ended up coming so they moved us up about 6 rows and to the center. Later I looked up how much the seats we got moved to were and they were thirty pounds more! We were so lucky. It was a really fun musical. I loved the tap dancing and the older songs. The costumes were amazing. Most of the people in the audience were older couples. I sat by an older couple from Scotland who just kept talking to me about all the cool places they went to in the U.S. When it started they leaned over to me and laughed and said, "Oh we just love these old tunes!" They were fun to sit by.

Day 37:

Yesterday we went to the Soane Museum. It was a house that belonged to Sir John Soane, an architect who taught at a university in London. He was a collector. He had paintings, grecian urns, books, sculptures, etc. I was amazed at all the things in his home! Every inch of the wall was covered. We had to put our purses in plastic bags so that they wouldn't get caught on anything. There were some places where you could hardly walk! In his home he had an Egyptian Sarcophagus that happens to be the most valuable one outside of Egypt. I learned later that he wanted his home to be a free museum where people could come and study. I really enjoyed it.

We ran to see Jeremy Bentham after that. He was a professor at the University College of London. When he died he wanted his body to be preserved and present at every staff meeting. He isn't at every staff meeting, but he's still in the University! His skeleton is dressed up and he has a wax head now because the students kept stealing the mummified one. However, his real hair is on the wax head. It was cool, but a little bit creepy...

Amanda booked us a tour for Highgate Cemetery that afternoon. It is a large cemetery taken care of in a way called "managed neglect." It is overgrown, but people are making sure it doesn't get out of hand like trees ruining gravestones, etc. It was so beautiful. There were plants everywhere, It was almost like walking into a forest. There were some amazing gravestones and monuments. It was unlike cemetery in France where I went to see certain people buried there. I really just enjoyed walking around there because it was so beautiful.

I couldn't wait another day to go to another show... So that night Jaden, Tiffany, and I bought tickets to Singin' in the Rain. It was one of my very favorites! We sat in the front row so when it rained we got wet! When they were dance we got splashed with water. It was so much fun! There were a few times when we were so close that we could have reached out and grabbed the actors if we would have wanted to. At first I wasn't thrilled that we were sitting so close because I thought that it would be hard to see, but it was so much fun to see their facial expressions and hear the side conversations of the extras. The actors were phenomenal. I liked Lina Lamont even better than the actress in the movie. It was one of the most enjoyable nights I had in London! At the end of the musical when the cast came out it started raining and they all tapped for us one more time. Lina looked straight at Jaden, Tiffany, and I and kicked water straight at us before she walked off stage. It was so fun! I was smiling the whole time.

Day 38:

Today I went on a run through Hyde Park. It was beautiful. In the afternoon we went on a boat ride down the Thames to Greenwich. We only spent a couple of hours there. We stood on the Prime Meridian, saw the Cutty Sark, and ate lunch in a double decker bus. We were all pretty tired, so we came home and watched Peter Pan. It was just a nice day to hang out at the center.