Busy Week! Lots of Theater!

Yeah, I've been a bad, bad blogger. I've been trying to find time to sit down and catch up on blogging for days, and for some reason it's been very difficult. I actually feel bad, because I know I haven't been the best communicator on this trip - I'm not responding to half my e-mails, never calling home, not updating LJ, rarely keeping on my blogging schedule. Just today I popped my first few postcards in the mail - and I've been here for three weeks! Anyway, I apologize a great deal for my terrible communication skills!

So Tas came up for the weekend last weekend from Southampton, and we had a lovely, very chill weekend that consisted of a lot of sitting around David's house watching TV. But it was nice to just chill out and reset a bit. And it wasn't all we did: we did go shopping in Covent Garden, and to London Pride. My first ever Pride, actually, which is kind of sad since I'm from San Francisco. *shrugs*


Tas and me drinking pink champagne at Pride.

I actually had a lot of schoolwork last weekend, so I didn't do much other than study Sunday and Monday morning. Yup - I admit it. Schoolwork. I am actually doing schoolwork on occasion. Last weekend I had a play to read, a paper to write, AND an oral presentation to prepare. Monday we didn't have class until the afternoon, and then the class simply consisted of oral presentations. And it was a busy day because we also had our last play at the Globe on Monday night.

So back to the Globe I went, and I saw A Midsummer Night's Dream - possibly up there with Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet as the most-studied play in my repertoire. I thought it was a decent production of Midsummer, but not my favorite that I've ever seen. But it was a blast to see it at the Globe.


Me at the Globe for the last time on this trip.

Tuesday I decided it was high time for me to get to some more museums, so I went straight from class to the National Gallery. It's a good, decent museum. A lot of the art is a little older than my typical enjoyment - a lot of religious-themed paintings. But they did have an impressionist room, which was lovely. I have to admit that I liked the National Portrait Gallery better.

Tuesday night a few of us decided to go see Romeo and Juliet at the Open Air Theater in Regent's Park, just for kicks. We loved their production of Twelfth Night so much that we wanted to see what they did with Romeo. Alas, it wasn't as good of a production as Twelfth Night. It felt like a strange, strange mixture of West Side Story and the Baz Luhrman film. I had mixed feelings about it - they made a few interesting and strange choices, but it was fairly well done.

Wednesday I had a get-things done day, and I stayed in for most of the day and did laundry and chilled out with my schoolwork and my laptop. But I did all of this during the day in preparation for an awesome evening out! We went to see Avenue Q on the West End! The truly amazing thing about it was - my classmates who bought the tickets didn't tell me until we left that....we had a BOX! As our student discount tickets they gave us a freaking BOX. Directly next to/above the stage. It was AMAZING. I've never had seats like that for a play before, and the cast was really fun and gave us an awful lot of attention (winks and whatnot). We splurged and bought a bottle of wine and felt all posh in our box with our wine. It was so much fun.

Thursday was the big day of this week: it was our class field trip to Stratford-Upon-Avon. It's about a two hour drive to Stratford from London, and our teacher rented us a bus. We got into Stratford about 9:30am, and went to Anne Hathaway's cottage (Shakespeare's wife), and then to Shakespeare's birthplace, and to see Shakespeare's grave, before going to see a matinée performance of Taming of the Shrew at the Royal Shakespeare Company's Courtyard Theater.

And yup. In case there was any doubt, or you missed that detail: That does take my grand total of theater trips this week up to FOUR. I went to the theater FOUR times this week. I'm a theater-going fool!

Stratford really was a lovely town. If I have any complaints it's that our day felt rushed. Which is fine for ME because I'm going back to Stratford in two weeks to see David Tennant in Hamlet. But I kind of felt bad for my classmates in having to rush. I'm definitely looking forward to spending a little more time looking around - all the shops and restaurants are all Shakespeare themed and adorable. It's like Shakespearean Disneyland!


Holy Trinity Church. "Shakespeare's Church" according to the sign.


Shakespeare's Grave (in Holy Trinity Church)


Shakespeare's Birthplace


Shakespeare's Fool Statue


Anne Hathaway's Cottage


Hamlet Poster at the Courtyard (because I'm dork enough to share)


And a cute picture of me for kicks.

Taming of the Shrew...was a strange, strange production. The director took a comedy and turned it into a tragedy with a message about battered wives and violent homes and things. It was a bit uncomfortable to watch. I do have to give the actors props though for being very good at what they did.

Today is Friday, and I had a nice busy day today. I decided to spend the day alone and see where the day took me...with a few general ideas on where I wanted to go. I left the flat around 10:30 this morning, and went directly to the Courtauld Gallery - my favorite museum in London on my last trip, because they have some fantastic impressionist pieces. It was still lovely. I spent a good 5 minutes sitting in front of my favorite piece in the gallery (Manet's A Bar at the Folies Bergere.). I also spent some time in front of Van Gogh's Earless Self-Portrait considering how thin the paint is on it compared to most Van Gogh paintings. It's kind of interesting.

From the Courtauld, I wandered my way across the Waterloo Bridge to Waterloo Station, spending some time appreciating the Thames, as I tend to when I'm anywhere near the river. I just love London's riverside. It's just wonderful. The pictures just don't do justice how lovely it was out there today. I cannot express.







I had lunch at Waterloo Station, before jumping on the tube and going to Canary Wharf. This was mostly to fulfill some sick obsessive desire I had to see Canary Wharf, even though I had a feeling it was going to be a typical business district - and it was. I felt very out of place there, and after wandering around a bit, I left, and took the tube up to King's Cross, where I spent the majority of the afternoon in the British Library.







The British Library is really a wonderful place. A very modern building, which I think surprised me. Not as cool of a building as the Seattle Central Library, but still very cool. I spent a good chunk of time in their historical exhibit, seeing the Gutenberg Bible, the Magna Carta, Shakespeare's First Folio, as well as numerous religious texts, letters, and transcripts from literary figures such as Jane Austen, Samuel Johnson, John Milton, and Lewis Carroll. It was extremely cool.



From there, I went shopping and bought myself a cute new outfit. I'm sure you all were dying to know that!

And thus begins my last week in London! A week from now I will be preparing to leave - packing to head off to my next destination, Tas's flat in Southampton. Up until now I've felt so rushed, but now I'm actually getting to a point where I'm ready to move on. The program has been fun and all, but I'm ready to spend some time with my peers and feel a bit more adult than I have lately. Plus, traveling and seeing new things, obviously, is freaking awesome!