Eye Pods and Abbeys

Monday we had an uber-touristy day again - only really our second one, since we've spent the majority of the trip just kind of hanging out. It was about damn time though.

We went on the London Eye, and to Westminster Abbey. The latter I had done before, but the first was an entirely new experience for me.

I've been historically afraid of Ferris Wheels. I think I've only been on one twice before in my life. And the London Eye is the largest Ferris Wheel in the world, so suffice to say, I was a teensy bit nervous. Plus, it was freaking expensive - a lot of money to spend on something I wasn't sure I could convince myself to get onto. The wait was only about 20 minutes - not bad. And then I walked on without hesitation, sat down on the little bench, and got extremely extremely nervous. I recall at one point realizing that my classmates were taking a group picture, while I was just steeling myself for takeoff.

Once we were about 5 minutes into the flight though, seriously? I was cool. IT was cool. It's extremely slow-moving, very steady, no shaking - takes about 30 minutes to go the whole way around. And in the end, I felt like it went too fast! I wanted to go around again!

The views from the Eye were pretty extraordinary! You can see most of the major sights in London from the Eye: Everything from Big Ben, Parliament, and Westminster Abbey across the river, to Buckingham Palace, the Battersea Power Station, the Gherkin, Canary Wharf, the Tate Modern. Pretty much the only major sights you CAN'T see are the Globe, and the Tower of London/Tower Bridge (big building in the way).

Some pictures to share:













After the Eye, we headed across the Thames to Westminster Abbey. The Abbey honestly doesn't change, although, I'll admit, I found it much less morbid this time simply because I was expecting it to be a massive crypt unlike the last time I was there. It is still a gorgeous church though:





Within those walls are buried, among other people, the bodies of Queen Elizabeth I, Mary Queen of Scots, a few King Henrys (can't remember which numbers, but you know, there were a lot of them), as well as Sir Lawrence Olivier, Sir Isaac Newton, and of course Winston Churchill.

My absolutely favorite bit of Westminster Abbey, of course, being as I'm a Lit-geek, is Poet's Corner. Not all of the writers with monuments in Poet's Corner are actually buried there (for instance, Shakespeare has a monument there, but he is buried in Stratford-Upon-Avon), but there are some lovely memorials, as well as some tombs, such as the tomb of Geoffrey Chaucer. I sat myself down in Poet's Corner for a good 20 minutes and just soaked in the genius. It was wonderful.

Yesterday was a pretty tightly scheduled day with class in the morning, our first paper due, and a play in the evening, but I managed to get out for a few hours in the afternoon, so we walked to Harrod's and wandered through the store for a while. I did not realize until this trip that Harrod's is owned by Mohamed Al Fayed - the father of Dodi Al Fayed who dated and died with Princess Diana. Very sad.

But yes. Harrod's. I wasn't really expecting to be overwhelmed by Harrod's. I figured I'd get bored of looking at clothes I can never afford or fit into within five minutes of walking through the door - except that it was all so pretty! I wasn't bored at all! I spent a good two hours in there looking at pretty clothes and wishing I was a rich Brit who could shop there for real. And marveling when one of my classmates bought a $300+ dress on a whim there.

And last night was our second play, in the form of Twelfth Night at the Open Air Theater in Regent's Park. It was a gorgeous facility, and really, a wonderful production. They set the play in the 20's or 30's and had lovely period costumes, lots of cigarettes and saxophone music for mood. It was really fantastic. And the Fool was played by an actor I recognized from Doctor Who, so that kind of added to the fun for me a bit. Very nice.

Taking a bit of a lazy day today. Class was canceled at the last minute this morning due to flooding in the building with the classrooms, apparently. I'm hiding in the basement of our building at the moment doing my laundry and trying to have a little quiet time. This afternoon I'm going to head out to King's Cross and buy my rail card (as my financial aid FINALLY showed up yesterday), as well as check out the Platform 9 3/4's setup they've got there. And this evening we have a school barbecue to go to. Plus, if it's not raining (it's supposed to rain), I'm going to wander up to Hyde Park afterwards to see if I can eavesdrop on the Jack Johnson concert. Woot!

Oh, and I've been meaning to mention - you may have noticed that many of my pictures on here are cropped kinda funky. For some reason my blog does that automatically and I'm not sure why. Regardless, ALL of my pictures are up at my flickr account if you'd like to see the full load of them, plus uncropped!