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icepixieLondon was fabulous, as usual, although I think I've definitely hit my London quota for the semester. (And yet we have at least three more days there, 'cause of trains and planes departing from Heathrow and other places.)
Our hotel was in Kensington (yes, the ritzy section), which has fun places to window shop, so we did that for a while. I bought my one and only non-food item this weekend, a small purple silk drawstring bag with a velvet heart on it that I'm going to use as a place to put jewelry and other sundry small items on these weekend trips. Hey, for £1.75, it's not bad. And it's preeeetty. Also preeeetty was St. Marry Abbott's Church, which we took lots of pictures of, and plan to come back to next month to hear Handel's Messiah by candlelight done right, unlike our crappy choir rendition of it next weekend.
We saw an insanely boring production of Hamlet with the class that night. It was done very conventionally, except for the minimalist set, and the guy playing Hamlet was terrible. I didn't really see the point of the production if it was just a straight, superficial reading (with a few bits cut out) and no really spectacular acting to differentiate it from any of the other productions. Also, the theatre was roasting. The ice cream sellers did a booming business during intermission.
On Saturday, we got zoo'd! A pretty steep admission price (£11 with a student discount), but worth it. We saw a two-toed sloth slothing about in his little habitat. He looked like Captain Hook with those claw-like toes. Oh, and he had a piece of rye bread. Apparently the sloths can get it in this country, but I can't. >:-{ There were a bunch of other fun mammals as well; lots and lots of marmosets, a couple small monkeys with handlebar moustaches, some tiny monkeys that looked like Einstein (cotton-headed something-or-others), lorises and lemurs (cuuuute!), and several various hopping rats. They were about the size of chinchillas, and hopped sort of like kangaroos. Sort of. There were also some black rats, in an enclosure set up to look like a ship. Mmmm, black plague.
They had two tigers, one of whom was definitely a fop. He was totally posing up on a rock for eager photographers like myself. The other one just looked like she wanted to eat us. There was a "henpecked" male lion who had just been introduced into an enclosure with two females; he looked very angsty. There was also a penguin pool, which at one point had more seagulls than penguins, as well as a sand crane. Utterly random. Let's see, what else...there were three giraffes, several camels (including a baby), and some warthogs. Actually, I don't think they were warthogs, but they were certainly ugly. Their faces were rather like orcs'. They had a minimalist petting zoo dedicated mostly to farm animals. I got up close and personal with bovine snot, and we all had fun petting the sheep. Actually, we were plotting how best to steal the sheep's coats, 'cause by that point it was quite chilly.
We walked through Regents Park to get to the tube station. It's a very pretty park; old and neoclassical. I went a little overboard on photographing the Broad Walk, which we walked down for quite some time. But it was autumn, it was pretty, so yeah.
Our other play for class was something called Festen, which was also terrible. Actually, no. It was well-written and well-acted, but I didn't enjoy it at all. A play about child abuse and incest wasn't really what I was in the mood for at that point. Or ever, for that matter. It definitely made you want to go slit your wrists or throw yourself off a cliff or something. Blech.
Luckily, we cheered ourselves up afterwards by really good Thai food and Finding Neverland. If you haven't seen that one, GO SEE IT. Bring lots of tissues. Even I was tearing up. It's so, so good. There was one sappy line at the end that clunked a bit, and Johnny Depp was right on the borderline of being just too inherently sketchy to play J. M. Barrie, but other than that it was note-perfect. I especially enjoyed being able to say "Hey, I've been there!" during the scenes in Hyde Park. ;) Worth the admission price and the weird theatre that stacked on top of itself and made us climb to the top of the stairs. (We've been on a lot of staircases in London, and we've been to the top of all of them, I think. Our hotel room this time? Fourth floor, and the rooms were VERY, VERY HIGH-CEILINGED, so it was more like six normal floors. Argh.)
This morning, we went to St. James's Park, which is one of the loveliest parks I've ever been too. We were going to go to the Cabinet War Rooms, but decided that £6 was more than we wanted to pay when we've already planned a trip to the secret WWII tunnels in the cliffs of Dover where Churchill's government stayed for a while. So we went back to Kensington and to Lord Leighton's house. I've spent better pounds, but hey. It was sort of neat, in a very subdued way, by which I mean we looked at everything we possibly could and still only spent about forty-five minutes there. The best part was seeing Waterhouse's Mariana somewhere in there. The stuffed peacock was pretty good, too, I suppose.
A little more window/charity shop shopping, and we decided to take the 4:30 train back to Exeter. I managed to finish this week's reading for the Kenyon Seminar, which was to page 81 of Virginia Woolf's The Waves, and if that doesn't sound like much, trust me, it is. I think it might be denser and more boring than Faulkner. Oy.
Now to take a shower and perhaps collapse in bed. Or maybe play with the 100-odd pictures I took...
Our hotel was in Kensington (yes, the ritzy section), which has fun places to window shop, so we did that for a while. I bought my one and only non-food item this weekend, a small purple silk drawstring bag with a velvet heart on it that I'm going to use as a place to put jewelry and other sundry small items on these weekend trips. Hey, for £1.75, it's not bad. And it's preeeetty. Also preeeetty was St. Marry Abbott's Church, which we took lots of pictures of, and plan to come back to next month to hear Handel's Messiah by candlelight done right, unlike our crappy choir rendition of it next weekend.
We saw an insanely boring production of Hamlet with the class that night. It was done very conventionally, except for the minimalist set, and the guy playing Hamlet was terrible. I didn't really see the point of the production if it was just a straight, superficial reading (with a few bits cut out) and no really spectacular acting to differentiate it from any of the other productions. Also, the theatre was roasting. The ice cream sellers did a booming business during intermission.
On Saturday, we got zoo'd! A pretty steep admission price (£11 with a student discount), but worth it. We saw a two-toed sloth slothing about in his little habitat. He looked like Captain Hook with those claw-like toes. Oh, and he had a piece of rye bread. Apparently the sloths can get it in this country, but I can't. >:-{ There were a bunch of other fun mammals as well; lots and lots of marmosets, a couple small monkeys with handlebar moustaches, some tiny monkeys that looked like Einstein (cotton-headed something-or-others), lorises and lemurs (cuuuute!), and several various hopping rats. They were about the size of chinchillas, and hopped sort of like kangaroos. Sort of. There were also some black rats, in an enclosure set up to look like a ship. Mmmm, black plague.
They had two tigers, one of whom was definitely a fop. He was totally posing up on a rock for eager photographers like myself. The other one just looked like she wanted to eat us. There was a "henpecked" male lion who had just been introduced into an enclosure with two females; he looked very angsty. There was also a penguin pool, which at one point had more seagulls than penguins, as well as a sand crane. Utterly random. Let's see, what else...there were three giraffes, several camels (including a baby), and some warthogs. Actually, I don't think they were warthogs, but they were certainly ugly. Their faces were rather like orcs'. They had a minimalist petting zoo dedicated mostly to farm animals. I got up close and personal with bovine snot, and we all had fun petting the sheep. Actually, we were plotting how best to steal the sheep's coats, 'cause by that point it was quite chilly.
We walked through Regents Park to get to the tube station. It's a very pretty park; old and neoclassical. I went a little overboard on photographing the Broad Walk, which we walked down for quite some time. But it was autumn, it was pretty, so yeah.
Our other play for class was something called Festen, which was also terrible. Actually, no. It was well-written and well-acted, but I didn't enjoy it at all. A play about child abuse and incest wasn't really what I was in the mood for at that point. Or ever, for that matter. It definitely made you want to go slit your wrists or throw yourself off a cliff or something. Blech.
Luckily, we cheered ourselves up afterwards by really good Thai food and Finding Neverland. If you haven't seen that one, GO SEE IT. Bring lots of tissues. Even I was tearing up. It's so, so good. There was one sappy line at the end that clunked a bit, and Johnny Depp was right on the borderline of being just too inherently sketchy to play J. M. Barrie, but other than that it was note-perfect. I especially enjoyed being able to say "Hey, I've been there!" during the scenes in Hyde Park. ;) Worth the admission price and the weird theatre that stacked on top of itself and made us climb to the top of the stairs. (We've been on a lot of staircases in London, and we've been to the top of all of them, I think. Our hotel room this time? Fourth floor, and the rooms were VERY, VERY HIGH-CEILINGED, so it was more like six normal floors. Argh.)
This morning, we went to St. James's Park, which is one of the loveliest parks I've ever been too. We were going to go to the Cabinet War Rooms, but decided that £6 was more than we wanted to pay when we've already planned a trip to the secret WWII tunnels in the cliffs of Dover where Churchill's government stayed for a while. So we went back to Kensington and to Lord Leighton's house. I've spent better pounds, but hey. It was sort of neat, in a very subdued way, by which I mean we looked at everything we possibly could and still only spent about forty-five minutes there. The best part was seeing Waterhouse's Mariana somewhere in there. The stuffed peacock was pretty good, too, I suppose.
A little more window/charity shop shopping, and we decided to take the 4:30 train back to Exeter. I managed to finish this week's reading for the Kenyon Seminar, which was to page 81 of Virginia Woolf's The Waves, and if that doesn't sound like much, trust me, it is. I think it might be denser and more boring than Faulkner. Oy.
Now to take a shower and perhaps collapse in bed. Or maybe play with the 100-odd pictures I took...
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no subject
Date: 2004-11-28 10:10 pm (UTC)Oh, yeah. Really sounds like you had a good time there. ;)
And yay! I'm seeing Finding Neverland soon, so it's nice to know it's good.
::hugs:: I haven't said it before, but I have been following your trip and it sounds amazing. So very cool that you got to do this.
(no subject)
From:I know I'm a history major, but...
Date: 2004-11-29 01:13 am (UTC)Re: I know I'm a history major, but...
From:woohoo for studying abroad!
Date: 2004-11-29 02:51 pm (UTC)Re: woohoo for studying abroad!
From: