Me in London. Can you see why I like it there?

July 22, 2007- July 23, 2007
Unprecedented floods, Trafalgar Lions, Emergencies at the Globe, Texas in London, and much, much more

My misfortune is your blog update. I have been going non stop the past few days and only have a bit below that I already wrote on Thursday before I just had to go to bed. You may be asking why I can’t just put up the updates, well with pictures and proper text updating the blog is about a 2 hour ordeal. So it just isn’t that easy since I don’t half ass it.

Today, I was supposed to be outside of Disley (?) England at the estate where they filmed Pemberley for the A&E/BBC Pride and Prejudice. This morning we were all packed, and ready to go, and arrived at the train station only to find there were absolutely NO trains leaving Oxford because the rails are completely under water to the west and north of here.

This is troubling, because it is blue skies and only a few clouds today. We were assuredly damp in London both Friday and Saturday, but every small bought of ran was followed by sunshine. One would assume this is England and to be expected. Wrong.

So today was a wash. I finished one of my novels for class and just started my next, and have been posting more of my pictures, and now am updating this. I haven’t the slightest desire to go pay 5 pounds to see the top of a tower nor do I feel it necessary to go and exchange personal space with obnoxious tourists. So instead of just sitting in my room, I opened my widows for the breeze but turned on the heater to keep it the right temperature. Wasteful? Yes. But one of my very few free days has been completely wasted. I can be positive about this as long as things clear by Friday when we are scheduled to go to Scotland. If it doesn’t, not only do I not get to go but I will be out a lot of $$$$$$$$$$$ for absolutely nothing.

I am vexed indeed.

Saturday July 14: Brighton
“A whole camp full of officers!”

Brighton is located on the southern coast of England roughly facing France in an area referred to as the downs and channel coast. Historically Brighton has been a resort and vacation town, and has a huge pier amusement park. Well, our lovely program just dropped us off and said “see ya at 4” so we were roughly left to figure out Brighton for ourselves.

You’ll be able to tell by our pictures that it was cool with an enormous breeze. We lucked out again with weather, the day turned out very nicely. So we walked on the Brighton Pier, which had a lot of cheesy amusement rides. We would have ridden on them if each ride weren’t about 3 tokens (that cost a pound each.) So we walked around and amused ourselves. After that we headed to the Royal Pavilion, an “oriental” and gaudy palace built by the future King George IV. A lot of people on the trip completely disregarded it as trashy, but I admit, while it holds nothing to the power of the tradition, it was different and the inside dining room took my breath away with it’s whimsical presence.

A bit of history: When George IV was just 23 and the Prince of Wales, he a falling out with his father and moved to Brighton. He fell in love with Mrs. Maria Fitzherbert, a 29 year old Catholic widow whom he secretly married. Together they built the Pavilion. Well his father, King George III started to go insane, so he had to fill in as reagent before becoming King. Despite being in love, he was forced to officially marry Caroline of Brunswick in 1795, she had a daughter, but he quickly just ordered her to essentially come no where near him, not even to his coronation. This of course ruined his relationship with Mrs. Fitzherbert, so he just had a bunch of mistresses and died old, but he always said his happiest days of his life were with Maria.

Well all throughout the Pavilion, which actually had a good audio tour, I kept craving Chinese food because it reminded me of the inside of a gaudy Chinese food buffet and I haven’t had Chinese since I left Texas. Sad.

Also funny, Queen Victoria found the whole thing disgusting and sold it to the city of Brighton. They politely said she didn’t have room there for all her kids (I didn’t know she had had so many!) but really I can imagine her being just disgusted with it’s lack of taste.


After that, we looked outside and saw we had just beat all the mobs of tourists!

So we moved into what is referred to as the Lanes, which is a bunch of shops and restaurants. I found a really nice pub to eat at and got Steak and Ale pie, with real mashed potatoes and brown gravy which of course reminded me of Grandma. It was one of the best meals.

While we were there, this guy was taking pictures with their promotional magazine for Brighton. Well they were trying to take a picture with these older, very tipsy, Irish men with beer bellies. One of them said “wait a minute, let’s get those girls in our picture!” so they called us over and pulled Ann, who I was with, into one of their laps and another put is arm around me for the picture. It was fun.

We had problems loading the bus to come home, which seems to be a standard for all our group trips.

Monday: Tower of London after Class
I don’t really have a lot to say regarding the Tower of London. After Class, we went into London, through daytime traffic, and had two hours to see all of the Tower. Needless to say this wasn’t enough time. I made sure to see the main white tower and the crown jewels, despite the incredible lines. One way they keep the lines for the jewels moving is they have two slow moving conveyer belts running on either side, so it ushers people past and keeps it moving. What was nice about this, is you can go back and do it as many times as you wanted, (I did it two) but most people don’t bother. The jewels are in these enormous vaults, so if the world is ever ending and you’re in London, I suggest going in there.

I was disappointed in the tower as a whole too, because they made it feel more like an amusement park instead of a historical sight. Things like Anne Boleyn’s apartments were closed to the public, and very little was explained on signs unless you paid the money for an audio guide. Most of the time we were left to wonder and try and piece together everything. The few captions they did have were also misleading: they would say things like Torture Tower (and on the inside say this was an artillery room, the torture took place elsewhere) and this is the block and axe that beheaded Anne Boleyn. Wrong, she was beheaded by a sword. It wasn’t until another caption when they said “this is from around that time, not the exact one like we just said.”

I didn’t go for an amusement park with ice cream cones and popcorn (which they sold there) I went to absorb history. I mean seriously, who am I to expect that? After that we got to on a bus for like 4 hours to get through London rush hour traffic.

Tuesday and Wednesday: Quiet Days with a lot of Homesickness

I’m fairly certain I mentioned this before, but I’ve been pretty bogged down recently with academic stuff from UT and problems with the way this program is being run here. I’ll spare everyone the boring details, but regarding the program here our “planned and paid for trips” are so far being poorly run and not all paid for. Aside from the disappointment and extra financial burden, this is adding to the stress of having to plan even more trips on top of our school work here. We are all frustrated, but making the most of it.

What this has resulted in however, is the worst homesickness I’ve had since that like one day in Vienna when I had a bad day and got sick. Even though I’m pretty good at not letting things interfere with my agenda at hand, I’m getting to the point where I’m sick of dealing with things and just want to go home. This further upsets me because I really do love England, but I’m so limited with transportation and completely free days to travel that I’m bound to the tourist haven called Oxford and I feel like I’m not getting to do it proper justice. The tourists in Oxford win the award for being the stupidest tourists I’ve encountered yet. They walk in front of buses and scream, and generally have moronic behavior.

So all this being said, I’ve kind of been in and out of a funk the past few days because of the drama coming from here and back home all at the same time. And it upsets me because this is England and it’s not England’s fault.

We all know I’m one “tough young lady” so if I hadn’t just told all of you that you’d never know the better by my experiences.

Tuesday our dining hall threw us a James Bond Party. We all got dressed up and they had the dining hall decorated with James Bond things. It was so much fun, especially since I had been depressed most the day. For dessert we had frozen martinis too!

Wednesday I went to have afternoon tea at a local café, out of the normal path of tourists. I really enjoyed that and read for class. I may do that again today in fact!


Thursday: Blenheim Palace (Birthplace and Family Estate of Winston Churchill)

I organized an afternoon trip after class to Blenheim, which is just outside Oxford. It was GORGEOUS! Check out all the pictures on the link to the right of this.

I have officially stood in the room where the baby, who strangely must have looked like Winston Churchill, was birthed. I think my life might be complete.

There was this really corny exhibit there, with these half wax, half animated figures that “acted out scenes from the history of Blenheim” and it was just incredibly hokey even though the technology they used was very new.

Other than that misjudgment on their part, everything was just beautiful. We kept joking with each other because they have these gardens there called the “pleasure gardens.” That made for some fun times. In case you were wondering, pleasure gardens consist of a hedge maze, butterfly garden, and lavender garden.

I split from the group and took the Queen’s Pool Walk around the lake. I walked past an old war monument that I suppose is “guarded” by a flock of sheep.

The gates we had all entered had closed, which was by the bus stop, so I had walked around through the town back to it. Well, when I got there, I saw the rest of our group climbing over the fence in order to get out. It made for a great spectacle.

Friday: London Part I
So we got dropped off at Trafalgar Square in London. When we left in the morning it was pouring down rain, and going into London we had to go through some mild floods [our first exposure to something was wrong]. Once we arrived in London however, the sun came out and everything was wet, but blue skies.

Don’t mess with Texas.
We went over to the Texas Embassy, now a restaurant that was formerly the Embassy when we were truly the Lone Star State.

I must say it: Texas is a badass.

There you go.

Longhorn things everywhere. Damn Right, all the way in London. We ended up eating there Saturday, so I went ahead and included the pictures here.

Trafalgar Square
We found the need to climb up onto the huge stone monument and be one with the lions. Remember how it had just rained….well the huge stone platform was slippery so I definitely slipped on my stomach multiple times getting up to the platform as tall as I am. I have bruises and scabs on my stomach- so I was maimed by lions in London if you will.

Totally worth it. Made my morning.

After that we went into the National Gallery, which was amazing. Renoir, Monet, Van Gogh, and many many many more. Not to mention a lot of English lesser known artists that I really enjoyed.

We also went into the National Portrait Gallery, which I highly recommend because you can see the original portraits of the Tudor Royal Family, many famous people, and some modern but very classy contemporary portraits.

From there we walked, yes walked, to St. Paul’s Cathedral. Yet another big church, but while we were there they started Evensong, which had such a heavenly sound and presence resonating throughout the nave of the church that it momentarily took your breath away.

We then walked across the Millennium Bridge and had some gorgeous views of London and really solidified how much I like London as a city. It isn’t dirty, I never feel unsafe, and everyone is very friendly. Another plus is there are so many places to go, the crowds are thinned out a bit.

We were then over by the globe, and in the 20 total minutes I’ve spent outside the Globe from last week and this week I’ve seen about four of the young actors from Merchant of Venice walking around, getting food, talking on their cell phones etc.

What happens is they walk by you, you do a double take, and then they are gone. Something that I think makes the Globe even more special since this has happened so many times.

We had dinner at a gourmet pizza place across from the Globe, then went over for our performance of Othello.

Othello
Othello wasn’t as good as Merchant, but was still quality. I wasn’t a groundling this time and got to sit, which with the threat of rain, I was happy about.

Half way through the performance, my attention was immediately grabbed by a flurry of moving people around someone who passed out in one of the boxes on the other side of theater from us. There was a lot of commotion, the play kept going, and next thing we know we see someone doing compressions and someone run out crying. We were all convinced that the person was dead, and the ushers were moving SO SLOW. Had I only been in that box let me just say that would not have been acceptable. People would have moved. Immediately.

Well we think she either passed out because of a minor stroke or complications from medicine, because they were able to wheel her out conscious.

At intermission we were all talking about it, and one girl in the group made the comment “if we were in America by the time the ushers started to move someone would have already had out the defibrillator saying CLEAR.”

Isn’t that the truth? It made me really 1) Proud to be an American 2) Miss being in America. All they had at the Globe was a first aid kit, because that’s going to help a lot in one of these situations.

This situation also made me fantasize what it would be like to be a doctor and be able to run over and say “I’m a doctor what can I do” and get the situation under control.


The End
I’m out of steam for the day. I have other things to do, but check out the picture links and Gulliver’s Travels Part II. Now I’m only one day behind! Yay.

Affectionately Yours,
Elaine

This is the memorial to animals in war: on one said they are scared and tired and on the other they come out these big strong horses and dogs looking back. It was touching, but kind of hard to see in this photo.