London Town

Tuesday  September 1, 2009

Well I am here... HELLO LONDON!  It is just as I imagined it would be. There are shops and people everywhere and old charming buildings lining the streets they walk on.  The poeple really say things like “lovely,” “brilliant,” and “cherrio” all with their fabulous accents.  The weather is perfect.  It is kind of chilly and usually blustery and the sun just comes and goes at it pleases and there usually is a light sprinkling of showers sometime during the day, but like I said, it’s perfect.  Yesterday we hit up Westminster Abbey and Buckingham Palace.  They were both amazing.  There are countless famous kings and writers buried there and could hours to figure out who they all are.  It was fun to think that this is the place that every king or queen since 1300-something was crowned.  They even use the same chair! Buckingham Palace was even more amazing.  Because the queen is in Scotland this time of year the palace is open to the public.  We were able to see all of the state rooms which include things like the drawing rooms, the dinning rooms, the thrown room, all the places the queen would entertain diplomats.  My favorite part of the tour was see a display of some of the queens dresses that she wore visiting all of the countries under her reign.  I also loved the ballroom.  It was everything a ballroom should be: beautiful, large (still on of the largest rooms in London), and royal! There was also this amazing art gallery with the most amazing paintigs.  It was like walking through my art history class text book.  There were Rembrants, and Van Dycks, and Ruebens, and Loraines, and Giovannis.  Last night we went to see the Broadway musical Hairspray.  It was buy far the funnest musical I have ever seen! The dancing, the music, the costumes, were simply fabulous!  Today we took the train out to Windsor to see Windsor Castle, the Queens summer home.  It was kind of like Buckingham Place but it seemed to have more history.  It was built over a thousand years ago.  Tons of kings have lived there and I thought it was especially interesting that King Henry the VIII was buried here.  There was also some more amazing art by the same artists in Buckingham but this time there was a huge collections of Da Vinci. When we were in Germany we saw all of these amazing castles in ruin and I would wonder what they would have been like in all of there glory; now seeing these buildings I know! On our way back to the train we tried our first English cuisine.  I had some fish and chips and my mom got this thing called a pasty (it sounds gross but it is just this pastry filled with meat, potatoes, and onion) both were absolutely delightful. When we got back into London  we didn’t know what to do for a night time activity so we walked into Kensington Gardens because Peter Pan was playing.  I thought it was just going to be some fun little show, but it was truly amazing.  It was in this big white tent and it was a show in the round (for all you non-play/musical people that means it was a round stage and all of the seats are in a circle around the stage).  The amazing part is that since they couldn’t have back drops they used the tent as the back drop and projected the scenery onto it.  It would change and move as they flew through the air you could see the rooftops of London and clouds or when they were in Neverland it was a jungle with palm trees blowing in the breeze and a running waterfall.  It was like a movie, it reminded me a little of the ride at California Adventures called Soarin’ Over California.  It was an all adult cast which I thought would be weird but it was perfect.  They were all relly amazing actors and all had amazing Bios.  Our Captain hook was actually …… Hyde.  He is in movies like Titanic, Jumanji, The Mummy… he was great. Tomorrow I move into my home of the next 3 1/2 months and I am excited to meet some new people and make some more memories!