O, how ripe in show . . . those . . . cherries, tempting grow!

Alright, so this post is all about Friday the 17th of June.  This day is mostly centered in Switzerland, but by the end of the day we were in Italy.

So we woke up at 5:30 in the morning to get ready and leave our hotel.  We were all packed and ready to go by 7:00, but we didn't have any food for breakfast.  We wandered around for a bit trying desperately to find something open, and finally found an open bakery.  I got this delicious apricot custard pastry.  The apricots tasted a bit like cobbler, which was really amazing.

Anyway, we headed off to see more beautiful Swiss countryside.  We stopped at two little tiny towns that my mom's mother's side of the family is from.  In the one town I have ancestors from the 1500s and the other from the 1700s before they emigrated to America.  The one was called Eptingen and the other Haefelflingen.  Yeah, sounds a bit like Hufflepuff.  The first one was just this cute little town nestled in this valley that had a small little chapel and a handful of houses.  The other one was a tiny bit bigger and surrounded by all of these cherry trees.  We bought some from a random stand on the side of the road (no person at the stand, you just leave the money and take the deliciousness) and they are without a doubt the most delicious cherries that I have ever had.

AMAZING cherries.  Seriously, if this was all there was to eat for the rest of eternity I would still be content.

Funny story about Eptingen though. So we want to look for the cemetery, on the off-chance that we can see some really old gravestones of our ancestor's friend's descendants because stones from 500 years ago definitely aren't there.  So Dad asks this man who doesn't speak English but proceeded to explain and speak in English to Dad where the cemetery is.  Dad comes back to the car and says that it's just down and to the left of the cow.  So we're thinking, okay, there's a statue or something that we somehow missed, and we start looking for it.  But apparently Dad was talking about an actual cow.  THE cow.  Only one in the town I guess.  It had a cute little cowbell around its neck (although the brown sheep in the next town over did too).  A side note: there seems to have been some decree that all graveyards needed to be started over in 1989, because that's the oldest tombstones that we could find.  Their cemeteries are immaculate by the way.  Neat rows, and clean headstones, and clean little flower plots on each grave.  Swiss.  

Of course I took a picture.  Who do you think I am?

Well, we got back on the main road and continued on through the Swiss countryside until we reached Bern.  It's the capital of Switzerland, but I guess that nothing of much importance happens there, because Zurich and Geneva have way bigger airports.  We went to visit the temple there.  It was the first temple in all of Europe, which I actually didn't realize until we got there.  The temple was closed because it just so happens to be the two weeks that the temple is being cleaned, but we walked around the grounds.  Lorraine and I also made friends with a nice lady from England who now lives just a couple of towns over and was watching her grandkids and let us into the bathroom in the church next to the temple.  

The temple!  I think all of the pictures that have me in them are on my parent's camera.  I need to figure out how to get a hold of those pictures.  

Well, then we headed off to Geneva to pick up David (my older brother) from the airport.  I think that he ended up hanging out at the airport for about three hours waiting for us.  (And we'd gotten up at 5:30 that morning remember!)  I guess he found a nice Portuguese man to talk to for an hour though, so that's alright.  

We found a nice place to park (after driving in circles for a while "getting our bearings" my dad called it) and went to wander the old part of town, because really that's the best part of any town.  We found this church from the time of the Reformation (okay, it was from earlier but they tore off all of the fancy stuff and redid it during the Reformation) and wandered around that for a while.  We climbed to the top of both towers, which was really cool and gave us an awesome view of the lake next to Geneva.

At the top of the South Tower!  There were quite a few stairs.

Then disaster struck!  I dropped my camera, while the lens was open, and it broke.  Probably one of the saddest moments of my life.  My camera has been my constant companion these last two months, and the prospect of not being able to take pictures of Italy was horrifying.  Thankfully, David has a camera (even uses the same battery and type of memory card) and so I actually just stuck my memory card into his camera and have been taking pictures using that, because he doesn't seem to mind so long as he gets pictures of the landscape and scenery and points of interest.  

Yeah, but then we ran over to Calvin's chapel where he preached in Geneva which was pretty neat and also pretty plain, and then it started to rain on us.  I swear, we get perfect weather in London for weeks and weeks and then the two days that I'm in Switzerland it's got to rain and be foggy the entire time.  But we basically ignored the rain, and wandered over to the Reformation Wall.  In addition to all of the normal religion reformers, it had bits of the Mayflower Compact and Oliver Cromwell, which was really cool.  

Then we wandered around for a bit trying to find a cheap dinner in an open place (5:00 everything closes down remember) and finally bought these really delicious panninis from a street vendor.  They were warm and delicious.  We clambered back into the car and took an insane amount of time to drive by the UN.  It was pretty neat seeing all the flags out front and especially seeing the insane amount of land they randomly have in a city that's tight on space, but we kind of got stuck in a traffic jam, which was not so wonderful.  

Once we got out of the slow traffic we headed towards MontBlanc, the tallest of the Alps, and also the tallest mountain in Europe.  We couldn't really see it very well (fog and clouds and rain again) but we took a tunnel right through the middle of the mountain.  When we came out on the other side we were in Italy!  

I don't think that I've seen so many castles in the space of just a few scant hours.  There were always signs pointing out the next castle off the freeway.  Although it's a toll road, so I guess it's not a freeway.  But anyway, Italy was really pretty, in a different way than Switzerland.  Seems to fit the country's personality.  We saw a lot of grapes growing on the hills.  They just build walls into the hill to create flat areas where they can plant grapes.  Something about the heat rising and helping the fruit ripen makes them want to plant on the hills at exceedingly steep angles.  

Well, we basically just drove to our hotel in Torino.  We had to switch rooms once we got there because our room was all smoky, but welcome to Europe, yeah?

Here is a water, look ye

Alright, so for all of you who are a bit behind the times and out of the loop, I'm no longer in London.  My study abroad program has ended.  Of course my blogging hasn't, because there's no way that I'm going to stop blogging now that I've found such an exciting and interesting writing activity that also conveniently doubles as a journal.

So without any further ado, onto Switzerland!  Lorraine and I left the beautiful city of London and, with the assistance of the Tube and the DLR, flew over to Zurich.  We hung out at the airport for about an hour before my parents came and picked us up in their snazy huge rental car that still manages to look European, and we drove towards Zug.  Oh, but in the airport, while we were hanging out we checked out the local shops and found ENORMOUS jars of nutella, like they have at Creperies, and huge stacks of chocolate.  There were no smaller candy bars anywhere in sight.  It was bulk or nothing.  Although actually, they did have a week pack of nutella jars.  Small little jars, one for every day of the week, all in a big pack.  Just the sort of thing that every family should have in their pantry.  

Anyway, we drove through the beautiful country of Switzerland and back to Zug (Pronounced zOOg, not zUG).  We got in fairly late, and had lots of fun looking at the strangest parking garage that I've ever been in.  You park your car on top of this metal ramp, and then when somebody else needs to park somewhere, the metal ramps will slide around, with your car on top of it, to make space for the other people's car.  It's pretty nuts.  But then we went down for dinner at this pizza place that is right on the edge of the lake, and I mean RIGHT on the edge of the lake.  It was really beautiful sitting right there as the sun faded from the sky and night set in.  Our waiter had something like four languages that he offered to speak to us in, including English, before settling on Spanish when he realized that we could understand that as well.  He's from the Dominican Republic, so it was exciting for him to speak his native tongue I suppose in a country full of German, French, Italian, and English speakers.  

Oh yeah, everyone speaks English here.  Some people pretend that they don't speak English (when you ask they say that they don't) but then you'll start trying to ask questions and they'll respond and give you directions in English.  Although there are some exceptions.  Most of the store clerks seem to just speak German.  Probably French too.  

This is a track that you put your shopping cart/bag on while you use the escalator to get up to the next level in the grocery store (called coop, or CoOp).  Kind of nuts, but really very smart. 

On Thursday we woke up and went to the grocery store.  We'll take a moment and talk about Swiss food now, which I know everyone will be totally intrigued by.  Too bad, this is my blog and I write about what I need to record for myself.  

The Swiss are really big on dairy.  When we got on the shuttle at the airport that took us over to border control after leaving the plane they have this music playing in the background, and then random cows mooing. Yeah, Lorraine and I looked at each other to see if we'd both heard the same thing.  So we obviously have been eating Swiss cheese, and then we got some yogurt.  But they have an enormous cheese section in the store and more yogurt than I've ever seen.  They also have this really interesting looking bread that's got dark and light sections in it.  We bought some of that and it's absolutely delicious.  They have a lot of really good French bread too that we got.  Lots of sausage in Zug, because it's definitely in the German part of Switzerland.  And strudel!  I ate a spinach strudel for lunch yesterday.  

Strudel is delicious!

And then, of course, there is chocolate everywhere!  Mostly Lindt (I got some of that yesterday to take home) but also a lot of Tolberlone.  They have great bricks and displays of it everywhere.  It's absolutely insane.  But the other thing that we have learned is Swiss is cherries.  Those'll come up later though.  

So the morning we spent in Zug.  We wandered around the old city section, or at least what remains of it.  The old city was built in the 1200's, but part of it actually fell into the lake in the 14 or 1500's.  Yup.  Big storm came up and there goes the city.  Anyway, cute village.  My mom called it Pinocchio's village, which is actually true in terms of what it looks like.  We went up the clock tower that used to be part of the wall for the first bit of the old city (you get the key from the police station) and met this nice Swiss lady on the way that was giving a tour to some students from various parts of the world, so she helped tell us about the town and the tower.  Then we went over to the city hall and looked around there and met another really nice lady, although this one didn't speak English, who gave us this nice book in German that's all about the hall and has some great pictures.  

Anyway, then we headed out of town to Lucern, or Luzern, depending on what language we're talking in.  This is where Switzerland was founded back in 1289.  Switzerland actually would be rather interesting to study politically because it's sort of a confederation of states and right now it's actually ruled by seven main rulers.  In order to pass any law all seven have to agree and vote for the law.  And yet it's the most immaculate and clean country I've been in.  No trash anywhere, and everything just feels so ordered and nice, even when the streets are winding and random.  

The thing about Luzern though is the really beautiful clear water.  Seriously, the river, Reuss, looked like it was almost pool water, it was that clear and beautiful, but it's just the local river.  We walked across all of these bridges (one is the oldest of its type in Europe, wooden covered bridge you know) and just couldn't stop looking at the water.  We did duck into a Jesuit church for a bit though, which was really neat with its white and pink wooden paneling and red marble.  

Yes, that really is the river.  Can you believe it?

After we tore ourselves away from the river we continued driving, this time towards Interlaken.  We drove past the most beautiful lakes that I have ever seen.  The water was like turquoise and clear and looked almost tropical.  It was probably one of the most beautiful sights of my lifetime.  We drove down next to one of the lakes just as a storm was rolling in, so the water was choppy and beautiful, framed by the mountains that were beginning to be shrouded in mist.  There were some fairly cute German speaking boys hanging around too.  But we hopped back in the car just as it started pouring rain.  We drove through town and up to Lauterbrunnen, which is among the top five most beautiful spots in Switzerland.  I've never seen so many waterfalls in one place before.  We couldn't really see the Alps because of the clouds, which was a bummer, but we hopped out of the car and took a walk along this little Swiss trail past waterfalls and beautiful countryside in the rain.

You know, just chilling in the Swiss countryside.

Well, we chilled there for quite a bit before slowly and leisurely making our way back to Zug.  We did almost take a tram up to the top of the waterfalls, but we took one look at the degree of fog/clouds that were covering the mountains we knew were about and decided that the weather combined with the fading daylight were both good reasons to head back to our hotel.  I swear, we have the most beautiful weather whilst in England and then we go to the Alps and can't see them because of the rain.  It's still so totally beautiful though, so I don't even care.  

Parting is such sweet sorrow

Alright, so we're now writing about Tuesday, my last day in London.  At least with all of my friends and the Center, which at this point is what I'm concerned with.

So I was planning on going to hang out in Hyde Park in the morning to walk about and maybe read my scriptures on the grass, but somehow my phone managed to not go off.  Or maybe it did and I didn't hear it because I was so deeply asleep.  My body woke me up at the usual 8:00 instead, which was a bummer, but whatever.  I had breakfast, showered, and got ready to go.  I was planning on going with Amy, who wanted to do some shopping before going to the British Museum.  But then we're standing there ready to go and Corey casually mentions that he's going to the zoo.  Sydnie and I jumped at the idea and said forget the shopping that we didn't really want to do anyway, and we headed off to the zoo.  Took a nice walk through Regent's Park on the way, so I did get my park walk in after all.

Me at the reptile house.  Of Harry Potter fame.  The very same.  

We spent about four hours at the zoo, and it was one of the best things ever.  We just walked around and looked at all of the animals and watched a lioness stalk and pounce at a duck, otters jumping inside of logs and playing, walked through a tunnel filled with butterflies that tried their best to bowl you over as they fluttered about looking for nectar, and watched penguins stand at attention as a procession passed between them.  It was just a lot of fun.  Probably one of the just plain old funnest things that I've done in Europe.  It wasn't ultra historical or intellectual, so we could just enjoy ourselves and be young people.

Anyway, when we were done with the zoo we were absolutely starving, because it was 2:30 or so and we hadn't had lunch.  So we went over to Camden Market, as it was the nearest food source at hand, and bought lunch and sat down for a while.  Then we went to go look for fruit of some sort, and who should we find walking past the fruit stall we're at but Amy!  She was looking for a bag, so we stopped and chatted for a minute.  But then I realized that it was getting nigh onto three thirty and that I really needed to go to the British Museum.  So I parted company with all of my dear sweet friends (who are usually very sarcastic and not sweet at all, which is one of the reasons that I love them so much) and went off to the British Museum, which is probably the least British place that I've been this whole time.

It's a big blueish-green man with a strange looking goatee.  I'm guessing that's significant.

Props to whoever gets that movie quote first (although I'm not sure what you need a prop for).  Yeah, but for those of you who don't know, the British Museum is full of really cool historical stuff from other countries.  Chunks and broken statues of the Parthenon, random mummies from Egypt, a really cool room full of pictures from an Assyrian lion hunt from sometime around 400 BC, you know.  That sort of stuff.  I saw the Rosetta Stone, which was kind of cool.  It was the only thing, just about, in the whole museum in a case.  Okay, not true, the mummies were in glass cases too.  Everything else they kind of trust that you aren't going to touch.  I spent some time just wandering through the rooms, because I frankly didn't have the energy to get super excited about whatever aspect of history I'd be learning through the plaques next to the objects.  That's what happens when you go to millions of museums in just a couple of weeks.

Anyway, the museum closed and I went on back to the Center, stopping at one of those stupid touristy shops on the way to get some souvenirs.  They're stupid, but we're all getting them.  After dinner we kicked around the Center for a while before going to Paul Rhodes to get brownies, which were good but definitely not the most amazing thing I've ever had.  Anyway, eventually Sarah and I mustered up the energy to go for one more nice stroll.

Beautiful lights!  That's London bridge behind my shoulder.

It was seriously one of the most beautiful things that I've done.  Walking along the river, just enjoying London and reminiscing about everything that we had done was so incredible.  We walked past St. Paul's, and the Globe, and London Bridge, and the Tower Bridge, and the Tower of London, and all of these things that I love so much.  The first week that I was here in London I did essentially the same walk, and it was beautiful then.  It was so much more beautiful last night, and it was a very cathartic sort of thing to do.  Nostalgic one of the girls at the center called it.  And the best part was that we were still discovering corners and nooks and crannies that we didn't know about before.

Anyway, we caught the very last train home on the Tube (we were worried there for a minute that we weren't going to make it, but London's just too beautiful to tear myself away from).  Because it was so late (past midnight) there wasn't anyone else in the Tube car with us, so we took pictures.  Yes, so I've got pictures of my on the Tube!  It was totally fun.

Reading the newspaper, because that's what everyone does on the Tube.

It was the perfect end to my London experience.  It's terribly sad to leave the Center and all of the beautifully wonderful people that lived here with me.  It's sort of like leaving Girl's Camp for the last time right before I moved to Utah.  You're never going to get this same group dynamic again, and never back in London.

However, what I've learned most from London is that Emily's statement of "but you HAVE to.  We're in LONDON." can apply to lots of different things.  Why not say that we're on Earth, so we have to?  Seems sad to stop living and loving just because I'm leaving London.  Which is why, ladies and gentlemen, this blog is going to be revamped whenever I reach America again ('Merica Sydnie) under the new title of Living and Loving Life.  Because really, isn't that what it's all about?

Bring me to the test, and I the matter will re-word

Okay, so this is about Sunday and Monday.  Second to last London post.  Terribly sad.

Alright, so Sunday I totally slept in, which was absolutely amazing and came in incredibly handy later.  When I finally did get up and get ready for church, I also prepared my lesson.  I was teaching sharing time for senior primary, but as Catherine got called home early Saturday morning, there was nobody to teach junior primary's sharing time, which took place at the same time.  So when I finally reached primary come third hour, I was told that I'd be teaching junior AND senior primary at the same time.  Well, you can imagine how well that went over.

You know how you have those days when you walk into a roomful of kids and know that there is no way that they are going to easily sit still and listen.  What they need is to run around the outside of the building four times, take a nap, eat dinner, and then come back.  Not sit in Primary and listen to a lesson.  Well, thankfully, about five minutes into the lesson the primary president, along with all of the kids, told me that I could just switch into English.  However, this caught me a bit off guard, and so the format of the lesson went rather differently.  Anyway, yeah, enough of that I suppose.  I'll save my griping for another time.

Monday was, of course, finals.  So Sunday night/Monday morning I was up really really rather late writing papers and the like.  Of course, it totally paid off because Monday morning I was totally relaxed and ready.  Remember all the sleep I stocked up on Sunday morning?  Yeah, it really came in handy.

Finals went alright.  In history we actually got one last lecture in before our super short multiple choice final.  You know the sort.  You fill out all the answers really quickly and although you acknowledge that some of them are wrong, there's really nothing that you're going to change no matter how long you sit there because you've already written down your best guesses.

Really cool piece that we analyzed at the Saatchi Gallery.

Yeah, so then we headed over to the Saatchi Gallery for our Fine Arts final.  We had a written portion that we turned in earlier that was sort of a reflection on the class, and then we went to the museum where we went around and analyzed different pieces.  We'd picked them out previously so that we could research them and say something intelligent.

Anyway, after that we were really tired so we headed back to the Center.  We've spent a lot of time just talking to each other lately it feels like.  Lots of Monday was sitting around and talking and laughing.  But then we had dinner in the park.  Sack lunches basically just over in the park.

Sarah and I in the park.  This is an awful picture, but I feel compelled to put one up.

Anyway, after our delightful lunch in the park (I finally had a pudding in England, so that was exciting) a group of us went to Harrods.  It's like THE department store in London.  We saw puppies that cost 2000 pounds, a stuffed giraffe that cost 995 pounds, which was admittedly huge, but still.  It was crazy.  It was basically like a mall except that it was all one store.  No big huge open spaces in the middle dividing everything.  It was pretty neat.

Yeah, um, so this is the Globe.  With teddy bears that are moving, putting on a play.  Coolest thing ever.

Yeah, so Harrods was pretty neat.  Big old store.  Or new.  Or whatever.  Can you tell that I'm tired?  Anyway, so then we just came back to the Center and laughed and giggled and reminisced.   

And therefore haste I to the Parliament

Alright, so now for Saturday!  We started off by doing another very important London sort of thing.  We went to Parliament!  They only have tours on Saturday, because they're in session during the rest of the week.

Okay, so to be quite honest, I'm having trouble deciding whether the Tower of London or Parliament was more cool.  They're definitely in my top five favorite things that I've done on this trip.  It was really neat.  Because I've read a bunch of books about the history of England, they were telling all these stories that I'd read about, things that I'd heard about or seen on T.V. and I was there in real life!  It was also pretty cool when our tour guide would mention something like the crown jewels that were kept in the Tower of London and I could think oh yeah, totally saw those yesterday.  Old news.

Big Ben and part of Parliament.  Oh, and me.

So the tour was awesome.  They took us right through where the queen goes when she opens Parliament, and then I stood literally four feet away from the ultra fancy throne that she sits in when opening Parliament.  That was another one of those really neat and surreal moments.  Oh, and they totally had us file into the benches and stand, no sitting allowed of course, where the members of Parliament sit.  We did that in the House of Lords and in the House of Commons.  Torture not to sit of course, but really cool.  We couldn't even get lower than the visitor's gallery when we had our tour of the Capitol.  Another reason to love England.

Anyway, we grabbed some lunch from across the street and then wandered around a bit to find the Cabinet War Rooms.  We thought they would be neat to go through, until we learned that admission was 13 pounds.  They suddenly sounded less cool.  But rather conveniently, the war rooms were located right next to the Trooping of the Color, so we wandered over to check it out.

For those who don't know what the Trooping of the Color is, a little explanation.  The queen's birthday is in April or something like that, but as the weather in April isn't nearly as nice and because she's the queen, she's declared that the second Saturday in June is when her birthday celebration shall take place.  Perks of being the ruler of a country you know.  So Trooping of the Color is lots of troops marching about for the queen's birthday.

We had known that the Trooping of the Color was happening, but we hadn't made plans to go.  But since we were there and there was a crowd to follow, we did.  We stood at the side of the road and watched all the troops go by (kind of the like the Royal Wedding, except that I could see better this time and got better pictures) which was pretty neat.  So we're thinking, okay, well that was cool when all these bobbies start going down the middle of the road with a crowd of people behind them.  So we're thinking that it's obviously not over and that we want to be at the front of that crowd.  So we join the crowd, snake our way up to the front, and end up at the gates in front of Buckingham Palace.  You know, the front ones that are the closest that you can get.  And then this cannon starts firing (it fired 40 or 41 times I forget how many) and the queen and the whole flippin royal family walk out onto the balcony.  I know.  What the random, oh look the queen's waving at us, we'd better wave back.  Then there was a really neat flyover (including these planes that spit smoke in red, white and blue for the colors of the Union Jack) and the royal family went back inside and we're sitting there going oh yeah.  We were randomly in London one morning, followed a crowd, and saw the queen.  No big.

Redcoats!  And British flags!

Yeah, so that was pretty neat.  It was at this point that I realized that we were already a good way through the Central Parks walk, which is what Amy and Sydnie had to do that day.  So I decided to go along because I wasn't sure where the nearest Tube station was, and why not spend a beautiful day walking through London parks?  I don't have much time left to do that.  We ended up finding Hard Rock Cafe (tis the original you know) and this protest rally thing that was, as far as we could tell, protesting the fact that prostitutes get raped.  So that was interesting.

When we finally reached the Center (we were all really tired by this point) we all went and collapsed for a bit.  But then we decided that hours are too precious to waste, so we pushed ourselves up and went to Camden Market.  Amazing place I tell you.  I found a really nifty little bag to give to my youngest sister, so that was a bit of a relief to finally get something (I can't say that I've gotten stuff for everyone in my family yet, unfortunately).

Anyway, then we headed back to the Hard Rock Cafe.  We were hoping to eat dinner there, but that didn't work because there was a great big line and we didn't want to wait, as we all had tons of homework to do.  So we just went into the Rock Shop, or the gift store basically.  Still, it was pretty neat to see the original.

We went to the Creperie for dinner, which was actually really excellent.  I got a Ratatouille crepe, which was absolutely delicious and so warm!  Anyway, after that we just headed back to the Center and spent the night doing a bit of homework.

You shall to the tower

Alright, so we finally reached one of the biggest icons of London.  We're talking about Friday, and we're talking about the Tower of London.  No joke, I was pretty stoked about this.  I think I was more excited for the Tower of London than I was for St. Paul's.  Yeah, really really excited.  I'd been looking forward to this ever since learning that I would be going to England.  Yup, this is going to be a big day.

The thing is, the Tower of London is all about history, and I love history.  And the more I learn about English history the more that I want to know.  Yeah, so if I'm geeking out (as Amy would say) or having a nerd moment (Tara supplied that phrase tonight) or basically being weird and getting excited about ridiculous stuff, you have my full permission to skip the majority of this post.  Because usually that would be quite unacceptable.

Yeah, that's me in front of the White Tower.  I went in there.

Anyway, basically the first thing that we did was go to see the Crown Jewels.  That means the Star of Africa and the Second Star of Africa and crowns and scepters and those nifty little balls that they hold in either their right or left hand to symbolize something important during a coronation (we had a few signs and picture contradicting each other on that one) and tons and tons of gold platters and the biggest golden punch bowl with an enormous ladle.  It was really neat.  I kept having to remind myself that all of those sparkling gems that are throwing off colors in all directions are real diamonds and not fakes.  That's about the time that your head starts spinning.  The crown jewels are priceless you know?  Like seriously priceless because although you probably could set a price on the actual gems (an enormously high price) it's impossible to put a price on both the gems and the historical value.  Mmm hmm.

Yeah, so then we took a tour with one of the beefeaters.  He basically walked us around all the towers and explained the history of them (lots of "in this tower so-and-so was kept a prisoner.  This is how they died.") which was really cool.  I guess that I hadn't fully understood that being kept prisoner in the Tower wasn't simply just one little block of places that you were kept prisoner in.  Could be any number of towers.  Our tour guide/beefeater was SUPER entertaining.  Kept making cracks about America and France and Australia.  Oh, and he kind of sort of flirted with me.  He was talking about one of the illegitimate sons of King Charles II and mentioning how he was young and handsome.  Then he says, "rather like me you know" and he totally winks, smiles, and blows a kiss at me.  Eye contact and stuff you know.  It was pretty hilarious.  (Especially when you consider that as a beefeater, he has 18 years or army experience and was a sergeant at one point and all that jazz.  Just making comments and stuff for fun.  HILARIOUS.)

We went into the chapel on our tour where Anne Boleyn, Catherine Howard, and Jane Grey are buried, which was like ultra geek out moment.  Then we wandered through several of the towers, getting some awesome pictures of both Tower Bridge and the White Tower along the way.

I'm on the Tower of London and Tower Bridge is behind me.  It was a really surreal moment.

 Anyway, it started to rain on us, so we tried to find a way down to find food.  It was nigh unto impossible, so we randomly walked through several tower and exhibitions on random things (for example, crowns through the ages.  More royal crowns!)  We went and grabbed a surprisingly normal-priced lunch from the cafe that they had built in the middle of the courtyard (although we still had to ask for directions from the worker in the gift shop).  I got this baguette with sausage and onion in it and Sydnie and I had fun trying all of the different sauces that they had to put on it.  The best was this tangy sort of yellow sauce and the worst this ultra ultra spicy mustard that I will be happy to never have again.

Next we went into the White Tower (I really couldn't leave until we'd done that) and walked through the collection of armor and swords and jeweled rifles that were there.  It was really really neat.  The White Tower is a Norman structure that's still standing.  Most of the Norman stuff I have seen has been along the lines of, if-you-look-in-this-hole-that's-covered-by-a-piece-of-glass-you-can-see-the-Norman-foundations-of-this-Gothic-cathedral type.  So the fact that we were in a building that was originally Norman and is still standing was really cool.  We walked into the small chapel in the White Tower and it was so clearly rough cut stone and so old that I was in complete awe.

Well, we made it out (through the gift shop) eventually and got distracted for a bit in the gift shop just outside of the tower.  I've been in way too many of these gift shops, so Sydnie and I goofed off for a bit with the stuffed animals and such while Amy did her legitimate shopping.  Then we headed over to Westminster.

BEAUTIFUL roses.  Oh yeah, that building in the background in Westminster.  It looks crooked in the picture, because the flowers are the highlight.

Yeah, I know what you're all thinking.  You're thinking, wait a second Laura, you're already BEEN to Westminster.  That was the whole Evensong thing on Sunday.  Well, yes.  That's what I thought too.  But I was with people who wanted to go, and what I wanted to do most (British Museum) I wouldn't have enough time for before dinner.  So I was like okay, yeah, sure, whatever, let's go take a tour of Westminster.

Okay, um, best decision ever!  I mean, yeah, cool cathedral and stuff except for oh wait!  Here's Queen Elizabeth's grave!  And Mary, Queen of Scots!  And Mary, Queen of England (Bloody Mary).  And oh here's Chaucer's grave.  And Dickens, and Handel, who had 3000 people randomly show up to his small and private funeral, and a million other important writers and stuff (Lewis Carrol anyone?  Livingstone?  Now I'm standing on Woodsworth).  Then we go farther down, and there's Isaac Newton, nice as you please with a wonderful monument and everything.  That was a really really really cool moment for me.  And Darwin's right over there.  Plus there's tons of kings and queens buried all over the place, and the coronation chair where, you know, they've been crowning people since the end of the Battle of Hastings and the Stone of Scone is placed.  (It's in Scotland right now.  Been there, seen that.)  Yeah, it was really neat.

Well, Amy went back to the Center for dinner crew, but Sydnie and I went over to the Saatchi Gallery next.  Homework assignment to run over to the gallery before our final and pick out a piece to analyze and present to the group.  We got lost about three times on our way there (we used the map at the Tube stop, the bus stop, and the bike rental stop before we figured out which direction the museum was actually in, which is, unfortunately, rather typical when Sydnie and I are together in strange areas of cities) but we finally made it!  I really actually loved it a rather lot, which surprised me.  It's full of sculptures and it's all Postmodern art, which I wouldn't think that I'd be inclined to like.  But as we're going back on Monday for our final I'll talk more about that then.

A match! 'tis done

Alright, so today were writing all about Thursday.  Thursday stared off really boring, basically classes and homework and showering and eating leftovers for lunch and the like, but then things got more exciting later on.

We went to a cricket match!  Yeah, it was pretty cool.  We all thought that it was going to be some sort of small game, not a lot of people, and that we would go and think oh cool, cricket.  You know, whatever.  Except then we were exiting the Tube stop and realized that the continuous stream of people moving in one direction were all going to the cricket match.  It was like going to a BYU football game.  I guess that people really do like cricket.  Groups of young men, all of these people who had clearly just gotten off work in the business district (blue shirts and cases), families with all of their small children, and mostly just lots and lots of men.  That was a problem later.

Anyway, cricket was pretty cool.  I read up on the very basics of it (at risk of sounding like Hermione) so we were able to follow alright.

At the cricket match!

Yeah, but unfortunately, we were all rather quickly bored of it, because obviously cricket's not our game.  I've noticed that if I walk sports unaccompanied by an enthusiast, my attention span is really short.  So Sydnie, Corey and I told stories to each other.  The ridiculous sort where everyone tells one line and the idea is to move the ridiculous plot line forward if possible.  Yeah, it was fun.  Luckily we were able to drown out the noise of the men sitting in front of us who were getting progressively more and more drunk.  So, because we were happily entertaining ourselves, we left early and went to Abbey Road.

Abbey Road!  There's lots of graffiti there (quite understandably). 

We did get a crossing the road pic (someone else's camera).  Not an exact copy, but there were four of us!  It's hard to take pictures in the middle of the road because there's cars always passing by, mostly taxis.  It was pretty neat though, and shout out to the Beatles!

Then we went on the Bloomsbury walk.  It was my last one, so that was exciting in and of itself.  Amy, Sydnie, Corey and I went on the walk.  Amy was leading, although Corey assisted at certain points (like when we ran into a garden that was locked and had to go around and therefore got lost.)  We passed by some pretty cool things, like a street called Handel Street (he did some concerts there to help support a hospital), and the house where Charles Dickens lived.  The highlight was the British Museum.

Back of the British Museum.  There were lions.  Yeah.

In front of the British Museum.  We're cool.

Anyway, cool walk with not an awful lot of getting lost, which is the really important part.  It was nice too because we just were able to chat a bunch and now I know where the British library is.  Got in a few good flower pictures too and saw lots of lovely circular blue plaques that have come to define my life.

Yeah, so then we headed back to the Center, with a short stop in Tesco.  We most definitely bought Krispy Kreme doughnuts.  Because, okay, they had mango cheesecake doughnuts.  They have been taunting me every single time that I walked into that store, and so we bought them and a pint of milk and took them home so that we could just sit and collapse.

I will be horribly in love

Alright, now about Wednesday, another one of the most amazing days of my life.  Seems to be a frequent occurrence in my life these days.

It started at 5:50 in the morning when I woke up to help with breakfast crew.  You see, the bus was leaving at 7:00 to take us to the London temple, which is way outside of the normal part of London.  It's like out by Gatwick airport, which means it took us two hours to get there by bus.  (City traffic . . . you know.)  Yeah, so really early morning, but totally worth it.

Amy and I in front of the temple.  Or off to the side, whatever.

The temple was really beautiful.  It was precisely what I needed too.  It was peaceful, and there was quiet thinking time, and then we had time to walk around the grounds for a bit (I was like the second one in line somehow, so I finished before most of group, so we had lots of looking about time) and it was just wonderful.  I'm so glad that we went, because our London experience would've been so different without it.

Well, we got back really late, so we just went to Nando's for lunch and spent the remaining part of the afternoon doing homework and kitchen duty.  (Yeah, kitchen duty ends Thursday and I couldn't be more relieved.)  But AFTER dinner the most amazing thing ever happened.

To quote Sydnie, "Much Ado with Doctor Who!"  Yeah, we went and saw Much Ado not at the Globe (I already did that, remember?) but in a normal theater with David Tennant playing Benedict.  He plays Doctor Who in the popular British TV series, but for those of us who haven't watched that, he is Barty Crouch Jr. in Harry Potter.  Not to mention incredibly attractive.

We were so happy and giddy.  And we had chocolate.

Besides the obvious attraction of the main actors (the lady who played Beatrice has also starred on Doctor Who and been in other films, but I'm not entirely sure which) the play was really good.  They decided to set the play in the 1970s - ish era (I think that's right.  when was it popular for little boys to wear really short shorts and for grown up boys to wear shorts that sometimes only went down to mid-thigh?) and it was basically in a beach house the whole time.  So that made for really interesting dynamics, because they were drinking and smoking and stuff like that as they lounged around on beach chairs.  And throwing techno dance parties.  They had a costume party, and there was totally a Darth Vadar and a Leah.  Yeah, Shakespeare and Star Wars have finally come together.  It was epic.  Worth watching the play just for that.  

I had lots of fun comparing the play to the one in the Globe and seeing how different lines were delivered and different scenes staged and so forth.  I really do love Shakespeare.  Basically it was awesome, and I won't bore you with any more of the details or my analysis of the play and the characters.  But seriously, so amazing.  Sigh.

Your cake there is warm within

So this post is all about Tuesday, June 7.  It's probably my most British day of this entire trip, and it was freaking epic!

Okay, so the day started off pretty normal.  Breakfast and getting ready and stuff.  We didn't have anything as a group until 12:30, so the morning was free.  Most of my friends either scattered right after breakfast, resigned themselves to a morning of homework, or fell asleep (you'd be surprised by the number of people in this last category).  As it appeared that no one was going anywhere spectacular, I decided that I'd head off to the Tate Modern and get my art homework done.  Several people had gone the day before, but I was busy doing other stuff and between dinner duty and everything hand't had the time.  So I dressed myself up in my black skirt and my very European looking coat, fixed my hair, and headed off to the St. Paul's Tube stop.  I was dressed up for later in the day, so I wouldn't have to deal with it.

Because everything opens at 10:00 in Europe (seriously, and it closes at 5:00), I took my time getting to the Tate.  I took a bunch of pictures in front of St. Paul's of myself, because I realized that I didn't have a really awesome one.

You can almost believe that I didn't take the picture of myself.  I'm getting better at it, aren't I?

Anyway, then it was across Millennial Bridge to the Tate Modern, getting to the museum a scant four minutes after it had opened for the day.  I spent nearly two hours at the museum wandering through the galleries filled with Modern art.  It's not really my sort of thing, but it was neat and thought-provoking enough.  I probably did more thinking in this museum than in the others both because of the nature of the pieces and the fact that I was alone.

Interesting observation.  As I took the Tube and walked to the Tate at 10:00 there were only business people about.  Men in suits (and blue collared shirts, because that's the thing to do) and women in their straight black skirts with their hair pinned up and their nice collared blouses and coats.  Nobody was taking any pictures.  If I hadn't had my camera out, I would've blended right in.  When I left the museum the streets were absolutely thronged (seriously 50 times more people) with student groups and packs of American teenagers and so forth.  And then all walked slowly and were very difficult to get around, while the business people were much more courteous and easy to work with.  So earlier in the morning London can be a very different place.

Anyway, I rushed back to the Center, arriving barely in time to run into everyone who was going out the door so that we could attend tea in the Kensington Garden Palace.  That's right.  Tea time in a palace.  Heck yes.

Yeah, that's me pouring more hot water into my tea.  Herbal of course, and caffeine free.  This was a BYU sponsored and planned event.

 The tea wasn't actually that bad.  You know, after you'd added two or three lumps of sugar and gotten over the fact that it was going to taste like flavored water no matter what.  It was so totally fancy and British though.  I mean, we had a miniature orange tree in the middle of our table.  And they gave us these little towers with treats on them.  Cucumber sandwiches (with the crusts sliced off of course) and tarts and chocolate muffins and the most AMAZING scone I've ever had in my life.  You open your scone (still perfectly warm) and spread jam on it and then put clotted cream on top and then you take a bite and go straight to heaven.  No dying required.  And no, I'm not being melodramatic.  I'm dead serious.  I think that scone is probably the most delicious thing that I've had in my life (although that Cookie Cup Explosion from the Slug and Lettuce is a serious contender.  Hmm.  I might have to get back to you on that actually.)

Now, if that wasn't enough to make my day perfect (and it was) we followed it up by playing our very own game of cricket!  That's right, ladies and gentlemen, I, Laura, have now played cricket in Kensington Gardens after a delightful tea at Kensington Palace.  We obviously ran back to the Center and changed out of our skirts first, but it was really fun.  Mostly because Sydnie and I were both tired and making full use of our considerable wit and knowledge of movies to entertain ourselves.  Yes, that was partially sarcastic.  Throwing curses at each other using sticks we found on the ground isn't particularly witty, but it was sure fun.

And guess what?  I was actually able to hit the cricket ball!  Ironically Lorraine was pitching while I was up to bat.  And no, I'm not sure if in cricket you speak of someone being up to bat.  I grew up in America, give me a break!  It was really fun though.  I haven't played something in a big group like that for a couple of years it feels like, and it was a beautiful day with lovely trees, and we were playing freaking cricket!  We're going to go watch a match on Thursday, so this was sort of preparation.  A bunch of Americans who know essentially nothing about cricket mucking about in the park . . . so awesome.

Well, after our amazing cricket match we headed back to the Center, got distracted by YouTube (Sydnie and I had to listen to all of the many songs we had been singing in the park) until it was time for me to do dinner crew and dinner.  But after dinner we had tickets to go see Mousetrap.

Actually, Sydnie, Amy and I were about five minutes late to the play.  Very complicated reasons, the primary one being that we forgot to map out the time in our heads (Half an hour for the Tube, and then ten minutes on either end for walking to your actual destination is the usual way that I do it).  We also had a bit of difficulty in knowing where precisely the theater was, but we made it and they let us in, which we were so grateful for!

Mousetrap!  Esme, the director's daughter, made the picture. 

Mousetrap is the oldest continually running play.  It's been on for something like 59 years, and this was the 24,386th performance.  There was a marker on the wall that keeps count.  It' s a bit of a murder mystery (think like the movie Clue) with an ending that the audience is always asked not to reveal.  It was pretty amazing, and it definitely kept you on edge and caught up.  Totally fun and amazing.

And thus ended a most epic and British day.  Blending in with business people, attending an art museum, tea in Kensington, cricket in the park, and a play in West End.  So legit.

And I will undertake all these to teach

Okay, so this is just a really quick post about Saturday and Sunday, and then I'll be 100% caught up.  Exciting, I know.  And it's only 1:00!

Alright, so Saturday Amy, Catherine and I had planned to go to Cadbury world, which is basically like Willie Wonka's chocolate factory, except that it's Cadbury chocolate, which is way more delicious.  However, you have to take a train to get there and the last admittance is at 3:00.  So with that preface, you can pretty much guess what happened.  All of our plans of waking up early and going were shot to pieces because, if you recall, we were all absolutely exhausted from Ireland.  So then we were heading off to the train station to catch a later tour time.  Except for guess what?  The faithful Tube decided to shut down the Victoria line!  This was particularly annoying because it was open the night before when we'd used it to get home.  Yeah, so the whole figuring out what other lines to take and so on and so forth, we didn't get to the train station until it was too late to catch a train that would get us there in time.

Yeah, so major bummer.  Amy and I bought gelato to console ourselves.  Then I just headed back to the center and blogged a lot (Can't you tell?) and do homework.  So it was a fairly productive day, and the evening was fun when everyone got back from all over the place and was telling stories about Rome, and Venice, and Germany, and Paris, and Normandy, and so on and so forth.

I don't have pictures for these days, so this is a random candy bar that I ate in Ireland.  I ignored the instructions.  The store clerk teased me when I bought this.

Alright, onto Sunday.  Basically I spent Sunday morning preparing my Sharing Time lesson.  Yes, that's right folks, I taught Senior Primary sharing time this last week.  In the freaking Spanish branch.  To be quite honest, I haven't been that nervous about something in years.  Churning stomach, sweaty palms, the whole deal whenever I thought about it all morning.  When I actually got there I did a lot better though and was calm, cool, and collected throughout the whole lesson.  You know, besides stumbling over Spanish and getting corrected by the Primary President as to the correct word for the word to grow.  You'd think if I was talking about faith and seeds I would've bothered to cement the word crecer in my mind.

Actually, the whole thing went rather well.  The kids were the best behaved that I've seen them so far.  There were ten of them, and I don't actually quite know all their names.  I'm going to fix that next week when I teach again.  I ran out of initial material after the first fifteen minutes, and I still had ten minutes to go, so we opened up to Alma and read more about seeds and held a discussion about good seeds and bad seeds.  Yeah, I lost their attention the last five minutes.  But they were all intently listening before that, which I was proud of because I wasn't even telling stories, which is sort of my forte in keeping children's attention.  Basically, it was a massive relief, and I'm feeling much more confident about next week as a result.

This is random picture of Molly and I at Primark.  We were bored.  It's kind of THE clothing store around (and I'm not entirely sure if that's London or the Center) but I really didn't feel like shopping that night.

Anyway, ignoring the random picture that I decided to insert for lack of color in this post, there were a couple of other eventful things on Sunday.  The first is that we got two dinner invites (I can't go to one of them, because I have tickets to a play that night), the second that the Branch President realized that next week is our last week and none of us have given a talk (he visibly gulped when we said next week was our last) and the third that it was pouring rain when we got out of church, so we showed up at the Center for dinner positively starving and sopping wet.  Yup, it was pretty awesome.  And I'm on kitchen duty this week, so I ate dinner in about five minutes and then got to jump up (still a bit wet) to help clean up the kitchen.  Joy.

We talk here in the public haunt of men

Alright, so now we're onto Friday!  We spent a grand majority of the morning (like an hour and a half after breakfast and packing to leave the hostel) trying to figure out the really annoying bus system in Dublin.  We couldn't find a simple bus map that would tell us the names of the bus stations or show the routes or anything.  You had to already know the names of the stops that you wanted to get to, and there wasn't a good map anywhere.  We finally gave up on it when even the tourist information couldn't help us, and we decided that we would pay two euros extra each to get a taxi.  Wasn't worth the time.

We spent the morning wandering around the first part of Dublin we had stumbled into.  If you remember, the first night that we were there everything was closed because it was past five o'clock, so this time we wandered through all of the shops.  You know, souvenir-y shopping.  Although I promise it wasn't all souvenirs!  We went into the really interesting looking shops too.  And we went and bought food from Tesco to be our dinner, as we would be on the train during dinner time.

Anyway, lunch time finally rolled around, so we set off to find a pub.  We found one that looked okay called O'Shea's.  It was connected to a hotel, but it seemed legit.  The food was pretty good too.  There was a stag party going on in the next room over at the bar, so that was kind of funny as well.  And we found sauce labeled HP, which naturally means Harry Potter sauce!

Come on, it's totally Harry Potter!  What else would it be?

Amy and I in the pub!

The funny thing about Ireland is that the food that they're most known for is their alcohol, and for obvious reasons we weren't going to get any of that.  So an Irish pub was about as close as we could get to the experience.  It was tons of fun.

After that we hailed a taxi and headed back to the dock to catch our ferry and then our trains.  We had some time in Wales in between the ferry and the train, so we went out on this bridge and took pictures and admired the absolutely gorgeous blue water.  I've decided that Wales is my favorite.  It was so beautiful.  And then we drove through Wales on the train, and it was so peaceful and beautiful.  I loved it, and took a bunch of pictures of Wales through the window.  Made me SO glad that I went.

Oh yeah!  We ate our fabulous dinner too!  Baguettes, and cheese, and apples.  It was freaking delicious.  Probably one of the best dinners that I've had in a long time.

Doesn't it look good?

And thus ended the excursion to Ireland.  Oh, although funny story.  For those of you who were attentive to my previous posts, you'll remember that Amy didn't have her passport with her, and we were trying to get into the UK.  So when we got off the ferry we knew that we were going to have to go through Customs and try to work it out.  So we're all praying really hard, and were rewarded with a miracle!  That day the border control decided to just check for suspicious activity rather than check passports.  So we walked off the ferry, grabbed our luggage, and struck up a conversation about chocolate or something equally frivolous as we waltzed right past the customs officials.  When we made it to the lobby in Wales Amy just about collapsed.  Okay, so we all did.  It was such a relief!  (For the record, she DID have a valid passport and everything, it was simply in London rather than with us.  So it's not like we were being really illegal.)

Anyway, when we got to London it was back on the Tube and then home.  Seriously getting back on the Tube felt like walking into your house after you've been on vacation for a long time.  London's becoming home for now.

Thine, Ireland is thine

Alright, so this post is about the full day that I had in Ireland.  This was Thursday, June 2, for those of you who might be keeping track (because I'm obviously not).

We woke up in the morning and went down to breakfast around a quarter to eight and we started to finish the plans we'd made the night before.  If you remember, I kind of inadvertently shut those down when I realized that being really really tired made me rather cross and if I didn't want to cross anyone, I would do better to go to sleep.  So we spent some time deciding where to go that morning, and finally settled on the seaside town of Bray that was under an hour's journey away by train (light rails sort of a thing).  We were hoping that we wouldn't miss out on the green hills, but quite honestly, I think that this was the best decision that we made all day.

Bray was beautiful.  There was this magnificent silverly water (the sun hadn't fully risen yet, and there was this awesome mist effect going on) that turned to a beautiful blue as the day wore on.  There were huge rocks on the beach, and packed sand down by the shore with bits of debris swept up all over the place.  And then you stand with your back to the sea and there's the town surrounded by great big green hills.  We walked on this path that took us up into this hill and was on cliff, so one side was beautiful green Irish hill and the other was beautiful water and sand.  It was so perfect and beautiful, I didn't even mind the enormous blister that developed on my heel.

Us girls on the beach!  See the hill in the background?

BEAUTIFUL green hill and the water all in one shot.  (And I know you're excited to get two pictures of me at one location, admit it.)

So we were in Bray for a few hours just hiking and enjoying how beautiful it all was.  Seriously, the best idea ever.  We stopped at some place for lunch (they had a smoothie called Laura's Summer Sunset that had MANGOES in it and I seriously almost got it because it was so fantastic, but I didn't) and got croissant-style sandwiches and made friends with a really small black and white bird that wanted our food.  Anyway, then we headed back to Dublin, because we had some very important things to see.  For example, Oscar Wilde's house, the Book of Kells, Trinity College, the site of the first performance of Handel's Messiah (that was my favorite) and a lovely stroll down Temple Bar.  Oh, and of course . . .

Palm trees!  (I wore a green shirt for Ireland that day too, see?)

Yeah, so background story to the palm trees.  When Lorraine and I were rerouted way back at the beginning of this crazy trip (see like the first post on this blog for full details, or at least partial details) we saw palm trees in L.A.  We started joking about how we were fooling our parents.  They thought we were going to rainy England (which has been surprisingly NOT rainy) but we were really going to run off to a tropical island with palm trees.  So we took a picture next to them, pointing at the palm trees.  Then I go to Ireland and lo and behold on Trinity College there's just a bunch of palm trees sitting there!  Ta da!  Had to take a picture of course!

The Book of Kells was pretty neat, but I really liked the Long Room or whatever it was called that had a bunch of other neat papers and journals and such.  The coolest things in the room (in my personal opinion) was the bones of this giant from way back.  He was like seven feet tall and had an enormous ribcage, so he must have been HUGE!  It was a growth defect or something.  The other really neat thing was this harp that, they say, is the oldest harp found in Ireland.  Harps are really really neat, even if I don't know much about them.  I was kind of upset that I couldn't take a picture of it.  (Honestly, what's up with these places not letting you take pictures of cool things?)

Well, in the midst of our wanderings we stumbled upon the Dublin Shakespeare Festival which was happening that week at Trinity College.  Being the total Shakespeare nuts that we are (I was with three English majors, and then there was me, who obviously loves Shakespeare, and then Molly) we decided that we were going to see Romeo and Juliet.

Romeo and Juliet!  Note Amy's stylish socks with her shoes.  (Ducks the flying object.  Love you Amy!)

The play was really good, and we were perfectly situated to see both Romeo and Juliet during the tower scenes, unlike the people on the other side of the theater.  I'd never seen Romeo and Juliet live before, so I was really glad that I saw it.  However, we were all freaking exhausted, so I'm afraid that we were rather giddy and spent the entire intermission and a good portion of the second half stifling giggles.  Amy found that in the very nice Elizabethean tights that the men were wearing (yeah.  Not as tight as the ones guys wear for ballet, but still.) Benvolio had a slight on the back of his thigh.  And then there was the glare that Amy threw at Jason when he scoffed at the "womanly tears" Romeo was succumbing to.  Yeah, it was a great play both in the fact that it was awesome Shakespeare and in other entertainment value coming from people who had been walking around all day and gotten very little sleep.

And so ended my first day in Ireland.  It was pretty awesome, and I'd fit in most everything that I had wanted to do in Ireland except for, of course, eating in an Irish pub.  And so stayed tuned for tomorrow folks!