Days 53 and 54: more London!!

So I left you all with the intrigue that we'd just missed seeing a prince. Yeah, apparently, we'd just missed him, but that's okay! It wasn't William, Harry, or Charles... eh, just your average British prince. No big deal :) After Westminster Abbey, we walked about the Parliament building, which (in case you didn't know) is absolutely gorgeous! Just beautiful! And it sits rights on the Thames, so you can look down the river and see so much of London, including the London Eye! Unfortunately, you can't actually go inside the Houses of Parliament except during the summer. :( That just means that I have to go back to London sometime during the summer! From Westminster, we walked relatively aimlessly in a northwest direction. We passed by 10 Downing Street (where the Prime Minister lives... shame it's not Hugh Grant) and the Horse Guards Palace, where the soldiers are horses have to be very stoic and can't smile or laugh! We then had a short stay in St. James' Park before heading toward Piccadilly Circus! Sadly, there was lots of construction, so it wasn't quite as fabulous as I remembered. Oh, and it was raining! But I did see Lillywhite's, which I distinctly remember spending both too much time and money in when I visited in 10th grade. :) From Piccadilly Circus, we wandered, saw some street vendors, just explored, and ended up getting hot chocolate. By this point, we were all tired and a little wet, so we ventured back to the hostel to get ready for Billy Elliot. Upon arriving at the hostel, we basically crashed for an hour or so (we were allowed to be exhausted after traveling and less than 6 hours of sleep).  Then, it was Billy Elliot time!!! And there were really no words to describe how amazing the show was (I mean, I'll try to describe it anyway since my words are basically all you have :) ) So the three of us are sitting in Row A, yes the front row, about 3 feet from the edge of the stage. Even though you can't see the floor on most of the stage, you get to see the FACES of the performers and they can see you! It's basically the coolest thing ever. Plus, the boy who was playing Billy Elliot is probably the cutest 14 year old I've ever seen. His name is Fox and he looks like he's maybe 12. But really, he could sing, dance, and was so so so cute. The show was just FABULOUS! I mean, if you haven't seen the show, you should definitely have to! (The movie just doesn't suffice!) But anyway, after the show, we dragged ourselves back to the hostel and passed out. Oh, and somewhere in there we got dinner... I don't really remember when or what :)

And now, Friday-- the second full day of London! We allowed ourselves to sleep in a little, but not too much. There's a lot in London (if you didn't know), and we had only 4 days to do it ALL! First stop, Leicester Square. Basically, if you want show tickets (cheaply-ish), this is where you go! It was not as exciting as I remember, but it's London, so it was still awesome. Leicester Square is only a short walk to Trafalgar Square... which is super neat!

The highlight, well the middle of the square is Nelson's column, built to commemorate Nelson's death at the Battle of Trafalgar (a battle that the British won in the Napoleonic Wars). This column is surrounded by four huge lions, which people love to climb and take pictures with. :) But there are also a few fountains and the National Gallery sits on one edge of the square, and although we didn't go in, I hear that it's fantastic! So after Trafalgar Square, we headed to Buckingham Palace to watch the Changing of the Guard. We walked along St. James' Park and joined the huge crowds for the ceremony. Now, it was a pretty cold day (as in freezing!) and despite the number of people, I was COLD. Plus, because there are SO many people, it's hard to see anything, and to be honest, I was a little disappointed. But!! It all turned out to be worth it... At one point, the band (the military one) starts to play... and the intro sounds really, really familiar. I mean, it sounded like the beginning of the Star Wars theme, but really?The Changing of the Guard band playing Star Wars? I don't think so. Ah! But these are the times in life that I LOVE being wrong. About ten seconds in, there is the distinctive duh-duh-duh-nuh-nuh-nuh... (and so on... you know the song!) and lo and behold, they're playing the theme to Star Wars. How cool! I was completely flabbergasted! So much for "God Save the Queen." And after, Star Wars, they played music from "Les Miserables" and then Sergeant Pepper's :) But, the highlight (perhaps of my life, well not really, but close) was the band's closing number. Yes, it was ABBA. They played "Dancing Queen" and "Mamma Mia," and I almost passed out with excitement (and maybe a little from cold). After the band stopped playing, we decided that nothing could top that, so we headed out! We walked to the nearest tube station and set our sights on the Tower of London! Upon getting off the tube, we were starved so we searched and found a cute pub-ish place to eat... and this photo is called "Our Drinks of Choice."

Can you guess which drink belongs to me? (Yes, it's the beer.) Lunch took a bit longer than we'd expected, so we didn't end up getting to the Tower of London until a bit after two (if I remember correctly). And being the nerd I am, I knew that I would want longer than 2 hours inside, so we bought our entrance tickets (for the next morning) and proceeded to walk across Tower Bridge. And if you didn't know, Tower Bridge, not London Bridge, is the gorgeous, gorgeous bridge across the Thames; I probably took 50 pictures of it. Once across the river, we walked along it, exploring a few shopping streets and seeing Shakespeare's Globe along the way. The Globe is right near the Tate Modern Art Museum, which we did not go into (although again, I hear it's awesome), and the Millenium Bridge. This bridge, even though I'd walked across it before, I was SUPER excited to go across it again. Why? Watch the first few minutes of "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" and then you'll understand why Genevieve and I kept shouting "Potter fixed it! It's been magically restored!" (Yes, we said that, but no, we did not shout :) ) If you keep walking in the direction that the bridge leads you, literally you run into St. Paul's Cathedral, which is magnificent. Absolutely magnificent.
We walked around the outside, explored the gift shop and then entered the sanctuary to hear an Evensong.  The three of us were probably in the first 15 people there, and I'm so glad we were because one of the priests invited the first group to sit behind the choir, closer to the altar. Sadly, no pictures were allowed... and I'm not sneaky enough to take decent pictures without people seeing me. But we were sitting in the booths where important people or the larger choir would sit. Unbelievable! It was just amazing.  We then left St. Paul's, spent almost 90 minutes in a Starbucks (just relaxing) before walking along the Thames to the London Eye.  We didn't end up going on it (yet), but it was so beautiful at night and there was the backdrop of Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament. Just gorgeous...
And sadly, I have to leave you again. This whole going to classes thing really gets in the way!

Days 45-53: Rock of Cashel and part of London

And I'm back... and this time for real. This will be a real entry! So... a day that was a long time ago (February 10) was just an ordinary day, a Wednesday.  And the day following (Thursday, February 11) was again ordinary, except for the fact that it was the end of R&G week! Since I had not skipped a single class during that week, I skipped my last class on Thursday and instead ate fresh donuts (seriously, the best donuts EVER) and watched lube wrestling (it wasn't quite as weird as it sounds, though close). And then... I might have pretended to accomplish something, probably REU applications (that should have been done already). Friday we were planning to go to Cobh, but someone said that the weather wasn't supposed to be nice, so we didn't. And of course, we had a sunny day :) But that was fine! Sleeping in was fantastic.  And Saturday was the Arcadia trip to the Mitchelstown Caves and the Rock of Cashel. And no photos were allowed inside of the caves, so here’s a photo of me with the sign!
We had a great tour of the caves, which were a fantastic 55 degrees (Fahrenheit) and that felt amazing as it was not nearly that warm outside.  Let’s just say that the caves were absolutely gorgeous! I could have spent a really, really long time inside and I was desperate to take pictures… but oh well! The landscape around the caves was gorgeous too! Oh, and since this was an Arcadia trip, we were having a photo contest, the theme: Romance, as it was the day before Valentine’s Day. So several people tried to take “romantic” photos the whole day… No one really succeeded as far as I know, though. After we left the caves, we stopped in the town of Cashel to have lunch. Arcadia was supposed to have made a deal with a cute little restaurant, but there was definitely a miscommunication, as the restaurant wasn't to open until mid-March. So all of us ate at this Italian restaurant, where I had a hamburger (how very American of me). But then! The Rock of Cashel! And yes, it is a rock but a very large one, i.e. a hill made of rock.  And there's a church and former monastery and cemetery on top, and most importantly, a beautiful view of the countryside.
We had a pretty good tour and learned a lot about the history of the Rock of Cashel (sadly, I don’t remember much of it). Once I upload more pictures, I’ll put the link to them here :) Anyway, the Rock of Cashel was beautiful! And although the weather was cold and a little damp (VERY Irish), it was a good day! Sunday was spent “working,” I’m sure… I might have actually been somewhat diligent since I was going to London in only 3 days, but no promises.  And then Monday was the start of three very crazy, mostly sleep-deprived days...  Not only did I have laundry to do, I also had homework and REU applications... Oh yeah, and packing for 5 days in London! Those three days were definitely a blur... essentially, I remember that somehow I got everything done that needed to be done AND running to the bus station to catch the bus to the airport (we weren't late, just anxious).  But we (Genevieve, Bridget, and I) made it to the bus station, I accidentally threw my bus ticket away, I found it again (in the trash--oops), we got on the bus, rode it to the deserted Cork airport. We managed to get there pretty early and then security was almost a joke... I didn't have to take off my jacket or my shoes--it was fantastic!
We bummed around for a bit and then made it to our gate (not too hard to find, as ours was the only flight leaving Cork at the late hour of 9 pm).  This was our first RyanAir experience, and it was better than I'd expected. While they are very particular about a lot of things, they were not too picky about bag size or bag weight, which was unexpected. Also, even though we were about halfway down the queue to get on the plane, the three of us managed to get a row all to ourselves.  Oh! But the plane was running late arriving from London, and thus, it was late leaving for London.  So, our desired arrival time in London of 11:00 was completely out of the question.  But that was okay... Even though we didn't make it to London-Stansted (about 40 minutes northeast of the city) until late, we managed to catch a crowded bus to the Victoria bus station in downtown London and then take a taxi (woo! exciting!!) to our hostel.  And yes, we finally arrived at the Meininger at 1:55 am (give or take a few minutes). But, we had a happy surprise when we checked in. Instead of being in the 14 person dorm that we had booked, we were placed in a 4 person dorm, which was an excellent surprise. Granted, the three of us probably scared our poor roommate almost to death when we walked in at 2 am... she had her stuff ALL over the room, particularly my bed... but the next day, we discovered that she was a very nice person, just one who thought she had the room to herself.  Anyway, since the original idea behind this trip was to see Billy Elliot, bright and early on Thursday morning, the three of us dragged ourselves out of bed at 8 am (or a bit before) to get ready to wait in line for tickets.  We walked to the nearest tube station (Gloucester Road!) and invested in Oyster cards (which is the way to travel London, just FYI).  We took the tube to Victoria and walked to the Victoria Palace Theatre!

We arrived a bit before 9 am, and we were the second, third, and fourth people in line :) (So the way the tickets work:  The more popular shows reserve a certain number of day tickets that go on sale at 10 am and are usually for seats in the very front row but have a restricted view--meaning you can't see the floor at the back of the stage-- and these tickets are usually 25 or 27.50 pounds, which is much less expensive than many of the other tickets... For some shows, like Billy Elliot, getting there by 8:45 generally guarantees you a ticket, but for Wicked, the queue starts around 6:30!) Anyway, we waited in line for a bit (like 80 minutes) but we got tickets!! And then, although we were all exhausted, we decided to brave the slightly wet weather and explore! The theatre
was only a short walk from Westminster Cathedral, Westminster Abbey, and Big Ben/Houses of Parliament.  Westminster Cathedral is an odd building with almost Turkish architecture and it’s hidden away… You could easily walk by it without realizing that it was there.  We didn’t go inside, but took some pictures in front of it! And then, we continued on to Westminster Abbey! By then, it was pouring, so we dashed inside the Abbey giftshop (and no, I didn’t buy anything, even though I wanted to J ). Within ten minutes, the rain had stopped and we began standing in awe at the beauty of Westminster Abbey.  The sign outside said that there was to be a communion in 30 minutes time (and ergo, we could enter for free!), so we decided to walk around the Abbey and take a million pictures while we waited.  But 30 minutes later, instead of people going inside, there was huge crowd of people leaving, most of whom were military men.  We had no idea what was going on, so we asked a lady who had just exited the building, and there was some military commemoration ceremony, and we apparently had just missed a prince (!!!) walking by!

And now, I must finish because I had this annoying thing called class... but I'll be back soon to update you on the past two weeks :)