Fit for a King

Day 65

Yesterday, Thursday, we went to Hampton Court. This was (one of) the royal homes for a number of years around Shakespeare's time (Shakespeare, in fact, performed here. This is where Macbeth was first performed and A Midsummer Night's Dream was also done here--in fact, we stood at the top of the Great Hall where plays were performed and quoted some Shakespeare!). The place is simply immense, with all the state and living chambers, and regularly feeding 600 people a day, with an army of servants, cooks, and food suppliers to match.
This clock is really cool.
We're about to go into the Maze! It's one of, if not the, oldest garden mazes.
Debating which way to go...
We made it to the center!
The gardens were my favorite place, especially these funny moundy trees and fountains

Me: Tracy, take a picture of me in front of this really cool long pond! What should I do for the picture?
Tracy: Look pretty
Me: Uhhhhh

Me looking pretty:
Apparently, jumping is the thing to do in this picture spot
The moundy trees had really cool ropey trunks. And a nice British man volunteered to take our picture
More cool gardens with topiary and statues

Also, while we were wandering around, I saw a little boy about 7 or 8 who simply has to be Rupert Grint's little brother. There's just not any other option. He was such a Weasley!

They make candy a little differently here (Bounty is like Almond Joy without the almond, or a milk chocolate Mound). These are for passing our cleaning checks :)

We finally had a free night, so a group of us decided to go out to see a show. They're all right around Picadilly Circus.The first of the Christmas lights at Picadilly Circus
Random really cool cab

We saw Les Miserables!! It was incredible. If you've never seen it, I'm telling you now that your life is not complete until you've see a good production of Les Mis. The singing and music was amazing, and they did a phenomenal job with the lighting and staging. They had a huge circular portion of the floor of the stage that could rotate, which let them do some amazing things with moving characters and sets around. Simply stunning.

Romans and Comedians

Day 6

I spent a couple of hours walking the walls of Londinium today. Or rather, where the walls would be if they were still standing. Londinium was the name of the original London town, built by the Romans during their occupation of Britain. You can still see remnants of the wall in some places (like I said--those Romans really built things to last!). Here's part of the wall. The lower part is Roman, the upper part was built during the medieval era. But just look how huge it is!

One of the cool things about London is how there's architecture from all sorts of eras, standing right there next to each other. You'll be walking down the street by modern bank buildings (which in London are still cooler than banks in most other places) and suddenly you'll pass a shop that's probably from the 18th century. And then suddenly out of nowhere pops the dome and spire of St. Peters, or a piece of the old Roman wall. And it's not all walled off and patrolled either. It's just a part of life. Here's a picture of the gate to St. Olave's church, that we found on our walk. The people then seemed to be very aware of their mortality.This is a bowling green, with bowlers. Apparently it's a popular pastime in England.


So we passed this sign post, and I really wished I had time to go to the station and see if I could find the cloakroom... but we had to keep going. Those of you familiar with So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish will remember the cloakroom.Some really cool artwork we found. That's modeled on the Christ's Church, just down the street.


Okay, this was actually the most awesome thing I've ever seen. Giant. Chessboard. Available for playing in the Exchange Court.

I went to my first play tonight. We saw 39 Steps at the Criterion Theatre in Picadilly Circus. It was absolutely hilarious. Four people play the entire cast. It claims to be 139 roles, but I'm skeptical. It is a lot though, I'd say maybe 40 parts. I was laughing the entire time, it was so good. And all of the accents were real :)