Going going going

Day 29

"Ladies and gentleman. Due to a person under a train, service on the eastern line is temporarily suspended".

Right. Now I'm not worried about the tube at all. Although I'm told that they actually have an anti-suicide lane you can hide in.

Friday we went to the Tower of London. It's something of a fortress. The White Tower, the oldest part, was built in the time of William the Conqueror.
Here's the portcullis, with variable water levels depending on the tide (the Thames is a tidal river).
There's a superstition at the Tower that if the ravens ever leave the tower, London will fall. During WWII, all the birds but one died, and gimpy little fellow. And obviously, London is still around. The British seem to take this supersition rather seriously though; they have a number of "pet" ravens in the grounds.
The guards at the Tower are affectionately called Beefeaters. They have to meet a whole bunch of requirements, including having served in the military for 30 years. Which explains why they're all old.

We also stopped by the Bloody Tower, which has been home to a number of prisoners over the years. The two missing princes were thought to have been imprisoned/murdered here. This is a restoration of the room as it would have looked while Sir Walter Ralegh was kept prisoner.
The window in Beauchamp Tower. Distinguished prisoners in the Tower didn't have it too bad.
However, they did have a lot of time on their hands. The walls have quite a bit of "graffiti" on them, carved into the stone by the inmates, or possibly someone hired to do it for them. This particular work bears the inscription 'my heart is yours till death'.
These guards are very young guys, but they stand all over and they're fun to watch march around at the changing of the guard.
The Crown Jewels are kept in here. Very. Sparkly.
I don't know if you can really tell... but this lance is really, really long.

After the Tower, we went to go see Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor at the New Globe theatre. It was fantastic. Absolutely hilarious, with an excellent cast. They had a semi-circle of stage built that actually came out into the groundlings, so I ended up watching the show from the inside of the wooden walkway.
Friday night there was a Young Single Adult (YSA) dance. We only got there an hour late, so the party hadn't started yet, but we crazy Americans singlehandedly began the dancing, and half an hour later, when people actually started showing up, it was really swingin. The Brits dance rather similarly to the Americans, but in a much more reserved, controlled fashion. I was actually walking back into the dance once after a short breather, and I thought, where are my friends--oh, the ones throwing their arms in the air and jumping up and down. The music was pretty similar too, though less hip hop and more techno feeling. Maybe a bit older too. I met someone from Ireland there, though it was so loud, I couldn't really tell he had an accent with him yelling in my ear.

out and about

Day 22

I feel like I'm getting behind here. Things keep happening. Okay, here's forgotten Globe Theatre pictures.

This is my attempt to take a picture of Westminster Abbey. It's huge. And amazing. And beautiful. Every monarch has been crowned there since the Norman Invasion. Most of them are buried there. The place is absolutely packed with statues and monuments, filling up all the recesses and side rooms, and spilling onto the floor, and a lot of the floor has memorial plaques as well. And of course, Poet's Corner. That was cool. Some of the poets are actually buried there, and many more have memorial plaques. They've started making memorials in the stained glass, because they're running out of floor and wall space. Wouldn't it be something to make it into Poet's Corner.I went for a random walk around the Victoria Embankment (north side of the Thames, east of Parliament) and Whitehall. The Embankment has all sorts of cool statues and memorials. Here's a relief that I really liked, for WWII.

I think we should play "guess what country this sky is from" because with the lack of clouds, no one would ever guess England. The weather the last two weeks has been stunningly beautiful (most unseasonably so--I like it).Most of the government buildings for executive type things are on Whitehall, and have been for the past few hundred years.
And of course, the notorious horseguards. They're very nice about letting you take pictures and pet the horse. Just don't try and touch the reins.

Cool ivy-covered building.This is where the Prime Minister traditionally lives, 10 Downing Street. Unfortunately, there's now an imposing wrought iron fence out front for security purposes.

This sign pretty much speaks for itself.The British certainly know how to do things right. This impressive archway, Admiralty Arch, was built as the start of the parade to Buckingham palace. Notice how red the ground is...

Apparently it's the red carpet idea. The road from Admiralty Arch to Buckingham Palace has red stones in the paving.
Buckingham Palace, as seen through it's gate.

We also went to this awesome old church of St. Bartholomew the Great. It boasts itself as being the oldest church in London.

This guy was really cool looking and wearing a top hat, so I took a picture.The building is absolutely beautiful though.Note the unique orange and yellow tiled floor. If you've ever watched Amazing Grace, Shakespeare in Love, or The Other Boleyn Girl, you may recognize this church. Apparently it's a very popular film spot. They're going to be filming a new Sherlock Holmes in November.We also went to see a panel of three mystery authors speak at the Picadilly Circus Waterstones. Kate Sommerset, Laura Wilson, and Anne Perry. They all write around the Victorian Era. It was pretty cool, actually.

Shakespeare lives!

Day 19

Sunday I was informed that I've been assigned to the Primary. I'm pretty excited. I've never been in Primary before, but I enjoyed being in it, years ago. There's only about 10 kids in Primary, almost all of them black. So it should be fun. The Primary leaders seemed really excited for us to help out with singing time, so I'd better brush up on my Primary songs!

The other exciting thing that happened this week is that we went on a tour of the new Globe Theatre. We learned lots of cool stuff, like how the theatre's being made entirely of wood helped the sound carry a lot better, and how the most expensive seats in the theatre were actually the seats on the stage, behind the actors, because in Shakespeare's day it was much more important to hear the actors than to see them, and theatre crowds back then were more like our modern football crowds than our more reserved theatre crowds, so they could get pretty loud.

Today we saw A Midsummer Night's Dream there. It was really fun, even though we were groundlings, so we had to stand through the whole thing and my legs kind of got tired. It was a bit different than I would have interpreted it, and the faeries were definitely a little more trippy, but it was fun.