The Big L dot.

On saturday I had the priviledge of spending another day in London. For the first time I had an opportunity to just wander around and take in some of the sights at a slow pace on my own. I wandered rather aimlessly through the streets of London going in whichever direction looked most interesting. At first I was cruising around with my headphones on until I realized I wasmissing a lot of the London experience, that is listening. So off went the iPod and i just took it all in. Listening, looking, smelling breathing all the different accents and incredible history around me. Around 5pm I found myself at Leicester Square, which is sort of in the centre of London's entertainment district. I sat at an empty table outside a little restaurant on the corner and too out my little bagged lunch. Which was quite tasty, by the way. It was a chicken nugget/turkey/ham sandwhich. While sitting at this corner eating my lunch watching everyone rush by i became quite reflective. I took it all in and really thought about where I was. I was sitting, by myself, in London, learning soooo much. And this is only the start of my adventures I think. I sat at this corner for a good hour just watching people and being quite content by myself. I attempted to capture the moment in the above photograph. It shows Leciester square (which is really just an intersection) and a portion of the table that I was sitting at. This was my view as I sat and reflected. Ok... enough of that. Lets move on to more pictures.

The great thing about traveling by yourself is that you can stop and spend as much or as little time at places that interest you. After sitting at Leicester Square, I wandered around London's West End visiting a bunch of different theatres and streets that I had heard of before. Most of these theatres/streets were ones that I had learned about during my Theatre History classes at Queen's. It was fascinating to walk around on these streets that I had once studied in a text book and have so much theatrical history! This exploration of the theatrical world brought me of course to Covent Garden. I loved this place. Covent Garden is about a block big and the streets are filled with buskers. Not just buskers though, but really, really talented performers. These buskers had huge audiences and used microphones and amps to have their music heard. Really cool. It then began to rain. (i spose it had to happen sometime....I am in England after all). So, I went inside the Covent Garden pavillion (in the pic).

I was a little premature in trying take the picture..which apparently distracted the guy. So, as you can see, in this picture he is expressing his distaste for my attempt to photograph him. It was a nice moment where he singled me out in the whole crowd. I then proceeded to put my camera away. awesome.

Once inside the pavillion I was once again delighted to see there were more performances happening! This guy was sort of a magician type guy who put on about a 20 minute show. He did some weird juggling and random knife tricks. Most interestingly, he announced to the audience that he doesn't get paid at all by Covent Gardens to do what he is doing. He is doing Street Theatre. He commented on how Street Theatre is the most honest form of theatre. Thus, after the perforamance almost everyone in the audience came and dropped a pound or two in his hat. Lets see there were about a hundred people watching... that equals one or two hundred pounds... hmm.. not bad for a twenty minute show. The finale of this guys show invloved pulling a table cloth out from underneath a bunch of dishes. I tried to capture the moment on film...

That evening I proceeded to the Albery Theatre where I had the opportunity of seeing the Royal Shakespeare Company perfrom King Lear. It was a long one. A nice 4 hour performance. I really enjoyed it though. I saw one of the best bits of stage combat I have ever seen. It was a broad sword battle where one Edmund had two swords taking on Edgar with one. Intense...Intense. It is funny though watching this theatre. This is the best of the best of Shakespeare and I am still so critical on the actors. There were only really two exceptional perfromaces (Edmund and Regin). I didn't especially like the set as I found it to be over minimalistic and had a boring color scheme. THe lighting though, was fantastic. There was a huge lighting storm in the middle and the effects used to create that were phenomenal! Also a really good method of waking one up around hour three of the performance.

Just before I hopped on the bus I snapped a shot of The London Eye. It was erected for the millenium and is basically a huge, really slow ferris wheel that is used to sight see London. At night i think it looks quite nice, but during the day I dinf it to be somewhat of an eyesore as it really does just look like a big ol ferris wheel. Unfortunately, it is closed now but apparently it opens back up in a couple weeks. Ill be hittin that up for sure.

Stonehenge Rocks!

Another early morning today. As I woke this morn (with my 4 hours of sleep) I felt as though my field trip was just being continued from the day before in London. For some reason I had an incredible amount of energy throughout the 3 hour bus ride to Stonehenge. I am so happy for my iPOD. It is my best friend while traveling! It never seems to run out of things to say to me. My expectations for Stonehenge were quite low as Simon (a local and co-worker) abosolutely hates it and thinks it is just a dumb bunch of rocks. I will say they are much smaller than I expected and it is kind of strange that the 5000 year old monument is bordered by highways on either side. It sort of takes away from the magic when there are transport trucks racing by throughout the experience.

So there it is. Stonehenge. The sky was beautiful today. Although it was deceivingly cold. With the sunshine and green grass it looked like it should have been much warmer, but it was certainly a biting cold one. A few years ago you used to be able to walk right up to the rocks and walk between them. Now there is an enormous roped pathway that encircles the entire monument that prohibits getting close to the stones. We had a great guide teach us the history of the site. He was this old English local. Funny old man he was. Funny.

Stonehenge was erected originally over 5000 years ago with 49 stones. Apparently it took 9 monthes to move each stone. Hmmm.... sounds kind of ridiculous. So... this is me posing as one of the muscular people who moved the stones. I'm so strong.

Did I mention Stonehenge rocks?

I think one of the things that makes Stonehenge the most interesting is that nobody knows why it was built. There are apparently many theories but none of them can be proven. It really makes you wonder what the heck was going on back then. All in all, I really enjoyed seeing Stonehenge for the mystery and ancient history of it. I think mostly I enjoyed it so now I can say..Hey.. look at me Ive been to Stonehenge. (Even if it looks like Adam and I were superimposed into this picture)

Salisbury Steak!!!......er When I say steak...I mean Cathedral.

After Stonehenge, we hopped back on the coach and made our way to the historic Medieval Town of Salisbury. The tour was sort of boring until we got to Salisbury Cathedral. I can't believe people built stuff like this so long ago!!! It was constructed in the 15th century sometime, I think. It has the highest spire in Great Britain and it is quite magnificant to look at. Unfornately, the sun wasn't shining in the best place when we were there.

Ye old Salisbury
Spire Higher and Higher
Ah, Fourteen A.D.

I was blown away by the inside of the cathedral! The ceilings (as you can see were ridiculous)! Doesn't seem to me to be the most intimate place for a church service. We got a guided tour of the inside across many tombs and got to see one of the first clocks ever built. (Not as interesting as you would think.) One of the most interesting parts of the tour was when we got to see the Magna Carta. The Manga Carta was a british constiution passed in 1215 that, among other things, meant that the King was not above the law. It is a sort of Charter or rights. Everyone is deserving of a fair trial. Quite intersting to see that kind of history. Unfortunately, we couldn't take any pictures for preservation purposes. After the tour, we had some spare time in Salisbury and we warmed up in a local coffee shop. Another great day!

JIF - Frosted Flakes are called FROSTIES
JIF - Red lights turn yellow for a second before turning Green. A nice little warning/preparation light for you to go.
JIF - While the shower faucets may be great, the sink faucets are not. The hot and cold taps are always independant of each other and do not flow into one faucet. Thus, there is not getting a nice lukewarm temperature to wash your hands with. it is always either really hot... or really cold.