The London Pop-up Book: Part 2

October 30, 2009

Another 8am morning – this time in order to see the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace. Buckingham Palace is home to the Queen of England and contains 775 rooms. If the flag is flying from the flagpole, it means that the Queen is home. It just so happened that the Queen was home although we did not get to see her. It was crowded as can be for the guard change and almost impossible to see anything. Fortunately, I did get a few pictures of all the finery.
Next, we went to get tickets for the evening show of “Wicked”, which is the story of the friendship between Elfaba, the Wicked Witch of the West and Glinda the Good Witch of the North from the Wizard of Oz. We did manage to get seats for 20 Pounds. I would have paid more because I have wanted to see “Wicked” for years but 20 is just fine. Since Amanda and I had done all the major sites the day before and had food at the hostel for lunch, we split from Samantha and Vi so that they could go see everything and we could go eat. They then met up with us at the hostel and Samantha and I decided to go to the Natural History Museum.
The Natural History Museum is an impressive building and the exhibits inside are even more intense. The first thing I saw when I walked in was the giant skeleton of a brachiosaurus. The museum contains an extensive dinosaur bone collection as well as exhibits on rocks and minerals and mammals, just to name a couple. Similar to the Louvre, it is impossible to really appreciate all that this museum has to offer within just a couple of hours. Samantha and I spent 45 minutes in an exhibit called the Vault which contains extremely valuable gemstones and precious minerals. One of the rocks is a meteorite that fell in 1910 in Ferrara, Italy. It contains material that is older than the Earth itself! In the mammal room is a full scale model of a Blue Whale. I could have spent a month in every exhibit in the museum and still not have comprehended all of the knowledge it had to offer.
After the museum, Samantha and I headed back to the hostel for a bite to eat and to meet up with Vi. We then headed over to the Apollo Victoria Theater to see “Wicked”. Words cannot describe how excited I was to see this show. I have loved the music from “Wicked” since high school but never had the opportunity to see it. It did not disappoint. Everything about it was wonderful: costumes, singing, set, and actors. It was magnificent.

October 31, 2009

Amanda and I set out early to visit Notting Hill and Portobello road. On Saturdays, there is a very large market selling everything from pashminas to antique telescopes. All kinds of people come to the market to both buy and sell. This diversity is packed onto a simple two lane road. It had been raining earlier in the morning so it wasn’t impassable when we first arrived but by the time we left, it was almost impossible to stay together. We drifted in and out of shops and stopped to look at things that caught our eye. There was so much to see it was a little overwhelming.
We headed back towards the center of town in order to visit a friend of Amanda’s. On our way back, we witnessed the insanity that is Halloween in London. There was a museum turned haunted house which included zombies, vampires, and other ghostly figures which haunt the night. I adore Halloween. I love to dress up and go out. I really love seeing all the costumes that little kids wear because they can be extremely cute. I do not, however, like being scared out of my skin. For this reason, I do not frequent haunted houses or anything else of the kind. However, the line for the museum’s haunted house was almost around the corner so in the end, without my business, haunted houses do just fine.
After a brief lunch, Amanda and I sprinted to the National Theater in order to catch the matinee of “Mother Courage and her Children”. This play is set in Poland during the 13 years war and follows a woman named Mother Courage. She has three children whom she is desperate to protect from the fighting but during the first scene, her eldest son is sneaked away by a recruiting officer. Her second son, who goes by the name of Cottage Cheese, has a mental disability and her daughter, Kattrin, is mute. Mother Courage follows the Polish army with a cart containing items that she trades with the soldiers for money. As the play continues, heartache and death are constant companions. It ends tragically but is still an amazing play. This show was truly one of the best I have ever seen and inspired me as an actress.
Next we headed back to Covent Garden. I had a ticket to see “War Horse” and Amanda decided to go to “Sister Act”. It may seem strange to see two shows in one day, but Amanda and I are theater majors and the stage is what we love. “War Horse” was very good. It follows a horse named Joey (a magnificent puppet manned by three people) and other horses as they go to war. Joey’s human companion Robbie is so distraught when Joey is taken away from him that he follows the horse into battle even though he is not of age. It is a heartbreaking but beautiful story.
Afterward as I made my way back to the hostel, I ran into Vi and Samantha. They had gone to see “Grease” that night. We decided to go out and see what London had to offer on Halloween. In the end, we went back to the hostel and had many conversations with the others who were staying there. It was a load of good fun and I went to bed quite happy with my day.

November 1, 2009

I decided that I wanted to go back to Portobello road to see if the market was still open. Unfortunately, the weather that had been so kind to us during the week gave in and it began to pour. There is nothing like walking down a deserted street in London, in the rain, only to discover that your shoes are no longer as water proof as they were when your trip first began. In the end, Amanda and I gave up wandering aimlessly around and stepped into a Starbucks to help warm out insides. We had a little heart to heart conversation (always good for the soul) then set out again in order to stop by the Tate Museum of Modern Art. This museum contains six floors with just about any kind of art imaginable. The Tate is free to enter, but the temporary exhibits are a paying affair. There was only one temporary exhibit that I wanted to see but I had run out of money and I couldn’t get more. In the end, I saw Monet and Andy Warhol so the visit was not a complete failure (as if seeing just those two artists alone could be considered anything but a victory).
We headed back to the hostel so that I could change my socks and decide which matinee show we wanted to see. Sundays are much more difficult to see a show because it is often what is called a dark day. Dark days are simply days when the show and the actors take a break from performing. In America, these days often happen on Monday but in London, this is not so. Luckily, we found a promising play: “The Shawshank Redemption”. “The Shawshank Redemption” began originally as a novel by Stephen King and then became a movie made in America. As a play, it was very impressive. A man Andy is sent to prison for a crime he constantly claims he never committed. He becomes friends with another inmate named Red and the two strike up a strong bond. As the story continues, the audience sees the injustices inherent in the system and it all ends in a very surprising manner. Amanda and I so enjoyed it that we gave it a standing ovation and stood outside the stage door to get signatures. Laugh if you will, but it was worth it.
We headed back to the hostel, made dinner, and I ended up going to bed quite early. We were going to have a long day of travel the next day.

November 2, 2009
We had to start out early in order to get to the airport on time. Luckily, Amanda and I had checked in online but Samantha and Vi needed to check luggage. To make a long story short, we all managed to make the plane by the skin of our teeth. Hannah and Jenna were both on the same flight so it was good to know that the majority of us were getting back together. We flew into Pisa with no problem, bought tickets for Arezzo and then proceeded to spend the rest of the day on very crowded trains. Exhausted and sore, we made our way back to the palazzo and I fell into bed to get some much needed R&R. I had a wonderful trip and it is my dear hope that I will one day be able to visit London again.