I do have one exception to the amazingness that is London, which is also a warning: should you ever go to London (& go, I say, go), NEVER, EVER stay at the Generator Hostel. Just don't. We were all in disbelief about how awful it was, although given that we were all at the hysterical point of tiredness, everything was just hilarious in it's terribleness. Oh, Generator.
But I digress. We caught a flight to London early early Thursday morning, catching the 5am bus to the airport. There were thirteen theater kids, Ashley our program director, & Siobhan, who works at IES. For all the things that could have gone wrong with this many people, it managed to work out fairly well (even though one of us left her passport at home & just barely got it in time. & no, that wasn't me. But it all worked out). We landed, all fairly delirious, at about 9am, and rode blearily on the Tube to Russell Square, where the British Museum is. Ashley led us down a few streets to our hostel. We all stood around the lobby (as it was) while he checked in. The hostel was all metal & neon & florescent lights. They sold a thong at the front desk instead of (in addition to perhaps) a t-shirt. Also it has a nightclub attached to it (or maybe I should say that the nightclub has a hostel attached to it), and a skeezy one to boot. We put our luggage in the storage room, which had a leak. When I say it had a leak, I mean that it was raining inside there. Still, we found dry places, stowed our luggage away, & followed Ashley back out.
We walked to Leicester Square, with Ashley showing us around, & he let us free for a few minutes before our first show. Some of us walked up the next block to Piccadilly Circus, where we stood in the rain & took photos. I got some of one of my favorite statues:
(I wrote these horses into a story once. And by "story" I mean two or three scenes that look a lot like a couple of other books I really loved at that point in time.)
We saw our first play, Boeing Boeing, a classic farce, about a man juggling three airline stewardess fiancees. It was fun & silly, as farces are, although it wasn't the best I've seen. We were mostly really excited about the fact that Kevin McNally, who plays Gibbs in the Pirates movies, was in it. Our first celebrity sighting in London!
After the play was over, we hung out in a pub for a little while & then had Indian dinner on IES, which was fabulous. Other than us, the restaurant was mostly catering to other Indian people, which meant it was a good one. Yum.
After dinner Cozy & I took the Tube out to see KATIE! It was so good to see her, even if we couldn't stay very long, just to hang out & get a drink at a pub & chat for a little while.
When Cozy & I made our way finally back to the hostel, we went up to the desk & asked to get into the luggage room to get our bags. "You can't do that," the lady told us. What? we ask in confusion. Why? "The luggage room closes at nine pm. There was a sign," she added, completely disdainfully. "And they're doing maintenance."
In utter disbelief, we went over to the room to see if the maintenance people would let us in, but they didn't hear us knock. & we did find the sign--a very small sign. & totally covered up by the maintenance sign. And the other front desk worker had very specifically told Ashley that we could get our bags at any time. So, extremely annoyed at the hostel, Cozy & I made our way up to our room in the lift--which was labeled a "Hoist" and was all metal & tiny, like a cargo lift--and found the bathroom. Which was utterly gross, all grungy & public-toilet like (I mean like public toilets in parks, not...usable ones). We had to go to bed without pajamas, without toothbrushes, without, in fact, anything except what we'd carried around all day. We all spent a few minutes before bed exclaiming over how unbelievable this place was. "Oh, don't look up while you're peeing," Kate told us, "because it looks like the ceiling's going to fall in."
The next morning Cozy & I woke up early & got our bags back & instantly went to shower. In the nasty bathrooms. I'm not sure I can really describe them, except to say that this was the one time in my life that I felt dirty while I was showering. We ate breakfast in the "Fuel Stop," or Space Station Sleeze to give it a better name. It was sort of like living on a ship that Red Dwarf had rejected. Also the staff was really rude; one of them actually slapped Katie's hand away from the toaster to put in her own toast instead. I mean. What.
But enough. Consider that all an anti-ad for the hostel. On to the good stuff! We began Friday by all thirteen of us going to the Tower of London, with a stop by King's Cross, to find, guess what? Platform 9 & 3/4!
I felt like a total dork, but we were all goofing off & having fun, even the people who had never read Harry Potter & didn't care at all.
Then down into King's Cross tube...
I love the tube. We took it to the Tower Hill stop, outside of which is a large sundial. Around the edge are pictures of London's history, going clockwise in a circle. This was my favorite panel:
(Remember remember the fifth of November!)
And off to the Tower of London!
(That's Tower Bridge in the middle in the distance, & Peter to the far right.)
We all milled around the entrance until a guided tour began, led by a "beefeater" named Mark, who was hilarious & having too much fun with the gory details, which I loved. He took us around some of the important places in the Tower, telling us gruesome stories about how many tries with the axe it took the drunk executioner to kill one of the Earls (I'm blanking on his name at the moment, James something). That would be five blows of the axe, before he landed a killing blow. Also, did you know that the victims had to pay the executioner for their own beheading? What a blow. (Ahaha....sorry.) We wandered about for a bit after the tour, & I took a ridiculous amount of photos, only a few of which I'll stick up here...
Closer in to Tower Bridge, the pretty one that is always mistaken for London Bridge because the old London bridge used to be that pretty. The one they have now is really boring.
Traitor's Gate, built around the time of Henry VII or VIII. Elizabeth came through this gate, as did Anne Boleyn.
The chapel, from near the execution hill. For private executions that is (in the lower left corner you can see a bit of the execution ground). There were only a couple of people worthy of being killed here (Anne being one of them); all others were killed at Tower Hill, across the way. Huzzah for public celebrations.
The view back the other way. That small fenced square with the glass disk is that private execution yard.
Up inside the Bloody Tower (right near the Traitor's Gate); this is where Walter Ralegh was imprisoned, and they redid the room to look as it probably did when he used it as his study. While being imprisoned.
In another room, they had information about the Princes in the Tower, and giving evidence for whether they were murdered by Richard III, Henry VII, or just disappeared somehow. You can vote.
(When I was there the votes were thus: Henry had 38,036; Richard had 54,664; and 35,063 were for "disappeared." Poor Dick.)
Another view of Tower Bridge, from the walls ringing the Tower grounds, which I walked on.
And one of the Tower Ravens. They currently have eight. This one was a total show-off, hopping around near the tourists, flying up to perch just at camera level, & posing for everyone. What cheek.
We got lunch, and made our way in various ways to Southwark, and to the Globe. I love the Globe too...it doesn't feel quite the same being here a second time; the first was high spirits and being thrilled about everything, and this was a little more subdued admiration. But no less love.
Plus, while we were waiting outside for Ashley & Siobhan, we saw Geoffrey RUSH. I kid you not! Celebrity sighting number two, and also a pirate. What. We were standing by the river & Nora was across the sidewalk on her phone, when she suddenly jets across the sidewalk & frantically mouths GEOFFREY RUSH at us. What? we say, turn around--& there he is, walking--no, sauntering, really--down the sidewalk, in a green pinstriped jacket & lime green scarf, talking on a cell phone. The only bit we heard was an amused "oh, the press had a field day with that one..." as he walked past. My jaw fell open & locked there. (I think that might have been the only time in my life that my jaw has actually fallen all the way open.)
And no, dammit, I didn't have my camera out. Don't bother kicking me; I'm doing it myself.
After that bit of excitement, we went into the Globe for more excitement, and a tour led by an actor (I think) in a trenchcoat, named David.
He told us about the Globe, mostly things most of us already knew, while we were awestruck & took pictures galore.
And then he took us on stage. At the Globe. Apparently they don't do this often, but there was a special exhibition of kids' art in a Peace tent. Which was all very well and good, but to be honest I cared more about being on stage at the Globe. And, god, we were theater kid dorks, goofing around on stage & making "tableeeaus" and being silly. And someday when I act there properly, I will look out and see something like this:
Except with a ton more people. Obviously.
Our guide told us the stupid questions that they get asked. My favorites were "Who painted the sky?" (It's open air, for the love of god.) Also, "What was Shakespeare's last name?" Um. And maybe the worst, when a lady stopped a waiter in the cafe and asked if Shakespeare ever came in to watch the productions of his plays. The poor waiter had to explain that no, actually, he's been dead for 400 years...
Cozy & I spent a good deal of time in the adjoining museum, geeking out over everything. I had to frustratedly point out to Lee that the authorship section was out of date (does anyone actually consider Francis Bacon a candidate anymore? And I thought there were theories about how Shakespeare got ahold of the books he obviously read. Not theories that will satisfy everyone, but still, they exist...) We found booths where you could record yourself doing famous scenes alongside recorded Globe actors. I have an adorable video of Cozy recording the balcony scene.
We finally tore ourselves away & went to the Tate, which is overwhelmingly huge (although a great museum), and a bad place to meet people when you can't figure out how to dial Irish numbers in England. But we found people, poked about the museum for a few minutes, and then headed down the bank of the Thames for dinner & then toward the National Theater.
We ate dinner at a pub/restaurant with four levels. This was our view, from the top. I had a chicken and mushroom pie...really tasty.
And then to the National, to see The Enchantment by Victoria Benedictsson, who had a passionate affair which led to her suicide, after she wrote the play. Which is basically about a woman who has a passionate affair & then commits suicide. She was the inspiration for Strindberg's Miss Julie. I'm generally not a fan of plays in this genre (I tend to get frustrated with characters who melodramatically walk into problems they freely admit will be terrible, especially when those problems are affairs with jerk-face artists), but the acting was good, & the design was interesting. So I had plenty to occupy me. Hah.
(And back to the hostel. We talked to Siobhan during the interval about how awful it was, & Cozy, Nora & Brianna showed her their arms--which were covered in bedbug bites. No, I kid you not. I got them too. Blergh.)
Saturday was crazy too--we started the day with a walking tour led by Ashley, which began by walking through Trafalgar Square:
Toward Buckingham Palace!
We saw Westminster Abbey:
And walked by Parliament & Big Ben:
They left us here with a few hours to kill before our first show of the day. Everyone wanted to go to Abbey Road, so we hopped on the Tube to get there. Honestly, I was fairly well suprised at how we all did everything as a group, & how well it worked out. So we went to Abbey Road...
We took photos, goofed off, stopped traffic. Probably pissed off some drivers, and generally had a good time.
We stopped by Trafalgar again for lunch & to see the National Portrait Gallery. I'd forgotten they had the Lothian portrait of John Donne! Right next to Shakespeare, too...my boys in a row. If only Marlowe was there. Hah. Also they had a new acquisition, a portrait of Lady Jane Grey that they think might have been painted in her lifetime, or just after death, which is closer than anything else they have (most portraits of Lady Jane are from later, after she became a big Protestant martyr).
Our first theater visit of the day was to the Menier Chocolate Factory theater (yes, in a converted chocolate factory...& the space is fantastic) to see Dealer's Choice by Patrick Marber. Everything about this production was fantastic. The actors all came with choice experience (two had been in the original cast of History Boys. Less sophisticated but more geeky was the fact that another played Barty Crouch, Sr in Harry Potter). They were all utterly engaging & so good, and played the text perfectly, as it was rapidfire and amazing & snappy. The design was fantastic...especially the raised silver floor of the kitchen in act one (set: kitchen & tables of a restaurant), which was pulled up to the ceiling of the theater to become the low-hanging ceiling in act two (set: the grungy basement of the same restaurant).
We had to be thrown into cabs to get across town in time to make it to the Royal Court for our second show--or rather, in time for Ashley to pick up the tickets. We had plenty of time once we got there to find food & loiter around the theater.
And to be geeky & artsy:
Our show was Eugene Ionescu's Rhinoceros in a new translation by Martin Crimp (the Stagework site is here--I haven't looked at that one yet, but Stagework is a great website & this was an amazing show). I loved this play. It wasn't as perfectly produced as Dealer's Choice--I thought Daisy was a bit weak--but overall I thought it was fantastic, and the man playing Berenger was unbelievably good. Plus, there were rhinoceroses. And the play itself is hilarious, and frightening, and so good, even now (maybe especially now; it was topical when it was written about Nazism. Even scarier that it can be seen as topical now). The design was incredible as well, including the several rhino heads, and considering the fact that the set essentially had to fall down around Berenger every night! I would hate to be tech on that show, but as an audience member it was breathtaking.
Plus the theater was beautiful:
After the show, Cozy, Nora & I met Katie and we had a really good Italian dinner...& all three of us were totally exhausted, so Katie had no one to go out with. (Hopefully she & Coz had fun the next night.)
I went to bed early (ish),and got up early to catch my flight to Dublin. Of course I forgot that most of the world changes clocks back on Sunday, so I ended up loitering around the Tube station for half an hour until it opened, at the real six-thirty. But everything else went fine; I landed in Dublin & my parents met me at the airport! We spent a couple days bumbling around Dublin, I got to show them sights & I got lots of yarn.
It's time for sleep for me, soon...so I'll leave you with a photo of the best vending machine in the world, in Heathrow airport:
Yes, those are books. (& yes, it is called "A Novel Idea." Everyone together now: groan.)
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