Londinium!

I love London. I don't know exactly why; I can't give you particular reasons. It's just that something about that city--upon which I can put no claims except those of a repeat visitor--something about the Tube & the old stone buildings & the insane amount of Indian food & the museums which are all free & the constant construction & the plethora of old theaters playing a grand variety of plays, about the way they play up those emblems that make the whole world recognize England (the red buses; the taxi cabs; the telephone booths); it all just makes me terrifically excited, like a little kid.


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.)

Venice II: Revenge of the pretty things...

And here's more Venice, more pretty pictures and more babbling about it all. Sunday was really our biggest touristy day, wherein we managed to see a lot of the things we'd (fairly randomly) put on our list before getting there. Monday & Tuesday were a little more low-key, totally unplanned, "maybe we'll go see that," poking about in shops, kind of days. Which, really, were no less enjoyable.


We began Monday by, as always, hopping on the vaporetto to get across the lagoon:



Our goal, as always, Piazza San Marco:


(The tall tower in the middle is the belltower; the large white building to the right of it is the Doge's Palace.)

We started off the day using our fantastic museum pass (haha, student discounts rock) to go to the Museo Correr, which is across San Marco from the Basilica. It had a fantastic exhibit on the "spheres of heaven and earth," which essentially meant there were a lot of globes, both terrestrial & astronomical, incredible astrological drawings, & one entire room fitted out like an old library in a lord's mansion. Everything was old & just about my time of history & gorgeous. Sadly there were no pictures allowed...& the guards were very diligent so I wasn't able to sneak anything.

Our general goal after that was to find internet, which we eventually did; but we did that via wandering (our main mode in Venice), since we stopped in nearly every interesting shop we saw along the way, got turned about several times by people giving us different directions to internet cafes, and ate lunch. Also I would like to note that by "directions to an internet cafe" I mean that whichever Venetian we asked would say, Oh, they are everywhere by the Ponte Rialto, and would wave a hand vaguely in some direction, often not actually the direction of said Ponte Rialto. (Directions in Italy are even worse than directions in Ireland, and let me tell you that is saying something.)



Another fantastic display...there were ones like this in nearly every shop window we passed (unless the shop was selling ties or lingerie. Or gelato.)



These were some of my favorites, simply because they were so unique--we didn't see anything else like these except for this one shop. Transformer masks, maybe; or something a comic-book hero would make in his garage during his teenage years. (Or like a steampunk alternate-universe carnevale. Whoooboy! Somebody write that!)



Typical Venice: colorful houses, intricate bridges.



This is looking down the Ponte Rialto--it's the widest bridge, I think, with two lanes of pedestrian traffic flanking a row of shops down the middle, with other stalls sprung up wherever they can find space. It's a bit mad.



A display at one of the temporary stalls at the Rialto market, just to give you an idea of how jam-packed with stuff these places are....



And a closeup to show you some of the beautiful hand-painting on these masks.


We found internet, at some point during that meandering, & continued wandering away from the bridges into the maze that is San Polo (or whichever island we were on at that point). And we were cold. So we found someplace with tea...



A perfectly sized pot, with two cups for each of us. And the tea was the most exquisite Earl Grey I've ever tasted. It didn't need anything to add to it. I very much enjoyed it:



And the shop was all wood and glass countertops with Murano glass on the shelves and fresh food in cases, & gorgeous sunflowers just sitting by the register:



In fact the place was so good even the pigeons wanted to be customers:



(I wish I'd gotten my camera up faster; this cheeky little bastard was five feet through the door and bobbing about like he owned the place.)


I really don't remember what else we did after the tea, except that it was more of the same--wandering and window shopping (& actual shopping...) and exclaiming over how pretty everything was. In any case, the next time I pulled my camera out was at dinner. We were fairly exhausted & ready for food early on in the evening, so we found a place we'd passed by earlier, a touristy restaurant near the Ponte Rialto, right on the Grand Canal. They actually had a well-priced menu (honestly probably cheaper than a comparable meal out in Dublin) & it felt awfully fancy.



Here's Lee, looking pleased at how ritzy our surroundings are.



The table next to us, when it was a bit darker & they'd lit the candles.



And our food. Tagliatelle con funghi for me, spaghetti bolongase for Lee. Delicious.


Tuesday was equally fantastic. We got up early to get to San Marco & stand in line for the Basilica, which fifteen minutes before it opened had already stretched round the corner of the building.



It had rained the night before, and men were busy in the square putting up walkways for everyone to stand and walk on to avoid the worst of the puddles, some of which were quite impressive.



The basilica itself was gorgeous (no pictures allowed of course). It's grandiose, and dim; it feels less holy, for me, & more like it ought to be holy but is struggling against its fame & the amount of people who pour through it every day to gawk at it because it is famous. (Since I'm one of them I can't legitimately complain; that's just what I felt.) Still, it is beautiful. Byzantine, mostly, with all the mosaics & gold; but definetely Italian Byzantine, by the architechture and the fact that although the gold & color mosaics were Byzantine of themselves, the figures within them were entirely Italian Renaissance--a strange juxtaposition, but it worked. Some of it seemed familiar, in a vague way--I'd been here with my parents when I was ten--but it wasn't until we got up to the rooftop that I really remembered. What a view...



To the right, the clock tower & part of one of the four bronze horses standing atop the roof. (These are copies; the real ones are inside.)



Looking backwards, the ornate front of the basilica roof, & more of the horses.



Another mosaic, just tucked away in an alcove on the roof.



And the view toward the lagoon, the open end of Piazza San Marco, & the two pillars. Atop the lefthand pillar is a statue of St Mark's Lion; the righthand one has a statue of St Theodore. Theo used to be Venice's patron saint, but he was too connected to Byzantine Europe & they wanted to assert their independence, so they needed a saint not connected to anywhere. Also, apparently there was a prophecy that St Mark's body would rest in Venice. So two merchant-travelers went to where he was buried, & armed with that prophecy & a boatload of moxie, stole his body & brought it back to Venice. Poor Theo was demoted, but I guess they must still be fond of him since he gets a statue in a pretty prominent place.


Determined to have a gondola ride before we left the only city in the world in which you can legitimately have one, we did a price comparison around San Marco. The gondoliers were offering us €150 or €120 prices, and when we laughed at them, said we were students & walked away some of them ran after us to offer €100...but we weren't buying. (We'd had a potential €60 offer the day before when it was raining.)

So we decided to wander up towards the Ca d'Oro (house of gold), which was on our list of things to see, although neither of us could remember exactly what it was or why we'd put it there. We got to see a part of the city we hadn't gotten to yet, & take more photos.

This is, possibly, my favorite photo I took:


Not only is the mask gorgeous, but I somehow managed to take the photo in such a way that something behind the mask makes it look like it has an eye, and is looking at you. Utterly an accident, but so cool.



Anyone want an enormous Lindt truffle? Those little ones in front are bigger than softballs.



It doesn't look all that impressive, but that's Marco Polo's house, when he was in Venice.



I refrained from taking photos of every tiny piazza we walked though, but I had to take a few sample photos, just to give you the idea. I loved them all.



And on the other side of that square, a bookshop! We didn't go in because we were eating (second dessert, I believe), but we lingered & I longed a little.



Another piazza on the way to San Sofia & the Ca d'Oro. There are over 200 bridges in Venice. I wonder how many belltowers there are?

As we passed the San Sofia traghetto (gondola ferry) stop & gondola ride point, we paused to look at the gondolas, & of course were accosted by several gondoliers asking if we wanted a ride. (Did we want a ride. Silly question.) One gondolier said €80, & we dithered a bit, but when he offered a "student discount!" of €60, we decided hang the cost, this is Venice. (Plus €60 is not bad for a gondola.) So we had a gondola ride! It was really lovely, actually quite relaxing. Honestly as a boat ride it wasn't much, but for the fact that it was a gondola ride, in Venice, it was great.



And boy were we pleased as punch.



The Ponte Rialto, from a gondola. Pretty much everything looks better from a gondola.

As we passed along one of the smaller canals, our gondolier points out a house to the side & says, "This here is very important...this is the house of the world's greatest lover, Giacamo Casanova...he lived in Venice for ten years. As you say? A sex machine." (Writing it down can't really do justice to his accent. It was glorious.)



Perhaps my favorite part about this photo of Casanova's house is the Italian loitering outside it with a cigarette, looking very un-Casanova.



Just another bridge. Prettier from the gondola.



Yet another belltower, and our gondolier. We decided his sunglasses were Cool, even if they didn't have the Cool tag on them.

After the gondola ride we finally found the Ca d'Oro, which turned out to be an art museum, with a gorgeous little courtyard attached--very Spanish, actually, or at least it reminded me of Spain. The museum was in what used to be an old mansion, and it was just as fun looking at the old house & room as it was looking at the art.

Afterwards we caught a traghetto across the canal. Traghetto are plain gondolas (not tricked out fancy ones) that just ferry people, usually standing up in the middle, across the canal. There are only three bridges across the Grand canal, so traghetti serve the same purpose. (It's the cheapest and shortest gondola ride you'll ever take!)



To round off our day, we made it the goal of our next bout of wandering to make it back to our favorite mask shop near the Campo San Frari, with the friendly girl who worked there. We made it back (I felt accomplished; even having a map is no guarantee of being able to get anywhere), and spent some time just lingering in the shop, looking at more masks and watching her work:



They'd been lacquering the masks, before finishing them off:



And this is the shop, facing out from the back room towards the door:



And that's Venice. We had a last dinner there, stumbled back to the hostel, packed, fell into bed, & got up horribly early to catch a bus to Treviso & a plane to Dublin. We had Wednesday to do laundry & repack for London...& Thursday we got up horribly earlier, to get to London for the madcap three days there. But that's a post for another time. My eyes are closing...it's time for sleep.


((And to round out the post: Entirely unrelated to anything Venice, I would just like to say that although I generally like most of the t-shirts on Threadless, I find this one to be particularly endearing, because it is essentially my childhood. Except that I didn't have a dog. But still. I like it.))