Travelogue, Part the First: London

[lily_handmaiden]

This is actually the oldest icon in my photobucket account. That's how long I've been looking forward to this England trip-- I knew which icon I'd be using when I got back from the time I started collecting icons.

I am back from England! Where I had probably the most amazing time of my life, ever! 

I have been back for about a week, and I have so many things to cover!
*the trip itself
*the awesomeness of the last three Office episodes (sqeeeee!)
*the awesomeness of PotC: AWE (whooooo!)
*the suckiness of my job hunt, which I suppose you can go ahead and read about over here.

Other than that, I have decided on the order of addressing these things: first the trip, in three entries spaced closely together, then The Office, then Pirates-- or possibly both in one entry.

Normally I don't talk about my real life on my lj, but I have a feeling I'm going to wax a bit long for my blog community, so this is where this is going.

We left school on May 2, flew from Louisville to O'Hare, and then from O'Hare to Heathrow in London. On the flight over, the longest flight I've ever been on as it was about 8 hours, I watched "Miss Potter," which is a cute movie.
The minute we landed in London, Jenaba ( celtic_songster), Whitney, Tiffany, and I started flipping out because, dude, we were IN ENGLAND! We were ON A BUS WHERE THE DRIVER WAS ON THE WRONG SIDE! We checked into our hotel, which wasn't great and somebody actually got their laptop stolen from there, and then went to the British Museum with a large group to try to stave off jetlag. Which basically meant that we were walking around the British Museum (hereafter, the B'museum) in a sort of zombie-like state. But OH MY GOD, The B'museum is about the most awesome place on the Earth. There were so many things there that we had seen pictures of and studied in textbooks and read about for years, and here they were, right in front of us. They have pieces of wonders of the world in the B-museum! And I saw them! I saw the Rosetta Stone and so many Egyptian things of famousness and tons of Buddha statues and cuneiform tables telling the Flood story and Roman statues and pottery one might find in every Latin textbook ever printed and, a highlight for me, the Sutton Hoo Saxon ship burial artifacts! Eeee!

Day two, after we had slept, I convinced Jenaba, Whitney, and Tiffany to go to the British Library, where we all dorked out so extremely. It was wonderful. We were all running around the treasures room, going, "DID YOU SEE THAT?" They had tons of gorgeous illuminated manuscripts and, man, there is no way to understand how gorgeous those are unless you see them in person; the original of Handel's Messiah (right next to the Beatles); the Magna Carta; the manuscript of Jane Eyre (open to the proposal scene; I read it); the original of "The History of England by a Partial Prejudiced and Ignorant Historian," and JANE AUSTEN'S WRITING DESK OMG! I flipped out. I actually did a little barely stifled squee-like noise and jumped. After that we walked down to Leicester Square and Covent Garden, where there are awesome professional street performers and all kinds of cool things to buy. We saw a juggler who looked like Daniel Craig juggling a bowling pin, an apple, and a machete on a ten-foot unicycle. Then we spotted the National Portrait Gallery and went in, which was awesome. Again with the things from textbooks! All of the Tudors and Stuarts, plus historical figures I'm rather fond of, like the Romantic poets, Sarah Siddons, George IV and poor Princess (er, Queen, I guess, eventually?) Caroline, the Brontes, and Cassandra Austen's sketch-portrait of Jane Austen, the only authenticated likeness of her in existence. It really does look a lot better in person-- much more delicate.
We exited the Portrait Gallery and discovered that we were in Trafalger Square and got all excited again. Then we walked over Waterloo Bridge to the Globe, which seems kind of small outside but is really gorgeous inside. We saw a kind of okay production of Othello. Basically, Iago wasn't that great and didn't know his lines, but I liked Roderigo and Emilia, and then the blocking was messed up and this hanging curtain thing almost fell and killed Desdemona for real, but then they danced and everything was okay.
The next day we went to the Victoria and Albert Museum of Cool Stuff and saw lots of cool stuff. Including old movie footage of actual Queen Victoria. And I got to try on a corset and hoop skirt, which is always fun. We went to St. Paul's Cathedral, which is beyond words. I actually cried, it was just so beautiful and just... the majesty of God was there so strongly. It's impossible to walk into that cathedral and not pray, I think. 
We kept walking and then we found Big Ben! It was unbelievable! It was a really surreal moment. It's so much more beautiful in person than could ever be conveyed in pictures. The detail work! Then we went to Westminster Abbey, but only got to see the outside because the inside of the abbey was "CLOSED!", as we say in Hanover theatre. It's beautiful, though. Then we went to Picadilly Circus, which looks kinda like Times Square. (Can I tell you a secret? There is no circus in Picadilly Circus. There is no circus that is Picadilly's.) That night we saw a really good production of The Importance of Being Earnest in a theatre about the size of my basement. It was great fun.
And that was our last day in London. There was so much I didnt' see, but so much that I did! I loved it.