High tea at Fortnum and Mason was such a fun experience. It was possibly one of the classiest meals that I have had in my life.
The lobster omelette that they served was amazing, and so were all the scones and cookies. The tea was definitely the best tea that I've had in England. I would highly suggest going to high tea while in London!
Here's a video with some information on how to have proper etiquette at Tea.
Wicked! I never thought I would enjoy a silly musical as much as I did Wicked.
Wicked is based on the Wizard of Oz, but from a different perspective all together. In the musical version, the Wicked Witch of the West (Elphaba) is actually the protagonist, and the Good Witch (Glinda) is her school time friend.
The production was beautifully done, a huge dragon hovering over the stage, and tall spiral staircases on both sides of the stage added an interesting dept to the set.
The actors were amazing, and I found myself giggling almost the entire performance. I'm so glad I got to experience this iconic musical for the first time in London!
Tonight, I went to see Wicked with Rachel, Megan, Chloe, and Tori. I'd already seen it once in New York, but I really love the show and every production is different. I enjoyed the play thoroughly, and I have to admit, everything does sound better in a British accent.
For a limited time, the Tate is featuring the first British art Avant-Garde movement; the Pre-Raphaelite exhibition.
The Pre-Raphaelites formed in the late 1800 as a rebellion art movement against the present day boring art and stiff postures. The Pre-Raph's wanted to restore art to the old conventions used before Raphael redefined how people looked at art. The Pre-Raph's combined vivid colors, odd postures, and complex scenery to create artwork like the world had never seen.
At the Tate, I was fortunate enough to see almost all the most famous paintings by all the big names in the movement. The collection included works by Hunt, Millais, and Rossetti.
A computer screen cannot to justice to the vivid colors and amazing scenery in all the paintings.
My favorite piece was this one entitled "The Scapegoat" by William Hunt. The plaque by the painting said that Hunt actually used a dying goat as his model for this painting. It symbolizes Jesus's forty days of fasting in the wilderness. In person, the goat looked real, and the pain in it's eyes was so real I couldn't stop looking at it.
These are some more of my favorite paintings also featured in the exhibit. Since I obviously wasn't allowed to take pictures in the actual exhibit, here's a picture of me holding the information booklet I received.
And here's a dramatic video on the Pre-Raphaelites!
This November 5th, a group of us journeyed out to Chelsea and Kensington to view a bonfire in honor of Guy Fawkes Day, remembering the day he almost blew up Parliament. It was a crazy, fun, loud affair, filled with screaming children and adults calling for the effigy of Guy Fawkes to go up in flames on the top of a pyre, formed by panels painted with the 5th of November-esque things. Sounds, exciting, right? Well, it was!
A view of the bonfire before it went up.....
And after. Burn, baby burn!
There were fire jugglers there, too, which was really exciting. I got a video of one performing:
and some pictures of us at the magnificent celebration:
Basically, it was one of the funnest nights we've had, and if you ever get the chance to go to a Guy Fawkes bonfire in England on November 5, you really need to do it. It's awesome.
Over the past few weeks, I've done a lot of shopping throughout London. I've been to Camden Town, Portabello Road, Oxford Circus, and Rachel and I even took a traumatizing trip to Harrods. I've bought the most at Camden Town and Primark though honestly. Shopping here is a bit more aggressive than what I'm used to, though not unpleasant.
here is a picture of Rachel and me in Camden. We bought sweaters that day. I like my sweater.
Last Thursday, Rachel, Tayler and I went to see a production of Our Boys by Jonathan Lewis. It's a play about six young soldiers and their struggles as they recover from injuries incurred in the line of duty. It's a show filled with amusement and the antics of the young soldiers, mixed with the severity and impact of war that they try to forget about. It was an excellent play, that I highly recommend if you have a chance to see it before December 15.
Oh, and did I mention Matthew Lewis and Arthur Darvill are in it?
Tonight Megan, Tori, Rachel, Autumn and I decided to see Wicked! A few of us had been talking about seeing it for a while now and an hour before we left it was decided that we would just show up an hour early and see if they had tickets...and they did! We got to sit all together too which was surprising as well.
The first time I saw Wicked was about four years ago and I feel like I was able to get more of the hidden humor this time around. The Wizard of Oz sand this song and the words just seemed to make so much sense. Here is a snip it of the lyrics:
[Wizard:] Oh, my dear child...
I never asked for this or planned it in advance
I was merely blown here by the winds of chance
I never saw myself as a Solomon or Socrates
I knew who I was, one of your dime a dozen mediocrities
Then suddenly I’m here, respected, worshiped even
Just because the folks in Oz needed someone to believe in
Does it surprise you I got hooked and all too soon
What can I say? I got carried away
And not just by balloon...
Wonderful, they called me wonderful
So I said, wonderful, if you insist
I will be wonderful and they said wonderful
Believe me it's hard to resist
'Cuz it feels wonderful
They think I’m wonderful
Hey look who's wonderful
This corn-fed hick!
Who said it might be keen
To build a town of green
And a wonderful road of yellow brick!
See, I never had a family of my own since I was always traveling,
and I guess I just wanted to give the citizens of Oz everything.
[Elphaba:] So you lied to them?
[Wizard:] Only verbally. Besides, they were the lies they wanted to
hear. Elphaba, where I come from we believe all sorts of things that
aren't true... We call it history!
A man's called a traitor or liberator
A rich man's a thief or philanthropist
Is one a crusader or ruthless invader
It's all in the label which is able to persist
There are precious few at ease
With moral ambiguities
So we act as though they don't exist...
They call me wonderful, so I am
In fact, it's so much who I am it's part of my name!
And with my help you can be the same...
The first time I listened to this song I just did not get the meaning of the song. But something about this song just clicked this time around and it is probably one of my favorites from the show.
Seeing Wicked in the UK was also an interesting experience. Elphaba spoke with an American accent but Glinda did not but she was still as wonderful and glamorous as ever! I am very glad we went and saw it here in London because it is probably my favorite musical. I got the same feeling when Glinda and Elphaba sang Defying Gravity and they did a beautiful job during that song. I am posting that song below because even though I really like the above song, Defying Gravity will always be the best song in the musical.
I recently visited the Natural History Museum of London. It has
over 70 million specimens from all over the natural world, from dinosaurs and
mammals, to human anatomy, even a history of the geological earth! Occupying
the central hall is a 26 meter longDiplodocus
model,affectionately called
Dippy by the museum staff:
There are five zones to visit, each with a different focus of
specimen. The Orange Zone has The Wildlife Garden and the Darwin Centre, which
allows you to see science in action. The Blue Zone is the home of the dinosaur
exhibit, for which you have to queue (it's that popular!), as well as human
anatomy, mammals, and marine life. This zone houses a life size model of the
Blue Whale, one of the largest animals in the world. There are also models of
other whales, as well as elephants, rhinos, and even a bison. This section of
the Blue Zone was one of my favorites to see and explore, as it had many hands
on activities, letting you see and hear what a dolphin sees and hears. All the
skeletons and models were pretty exciting too:
This is me in the Blue Zone, with the rhino and whale skeleton
models behind me. They were huge!
The Central Hall is the next zone, which houses a spectacular
painted ceiling, as well as a coelacanth, or living fossil fish, Dippy, and
other large fossils. The Green Zone Has a cross section of a giant sequoia, the
world's largest tree. There's also a large wall filled with the fossils of
Ichtheosaurs and Plesiosaurs, ancient marine reptiles, much like marine
dinosaurs, found by Mary Anning. Here's a few pictures of those fossils- the
first is an Ichthiosaur, the second is a Plesiosaur:
Pretty cool, huh? They were oceanic giants! The next zone is the
Red Zone, which holds the history of the earth, and various other geological
artifacts.
Being interested in the sciences, especially animal science, I
loved being able to visit this museum! The Blue Zone was by far my favorite,
and the one I spent the most time in. I just loved looking at all the animals
the earth holds, or has held in the past, especially the marine invertebrates
and mammals. There were a lot of funny looking fish models, like this guy:
He's a trench fish, basically blind from living in the dark depths
of the ocean. His shape is so interesting, I just had to get a picture of it!
If you're visiting London, I definitely recommend taking some time
out to visit the Natural History Museum. It has something interesting for
everyone, and it's also free! With so many cool exhibits to explore, and at no
cost, how could anyone pass up a chance to look around one of London's best
museums?
Here’s a video with some information about the museum and some of
the things you can find there:
On the outskirts of London is a quaint little Tea Shop where
Megan and I treated ourselves to afternoon tea. It was quite a journey out
there. We had to take the central line to White Street then walk out to the
street and walk 200 yards to another station which had the Hammersmith and City
line which is what we needed. Then when we got to Hammersmith we had to enter
the bus station and find a 209 or 419 bus that could take us to White Hart
Street. It took us about an hour and ten minutes to get this far out.
This place is so cute! It received London's Best Tea House
in 2008 by the Telegraph and it also gave you the option of cream tea or
afternoon tea. I decided to go all out (and I made sure not to eat lunch) and I
got the High tea and Megan went with the cream tea.
All of the orders came with a pot of tea. Megan stuck with
the traditional English Breakfast and I chose my favourite, Chai. I ended up
drinking three cups of it but I still left the table with my pot half
full!
I got so much food with my order! It was five finger sandwiches
(cucumber, cream cheese, and mint/ ham and spicy mustard/ cheese and some sort
of jam/ egg salad/ salmon with some sort of leafy green thing) and they were
all pretty good. The picture is after I had taken a few bites of each and was
trying to figure out my favourites! I also had a fruit scone with clotted cream
and jelly and a piece of cake that was chocolate with a vanilla cream cheese
icing. I ate everything but about half of the icing because I love my lady-like
portions of food!
I was eating my amazing scone and I was actually
wondering how I would make some of these at home...so here you go! They
interesting thing about the scones at this Tea room was that they looked like
the homemade biscuits I make at home.
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