de mercredi a jeudi

After my last post, my laptop charger decided that it no longer wished to be a part of my UK adventures, and alas, committed suicide. So for now, I write from borrowed lappies and community desktops at the hostel, and without pictures! Hopefully, we will recover from this rather soon, and I'll have to do a post of just pictures to make up for it.

Wednesday and Thursday were a bit of a whirlwind of wandering throughout the city and seeing plays. First Wednesday. Mollie, Jenny, the boys and I tried to spend a fun afternoon in some of the beautiful parks near Buckingham Palace, but the weather and the bobbies (slang for police) had other plans. We took lots of pictures of us mostly freezing bollocks in Green Park and then around the palace. At this point I would insert a nude statue, with which the boys seemed enraptured and some of Mollie, Jenny and I with chattering smiles and windblown hair. To escape the weather, we went to the National Portrait Gallery, smaller and less crowded than the British Museum. It was pretty marvellous; they had a beautiful collection of Monet, some of which I'd never seen before, and a really neat exhibit on a (Dutch?) painter dubbed "The Master of Light." His portraits were the most compelling, in my humble opinion. That night we saw Legally Blonde: The Musical, which was pink and certainly entertaining, with catchy tunes that left most of us humming the first number, "Oh my god, you guys!"

Mollie and Jenny, quickly becoming my dearest mates, set off the following afternoon avec moi to the Covent Garden market. The market was super neat, if I may use such silly adjectives. There was a close-up magician (disappearing and reappearing melons never seemed so magical), a really freaky contortionist, a woman performing opera in an open-air restaurant, and all sorts of vendors selling knick knacks and paddywacks (imagine pictures galore). There were also a fantastic assortment of posh shops - thanks to EK's tip (shout out to my ladies eieieieiei!) we stopped in at the grand re-opening of Ted Baker and got free cupcakes with glitter frosting while we admired their beautiful dresses. I was very glad I went with nearly zero pocket change because H&M was the fluffy, adorable, cheap of my fashion dreams. We also found complimentary tea and champagne at a high-end beauty shop. The best shop, however, was Lush, an affordable handmade soap and beauty products shop. You enter on the street-level, but the entire store is in the basement, where there are foxy blokes (and girls probably but I didn't notice them) performing demonstrations with bath soaps and moisturizers. I'm definitely going back for myself and for friend gifts in the near future.

Our night concluded with a sprint through the tube station due to tube delays to the Barbican Arts Center, where we caught a really out of this world version of Macbeth. I don't want to say Americans do Shakespeare better after only one go at it, but compared to the recent Guthrie production, I was less enthralled by some of the choices, though I felt the company's commitment to their choices was very strong. The lead actress as Lady Macbeth was a truly haunting portrayal vs. Minneapolis' more sultry one, but both performances continue to support my claim that Shakespeare's women are more captivating than his men.

To celebrate the end of the week (insert silly face photo here), a large group of us headed to a pub for drinks and good conversation. I mostly partook (I may have just made that up) of the latter, as well as people watching (dressing up for a night out is surprisingly scandalous here, as demonstrated by a girl wearing what Matt quaintly described as "half a top"), but Will and Dan enjoyed a pint or two, Lizzie fought off some advances, and Jenny even got a kiss from a quite handsome bloke whose friends put him up to (or so was his excuse). Cheers to studying!