Made it back

We made it back from Italy. Unfortunately, due to a day of travelling and a late return, I will not have enough time to elaborate on Italy until my return from Cornwall on Thursday. We leave in the morning, and I'm already exhausted.
That's pretty much it. Look for new posts on Thursday evening!

A Quick Hey

So this will be my last blog for a couple days because I'm going to Italy tomorrow with Mallory!!! We're excited, but I am a little nervous because it'll be my first time on my own in a non-English speaking country. It'll be fun. Anyway, we get back Sunday night and then leave Monday morning for Cornwall. We're in Cornwall until Thursday. There is a chance that I may get an Italy post up on Sunday, but if not I will at least get a post up saying that we made it back!
Super excited!

The Chalk Garden

An excellent play that was well done. The characters were full and alive and performed extremely well. The only problem with the show is that there was no plot and no conflict. There seemed to be a lot of screaming, but there was nothing to move the story forward. Again,the characters were amazing and the show was about discovering the characters, but it would've been nice to discover the characters through the course of a plot.
Overall an enjoyable experience, but it did get slightly dull in some spots.

Free Outgoing

This was done at the Royal Court Theatre. It was okay. It was about a modernized India and the technology gap that exists (technology gap- the gap between advancing technology and the culture that it is exposed to). A girl makes a bad decision and it leaks onto the internet, causing a riot outside their house and a disturbance to the entire residential area. It is interesting watching a how a different culture responds to a situation that would be hardly noticed in the US.
Overall the performances were good- the leading lady's being exceptional. But the script was somewhere between community theatre and professional theatre.

More Albums

I added a couple more albums. It took a really long time, so people better look at them. I haven't finished labeling the Warwick Castle pictures so just use your imagination for now. I just got really sick of waiting five minutes for the computer to respond to my clicking.
Enjoy!

De Profundis

Written by Oscar Wilde, this is a letter from Oscar to his male love, Bosie, from prison (Oscar was married). Oscar puts the reason of himself being in prison on Bosie and recounts the several years leading up to it. Indeed, Oscar reflects on most of their relationship and how unhealthy it was.
The letter was performed as a one-man show by Corin Redgrave. It was heavily cut (most of the second half of the letter was omitted, as most of it was just repetition) but it was about an hour. It was very well done. The ability of Corin to have memorized that much (especially after having a stroke to which he lost a lot of his memory) and to keep the audience engaged in such a piece while seated in a chair was brilliant. I was impressed. Where the letter doesn't really make much of a show, it was well done and engaging so it was not torturous. It was a good experience and I'm glad we had the opportunity.

A Magical Day

Ricky, Greta, Carrie, Rachel, Jess, Amber, and I all walked around together on the second day. The reason is because the other half of the group went to Versailles for the day. So we started out by walking to the Arc de Triumph. It was awesome. And huge.
After that, we walked over to the Eiffel Tower. Now I make it sound easy, all of this walking, but it wasn't. It was pretty much half of the city, and took about and hour and a half to get to the Eiffel Tower. When we got there, we decided to go up.

This is the Eiffel Tower from the ground:
This is from the middle (second floor):
And this is from the top (you can see the point in the upper left of the picture):
This is the view from the top: Probably the worst part of going up the tower was the elevator ride. The elevators were glass, so you could see everything as you ascended. And it was painstakingly slow. Rick and I got a little queasy, but once we were at the top and on solid structure again, we were good. The view was amazing.

After descending again, we wandered the direction of Notre Dame (though we eventually got sick of walking and jumped on the metro). We got Kebab (meat shavings, french fries, ketchup, and lettuce in a pita) for lunch and chilled in front of Notre Dame.

After eating we went in. It was fun. I mean, after awhile all the Churches start to look the same, but I guess that's just because I'm not as interested in the inside of them.

There were several gypsies in the courtyard of Notre Dame. Now I'm not talking about the culture. I'm talking about the ladies that walk up and ask, "Speak English?" and if you say yes they thrust a piece of paper into your hand asking for money. It's annoying, especially because they are fully capable of getting a real job. At one point, Rick gave one of them an Eiffel Tower keychain. She initially refused, but he insisted so she took it with a smile. The second he turned his back she glared at him. A minute later she came over and tried to get it back. He wouldn't take it. She tried again, and he still wouldn't take it. So she glared at him and tossed it over her shoulder behind her and stormed off. It was hysterical.

Anyway, we wandered some more, stopping at Haagen Das for Ice cream (I got cookies and cream. So happy...). We then rushed back to the hotel, because we were late to meet the other half for dinner. When we got back there was no sign of them, so we thought they had come and gone. So we showered then went back out.

We weren't very hungry for dinner, but we wanted to eat at a nice place, so we found a sort of nice place and sat down. It wasn't super nice but it was a restaurant. Well, we just ordered appetizers, and apparently that wasn't enough money for them, so we left.

We then went to the boat tour area and waited for the other group. Again, they didn't show. So we got on the last boat tour of the night (10:30) and travelled up and down the Seine. It was beautiful.

At the top of every hour after dark, the Eiffel tower lights up in a sparkling show for ten minutes. It was beautiful to watch, especially because we were on the boat when it happened. It was a magical evening.



The sparkling tower:

The lit up tower:

So after a stop at the Moulin Rouge to see it at night, we went back to the hotel to bed.The next day was basically just spent wandering around buying souvenirs. We went to the Moulin Rouge area first because they are cheapest there, then we went back to the Notre Dame area for lunch and just to chill until it was time to return home.

The Louvre

We started out in Paris with a bus tour of the city. I did not pay much attention because I was cold, tired, and hungry. I couldn't take any pictures, and I didn't really know where we were when he was showing us stuff. All that aside, it was fun being able to get a quick overview of the city.

Once we were done, we checked into the hotel. This took three hours because of some problem with the system higher up. It was really frustrating. When I finally got to my room, there was next to no ventillation and we couldn't open the window. Trevor stayed in Mal's room because our room smelled of cover-up smoker and the smell was enough to give us headaches.

After a brief rest, we started the walking tour. We were shown several areas of the city (some of which I didn't know where they were so we couldn't go back later. Again, tired.) and our tour guide told us some info on them. It was quite boring.

Sacre-Couer:
Oldest tree in France. Planted 1602
Notre-Dame After the walking tour was over, we stopped at a sandwich shop and got some baguette sandwiches. They were really good. We then decided to go to the Louvre because it is free for under-26 on Friday evenings. It was amazing. The building was gigantic and it was completely filled with artwork. It used to be Napolean's place of residence, but now it's a museum of art. The artwork there was amazing.

These flowers are beautifully detailed, and are about twice the size of my head.

The little white dot at the bottom of this painting is the flowers in the above picture. Needless to say it's gigantic.

Here's a quick shot of Napolean's Apartments:

After visiting the Louvre, we went back to the hotel to "freshen up" before going out. Unfortunately this took a really long time. Regardless, I still went out with everyone else. But we went to an English pub. Everything French was further in the city. After a quick drink we went back to the hotel and to bed.