The Countryside

We went on a bus tour of the countryside on our second day in Dublin. It was fun. We got to see a little more of Ireland than Dublin, but we didn't have to spend all day out and about. We had an AWESOME tour guide/bus driver who talked to us and told us stories the whole bus ride. He even sang us some awesome Irish folk songs. There was one point where he was in the middle of a story and stopped to comment about a woman walking down the street with a look of determination. I'm sure she was just "power walking" but he's like, "I wouldn't want to be the fella she's comin' home to!" It was fun.
Our first stop was Monaghan Castle. It was pretty cool, though it has been lived in up until thirty years ago. It is more along the lines of a house than a fortress, so it wasn't as cool as Warwick. But it was still cool.
This is a view of the grounds from out of one of the windows.
On our way back we stopped at a beach. You can see the peninsula behind Emily and me.

After we got back, we ate and then I went to Trinity College to see the Book of Kells. On the way I ran into Jared, so he came with me. It was pretty sweet. It's an old version of the gospels, copied by four monks in latin and decorated with gothic drawings and colors*. Then we went upstairs and looked at the Long Room, which is a giant old library. I mean giant, like the size of the one in Beauty and the Beast. It was awesome. Also housed in the library was the oldest harp in Ireland.
Jared and I took a quick walk over to Oscar Wilde's memorial before going back to the hostel and catching dinner (Oscar Wilde is a famous poet- one of the ones we're studying in class).

That night we went pub hopping again. This time it was on our own and to real pubs (not the touristy ones). Trevor was told where to find them, so we wandered down the street. The first pub we went to was fun, but we didn't talk to many people. Trevor and Greta talked to some old Irish men, but that was it. Then we went to an American 50's style diner and got deserts. We all wanted desert. After a quick desert (I got ice cream. I'd been dying for ice cream. The two things I'm eating first when I get home are Taco Bell and Cookies and Cream ice cream.) we went to another pub. There we met some guys more our age (late twenties) and hung out with them. Just as we started to chat, the pub was closing, so we went to another one. It was kinda loud, but one of the guys bought us a round of beer. We decided the noise didn't lend much to conversation, so we went to another pub (there are certainly enough to take your pick, without much of a walk in between). There was music, but we went outside in the back so it wasn't too loud. Our new Irish friends could smoke back there, so that was another plus (for them at least). They bought us another round and we stayed there til 1:30. They continued on to yet another pub, but we decided to go to bed on account of exhaustion.

The next morning we got breakfast/lunch (yes, at a pub. Again, where else is there to eat? I'm not even joking....it's either McDonalds or a pub) and then headed back to London. It was an excellent weekend.



*again with the British spellings, I wanted to spell "colours"

Guinness

We actually started out our first day in Dublin by visiting St. Patrick's Cathedral. I didn't go in, but it was pretty sweet. We just kinda chilled in the front lawn and relaxed. Strangely enough, there was actually a Tim Horton's across the street. Weird, huh?After the Cathedral we went to the Guinness factory. It was awesome. There were seven different levels, and it took you through the process of how they make Guinness. It was cool being able to go through and learn a little bit. The center of the building was designed to look like a giant pint, so the entire time you're climbing through a pint of guinness. There were various floors that had various information- how to make it, how to store it, how to transport it, how the building was founded (original lease of 9000 years. wow) and finally, on the top floor, there was a bar that served each person who went through the tour one glass of guinness (or other drink). The bar, being on the top floor, had walls of glass, giving you a view of the entire city of Dublin (not that there's much to look at).
This is the view from the seventh floor bar.

After the guinness factory, we got some dinner (at a pub of course. Where else is there to eat in Dublin?) and then went on a pub crawl. They took us around and showed us different pubs to go to. I went to three out of four of them, but after having three hours of sleep and then a twenty hour day, I could barely stand on my feet, so I went back to the hostel to go to sleep.

Wicked

Finally, after three years of anticipation, I finally get to see it. I've known the songs by heart and used to listen to them all the time. And now my imaginings of the stage come to life. The holes in the story are filled in. And it was phenominal. Alexia Khadime, the woman who played Elphaba (the Wicked Witch), was amazing. Truly. She had an amazing voice and more than once I had chills because of the way she used it. Remarkable.

The whole production was amazing from the music (Stephen Schwartz is one of my favorite* composers) to the spectacle. One thing that struck me as odd was that there was captioning. As in, English words to the left and right of the stage that wrote what was being said. I see why someone would go if they couldn't hear, but I think that giant glowing red letters are necessary. In fact, it was distracting from the performance. I constantly found my eyes wandering to the side of the stage to read the words.

Overall excellent performance. I would definately see it again (though a different cast would be fun).

*I thought I should note that I read a lot of British books, as the fantasy genre seems to be dominated by British authors, and I almost spelled "favorite" as "favourite".

West End Live

Today we went to West End Live. It's basically a bunch of performances from Musicals to Music groups to performing arts schools for free all jambed in Leicester square. It was fun. Totally packed, though. Jared and I caught the tail end of "Close Every Door" from Joseph. We then watched the Mamma Mia, Avenue Q, and High School Musical performances. There were a couple others in there as well. It was fun, and as it doesn't happen very often, it was good to be a part of.

Unfortunately Jared and I couldn't get tickets to see Billy Elliot tonight as it's crazy, but I got a ticket for Wicked (though I probably paid more than I should've because I forgot to mention I'm a student. Oh well.) So that'll be fun.

Oh, and I promise I'll get my Ireland posts up as soon as possible. It's still crazy and is going to continue to get even crazier.

Canterbury

Today Jared and I went to Canterbury. It was not an arranged trip. A couple days ago Jared and I bought bus tickets and we just went. When we got there, we got a map, and charted our course. It was quite fun. We did three things. The first, was visit the Canterbury Cathedral. Second, we went through the Canterbury Tales tour. Third, we visited the Canterbury Castle.

So on the way to the cathedral, we ran across this tower:

It is apparently what remains of the church where Christopher Marlowe was baptised. For those that don't know, Christopher Marlowe was a contemporary of Shakespeare- aka he wrote plays around the same time period. Actually, he died about 6 weeks before Shakespeare's first play. Some people think that Marlowe actually published under Shakespeare's name and that Shakespeare didn't actually write any plays. But that's a different story altogether.

Anyway, the Canterbury Cathedral is incredibly famous. There were two significant things about it that made Jared and I get on a bus for 2 hours. The first is that it is the Cathedral that Geoffrey Chaucer went on a pilgrimage to and in the process came up with the Canterbury Tales. The second is that it is the site of the tombstone of Prince Edward of Woodstock- the Black Prince.

This is the tomb of the Black Prince. It is a bronze figure, with his head resting on his helmet (and his feet on his dog). It was quite cool.
Me standing by the tomb. You can't really see it because of the guard cage, but you get the idea.
Around the outside of his tomb are his two arms. The first shield is the Shield of War. It is his coat of arms (and obviously that of his father, King Edward III). The second is the Shield of Peace. This has become the symbol for the Prince of Wales (I think Prince Edward was the first Prince of Wales).

After we finished at the Cathedral, we went to a place called The Canterbury Tales. Basically it was a cheesy audio and visual walkthrough of the Canterbury Tales. Super abridged- like, telling the story, but without any of Chaucer's words. It was cool in that it was a fun way to familiarize one's self with the Tales without reading them.

After the "tour" we went to the Canterbury Castle. It sounds a lot cooler than it was. It was basically a prison when it was still intact. And now it's just kind of a hollowed out keep. Even though it lacked the grandeur of the other castles we've been to, it was still fun to run around and take pictures.

We pretty much spent the rest of our time wandering around the shops and stuff. We stopped by the Marlowe Theatre and poked our heads in, but there's not much exciting in a theatre when there's not a show going on. Then we returned home. Unfortunately there were traffic problems, so after we were already 45 minutes late and showing no sign of being remotely close to the destination station, Jared and I just got off and walked the rest of the way back to school, as we had to get to the shows we were seeing before the curtain went up. And thus was Canterbury.

Les Miserables

This was the first Professional production of Les Miserables that I've seen. I was in it, I've seen two different high school versions (one with Trent, who absolutely rocked as Jean Valjean....but that may be biased) and the concert version on tape, but I haven't seen the full professional production. And it is different than the high school version- there's more. Not much more, and it didn't really add to the story. In fact, I think there was really only one or two things that the professional production had that wasn't in the high school version that I thought helped. Other than that, the high school version is more of a refined version than it is condensed.

Anyway, it was an excellent show. I thought everyone did extremely well, especially Jean Valjean. I've heard some crapy Valjeans (one of them being the Broadway recording) and this guy nailed it. Normally it's played by a different person, but the guy who played it tonight was fabulous. Each person in turn did their part very well (though Marius seemed to yell Empty Chairs at Empty Tables more than sing it, which bothered me a little). If I were to talk about each person and how well they did, you would all close your browser windows and go to bed because the blog would be too long. Just know that as a person who was in the show and has listened to several different people play each part, I though the show was excellent and each person did at least as good as I've heard it before, if not better. Some of them even did better than the international tenth anniversary concert edition. Now that's saying something.

A very powerful story, it is hard to not be moved by the show. It was excellently done and a wonderful night.

British Museum

Yesterday Jared and I went to the British Museum before class. It was pretty cool, though we barely scratched the surface as far as the exhibits there and how much you can see. It's free admission, but it would take several days at several hours a day in order to just look at everything, let alone learn about it. We ended up going to the Egyptian and then Greek parts of the museum, then went on a short tour about the Greek works that were there. It was fun watching how Greek art had developed over the years and in what ways they used the art.

Aphrodite (aka Venus via the Romans) covering herself because she was discovered in the woods.

Cool Greek artwork, toward its later development, on a pot used for wine.

Cool Greek statues (though originally Greek statues were painted).

The Rosetta Stone (part of the law written in three languages on one stone- very useful when trying to understand hyroglyphics)

And thus was our rather short visit to the museum. It was more because we had to visit it as part of a paper than because we actually wanted to go. But it was fun and worth it.

More Cool Pictures from Stratford-Upon-Avon

Just some more pictures from last week.