Hello! How I've missed you all. Sorry for being so lazy/forgetful, but I have finally written my Venice post from when I went there with Eren in early April. It was a very magical trip, and I absolutely loved it there so I really should have been more inspired to write about it, but I guess I was so overwhelmed by all that happened, I didn't know what to write first.
Going to Venice was a dream come true. Plane trip was uneventful, although we did get dry, crappy breadsticks and flew over the Alps. I didn't realize before how many mountains there were (way more than you might think, over 20 minutes of flying over them!!), and there are so many small villages nestled in the mountains! I wonder how life is there?
After getting to the airport, we got tickets from an unfriendly woman for a ferry to cross to the main island. Wasn't like the €100 each private boat trip I was expecting! Waiting for the boat on the pier with other people while the sun was going down over the water was beautiful. By the time we got on our boat, it got pretty dark. It took over an hour to get to our San Marco dock. With the help of our Google maps printout, asking someone in Hotel Serenissima (swanky!) and walking up and down deserted, echoey Venice streets, we eventually found our hotel hidden around a corner by a river side (with a scary unmoving beggar with his arms held out and his head down...) .
The Hotel Corte Grimani where we stayed was quite nice. The inside lobby area stank, but apparently that's really common. The old guy behind the counter who looked like Santos from Minna No Nihongo, took 20 minutes to explain to us the Venice map and gave us suggestions and stories of what to do/see. After grabbing a free internet access code, we went up to our room in the tiny elevator. Our room was room 302, so it was meant to be! We were starving because we hadn't eaten all day, and there wasn't any room service. I found hotel paper though and drew Ezio on it with miscellaneous HAI VENEZIA! messages on it. There was free water and cookies, so we partook in that, then took in some internet and went to sleep.
Got up the next day pretty early. The view and sounds outside our window were fantastic, and there was even a pigeon coop on the roof across from us. (Assassin's Creed much?) So we quickly got ready and departed. We wanted to shop, get lost in the maze of streets and explore everywhere, but first we were starving! Let me tell you something first, our Venice map got lots of wear out of it! It was quite easy navigating to the larger area because of the Per San Marco and Per Rialto signs everywhere on the buildings.
We went to a place called MR. SANDWICH for breakfast near the Rialto Bridge, and had a wonderful toasted sandwich with a cappuccino, and I normally don't like coffee but this tasted incredibly delightful. We were served by a really friendly Italian man that didn't mind that Eren couldn't pronounce Macchiato. Bahaha!
After breakfast we explored a bit down the streets, crowded with tourists and tourist trappings stalls. I went into a Murano glass shop run by a cool girl listening to ska music. I bought a red and black Murano glass snail and told her I would be back on Sunday to shop more. We happened to find a Lush in the hidden shops under all the old stone awnings, which I had to check out. Going through the rest of the alleyways, we cam across some great shops, ones with a lot of masks, Murano... you can tell it wa sa very touristy place. I found a great artistic dress in a shop run by a chinese lady (and later the zipper broke, sads. Need to get it fixed). We also got some sweets from one of the many bakeries and sweet shops scattered around (meringue cookies and melon rope, because I got addicted to the stuff thanks to Sweden).
We happily started a 3-a-day gelato taste test. Gelato was only 1 euro per scoop, so we tried as much as we could. Gelato is like ice cream, except way thicker, creamier and with incredible amounts of flavour. Flavours tried included Lemon, White Chocolate, Nutella, Extreme Chocolate, Strawberry, Kinder Surprise.. can't remember the rest. But most of them were nommy.
We checked out some of the amazing buildings and cathedrals scattered around, and made sure to take a couple of nerdy photos of us trying to climb some pillars a la Ezio. We had a late lunch at a fantastic restaurant on the first day. I had a fresh creamy ham sauce tortellini dish, while Eren had an artichoke, cheese, ham and mushroom pizza which was also tasty. I partook in the breadsticks and white house wine, which was divine, and cheap! Really satisfying meal.
We walked quite far all around the city, and discovered the Piazza Roma which is where all the cars/busses/trains drop all the people off because they can't go into the city. They had a newer bridge built over the water that was really modern and neat to cross over. There were some small posters put up in an area of construction that had a cracked out Snail on it that reminded me of Sausage the Snail. I was delighted. :D
Seeing all the Gondoliers float in their gondolas and go under bridges with people was so cool, they had their stripey shirts and awesome straw hats n' everything. Just like you'd expect! Some of them even sang/whistled.
We ate the meringue cookies at the waterside by the Rialto bridge and watched the gondoliers go by. We saw the seagulls flying around trying to get a bit of food action from people. We closely inspected the water in the canals (without getting too close) and summarized that is definitely pure AIDS. It smelled like the bathroom from Trainspotting. Oh well, the view was nice.
During the day, the lineups to get into St. Marco cathedral were huge, so we didn't bother going inside. There was lots of really cool things to see on the outside, anyway. Saturday night in St. Marco square there was a live band (bass, violin, clarinet, accordion) that played beautiful songs and even the Tetris song! I got some crappy video of it on my phone. Lights at night on the canals were creepy but hauntingly pretty. Night walking in St. Marco square was lovely! The architecture in this area is incredible, with the long row of pillared buildings and the ornate Torre D'Orlogio (clock tower) sitting adjacent to the San Marco Cathedral, when walking under it is quite neat.
On Sunday we walked all over Venice trying to find all the glyph locations from Assassin's Creed 2 (there are 6 locations, but one doesn't exist anymore because it was..well, a thieves guild. Haha) and taking pictures/video of each one. Before we left our hotel on Sunday we scoured the internet for an hour trying to find a proper old map from AC2 that showed us where the glyph locations were supposed to be. Translating it to the new map we had was a bit hard because even though it's very similar, it was definitely shrunk down for the game.
• Gilda dei Ladri di Venezia (this is the thieves guild location that didn't exist.. haha)
• San Giacomo di Rialto
• Ponte di Rialto Rialto Bridge
• Scuola Grande di San Marco
• Torre Dell'Orologio Clock Tower
• Campanile di San Marco
• San Pietro di Castello To the very very east of Venice where no one was!
At one of the locations at the far east, where we found the San Pietro di Castello, we were sitting on a bench and we saw a bunch of people on the large bridge going across one of the canals, and they were all wearing a different colour jacket. The funny thing was, most of them weren't together. Rainbow people! :D Also there were barely any people over on this side, so it was really quiet and quite beautiful. We had to cross 7 bridges to get to this place, one of the bridges being the "Lovers Bridge". There is a story behind it and you're supposed to kiss a loved one after you cross the bridge. So adorable!
Getting to this part in the east we walked down a street where mostly the locals were out and about, and there was some sort of flea market display in the streets that had some interesting items. We got some gelato and explored the nearby garden which had a fantastic statue/fountain and a really nice walking path that sheltered us from the sun. We got to the edge of the water and walked all the way up, admiring the skyline of beautiful Venice with all the boats going to and from the docks. On the way in the water, we saw a bizarre drowned woman statue covered in seaweed. We also angered a local gazebo.
During our shopping adventures, we saw a lot of really neat things. Like cybernetic masks instead of the normal Carnivale masks. We also found a small dragon and eclectic figure store where Eren got a little dragon figure. Also went back to Murano shop run by cool ska girl, and bought lotsa neat things and presents! I wanted to go mask hunting to find the perfect mask for me and a Plague Doctor mask for Kody. Another shop we saw had amazing Greek God statues in the window. I wanted the Lady Justice and Zeus ones but they would have been too huge to carry back. Also to my delight and surprise, I found out that Lupin the 3rd is very popular in Italy, as I saw lots of Lupin merchandise and clothing at random stores. I got a really awesome purple and green Lupin shirt with fuzzy black designs!
Caffe del Doge was amazing. Spent 17 euros in there. That's where I had the best hot chocolate I've ever had. It was pure chocolate with cinnamon sprinkled on top. Exquisite.
Found an amazing mask shop that did huge masks of cartoons/people, like the Joker, Simpsons, the Hulk, etc. and sold Italian manga!
Steph asked me to try to find a spiral/shell design necklace charm she lost, and we searched everywhere in most Murano shops but we could not find what she described. Apparently there was only one shop that sold them though (and there was a lot of Murano shops.) I did buy her a cool pendant though.
On Monday before we left, we decided to partake in one of the 80 Euro Gondola rides. It was about 30 minutes and it was really lovely. Our Gondolier was secretly Ezio, we think. He showed us some really old buildlings, like the Marco Polo building and some really old marble buildings from the 1400's. He took us to where we were looking out over the water on Saturday eating meringues. It was cool to see it from the other side on the water! We even got in a mini traffic jam on the water, which was cool, haha. And there was this old Gondolier with the coolest mustache! He was a bro. This was a really nice way to end the Venice trip, I think, even if it was an expensive one!
FINAL THOUGHTS!
Walking over so many bridges was really cool. Gorgeous city, old buildings, quite friendly people, the streets were very narrow and so crowded with tourists, it was sometimes very hard to get past. Apparently less than 1% of tourists actually take time to see the gorgeous sights and buildings. How sad! We made sure to see as much as we could, chased pigeons, fought our way through crowds, had lots of candy, gelato and expensive delicious foods. Our bed was very comfy and our bathroom had a bidet. Haha. The Hotel Corte Grimani was clean and very nice. Staff was nice too. Ferry ride back was fun and crowded. People got splashed by the water!
I was a bit worried at airport security that I wouldn't be able to take everything because I had like 5 carry on bags, but I guess they're used to it. Had shitty breadsticks on the plane ride back, too! Was uneventful and we got back safe and sound. Venice was amazing, A+++ would visit again many many times!
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Foods we tried:
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Toasted sandwiches
Super Expensive crab (that was just a small pile of crab with bits of shell in it on some lettuce.. :| )
Beef Goulash noodles
Lemon Pana Cotta with Raspberry sauce (this was EXTRA NICE)
Smoked Salmon Penne
Random pizza
Lots of wine
The BEST hot chocolate
Croissants
Spinach and Cheese pastry
Fruit Milkshake
Many delicious sandwiches on Monday, like my fav. Cream cheese and ham with no crust. DIVINE!
Random bakery cookies and pastries
I have a crapload of photos from Venice, you can see my photo album here if you haven't seen any my photos already! http://www.flickr.com/photos/43711291@N02/sets/72157623803323554/ GO SEE GO SEE!
Showing posts with label touristy shennanigans. Show all posts
Showing posts with label touristy shennanigans. Show all posts
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
CARDIFF - PERTH/STIRLINGSHIRE ROAD TRIP - ETC!
So much to say, so much to say!
First off I must tell you of Tchai Ovna, which is a tea house in a weird part of Glasgow where you have to go down some creepy streets to get to, and it's basically a shed in someone's backyard that they decorated all hippie like. They have close to 50 kinds of teas you can choose from, ranging from green teas, indian teas, fruit teas, Russian, black teas.. it's cool! I've gotten to try a couple things from there so far, like the best one is the Moroccan Mint Apple, which is ABSOLUTELY FINE. They had another one called Fairies Blood, which is very strong, fruity, minty herbal. A lot of my recent tea count has been from that place!
Also went with a new friend to his friend's birthday party, where we went Go-Karting (my first time) which was HELLA FUN! Totally Mario-Kartesque, got the helmet, outfit and everything! Too bad I don't have pictures from it. It was my first time but I got 5th out of 9 experienced go Karters, go me! And had a really good lap time! :D We also did lazer tag, which I am DREADFUL at, I got dead last out of 17 people, some of them being seemingly blonde petite girls...sigh. I think my tactics of "storming everywhere and everything while shouting BLUE THUNDERRRRRR at the top of my lungs" doesn't work so hot..)
Also saw Sherlock Holmes with Caz last week, which was cool! The movie itself I enjoyed but it was still missing something so I didn't enjoy it to the fullest extent of Robert Downey Jr.'s sexiness that I could!
Anyway, a couple weekends ago, Kody, Caz and I went on a ROAD TRIP to the outskirts of Perth and Stirlingshire, to visit a couple of pretty places and basically just hang out in the countrysides! (because they were NICE and the BIRDS and the SUN was almost down from the TOP of the SKY !?!?!)
Kody likes driving fast on scary roads that have no fences on them :| but that seems to be a normal thing in the UK where people are so used to driving on these roads and they are ace at it.. it's still scary! The long road we drove on was called Braco Road. (Google it!) I saw Stirling Castle and the (phallic) Wallace monument from a distance! We went to a place called "Deil's Cauldron". Deil is another word for Devil. Had gorgeous scenery with all these dead, red ferns covering the hills. Also went to a waterfall called Fairy Falls in South Lochearnhead. Got dangerously close, but it was worth it! Really had an amazing, thrilling feeling with the powerful water flow making wisps of freshwater flecked air fly into my face! Whoa... just made an alliteration there. Apparently in the Spring/Summer Equinox when it turns midnight, you can see lights around the falls that look like fairies!
We also went to Kody's parents house in St. Fillans which they have a private dock on Loch Earn. It was quite cold and it was definitely not swimming weather, or even staying outside for longer than a few minutes weather.. but it was definitely beautiful! Afterwards we went to the small town of Calendar, where we hit up a couple of neat shops. I went to a Celtic Jewelry store where I got some gorgeous triskele earrings and a triskele necklace, so much better quality than anything I'd find at home, and pretty darn cheap, too! Another store we visited was a Shell shop run by a very chatty, nice Scottish man. After Caz and Kody bought a couple of shells, we headed back home!
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CARDIFF
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A couple of months ago, a couple of friends back in London (Chris and Andy) mentioned that John Barrowman was doing a Pantomime in Cardiff, Wales, and had invited me to come along. I didn't want to miss an opportunity to be in the same room as John Barrowman while he sings and prances around gay-ly, so I told them to buy me a ticket.
Cardiff is where a lot of Torchwood and Doctor Who is shot, contrary to what you might be thinking (ie, London), so I saw a lot of places where some episodes were shot (the mall where they shot the mannequin episode, a chip shop where Martha was in, etc) and from Torchwood, we went to the "secret gate" which is on the docks at a wharf (which has now been turned into an Ianto Jones memorial shrine), and we also went to the most famous Torchwood place, which is where the secret slab is outside of that huge theatre building with the giant writing on it. (See pictures, you'd recognize it if you saw the show!)
The Cardiff trip itself was pretty successful. I was picked up by Chris, Andy and Sadie at Cardiff Central train station where we then walked around a bit to scope out the area. We ended up going to Nando's right away because I was starved to death from not eating on a 7 hour train journey. I ended up eating half a chicken, mashed potatoes, a corn on the cob, and Sadie's half a chicken wrap. XD;; Afterwards we hit up a couple of pubs, both of them being Wetherspoons. The first one we went to was a gay friendly 'poons with 2 floors. We lounged in the upper floor's comfy couch seats where I had a WKD Blue and a huge plate of profiteroles (PRO-FIT-TER-OOOH-LEES!) (ice cream filled cream puffs with chocolate drizzled on them) that I barely shared. 8D~ Chris had to run to catch his train back to Swansea, and Sadie, Andy and I called it an early night and went to our pretty ghetto hotel in a garbage-littered part of Cardiff. Oh well, it was cheap!
The next day, Andy, Sadie and I had breakfast at Caffe Nero, where we were served by a one-man show - he was nuts, serving all the customers himself and making all the drinks! He had crazy dreadlocks which must have given him A.D.D. Spider genes. I had a blueberry muffin and a chai latte. We scoped out a Wales shop, where I bought a Wales touque and a flag sticker for my laptop. Andy bought a sheep plushie that we had plans for later. Then we checked out the large, two floored Cardiff Market. We hung around looking at the booths while waiting for Chris and Neil to arrive from Swansea. We tried Welsh Cakes (like flat raisin english muffins covered in sugar). Looked for a specifically titled book in all the Harlequin Romance novels with similar titles (tried to find 'Italian Billionaire's Virgin Bride' but ended up having to settle for 'Italian Millionaire's Virgin Wife'.)
We escaped the market where Andy had written "Ianto" on the side of the sheep he purchased. From there, we proceeded to have random adventures in malls, like Andy putting 1man1jar on the macbook in the mac store (DON'T LOOK THIS UP IF YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT IT IS I'M SERIOUS), trying to find a smoothie place, Andy sending horrible pictures to people's bluetooth on their mobile phones... We had lunch at an Irish pub where I had a Steak and Guiness pie, chips and peas. (I ATE ALL OF THE PIES.) We found some statues to pose Ianto the sheep with, like the two giant fists (lol) and the "Stargate" where we had a good laugh because some young army cadets were hanging outside out of it with a 'malp' looking device. We took pictures of us jumping through the Stargate, and throwing Ianto through it. We visited an Antique store where I found a Sherlock Holmes soundtrack CD...go figure! And they had a comic store inside with a Doctor Who merchandise treasury on the top floor! They had so much stuff.... I found some stickers, a Dalek bag and a David Tennant notebook in a £1 bin which I promptly purchased! Yay stickers! Also, there was a militaria section where a guy had Russian guns and Nazi daggers and swords - spoils from the war! :O There was a section that had bags, medikits, jackets, badges, patches, lots of stuff from all the countries who participated in the wars! I bought an armband that has a medic symbol on it as well as a Union Jack and a Scotland Flag emblem. It's recent, but it's cool looking! The boys said it looked like a thong from the way it's designed... hahaha.
Neil drove us all to Barry Island, where during the day they have faires and rides, and it's right on the beach. We went after 5 when everything was closed, but we did manage to waste time in a couple of arcades where we tried to win stuff in the 2p pushing coins game. Also had Neil try to win me a Scottish Terrier plush, but he didn't get it. Took some amazing pictures of the beach and sky with long exposure. We also got a ton of free chips, pies and sausages from a chippy that was closing! So yet again, I got to 'eat all the pies' except I didn't really touch it. haha. Also, some person was setting Chinese Lanterns up into the sky (the kind where you light the base on fire and the heat takes it up like an air balloon) They filled the sky with pretty orange lights!
We headed for the posh area of Cardiff on the water after that, where I got a Starbucks. We visited the Ianto shrine where the presumed 'outside of Torchwood' is filmed, and we talked to the theatre with the huge glowing letters on the outside. After taking hilarious photos of Ianto being silly, we went back to the hotel where we had delicious Whittards Dreamtime tea, and called it a night after Sadie, Neil and Andy tried on Sadie's "Russell from Up" outfit she bought at the Disney store that was made for 5 year olds. HILARIOUS.
The next day, Sadie, Andy and I had breakfast at a cafe, where I had an apple blueberry juice and a bacon and cheese panini. We wandered around until we had to meet up with Chris and Neil. I managed to buy a very pretty pinup rockabilly dress for only £20! We also went to a Welsh crafts store with the world's largest carved wooden Welsh Love Spoon! (see pictures) I got Steph and Terri presents from that store. We went back to check on Cardiff Castle which is situated in the middle of downtown, but we figured it was too expensive because it was £9 just to get in. We went back to "Torchwood" where we tried to find a place to eat that had lamb on the menu, but surprisingly our search was fruitless because it seems Cardiff likes their Italian restaurants more than traditional Welsh food, and it is also "cool" for restaurants to close between 4-6:30pm. :| WTF. We ended up going to a chinese/thai food restaurant that was completely horrible. I had peanut satay chicken and the chicken was so overdone, and 'braised lamb with ginger and spring onion' which came as a slop on a plate that tasted like slop on a plate. Worst £15 I've ever spent so far ughghgh.
We went back to the hotel to drop stuff off and get changed to see BARROWMAN! The theatre was pretty, with crowded, uncomfortable seats. We were pretty high up so we couldn't see too well, but it was still hilarious. Barrowman flashing his butt in shiny tights, haha yes! There was a questionable "ice skating of the FUTUR" part with a Russian skater dude who looked like Evgeni Plushenko. However, it was all made worth it when I saw John Barrowman sing "Every little thing she does is magic". :D
The next day I bought a chunk of welsh lamb leg for Kody to cook, some fruit for breakfast, had a chocolatey fika with cheesecake and hot chocolate at Caffe Nero, then a 7 hour train ride later, I was back in Glasgow, where Caz and Kody went to go meet me but didn't get a block outside of their apartment before I arrived. Hehe!
It's good to be back in Glasgow, which seems to be my home at the moment! <3 Edinburgh trip on the weekend though! Very exciting, going to go bead shopping and buy a muffin tin so Caz and I can make cupcakes and muffins! Squeeeee~
TORCHWOOD
Chillin' in the market with Elvis
MY SPOON IS TOO BIG!
Those wooden links are carved like that!
Clock Tower in Cardiff
Barry Island
Fairy Falls
Loch Earn
Deil's Cauldron featuring Kody and Caz!
First off I must tell you of Tchai Ovna, which is a tea house in a weird part of Glasgow where you have to go down some creepy streets to get to, and it's basically a shed in someone's backyard that they decorated all hippie like. They have close to 50 kinds of teas you can choose from, ranging from green teas, indian teas, fruit teas, Russian, black teas.. it's cool! I've gotten to try a couple things from there so far, like the best one is the Moroccan Mint Apple, which is ABSOLUTELY FINE. They had another one called Fairies Blood, which is very strong, fruity, minty herbal. A lot of my recent tea count has been from that place!
Also went with a new friend to his friend's birthday party, where we went Go-Karting (my first time) which was HELLA FUN! Totally Mario-Kartesque, got the helmet, outfit and everything! Too bad I don't have pictures from it. It was my first time but I got 5th out of 9 experienced go Karters, go me! And had a really good lap time! :D We also did lazer tag, which I am DREADFUL at, I got dead last out of 17 people, some of them being seemingly blonde petite girls...sigh. I think my tactics of "storming everywhere and everything while shouting BLUE THUNDERRRRRR at the top of my lungs" doesn't work so hot..)
Also saw Sherlock Holmes with Caz last week, which was cool! The movie itself I enjoyed but it was still missing something so I didn't enjoy it to the fullest extent of Robert Downey Jr.'s sexiness that I could!
Anyway, a couple weekends ago, Kody, Caz and I went on a ROAD TRIP to the outskirts of Perth and Stirlingshire, to visit a couple of pretty places and basically just hang out in the countrysides! (because they were NICE and the BIRDS and the SUN was almost down from the TOP of the SKY !?!?!)
Kody likes driving fast on scary roads that have no fences on them :| but that seems to be a normal thing in the UK where people are so used to driving on these roads and they are ace at it.. it's still scary! The long road we drove on was called Braco Road. (Google it!) I saw Stirling Castle and the (phallic) Wallace monument from a distance! We went to a place called "Deil's Cauldron". Deil is another word for Devil. Had gorgeous scenery with all these dead, red ferns covering the hills. Also went to a waterfall called Fairy Falls in South Lochearnhead. Got dangerously close, but it was worth it! Really had an amazing, thrilling feeling with the powerful water flow making wisps of freshwater flecked air fly into my face! Whoa... just made an alliteration there. Apparently in the Spring/Summer Equinox when it turns midnight, you can see lights around the falls that look like fairies!
We also went to Kody's parents house in St. Fillans which they have a private dock on Loch Earn. It was quite cold and it was definitely not swimming weather, or even staying outside for longer than a few minutes weather.. but it was definitely beautiful! Afterwards we went to the small town of Calendar, where we hit up a couple of neat shops. I went to a Celtic Jewelry store where I got some gorgeous triskele earrings and a triskele necklace, so much better quality than anything I'd find at home, and pretty darn cheap, too! Another store we visited was a Shell shop run by a very chatty, nice Scottish man. After Caz and Kody bought a couple of shells, we headed back home!
**********
CARDIFF
**********
A couple of months ago, a couple of friends back in London (Chris and Andy) mentioned that John Barrowman was doing a Pantomime in Cardiff, Wales, and had invited me to come along. I didn't want to miss an opportunity to be in the same room as John Barrowman while he sings and prances around gay-ly, so I told them to buy me a ticket.
Cardiff is where a lot of Torchwood and Doctor Who is shot, contrary to what you might be thinking (ie, London), so I saw a lot of places where some episodes were shot (the mall where they shot the mannequin episode, a chip shop where Martha was in, etc) and from Torchwood, we went to the "secret gate" which is on the docks at a wharf (which has now been turned into an Ianto Jones memorial shrine), and we also went to the most famous Torchwood place, which is where the secret slab is outside of that huge theatre building with the giant writing on it. (See pictures, you'd recognize it if you saw the show!)
The Cardiff trip itself was pretty successful. I was picked up by Chris, Andy and Sadie at Cardiff Central train station where we then walked around a bit to scope out the area. We ended up going to Nando's right away because I was starved to death from not eating on a 7 hour train journey. I ended up eating half a chicken, mashed potatoes, a corn on the cob, and Sadie's half a chicken wrap. XD;; Afterwards we hit up a couple of pubs, both of them being Wetherspoons. The first one we went to was a gay friendly 'poons with 2 floors. We lounged in the upper floor's comfy couch seats where I had a WKD Blue and a huge plate of profiteroles (PRO-FIT-TER-OOOH-LEES!) (ice cream filled cream puffs with chocolate drizzled on them) that I barely shared. 8D~ Chris had to run to catch his train back to Swansea, and Sadie, Andy and I called it an early night and went to our pretty ghetto hotel in a garbage-littered part of Cardiff. Oh well, it was cheap!
The next day, Andy, Sadie and I had breakfast at Caffe Nero, where we were served by a one-man show - he was nuts, serving all the customers himself and making all the drinks! He had crazy dreadlocks which must have given him A.D.D. Spider genes. I had a blueberry muffin and a chai latte. We scoped out a Wales shop, where I bought a Wales touque and a flag sticker for my laptop. Andy bought a sheep plushie that we had plans for later. Then we checked out the large, two floored Cardiff Market. We hung around looking at the booths while waiting for Chris and Neil to arrive from Swansea. We tried Welsh Cakes (like flat raisin english muffins covered in sugar). Looked for a specifically titled book in all the Harlequin Romance novels with similar titles (tried to find 'Italian Billionaire's Virgin Bride' but ended up having to settle for 'Italian Millionaire's Virgin Wife'.)
We escaped the market where Andy had written "Ianto" on the side of the sheep he purchased. From there, we proceeded to have random adventures in malls, like Andy putting 1man1jar on the macbook in the mac store (DON'T LOOK THIS UP IF YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT IT IS I'M SERIOUS), trying to find a smoothie place, Andy sending horrible pictures to people's bluetooth on their mobile phones... We had lunch at an Irish pub where I had a Steak and Guiness pie, chips and peas. (I ATE ALL OF THE PIES.) We found some statues to pose Ianto the sheep with, like the two giant fists (lol) and the "Stargate" where we had a good laugh because some young army cadets were hanging outside out of it with a 'malp' looking device. We took pictures of us jumping through the Stargate, and throwing Ianto through it. We visited an Antique store where I found a Sherlock Holmes soundtrack CD...go figure! And they had a comic store inside with a Doctor Who merchandise treasury on the top floor! They had so much stuff.... I found some stickers, a Dalek bag and a David Tennant notebook in a £1 bin which I promptly purchased! Yay stickers! Also, there was a militaria section where a guy had Russian guns and Nazi daggers and swords - spoils from the war! :O There was a section that had bags, medikits, jackets, badges, patches, lots of stuff from all the countries who participated in the wars! I bought an armband that has a medic symbol on it as well as a Union Jack and a Scotland Flag emblem. It's recent, but it's cool looking! The boys said it looked like a thong from the way it's designed... hahaha.
Neil drove us all to Barry Island, where during the day they have faires and rides, and it's right on the beach. We went after 5 when everything was closed, but we did manage to waste time in a couple of arcades where we tried to win stuff in the 2p pushing coins game. Also had Neil try to win me a Scottish Terrier plush, but he didn't get it. Took some amazing pictures of the beach and sky with long exposure. We also got a ton of free chips, pies and sausages from a chippy that was closing! So yet again, I got to 'eat all the pies' except I didn't really touch it. haha. Also, some person was setting Chinese Lanterns up into the sky (the kind where you light the base on fire and the heat takes it up like an air balloon) They filled the sky with pretty orange lights!
We headed for the posh area of Cardiff on the water after that, where I got a Starbucks. We visited the Ianto shrine where the presumed 'outside of Torchwood' is filmed, and we talked to the theatre with the huge glowing letters on the outside. After taking hilarious photos of Ianto being silly, we went back to the hotel where we had delicious Whittards Dreamtime tea, and called it a night after Sadie, Neil and Andy tried on Sadie's "Russell from Up" outfit she bought at the Disney store that was made for 5 year olds. HILARIOUS.
The next day, Sadie, Andy and I had breakfast at a cafe, where I had an apple blueberry juice and a bacon and cheese panini. We wandered around until we had to meet up with Chris and Neil. I managed to buy a very pretty pinup rockabilly dress for only £20! We also went to a Welsh crafts store with the world's largest carved wooden Welsh Love Spoon! (see pictures) I got Steph and Terri presents from that store. We went back to check on Cardiff Castle which is situated in the middle of downtown, but we figured it was too expensive because it was £9 just to get in. We went back to "Torchwood" where we tried to find a place to eat that had lamb on the menu, but surprisingly our search was fruitless because it seems Cardiff likes their Italian restaurants more than traditional Welsh food, and it is also "cool" for restaurants to close between 4-6:30pm. :| WTF. We ended up going to a chinese/thai food restaurant that was completely horrible. I had peanut satay chicken and the chicken was so overdone, and 'braised lamb with ginger and spring onion' which came as a slop on a plate that tasted like slop on a plate. Worst £15 I've ever spent so far ughghgh.
We went back to the hotel to drop stuff off and get changed to see BARROWMAN! The theatre was pretty, with crowded, uncomfortable seats. We were pretty high up so we couldn't see too well, but it was still hilarious. Barrowman flashing his butt in shiny tights, haha yes! There was a questionable "ice skating of the FUTUR" part with a Russian skater dude who looked like Evgeni Plushenko. However, it was all made worth it when I saw John Barrowman sing "Every little thing she does is magic". :D
The next day I bought a chunk of welsh lamb leg for Kody to cook, some fruit for breakfast, had a chocolatey fika with cheesecake and hot chocolate at Caffe Nero, then a 7 hour train ride later, I was back in Glasgow, where Caz and Kody went to go meet me but didn't get a block outside of their apartment before I arrived. Hehe!
It's good to be back in Glasgow, which seems to be my home at the moment! <3 Edinburgh trip on the weekend though! Very exciting, going to go bead shopping and buy a muffin tin so Caz and I can make cupcakes and muffins! Squeeeee~
TORCHWOOD
Chillin' in the market with Elvis
MY SPOON IS TOO BIG!
Those wooden links are carved like that!
Clock Tower in Cardiff
Barry Island
Fairy Falls
Loch Earn
Deil's Cauldron featuring Kody and Caz!
Monday, November 23, 2009
Glasgow Fun Happy Time
How goes my peeps! I spent the last week in Glasgow with a new friend, Kody! I was so productive art-wise. I drew like, 4-5 comics and lots of sketches! :D Being here really has lifted my spirits and given me inspiration! It's fantastic!
I already talked about what happened when I got here, after eating the most awesome lasagna and having a Fireworks show, we watched the new Doctor Who special, Waters of Mars, which was pretty scary/epic. Good times.
Kody has a really cool looking flat. It's very modern, and all of the bedrooms have open walls where you can peek down to the floor below, which means you can hear everything that goes on everywhere! Kody and I would yell at eachother while we went to sleep in the next rooms! XD Too funny.
What's great about Kody is that he's an excellent cook, and the next night he made the best no-bone Buffalo chicken strips...ever. ;_; He apparently learned the recipe himself from testing the sauce from restaurant buffalo wings in his Chem lab. XD It was so good though, with fresh made blue cheese dip NYAM NYAM.
He also has his own webcomic with his friends called Space Prison, and I saw him work on his stuff, read lots of his art and comics, and we collabed ideas back and forth. So that's where a lot of my inspiration came from, just keeping the creative juices flowing with someone else to talk to about comics and stories and randomness!
Some of the things we got up to while I was there, was that we went to go to the small town where my Dad was born, High Ballantyre/Blantyre. It still was a tiny town, but the lodge he was born in was torn town and was now replaced by a nursing home! However, something cool we discovered in the memorial garden across the street was a GEOCACHE that Kody happened to remember from our excursions online. So we marked our mark in the tiny little silver container and we were on our way.
We stopped by into the Kelvingrove art museum before it closed and had a few laughs while we were there, and made a point to remember the Doctor Who exhibit and to come back. :D
Something else we checked out was Xscape, which is like a huge recreation play center. There was an indoor ski hill, mini golf, a couple arcades, stores, coffee shop, and all you can eat Chinese buffet! We hit up the buffet, did mini golf where we got points for style and weird movements/rebounds/etc, and tried the arcade, where I failed at DDR in my chunky army boots. :(
Glasgow gets lots of raaaain but it's really nice, still. It just meant we had to stay inside lots, and draw and make food and drink and draw more!
We did brave the rain one day and set out to venture and explore the Glasgow Cathedral, otherwise known as St. Mungos Cathedral. It was really creepy, yet beautiful in there. The architecture was just fantastic. I took lots of pictures there and they are all in my Glasgow album on Flickr.
We also hiked up to the Necropolis in the blustery rain and walked amongst the huge graves and crypts. It was really depressing how much graffiti and alcohol bottles were scattered in the crypts and stuff though. People have no respect for beautiful stuff. :(
On the weekend, Kody's girlfriend Caz came back and we hung out, played Rock Band, had some booze and dressed up (well.. I dressed up. Caz had cow pajamas on and Kody wore his kilt, and Kody let me wear his Balrog outfit...) so we had some cheesy potatoes Kody made that I think I remember tasting, some cheese and crackers (Wensleydale and Applewood FTW).
Earlier that day, we also went outside to find 3 geocaches without a GPS. We found them all, even the super tough one which was a tiny container magnetized to the bottom of a fence post! There was a lot of fences in the area and they gave us a very vague hint! I'm slowly turning all my friends into Geocachers! hehehe. We also visited the Glasgow Winter Festival in the middle of the square where I had an Angus burger. There wasn't much on it, it was just beef and buns, but it was still super tasty!
On Sunday we hit up the Doctor Who exhibit. Saw lots of amazing things, like the Blink Angels, ENORMOUS Daleks, and David Tennant's shoes and coat! Woo! We peeked around the rest of the museum and saw a lot of cool stuff, had some laughs.. and we hung around until 3pm where in the mail hall, where they have an ENORMOUS pipe organ, they had an old man come and play it. It was just phenomenal. Being in the middle of the large, museum hall, with it's massive stone pillars and cold, reverberating walls, having the pipes basically melt into your soul while he played live was like nothing I've felt. I just love the pipe organ, seriously. I tried to take a really crappy video with my camera, so I at least have a small token of remembrance, but it does it no justice.
We tried to geocache afterwards too but we failed something fierce. :( It started raining hard so we went back to Kody's and we bummed around drawing and watching TV and listening to tunes before Caz headed back to Aberdeen.
On Monday I was up early packing my bags, and Kody walked me to the train station where I got a mint hot chocolate, said goodbye, and got on the 30 min train to Irvine, where my friend Leslie was waiting for me. :) Now I'm at her awesome house with her kid and her husband. Also, her mom is awesome because she is like me because she wears 2 different socks. It's me when I'm older! yay! And I'm still cool!!!!
Tune in for more adventures! I'll be in Irvine for 2 weeks, just wanted to tell you all I'm ok!
Check in with the pictures on my Flickr here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/43711291@N02/
I already talked about what happened when I got here, after eating the most awesome lasagna and having a Fireworks show, we watched the new Doctor Who special, Waters of Mars, which was pretty scary/epic. Good times.
Kody has a really cool looking flat. It's very modern, and all of the bedrooms have open walls where you can peek down to the floor below, which means you can hear everything that goes on everywhere! Kody and I would yell at eachother while we went to sleep in the next rooms! XD Too funny.
What's great about Kody is that he's an excellent cook, and the next night he made the best no-bone Buffalo chicken strips...ever. ;_; He apparently learned the recipe himself from testing the sauce from restaurant buffalo wings in his Chem lab. XD It was so good though, with fresh made blue cheese dip NYAM NYAM.
He also has his own webcomic with his friends called Space Prison, and I saw him work on his stuff, read lots of his art and comics, and we collabed ideas back and forth. So that's where a lot of my inspiration came from, just keeping the creative juices flowing with someone else to talk to about comics and stories and randomness!
Some of the things we got up to while I was there, was that we went to go to the small town where my Dad was born, High Ballantyre/Blantyre. It still was a tiny town, but the lodge he was born in was torn town and was now replaced by a nursing home! However, something cool we discovered in the memorial garden across the street was a GEOCACHE that Kody happened to remember from our excursions online. So we marked our mark in the tiny little silver container and we were on our way.
We stopped by into the Kelvingrove art museum before it closed and had a few laughs while we were there, and made a point to remember the Doctor Who exhibit and to come back. :D
Something else we checked out was Xscape, which is like a huge recreation play center. There was an indoor ski hill, mini golf, a couple arcades, stores, coffee shop, and all you can eat Chinese buffet! We hit up the buffet, did mini golf where we got points for style and weird movements/rebounds/etc, and tried the arcade, where I failed at DDR in my chunky army boots. :(
Glasgow gets lots of raaaain but it's really nice, still. It just meant we had to stay inside lots, and draw and make food and drink and draw more!
We did brave the rain one day and set out to venture and explore the Glasgow Cathedral, otherwise known as St. Mungos Cathedral. It was really creepy, yet beautiful in there. The architecture was just fantastic. I took lots of pictures there and they are all in my Glasgow album on Flickr.
We also hiked up to the Necropolis in the blustery rain and walked amongst the huge graves and crypts. It was really depressing how much graffiti and alcohol bottles were scattered in the crypts and stuff though. People have no respect for beautiful stuff. :(
On the weekend, Kody's girlfriend Caz came back and we hung out, played Rock Band, had some booze and dressed up (well.. I dressed up. Caz had cow pajamas on and Kody wore his kilt, and Kody let me wear his Balrog outfit...) so we had some cheesy potatoes Kody made that I think I remember tasting, some cheese and crackers (Wensleydale and Applewood FTW).
Earlier that day, we also went outside to find 3 geocaches without a GPS. We found them all, even the super tough one which was a tiny container magnetized to the bottom of a fence post! There was a lot of fences in the area and they gave us a very vague hint! I'm slowly turning all my friends into Geocachers! hehehe. We also visited the Glasgow Winter Festival in the middle of the square where I had an Angus burger. There wasn't much on it, it was just beef and buns, but it was still super tasty!
On Sunday we hit up the Doctor Who exhibit. Saw lots of amazing things, like the Blink Angels, ENORMOUS Daleks, and David Tennant's shoes and coat! Woo! We peeked around the rest of the museum and saw a lot of cool stuff, had some laughs.. and we hung around until 3pm where in the mail hall, where they have an ENORMOUS pipe organ, they had an old man come and play it. It was just phenomenal. Being in the middle of the large, museum hall, with it's massive stone pillars and cold, reverberating walls, having the pipes basically melt into your soul while he played live was like nothing I've felt. I just love the pipe organ, seriously. I tried to take a really crappy video with my camera, so I at least have a small token of remembrance, but it does it no justice.
We tried to geocache afterwards too but we failed something fierce. :( It started raining hard so we went back to Kody's and we bummed around drawing and watching TV and listening to tunes before Caz headed back to Aberdeen.
On Monday I was up early packing my bags, and Kody walked me to the train station where I got a mint hot chocolate, said goodbye, and got on the 30 min train to Irvine, where my friend Leslie was waiting for me. :) Now I'm at her awesome house with her kid and her husband. Also, her mom is awesome because she is like me because she wears 2 different socks. It's me when I'm older! yay! And I'm still cool!!!!
Tune in for more adventures! I'll be in Irvine for 2 weeks, just wanted to tell you all I'm ok!
Check in with the pictures on my Flickr here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/43711291@N02/
Monday, November 16, 2009
BRADFORD + HELLO SCOTLAND!
HI I'M DAISY! Okay not really... but that reminds me of a really clever puzzle!
Again with the long delay in postage.. just didn't have a heck of a lot to report! I've gone from Cheltenham, to Bradford, and now I'm in Glasgow!
But for now let me catch you up on all the delicious happenings..
Last Sunday, one of my new friends Rowan hosted an incredibly great, and incredibly geeky party at her house. The theme was a "World Conference Party" a la Axis Powers Hetalia (the new anime my friends got me into) , and we all had to bring a different dish depending on which country we were dressing up as. I got England, since no one wanted to be their own country - which is okay, because all I did was buy a large chippy and a flat of pear cider and I was set! :D I also bought a white collared shirt and camo green jogging pants - along with Troy's Dalek tie and drawn on enormous eyebrows, I completed the look. The party itself was a blast, full of drinking and delicious food from everywhere. Jack dressed up as Canada, and I taught him how to make proper canadian pancakes and bacon! He took it to the next level and made bacon-infused pancakes! I was so proud of him. *Sniff*
All the pictures from the party you can see if you follow this link below!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/43711291@N02/sets/72157622767701234/
Sarah came back from where she's originally from in Plymouth and her, Sabine, Troy and I went and braved the outside for a bit of a walk, and I introduced them to GEOCACHING! Except I didn't have a GPS so we pretty much did it via clues and Google Satellite. We managed to find one, and the other one was a bit lost to us (it told us to search near a rock under a shrubbery - there were a lot of those in the area we had to look!) Troy planted some Toy Soldier propaganda and a Warhammer 40k pin. The scenery was gorgeous. After getting up to some Blockbuster shenanigans, Sabine, Sarah and I watched the Prestige and hung out and drew for a bit (I drew Sarah a picture of her and the Doctor and she wrote me some really awesome poems in return!)
Sadly, I had to leave Cheltenham on Wednesday and say goodbye to all my sweet newfound friends. :{ They threatened to break my legs many times if I didn't return so I will MOST DEFINITELY return sometime next year, because I sure to love the use of my legs!
So a £61.50 ticket later, I was on the train to Leeds to visit my dad's cousin, Shirley, who I've only seen in pictures! She actually lives in Bradford, but she came to pick me up after I got there. After not knowing what I was doing to actually get out into the train station (that's what the tickets are for.. ohhhh) we drove to her awesomely cute house and ordered chinese food.
After getting accustomed to her place and settling into my nice clean room (WITH A BED!!! A BED!! YESSSSS!) I quickly learned that her cat, Frith, doesn't like being locked out of any room in the house with a person inside. So the next few nights of Bradford involved me waking up every hour to the sound of frantically scrambling claws trying to get into my room. :||||||| I had some earplugs but they fell out in the middle of the night quite frequently.. It was tough as well because I'm severely allergic to cats, so I constantly had my inhaler in my mouth, and popping Claritin trying not to die.
Oh well, SURVIVAL MODE ON, Shirley took me into town where we went to an old building that got turned into an art gallery and bookstore/diner. The guy who owns all the art posted around looks like he learned to draw from a 3 year old, but they had lots of really cool art supplies and books, and I bought a pink Copic sparkly writing pen. :D After looking at lots of cool books and having an Earl Grey, we went back home where we walked to a really tiny, tacky empty pub called the Blue Boar, run by a tiny old lady and her husband. Met up with Shirley's girlfriend, Lee, who is a freakin' gas. We had some drinks, and stumbled into a posh curry restaurant where we had great curry! Finally, some decent UK curry!
Unfortunately I've been having some problems with my electrical stuff, ever since my hard drive failed, the left side of my $100 headphones is busted and won't work properly, and the S key of my Macbook decided to stop working half the time (which I have since fixed, yay me!) and I'm always scared that the converter adaptor for my electrical stuff is going to blow up...
The next day, we went into a small town about 30 mins drive through countryside away to visit an Abbey in the middle of a tiny town. It had a huge graveyard outside with enormous gravestones, and it was all ruins. It was just gorgeous, really. There was a part of the church that was still functioning though, and I got some great pictures inside of it. There was ominous male choral music playing in the background.. like the Halo opening. It was kind of awesome.
We visited a couple of the pubs in the area where the locals hang out. The first one we had a drink at, two old men made a comment about my violently lime green tights and army boots. I said the tights were so that people could see me from miles away in case I got lost.. and they bought it! :D They liked my army boots too. They were just darling old men.
The next pub we went to had FOOD! And a great atmosphere, it was partly in a BARN that was converted into this dining hall, and it had a huge fireplace! And the old guy who ran it was really nice, and I got smoked salmon creamy penne and it was delicious! They also had this game in the pub where you had to swing a metal ring tied to a rope and try to hook it on a hook that was coming out from one of the ceiling bars. I failed harsh. :{ After finishing my "lemonade" (which is what British people call Sprite) we finished driving through the countryside back home!
That night we went to Shirley and Lee's coworkers birthday party at an Irish Club (not a typical "club" but a "Club" like the YMCA, somewhere where you'd host a really lame work party) and went to party with a bunch of drunk doctors, who were considerably less fun than I had anticipated. Humongous sigh. :{ Thanks to my salmon pasta earlier that day, every drink I had that night, including the double shot of vodka I had at the bar, was all for naught, and I wasn't even tipsy. However, they played Scissor Sisters and Lee and I got up and had to dance to that jazz.
The next day, Shirley had to go into another town to meet with her friend Pam, where I had 2 more cuppas at the beer and wine bar (I feel so lame not drinking beer..) and delicious cookies. It was POURING rain, and while everyone was scrambling around in hoodies and umbrellas trying to get out of the rain, I was the only one open faced into the air receiving the heaven's tears on my face :D Everyone must have thought I was insane..
Shirley got her hair cut, and we drove through some freaking awesome countryside where the rain had cleared and we got a DOUBLE AWESOME RAINBOW spread over the countryside!!!!!!!!!! It was so bright, the pictures don't do it justice! It was magical!
The next day involved rush hour traffic and almost missing my train into Glasgow, but we INDIANA JONES'D that noise, and got there just in the nick of time. Thank you Shirley and Bradford for letting me stay for a few days and showing me a great time. :D
So from Leeds to York, and York to Glasgow Central!
The train ride was fun and a half. 4 hours of screaming kids and obnoxious pikeys (those are hoodlums) , my non working headphones, Hetalia, talking to a sweet girl from London, a Wispa gold, and writing in my sexy new diary.
After a small mix up, I was met at the train station by Kody, Troy and Jack's friend, and his lovely girlfriend Carly. :D They proceeded to walk me back to Kody's where the BEST LASAGNA I've EVER HAD was waiting for me, and while we were eating, right outside of Kody's apartment in Glasgow center they had FIREWORKS! It's like they knew I was coming! And they were awesome. Awesome awesome awesome. Sparkly goodtimes.
Today was a rainy day and consisted of Kody showing me around town and the shops, and Glasgow Uni, and the museum where the Doctor Who exhibit I'm going to visit is (YEEEEE) . I got some strawberry marshmallow candy from this huge Candy shop where a thing of orange Koolaid imported from the states is £4.50 and a small box of Lucky Charms is £8.00!!! D: Dear god. Times that by almost two and you have that in Canadian prices.
I also got the COOLEST THING EVER... IT'S A RACING SNAIL WIND UP TOY!!!!
:D
After visiting the museum for a bit, Kody took me to a chippy place where we had chips and DEEP. FRIED. HAGGIS!!!!
The best part is..
IT WAS DELICIOUS!!!!!!!!!!!!
Yes that's right my opinionated friends. Haggis is no more disgusting than a regular breakfast sausage. So if you'd eat that, you'd eat haggis which technically is just... a sheep sausage instead of a pork one. Honestly. It's not that bad. Tasty shite, man. Jak approves.
Excitement and joy of joys, my pretties. I will update again soon with more Glasgow-ness once the weather is better, it was spitting like mad today.
Love and-o peace!
Shirley's road in Bradford
Shirley (on left) and Lee (on right) in the Pub in the countryside :D
RAINBOW
View from underneath an archway at the Abbey
The Bolton Abbey and some gravestones
The Church inside the Abbey
SHEEP! You have pink on your butt.
View from Kody's balcony
"Hooray! Molly's here! Rejoice!"
Again with the long delay in postage.. just didn't have a heck of a lot to report! I've gone from Cheltenham, to Bradford, and now I'm in Glasgow!
But for now let me catch you up on all the delicious happenings..
Last Sunday, one of my new friends Rowan hosted an incredibly great, and incredibly geeky party at her house. The theme was a "World Conference Party" a la Axis Powers Hetalia (the new anime my friends got me into) , and we all had to bring a different dish depending on which country we were dressing up as. I got England, since no one wanted to be their own country - which is okay, because all I did was buy a large chippy and a flat of pear cider and I was set! :D I also bought a white collared shirt and camo green jogging pants - along with Troy's Dalek tie and drawn on enormous eyebrows, I completed the look. The party itself was a blast, full of drinking and delicious food from everywhere. Jack dressed up as Canada, and I taught him how to make proper canadian pancakes and bacon! He took it to the next level and made bacon-infused pancakes! I was so proud of him. *Sniff*
All the pictures from the party you can see if you follow this link below!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/43711291@N02/sets/72157622767701234/
Sarah came back from where she's originally from in Plymouth and her, Sabine, Troy and I went and braved the outside for a bit of a walk, and I introduced them to GEOCACHING! Except I didn't have a GPS so we pretty much did it via clues and Google Satellite. We managed to find one, and the other one was a bit lost to us (it told us to search near a rock under a shrubbery - there were a lot of those in the area we had to look!) Troy planted some Toy Soldier propaganda and a Warhammer 40k pin. The scenery was gorgeous. After getting up to some Blockbuster shenanigans, Sabine, Sarah and I watched the Prestige and hung out and drew for a bit (I drew Sarah a picture of her and the Doctor and she wrote me some really awesome poems in return!)
Sadly, I had to leave Cheltenham on Wednesday and say goodbye to all my sweet newfound friends. :{ They threatened to break my legs many times if I didn't return so I will MOST DEFINITELY return sometime next year, because I sure to love the use of my legs!
So a £61.50 ticket later, I was on the train to Leeds to visit my dad's cousin, Shirley, who I've only seen in pictures! She actually lives in Bradford, but she came to pick me up after I got there. After not knowing what I was doing to actually get out into the train station (that's what the tickets are for.. ohhhh) we drove to her awesomely cute house and ordered chinese food.
After getting accustomed to her place and settling into my nice clean room (WITH A BED!!! A BED!! YESSSSS!) I quickly learned that her cat, Frith, doesn't like being locked out of any room in the house with a person inside. So the next few nights of Bradford involved me waking up every hour to the sound of frantically scrambling claws trying to get into my room. :||||||| I had some earplugs but they fell out in the middle of the night quite frequently.. It was tough as well because I'm severely allergic to cats, so I constantly had my inhaler in my mouth, and popping Claritin trying not to die.
Oh well, SURVIVAL MODE ON, Shirley took me into town where we went to an old building that got turned into an art gallery and bookstore/diner. The guy who owns all the art posted around looks like he learned to draw from a 3 year old, but they had lots of really cool art supplies and books, and I bought a pink Copic sparkly writing pen. :D After looking at lots of cool books and having an Earl Grey, we went back home where we walked to a really tiny, tacky empty pub called the Blue Boar, run by a tiny old lady and her husband. Met up with Shirley's girlfriend, Lee, who is a freakin' gas. We had some drinks, and stumbled into a posh curry restaurant where we had great curry! Finally, some decent UK curry!
Unfortunately I've been having some problems with my electrical stuff, ever since my hard drive failed, the left side of my $100 headphones is busted and won't work properly, and the S key of my Macbook decided to stop working half the time (which I have since fixed, yay me!) and I'm always scared that the converter adaptor for my electrical stuff is going to blow up...
The next day, we went into a small town about 30 mins drive through countryside away to visit an Abbey in the middle of a tiny town. It had a huge graveyard outside with enormous gravestones, and it was all ruins. It was just gorgeous, really. There was a part of the church that was still functioning though, and I got some great pictures inside of it. There was ominous male choral music playing in the background.. like the Halo opening. It was kind of awesome.
We visited a couple of the pubs in the area where the locals hang out. The first one we had a drink at, two old men made a comment about my violently lime green tights and army boots. I said the tights were so that people could see me from miles away in case I got lost.. and they bought it! :D They liked my army boots too. They were just darling old men.
The next pub we went to had FOOD! And a great atmosphere, it was partly in a BARN that was converted into this dining hall, and it had a huge fireplace! And the old guy who ran it was really nice, and I got smoked salmon creamy penne and it was delicious! They also had this game in the pub where you had to swing a metal ring tied to a rope and try to hook it on a hook that was coming out from one of the ceiling bars. I failed harsh. :{ After finishing my "lemonade" (which is what British people call Sprite) we finished driving through the countryside back home!
That night we went to Shirley and Lee's coworkers birthday party at an Irish Club (not a typical "club" but a "Club" like the YMCA, somewhere where you'd host a really lame work party) and went to party with a bunch of drunk doctors, who were considerably less fun than I had anticipated. Humongous sigh. :{ Thanks to my salmon pasta earlier that day, every drink I had that night, including the double shot of vodka I had at the bar, was all for naught, and I wasn't even tipsy. However, they played Scissor Sisters and Lee and I got up and had to dance to that jazz.
The next day, Shirley had to go into another town to meet with her friend Pam, where I had 2 more cuppas at the beer and wine bar (I feel so lame not drinking beer..) and delicious cookies. It was POURING rain, and while everyone was scrambling around in hoodies and umbrellas trying to get out of the rain, I was the only one open faced into the air receiving the heaven's tears on my face :D Everyone must have thought I was insane..
Shirley got her hair cut, and we drove through some freaking awesome countryside where the rain had cleared and we got a DOUBLE AWESOME RAINBOW spread over the countryside!!!!!!!!!! It was so bright, the pictures don't do it justice! It was magical!
The next day involved rush hour traffic and almost missing my train into Glasgow, but we INDIANA JONES'D that noise, and got there just in the nick of time. Thank you Shirley and Bradford for letting me stay for a few days and showing me a great time. :D
So from Leeds to York, and York to Glasgow Central!
The train ride was fun and a half. 4 hours of screaming kids and obnoxious pikeys (those are hoodlums) , my non working headphones, Hetalia, talking to a sweet girl from London, a Wispa gold, and writing in my sexy new diary.
After a small mix up, I was met at the train station by Kody, Troy and Jack's friend, and his lovely girlfriend Carly. :D They proceeded to walk me back to Kody's where the BEST LASAGNA I've EVER HAD was waiting for me, and while we were eating, right outside of Kody's apartment in Glasgow center they had FIREWORKS! It's like they knew I was coming! And they were awesome. Awesome awesome awesome. Sparkly goodtimes.
Today was a rainy day and consisted of Kody showing me around town and the shops, and Glasgow Uni, and the museum where the Doctor Who exhibit I'm going to visit is (YEEEEE) . I got some strawberry marshmallow candy from this huge Candy shop where a thing of orange Koolaid imported from the states is £4.50 and a small box of Lucky Charms is £8.00!!! D: Dear god. Times that by almost two and you have that in Canadian prices.
I also got the COOLEST THING EVER... IT'S A RACING SNAIL WIND UP TOY!!!!
:D
After visiting the museum for a bit, Kody took me to a chippy place where we had chips and DEEP. FRIED. HAGGIS!!!!
The best part is..
IT WAS DELICIOUS!!!!!!!!!!!!
Yes that's right my opinionated friends. Haggis is no more disgusting than a regular breakfast sausage. So if you'd eat that, you'd eat haggis which technically is just... a sheep sausage instead of a pork one. Honestly. It's not that bad. Tasty shite, man. Jak approves.
Excitement and joy of joys, my pretties. I will update again soon with more Glasgow-ness once the weather is better, it was spitting like mad today.
Love and-o peace!
Shirley's road in Bradford
Shirley (on left) and Lee (on right) in the Pub in the countryside :D
RAINBOW
View from underneath an archway at the Abbey
The Bolton Abbey and some gravestones
The Church inside the Abbey
SHEEP! You have pink on your butt.
View from Kody's balcony
"Hooray! Molly's here! Rejoice!"
Friday, November 6, 2009
Pub and GO! Let's rock Oxford!
Sabine had the awesome idea yesterday for us to just up and take a bus into OXFORD for the day today, so that's exactly where we went!
So our bus departed at 7:00 exactly in the morning, and we decided to do the whole Oxford thing last night at about 12:30 am, so nevertheless, we got about 4 1/2-5 hours of sleep before we had to get up at 6:00am and rush around getting ready then busted out the door, grabbing money from a hole-in-the-wall, and booking it to the bus. HAPPY CAMPERS! (see picture)
A lovely 1 1/2 hour bus ride later, which involved a sunrise with the sky being on fire, having an awesome talk with Troy about a Venture Bros/Doctor Steel project we're going to work on together, and awesome english countryside, we arrived in downtown Oxford! Being as bathrooms needed to be had, and also breakfast, we went into a McDonalds. I got a blueberry muffin because anything else is a risk. lol. After eating in the smelly of poops eating area, I went to Pret a Manger across the street and got another one of their amazing hot chocolates to wake me up. :D
After feeling relieved, we walked down the main street to Christ Church and took some pictures and walked down the pretty path, where we were approached by a curious magpie flying around above us. We also came across some playful squirrels, which Troy tried to offer Dr. Steel propaganda to. (See picture) I don't think they bought his schpiel, though. :(
Since it was still really REALLY EARLY we went to a pub called "The Grapes" and had a drink, and had to wait until noon for them to start serving food because we were starving (awake for 6 hours and hadn't had a proper meal) and we tried the Steak and Yorkshire wrap with peas and chips and gravy. Omnomnom. It was pretty good but there wasn't enough gravy so it was kinda dry, and it hurt going down my throat. :{
Next we hit up the museum across from Trinity College because they were hosting a Steampunk exhibit, and couldn't miss that! I'm currently uploading a ton of pictures from it to my Flickr, they'll be here when done, but ohmygosh.. so amazing. The stuff in there was so inspirational, and I got to see some art pieces that were steampunk inspired, one of them being by Molly "Porkshanks" (we share the same name) who I watch on Deviantart, so that was cool to see her work up close. :D
So we wandered around a bit more, checked out a couple clothing shops and a book shop, I bought myself an awesome Snail shirt (SEE PICTURE) and I bought Sarah a shirt, which she will have to witness when she gets home.
Another cool shop worth mentioning that we visited was the Alice Shop, which had pretty much strictly Alice in Wonderland related merchandise. It was really cool! They had a lot of neat things. I got Steph a present from there, and bought some Mad Hatter Tea, which was quite delicious. :} Tasted like a mellow english breakfast.
We went back to the bookshop because we needed a pick me up, and we went to a cafe on the top floor, and I got an AWESOME cinnamon latte, which was loaded with sugar that I happened to add after the fact *cough* it was in a tall mug with proper awesome foam n' everything! And then we checked on the kids books on the bottom floor! I LOVE KIDS BOOKS AUGH no wonder it was so much fun drawing a kids book themed story, it was just so easy and came naturally and was fun to do.
We paid to visit Trinity College, which is a beautiful place. It's where some of the Harry Potter movies was shot, apparently. Lots of beautiful buildings covered in what's left of ivy branches, awesome decor. (SEE PICTURES)
We checked out this market which was kind of like the Granville farmer's market with all the booths, but it was pretty much closing up as we got there, however we found this Milkshake place called "MOO MOO MILKSHAKES" and we got some AWESOME MILKSHAKES. They pretty much made ANYTHING into a milkshake (even skittles!) I got a chocolate cheesecake milkshake, and it was delicious. We also got some chocolates from a little store, and I ate a truffle and it was melt in my mouth orgasmatastic. nommmmmm.
After that we headed back to the bus stop for 6pm which was the last bus outside of Oxford. We were being "rained" on (mildly spitting) for awhile, so Troy remedied the situation (see picture). On the excrutiatingly long ride home, there was some drunk 21 year old guy who decided to chat us up and talk about his boring ideas for books, and he also thought it would be a smashing idea to walk to the emergency exit across from my seat, whip out his junk and pee in a bottle. He didn't even try to hide it. Sabine and I were so disgusted, and he saw it. He was like "SORRY I'm LIKE THE MOST DISGUSTING GUY IN THE WORLD. LET ME BUY YOU GUYS A DRINK TO MAKE UP FOR IT" and we politely declined. :|
AH, ENGLAND
I'LL MISS YOU :}
WELCOME TO 6:45 AM GUYS
"Join Dr. Steel's army of toy soldiers! ....what the heck does "squeak!" mean?!"
WHAT'S THE RUSH!?
Trinity College
Sad, wet Troy is a sad, wet Troy.
So our bus departed at 7:00 exactly in the morning, and we decided to do the whole Oxford thing last night at about 12:30 am, so nevertheless, we got about 4 1/2-5 hours of sleep before we had to get up at 6:00am and rush around getting ready then busted out the door, grabbing money from a hole-in-the-wall, and booking it to the bus. HAPPY CAMPERS! (see picture)
A lovely 1 1/2 hour bus ride later, which involved a sunrise with the sky being on fire, having an awesome talk with Troy about a Venture Bros/Doctor Steel project we're going to work on together, and awesome english countryside, we arrived in downtown Oxford! Being as bathrooms needed to be had, and also breakfast, we went into a McDonalds. I got a blueberry muffin because anything else is a risk. lol. After eating in the smelly of poops eating area, I went to Pret a Manger across the street and got another one of their amazing hot chocolates to wake me up. :D
After feeling relieved, we walked down the main street to Christ Church and took some pictures and walked down the pretty path, where we were approached by a curious magpie flying around above us. We also came across some playful squirrels, which Troy tried to offer Dr. Steel propaganda to. (See picture) I don't think they bought his schpiel, though. :(
Since it was still really REALLY EARLY we went to a pub called "The Grapes" and had a drink, and had to wait until noon for them to start serving food because we were starving (awake for 6 hours and hadn't had a proper meal) and we tried the Steak and Yorkshire wrap with peas and chips and gravy. Omnomnom. It was pretty good but there wasn't enough gravy so it was kinda dry, and it hurt going down my throat. :{
Next we hit up the museum across from Trinity College because they were hosting a Steampunk exhibit, and couldn't miss that! I'm currently uploading a ton of pictures from it to my Flickr, they'll be here when done, but ohmygosh.. so amazing. The stuff in there was so inspirational, and I got to see some art pieces that were steampunk inspired, one of them being by Molly "Porkshanks" (we share the same name) who I watch on Deviantart, so that was cool to see her work up close. :D
So we wandered around a bit more, checked out a couple clothing shops and a book shop, I bought myself an awesome Snail shirt (SEE PICTURE) and I bought Sarah a shirt, which she will have to witness when she gets home.
Another cool shop worth mentioning that we visited was the Alice Shop, which had pretty much strictly Alice in Wonderland related merchandise. It was really cool! They had a lot of neat things. I got Steph a present from there, and bought some Mad Hatter Tea, which was quite delicious. :} Tasted like a mellow english breakfast.
We went back to the bookshop because we needed a pick me up, and we went to a cafe on the top floor, and I got an AWESOME cinnamon latte, which was loaded with sugar that I happened to add after the fact *cough* it was in a tall mug with proper awesome foam n' everything! And then we checked on the kids books on the bottom floor! I LOVE KIDS BOOKS AUGH no wonder it was so much fun drawing a kids book themed story, it was just so easy and came naturally and was fun to do.
We paid to visit Trinity College, which is a beautiful place. It's where some of the Harry Potter movies was shot, apparently. Lots of beautiful buildings covered in what's left of ivy branches, awesome decor. (SEE PICTURES)
We checked out this market which was kind of like the Granville farmer's market with all the booths, but it was pretty much closing up as we got there, however we found this Milkshake place called "MOO MOO MILKSHAKES" and we got some AWESOME MILKSHAKES. They pretty much made ANYTHING into a milkshake (even skittles!) I got a chocolate cheesecake milkshake, and it was delicious. We also got some chocolates from a little store, and I ate a truffle and it was melt in my mouth orgasmatastic. nommmmmm.
After that we headed back to the bus stop for 6pm which was the last bus outside of Oxford. We were being "rained" on (mildly spitting) for awhile, so Troy remedied the situation (see picture). On the excrutiatingly long ride home, there was some drunk 21 year old guy who decided to chat us up and talk about his boring ideas for books, and he also thought it would be a smashing idea to walk to the emergency exit across from my seat, whip out his junk and pee in a bottle. He didn't even try to hide it. Sabine and I were so disgusted, and he saw it. He was like "SORRY I'm LIKE THE MOST DISGUSTING GUY IN THE WORLD. LET ME BUY YOU GUYS A DRINK TO MAKE UP FOR IT" and we politely declined. :|
AH, ENGLAND
I'LL MISS YOU :}
WELCOME TO 6:45 AM GUYS
"Join Dr. Steel's army of toy soldiers! ....what the heck does "squeak!" mean?!"
WHAT'S THE RUSH!?
Trinity College
Sad, wet Troy is a sad, wet Troy.
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Happy Samhain!
Hey, long time no updatey! Cheltenham has been a bit more lax than London since there's far less to do, but that doesn't mean the company is any less awesome! I've been hanging out with my Fortress of Solitude peeps... Troy, Sabine, Sarah, Rachel, Jack! (And Sarah #2 who rarely comes out of hiding! :D)
I get the couch which is a tad too short for me in their living room. That's okay though, I have a super comfy comforter. Plus now that my back is all achey-wachey, it gives me an excuse to get a massage somewhere. And maybe a pedicure. My poor blistered feet. They be peelin'. It's not a pretty sight. (SEE PIC- just kidding.)
On my first day, Troy had the day off and he took me down High St. where all the shops and people hang out. We went into a couple of malls, one being the Regent Arcade Mall. There are a couple really cool stores in there, including LUSH!! :O I gotta go there before I leave and grab another shampoo bar and tin since my shampoo bar melted by accident. ;__; It's okay because it's CHEAPER in the UK than it is in Canada! Hooray! Anyway, Regent Arcade Mall has this enormous scary kids clock that blows bubbles on the hour. We didn't stay for that to happen, but I took some cool pictures of it. (SEE PICTURE) It was definitely something very cool, like out of a really colorful kids book. :D
Also went down the promenade and saw some really creepy Bull and Hare statue. :| I won't post it here for fear of nightmare inducing, but I'll upload it to Flickr later so you can see that business.
Troy tried out his crazy Two-Face makeup for Halloween, and that's always fun to see. :D
Since Troy works a lot at the local McDonalds, I've hung out with Sabine, his lovely girlfriend, and Sarah a lot. They're great girls, and we have lots in common. Sabine took me walking to see different cute shops and streets and we went into an Indian restaurant which was the most AWESOMELY decorated Indian restaurant I've ever seen (SEE PICTURE). The food wasn't the best, and so far I haven't been impressed by Indian cuisine over here since I've been in the UK (And it's supposed to be the birthplace of most indian food, wtf) but maybe I just haven't been to the right restaurant.
For the most part I've been just chilling out and talking to people, making food, taking walks, I have also been drawing a bit and trying to write Signum Fas issue 2. I've been having trouble though because I haven't written for so long so trying to find inspiration for the future events is pretty tough. I will sort it out soon though! :)
So in no particular order I'll tell you some things I've been up to..
Sarah, Sabine and I decided to do FACEPAINTING a la MAKEOVER MAKEOVERRRR style! It was a horrifying sight, but damn was it silly and fun. (See picture) Apparently Facepainting is one of the fun things you should do on Samhain so we decided to do it November 1st, which is another important day after Samhain. :) All we had was my makeup to work with too, so... haha.
Also as we speak my external hard drive with all my movies on it is exploding into dust because it's not a very happy camper. Not sure why.. but thanks to my friend who had an external hard drive, I'm now making a backup so I can restore the bugger and hopefully fix it's problem. If not, Molly sad. :(
So apparently it's tradition where every Tuesday, Troy and the boys go to their friend David and Kai's house to have dinner and either drinks, board games, SingStar.. whatever. I was invited this time, and I got to partake in the Scottish food "Stovies" which is basically, take potatoes and sausage, put them in a blender until it's pureed, and make it into a soup. It's actually really good. :D I had seconds! Troy and I got super drunk with First Rank, Second Rank, ...oh god don't even ask, we played the hell out of SingStar, and Troy singing songs as Professor Farnsworth, Fat Bastard, and 24 from Venture Brothers is something to witness. We got back later that night and made drunken videos of Troy rambling as Luke, which I nicely uploaded to YouTube promptly.
Being as there's not too much to do in Cheltenham if you don't have company that can stay longer than a few hours, we've been watching a lot of random videos on YouTube, and the household got me into Axis Powers Hetalia, which is an anime/manga where all the different countries from the world wars are represented as humans and they all have weird adventures and experiences based off of what kind of country they represented themselves as in the wars. It's cute and hilarious, and I haven't watched anime for a long long time seriously, but being around some fun people who are really excited about stuff really brings acceptance and optimism out of you, and I really enjoyed watching and laughing with everyone, I probably wouldn't normally if I would have been by myself in my room at home.
The lovely thing about being close to Europe is CHEESE. (SEE PICTURE)
I literally got a pile of cheese for about 5 quid. It's pretty ridiculous. I got French Camembert, Leerhammer, Applewood, Laughing Cow and a nice chunk of Edam to eat with some crackers for Samhain. It was soooo nice. Normally you'd pay so much for that kind of cheese over in Canada but this stuff was cheap. My lactose intolerance is being ignored for the most part since I've been here. LAWL.
I've also cooked a couple times, I made Chicken Stew with potatoes, carrots, onion, garlic and celery, and I also made Macaroni and Cheese sauce with Ham and mushrooms. It was GLORIOUS both times om nom.
So on October 30th, all of us and more friends went to the Two Pigs, which is a bar/club in Cheltenham which sometimes caters to nerds in all fashions, for a Halloween dance. So this was the night we all dressed up and went out to dance and drink and just have a heck of a lot of fun and get stared at a lot. Troy went as Two Face from the Dark Knight Batman movie, Jack went as Scarface (the ventriloquist dummy villain) from Batman, Sabine went as a character from Girl Genius, Sarah went as the cutest girl bee costume, and various other costumes by friends was there, including a Grim Fandango and a cute ghost girl. (SEE PICTURES) I wish my costume turned out a little better, but to be fair I DID start it 2 days before I left, and I pressured my mom into helping me, which I still feel really bad for. I still looked pretty awesome as I danced my silly butt off. :) Got a lot of compliments on my costume, and had creepy hick guys trying to dance near my butt, I guess they're kind is EVERYWHERE!! You cannot escape!! Anyway, we danced a lot and booked it out of there by 12:30, practically carrying a hilarious drunk Troy home. What a night that was!
The next day was Samhain, where Sarah and Sabine were having some of their Pagan friends over to celebrate Samhain. Sabine and I went out to buy ribbon for our "resolution knots" we were all going to tie. Each color was going to represent something we wanted to achieve in the next year, so I picked rainbow (For creativity), red (for love) and orange (For happiness). Seemed appropriate :) I also sewed/attached a bell and a pewter heart to the bottom. It's really pretty! Mine's in the middle in the picture attached. (PICTURE) We also set up a very pretty autumn altar (PICTURE) and thought of our loved ones who have passed. We did some amazing baking as well, and generally just hung around great people, had great conversation and laughs, listened to music and voila! :D Great night.
In other exciting non-UK-related news, THE PRINCE OF PERSIA MOVIE TRAILERRRRR:
http://uk.movies.ign.com/dor/objects/664420/prince-of-persia/videos/pop_mov_trl1_110209.html
I gotta wait til MAY?!?! BOLLOCKS!!!
Halloween Costumes!
THE CHEESE PLATTER
Samhain Altar
Some resolution knots (mine is the middle colorful one!)
MAKE OVER MAKEOVERRRR
Inside the Indian restaurant
CRAZY CLOCK!
I get the couch which is a tad too short for me in their living room. That's okay though, I have a super comfy comforter. Plus now that my back is all achey-wachey, it gives me an excuse to get a massage somewhere. And maybe a pedicure. My poor blistered feet. They be peelin'. It's not a pretty sight. (SEE PIC- just kidding.)
On my first day, Troy had the day off and he took me down High St. where all the shops and people hang out. We went into a couple of malls, one being the Regent Arcade Mall. There are a couple really cool stores in there, including LUSH!! :O I gotta go there before I leave and grab another shampoo bar and tin since my shampoo bar melted by accident. ;__; It's okay because it's CHEAPER in the UK than it is in Canada! Hooray! Anyway, Regent Arcade Mall has this enormous scary kids clock that blows bubbles on the hour. We didn't stay for that to happen, but I took some cool pictures of it. (SEE PICTURE) It was definitely something very cool, like out of a really colorful kids book. :D
Also went down the promenade and saw some really creepy Bull and Hare statue. :| I won't post it here for fear of nightmare inducing, but I'll upload it to Flickr later so you can see that business.
Troy tried out his crazy Two-Face makeup for Halloween, and that's always fun to see. :D
Since Troy works a lot at the local McDonalds, I've hung out with Sabine, his lovely girlfriend, and Sarah a lot. They're great girls, and we have lots in common. Sabine took me walking to see different cute shops and streets and we went into an Indian restaurant which was the most AWESOMELY decorated Indian restaurant I've ever seen (SEE PICTURE). The food wasn't the best, and so far I haven't been impressed by Indian cuisine over here since I've been in the UK (And it's supposed to be the birthplace of most indian food, wtf) but maybe I just haven't been to the right restaurant.
For the most part I've been just chilling out and talking to people, making food, taking walks, I have also been drawing a bit and trying to write Signum Fas issue 2. I've been having trouble though because I haven't written for so long so trying to find inspiration for the future events is pretty tough. I will sort it out soon though! :)
So in no particular order I'll tell you some things I've been up to..
Sarah, Sabine and I decided to do FACEPAINTING a la MAKEOVER MAKEOVERRRR style! It was a horrifying sight, but damn was it silly and fun. (See picture) Apparently Facepainting is one of the fun things you should do on Samhain so we decided to do it November 1st, which is another important day after Samhain. :) All we had was my makeup to work with too, so... haha.
Also as we speak my external hard drive with all my movies on it is exploding into dust because it's not a very happy camper. Not sure why.. but thanks to my friend who had an external hard drive, I'm now making a backup so I can restore the bugger and hopefully fix it's problem. If not, Molly sad. :(
So apparently it's tradition where every Tuesday, Troy and the boys go to their friend David and Kai's house to have dinner and either drinks, board games, SingStar.. whatever. I was invited this time, and I got to partake in the Scottish food "Stovies" which is basically, take potatoes and sausage, put them in a blender until it's pureed, and make it into a soup. It's actually really good. :D I had seconds! Troy and I got super drunk with First Rank, Second Rank, ...oh god don't even ask, we played the hell out of SingStar, and Troy singing songs as Professor Farnsworth, Fat Bastard, and 24 from Venture Brothers is something to witness. We got back later that night and made drunken videos of Troy rambling as Luke, which I nicely uploaded to YouTube promptly.
Being as there's not too much to do in Cheltenham if you don't have company that can stay longer than a few hours, we've been watching a lot of random videos on YouTube, and the household got me into Axis Powers Hetalia, which is an anime/manga where all the different countries from the world wars are represented as humans and they all have weird adventures and experiences based off of what kind of country they represented themselves as in the wars. It's cute and hilarious, and I haven't watched anime for a long long time seriously, but being around some fun people who are really excited about stuff really brings acceptance and optimism out of you, and I really enjoyed watching and laughing with everyone, I probably wouldn't normally if I would have been by myself in my room at home.
The lovely thing about being close to Europe is CHEESE. (SEE PICTURE)
I literally got a pile of cheese for about 5 quid. It's pretty ridiculous. I got French Camembert, Leerhammer, Applewood, Laughing Cow and a nice chunk of Edam to eat with some crackers for Samhain. It was soooo nice. Normally you'd pay so much for that kind of cheese over in Canada but this stuff was cheap. My lactose intolerance is being ignored for the most part since I've been here. LAWL.
I've also cooked a couple times, I made Chicken Stew with potatoes, carrots, onion, garlic and celery, and I also made Macaroni and Cheese sauce with Ham and mushrooms. It was GLORIOUS both times om nom.
So on October 30th, all of us and more friends went to the Two Pigs, which is a bar/club in Cheltenham which sometimes caters to nerds in all fashions, for a Halloween dance. So this was the night we all dressed up and went out to dance and drink and just have a heck of a lot of fun and get stared at a lot. Troy went as Two Face from the Dark Knight Batman movie, Jack went as Scarface (the ventriloquist dummy villain) from Batman, Sabine went as a character from Girl Genius, Sarah went as the cutest girl bee costume, and various other costumes by friends was there, including a Grim Fandango and a cute ghost girl. (SEE PICTURES) I wish my costume turned out a little better, but to be fair I DID start it 2 days before I left, and I pressured my mom into helping me, which I still feel really bad for. I still looked pretty awesome as I danced my silly butt off. :) Got a lot of compliments on my costume, and had creepy hick guys trying to dance near my butt, I guess they're kind is EVERYWHERE!! You cannot escape!! Anyway, we danced a lot and booked it out of there by 12:30, practically carrying a hilarious drunk Troy home. What a night that was!
The next day was Samhain, where Sarah and Sabine were having some of their Pagan friends over to celebrate Samhain. Sabine and I went out to buy ribbon for our "resolution knots" we were all going to tie. Each color was going to represent something we wanted to achieve in the next year, so I picked rainbow (For creativity), red (for love) and orange (For happiness). Seemed appropriate :) I also sewed/attached a bell and a pewter heart to the bottom. It's really pretty! Mine's in the middle in the picture attached. (PICTURE) We also set up a very pretty autumn altar (PICTURE) and thought of our loved ones who have passed. We did some amazing baking as well, and generally just hung around great people, had great conversation and laughs, listened to music and voila! :D Great night.
In other exciting non-UK-related news, THE PRINCE OF PERSIA MOVIE TRAILERRRRR:
http://uk.movies.ign.com/dor/objects/664420/prince-of-persia/videos/pop_mov_trl1_110209.html
I gotta wait til MAY?!?! BOLLOCKS!!!
Halloween Costumes!
THE CHEESE PLATTER
Samhain Altar
Some resolution knots (mine is the middle colorful one!)
MAKE OVER MAKEOVERRRR
Inside the Indian restaurant
CRAZY CLOCK!
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
To London, geeky adventures await!
Currently listening to: "To Zanarkand" from the Final Fantasy Distant Worlds concert, because it reminds me of "Home". Home doesn't only signify where my friends and family live, but anywhere where I feel welcome and happy and safe.
Sorry about the lack of updates! I've been a bit lazy the last couple of days to myself, but have no fear, I am returning with a full itinerary of what I've been up to.. :)
I've had a few days of just taking it easy because breaking in my boots hasn't been so easy.. I have internal blisters in my heels that are pretty painful to walk on, not to mention the regular blisters.. However, last Thursday I managed to drag myself out and go to the Natural History museum. It was a bit like Science World mixed with a modern museum with lots of interactive displays, dinosaur bones, stuffed animals, gemstones.. it was pretty cool to see everything and walk around on my own. The entrance with the escalator up to the first exhibits (see picture) was absolutely incredible, with statues of Zeus, Medusa, Atlas, a Cyclops, an astronaut.. and then ascending the stairs into a huge globe where inside was a small light show with cool sound effects and props telling you what to expect of what's to come in the exhibits.
So there were many exhibits like facts about planets, rock, volcanoes, earthquakes.. I watched a pretty mortifying video of how the earth is going to die in the future and what ways it can die (and probably will) sun exploding, war, disease, etc.. :| Sure lifted my spirits. Then I checked out the exhibits with the dinosaurs, that had animatronic robotic velociraptors on top of some of the displays.. they were pretty awesome :D The main hall had a brontosaurus bone display.. pretty amazing. And there were halls of stuffed mammals and birds which was a bit sad actually. :{ There were like, just heads of some of the birds in glass cases. :|
Then there were some exhibits about childbirth (woo hoo) and how a baby/child learns, and there was this model of a huge scary baby in a "womb"... it looked like something out of Silent Hill (see picture).
After exploring the exhibits, I went outside and managed to find my way back to Kensington Gardens, which is quickly becoming my favorite place to hang out. I found a bench and read a bit of "Howl's Moving Castle" (which I have since finished), and randomly found the spot where it had the Albert memorial with the Royal Albert Hall just across from it. Really beautiful architecture all around. :)
The next day was a rest day, yet when Chris got off work, I met him at Russell Square station to go check out the building where the outside of "Black Books" is shot. "Black Books" is my favorite british comedy series, and is where I named my last hamster from - 'Bernard', played by Dylan Moran, who is a lewd, wine drinking, smoking jackass who runs the bookshop. So in commemoration of the event, Chris and I went to the convenience store across the way and bought a bottle of White Zinfandel wine and drank it amongst some confused Japanese businessmen as we took pictures outside of the building. Too bad it was closed, I would have gone in and searched for the Little Book of Calm. :) (see picture!)
Afterwards we headed to Central London where we took in some of the sights at night, which involved crossing a bridge, checking out the London Eye all lit up, seeing Big Ben all lit up.. have a great shot of the nightly atmosphere! (See photo.) We also went to a Starbucks where Chris got free coffee! And I got a signature hot chocolate with a cheesecake which they threw into a bag so it fell apart nicely... but it still tasted delicious. :)
Saturday came! And it was quite a great day.
Chris and I headed out to Peckham early, since there was going to be a riot later that day, however we still got caught in a pretty nasty traffic jam (which Roy got the best of, he waited 2 1/2 hours on a bus when he could have just walked for less that XD) because we headed to TOYS R US for I wanted to find a Doctor Who Sonic Screwdriver, which Chris managed to find one left of. :D He is the finding masta! I have a video of me showing my "fancy pens" which you can check out ici:
Afterwards I was extremely starving, so Chris took me to a nice chips place. I got some chips and a Saveloy (a red sausage/hot dog thing, I didn't like it so much :( ) and ate it in a park which was actually right opposite the "Winchester" which is the pub Simon Pegg and crew hang out at during the Zombie Attack in the movie "Shaun of the Dead." However, it doesn't look like it did in the movie anymore because they closed down and renovated the crap out of the outside. :{ Ah well...
We met up with Roy at Chris's friend Barry's house, where I explored his awesome "basement in a closet", got confused at the furry pillows in the living room because I thought they were animals (had to poke it to make sure..) We had 1/6th of a McDonalds cheeseburger pie each, grabbed a quick cuppa and a cold Wispa Gold (which I thankfully saved for later, see why in a bit..) and headed out to the "Hobgoblin" which is a pub that sells "Green Goblin" beer. I think Jackson would have been ecstatic to see it. :) Anyway, I tried my first Gin and Tonic here, which was lovingly described by someone as "drinking an alcoholic pine tree", so in order to get through that, I had to take bites of my Wispa Gold in between sips. :|
That night we ended up watching the movie "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus" which awesomely came out in the UK first before North America (ha ha!) It was the film Heath Ledger died in the middle of filming, which Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell, and Jude Law all volunteered to help finish as being the same character, so they worked out his "face changes" into the script, which is awesomely done. I thought it was a brilliant movie, I love the kind of old carnival, artsy type movies (like Moulin Rouge) so of course I enjoyed it. :D I think the boys didn't enjoy it as much as I did though, haha.
Ended up going to the Ledger Building next door for a bunch of unexpected rounds of cocktails, 6 jugs of cocktails to be exact, playing hilarious drinking games and fondling Barry's hairy chest (I think the guys enjoyed that more, haha!!) Good times had by all, except for a stupid tipsy me, who thought it would be a good idea to wait to go to the bathroom.. So I awesomely didn't go before we left (it's more than an hour tube ride home) and after the longest tube ride of my life, dragged Chris and Roy off the tube a couple stops before ours because I couldn't wait any longer.. There wasn't a bathroom at the station so I had to run up the street looking for dark alleys when I finally found a petrol station which was HEAVEN SENT, all lit up and everything... After the best pee of my life, we walked home, got an enormous Lamb Doner Kebab and a large chips (which alone could feed a family of 4) and watched R. Kelly's "Trapped in a Closet" which was apparently an lol!internet sensation years ago but I never caught onto it.. Anyway, it was horribly amazing, and that was the end of that day, which ended at around 3 am.
Sunday consisted of Chris and I getting up and dressing up for "Suit up Sunday", and headed to Earl's Court because they had a REAL TARDIS there. :D After meeting up with Lap, we took some really great, geeky pictures (see photo) and had disgusting, expensive tea in the cafe across from it. :| Went back to Chris's place, changed, met up with Sadie and Annabel, and went to "Nando's 11". Chris and Annabel are on a mission to visit all the Nando's in London, starting from the order that they opened. I got a chicken pitta with a side of "spicy rice", both of which had SURPRISE PEPPERS in it >:| I managed to get some free chips and a coke, and we also managed some free banana frozen yogurt, an extra perinaise, and a few sprites :D
We visited Harrow on the Hill since we were in the area, I got a travel charger and we visited the Disney Store, where I got a Nightmare Before Christmas water bottle! We also visited this clothing store called "New Look", where they had a shoe section in the back, where it showed the laziness of both London shoppers and staff - shoes were EVERYWHERE. Like, someone would pick up a pair of shoes, not like it, and just THROW IT ON THE FLOOR. So in order to be part of the crowd, I picked up a couple of pairs of shoes and just chucked them on the floor. No one seemed to care, it was like I was one of them. Regardless, I got a photo of this event (See photo.)
Returning to Chris's house involved playing Singstar, eating a horrible gravy covered atrocity, and watching lots of hilarious videos, so now I'm all caught up with the in-jokes for the most part.
JUNIOR SPESH!
Yesterday was a lazy day, however we managed to go to a pub quiz later that night after making an epic Chile Con Carne. The Pub Quiz was lots of fun, and there was one question where we got a puzzle we had to solve. After playing 150 professor Layton puzzles in the last month, I was determined to solve it, so after 15 minutes of thinking, I finally figured it out and tick...tick...tick....DING! CORRECT! I struck a pose the Professor would be proud of. :D
After the quiz (we didn't win but we got a damn good score) I demanded emergency ice cream, so emergency ice cream was had. And enjoyed, while watching America's Next Top Model. Haha.
So today I am meeting up with Steve/Joei in Camden Town and we're gonna tear stuff up. :D Or just hang out. Whatever we feel like.
Tempus Fugit!
Sorry about the lack of updates! I've been a bit lazy the last couple of days to myself, but have no fear, I am returning with a full itinerary of what I've been up to.. :)
I've had a few days of just taking it easy because breaking in my boots hasn't been so easy.. I have internal blisters in my heels that are pretty painful to walk on, not to mention the regular blisters.. However, last Thursday I managed to drag myself out and go to the Natural History museum. It was a bit like Science World mixed with a modern museum with lots of interactive displays, dinosaur bones, stuffed animals, gemstones.. it was pretty cool to see everything and walk around on my own. The entrance with the escalator up to the first exhibits (see picture) was absolutely incredible, with statues of Zeus, Medusa, Atlas, a Cyclops, an astronaut.. and then ascending the stairs into a huge globe where inside was a small light show with cool sound effects and props telling you what to expect of what's to come in the exhibits.
So there were many exhibits like facts about planets, rock, volcanoes, earthquakes.. I watched a pretty mortifying video of how the earth is going to die in the future and what ways it can die (and probably will) sun exploding, war, disease, etc.. :| Sure lifted my spirits. Then I checked out the exhibits with the dinosaurs, that had animatronic robotic velociraptors on top of some of the displays.. they were pretty awesome :D The main hall had a brontosaurus bone display.. pretty amazing. And there were halls of stuffed mammals and birds which was a bit sad actually. :{ There were like, just heads of some of the birds in glass cases. :|
Then there were some exhibits about childbirth (woo hoo) and how a baby/child learns, and there was this model of a huge scary baby in a "womb"... it looked like something out of Silent Hill (see picture).
After exploring the exhibits, I went outside and managed to find my way back to Kensington Gardens, which is quickly becoming my favorite place to hang out. I found a bench and read a bit of "Howl's Moving Castle" (which I have since finished), and randomly found the spot where it had the Albert memorial with the Royal Albert Hall just across from it. Really beautiful architecture all around. :)
The next day was a rest day, yet when Chris got off work, I met him at Russell Square station to go check out the building where the outside of "Black Books" is shot. "Black Books" is my favorite british comedy series, and is where I named my last hamster from - 'Bernard', played by Dylan Moran, who is a lewd, wine drinking, smoking jackass who runs the bookshop. So in commemoration of the event, Chris and I went to the convenience store across the way and bought a bottle of White Zinfandel wine and drank it amongst some confused Japanese businessmen as we took pictures outside of the building. Too bad it was closed, I would have gone in and searched for the Little Book of Calm. :) (see picture!)
Afterwards we headed to Central London where we took in some of the sights at night, which involved crossing a bridge, checking out the London Eye all lit up, seeing Big Ben all lit up.. have a great shot of the nightly atmosphere! (See photo.) We also went to a Starbucks where Chris got free coffee! And I got a signature hot chocolate with a cheesecake which they threw into a bag so it fell apart nicely... but it still tasted delicious. :)
Saturday came! And it was quite a great day.
Chris and I headed out to Peckham early, since there was going to be a riot later that day, however we still got caught in a pretty nasty traffic jam (which Roy got the best of, he waited 2 1/2 hours on a bus when he could have just walked for less that XD) because we headed to TOYS R US for I wanted to find a Doctor Who Sonic Screwdriver, which Chris managed to find one left of. :D He is the finding masta! I have a video of me showing my "fancy pens" which you can check out ici:
Afterwards I was extremely starving, so Chris took me to a nice chips place. I got some chips and a Saveloy (a red sausage/hot dog thing, I didn't like it so much :( ) and ate it in a park which was actually right opposite the "Winchester" which is the pub Simon Pegg and crew hang out at during the Zombie Attack in the movie "Shaun of the Dead." However, it doesn't look like it did in the movie anymore because they closed down and renovated the crap out of the outside. :{ Ah well...
We met up with Roy at Chris's friend Barry's house, where I explored his awesome "basement in a closet", got confused at the furry pillows in the living room because I thought they were animals (had to poke it to make sure..) We had 1/6th of a McDonalds cheeseburger pie each, grabbed a quick cuppa and a cold Wispa Gold (which I thankfully saved for later, see why in a bit..) and headed out to the "Hobgoblin" which is a pub that sells "Green Goblin" beer. I think Jackson would have been ecstatic to see it. :) Anyway, I tried my first Gin and Tonic here, which was lovingly described by someone as "drinking an alcoholic pine tree", so in order to get through that, I had to take bites of my Wispa Gold in between sips. :|
That night we ended up watching the movie "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus" which awesomely came out in the UK first before North America (ha ha!) It was the film Heath Ledger died in the middle of filming, which Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell, and Jude Law all volunteered to help finish as being the same character, so they worked out his "face changes" into the script, which is awesomely done. I thought it was a brilliant movie, I love the kind of old carnival, artsy type movies (like Moulin Rouge) so of course I enjoyed it. :D I think the boys didn't enjoy it as much as I did though, haha.
Ended up going to the Ledger Building next door for a bunch of unexpected rounds of cocktails, 6 jugs of cocktails to be exact, playing hilarious drinking games and fondling Barry's hairy chest (I think the guys enjoyed that more, haha!!) Good times had by all, except for a stupid tipsy me, who thought it would be a good idea to wait to go to the bathroom.. So I awesomely didn't go before we left (it's more than an hour tube ride home) and after the longest tube ride of my life, dragged Chris and Roy off the tube a couple stops before ours because I couldn't wait any longer.. There wasn't a bathroom at the station so I had to run up the street looking for dark alleys when I finally found a petrol station which was HEAVEN SENT, all lit up and everything... After the best pee of my life, we walked home, got an enormous Lamb Doner Kebab and a large chips (which alone could feed a family of 4) and watched R. Kelly's "Trapped in a Closet" which was apparently an lol!internet sensation years ago but I never caught onto it.. Anyway, it was horribly amazing, and that was the end of that day, which ended at around 3 am.
Sunday consisted of Chris and I getting up and dressing up for "Suit up Sunday", and headed to Earl's Court because they had a REAL TARDIS there. :D After meeting up with Lap, we took some really great, geeky pictures (see photo) and had disgusting, expensive tea in the cafe across from it. :| Went back to Chris's place, changed, met up with Sadie and Annabel, and went to "Nando's 11". Chris and Annabel are on a mission to visit all the Nando's in London, starting from the order that they opened. I got a chicken pitta with a side of "spicy rice", both of which had SURPRISE PEPPERS in it >:| I managed to get some free chips and a coke, and we also managed some free banana frozen yogurt, an extra perinaise, and a few sprites :D
We visited Harrow on the Hill since we were in the area, I got a travel charger and we visited the Disney Store, where I got a Nightmare Before Christmas water bottle! We also visited this clothing store called "New Look", where they had a shoe section in the back, where it showed the laziness of both London shoppers and staff - shoes were EVERYWHERE. Like, someone would pick up a pair of shoes, not like it, and just THROW IT ON THE FLOOR. So in order to be part of the crowd, I picked up a couple of pairs of shoes and just chucked them on the floor. No one seemed to care, it was like I was one of them. Regardless, I got a photo of this event (See photo.)
Returning to Chris's house involved playing Singstar, eating a horrible gravy covered atrocity, and watching lots of hilarious videos, so now I'm all caught up with the in-jokes for the most part.
JUNIOR SPESH!
Yesterday was a lazy day, however we managed to go to a pub quiz later that night after making an epic Chile Con Carne. The Pub Quiz was lots of fun, and there was one question where we got a puzzle we had to solve. After playing 150 professor Layton puzzles in the last month, I was determined to solve it, so after 15 minutes of thinking, I finally figured it out and tick...tick...tick....DING! CORRECT! I struck a pose the Professor would be proud of. :D
After the quiz (we didn't win but we got a damn good score) I demanded emergency ice cream, so emergency ice cream was had. And enjoyed, while watching America's Next Top Model. Haha.
So today I am meeting up with Steve/Joei in Camden Town and we're gonna tear stuff up. :D Or just hang out. Whatever we feel like.
Tempus Fugit!
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Touristy Things!
Today I braved the outside by myself! And guess what - I didn't get lost! (at least.. not TOO lost...)
I got up at 10am thinking it was 1:30pm (damn receiver), but it's a good thing I did get up when I did, or else I wouldn't have been able to do all the things I wanted to!
After making a breakfast of a fried egg between a UK 'muffin' (I actually asked my friend where the English Muffins were. HURP DURP) and some tea, I got dressed and braved the outside world. Found my way to the South Ealing tube/train station. I always get so self conscious when I'm in a new country, I always think I'm not dressing properly or I'm wearing something in a certain way that would offend someone. Anyway, it just felt like people were staring at me, which they probably were. After about 45 minutes of transferring, I eventually got to Baker Street, wandered around aimlessly, but saw some really pretty buildings. After doing a bit of a circle, I found 221b Baker St, which is Sherlock Holmes'es address in the books by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. There is a Sherlock Holmes tribute museum there where there are chamber maids that run the shop inside, and there is also a constable outside letting you into the museum. I went into the museum and saw all the cool stuff, which included top hats and deerstalkers. :D I wandered around the really tiny, but really tall house for quite a while, taking pictures and trying to avoid tourists. There is a lot of really neat stuff in there, including some freaky wax figures, and an antique potty, some old chemist sets, recreated old "clues", really old books, and other antique victorian knicknacks. I got the dude inside to take the touristy picture of me wearing Sherlock's hat, sitting in his chair, with his pipe. Observe totally rad picture. Also apparently people write to Sherlock Holmes. All his mail goes into this binder that is sitting in one of his studies. I read the funniest letter from a Japanese girl, and I took a picture of it. It reads..
"Dear Mr. SHERLOCK HOLMES How are you? I am seventeen year-old-girl and a junior at highschool. I have had great respect for you since I read about your distinguished service in the book. I admire you for your discernment, coolness, and prodigious intelligence. I am sure that you are gentleman of the first class, as well as you are the greatest detective in the world. Why have you retired at so early age? If I remember correctly, you were 48 year old at that time. Aren't you going to come back any longer? I have heard you are living in SUSSEX. What are you doing every day except when you raise bees. I hope you live comfortably. English is not much in my line, but I wrote this letter with my whole heart. Pleasure excuse me made some mistake in grammar.. I promise I will treasure your letter if you write back. Please do. I wish you every happiness. Sincerely yours, Rina Nakahara"
Next, I walked down the street to Reagent's Park, but not before stopping off in another small park to do a walkaround it's horseshoe shape to admire the lovely scenery. There were benches everywhere, and there was always one person at the end of each bench. Also, there were some girls in the middle of the park smoking that flavored tobacco out of a huge ornate water pipe. I didn't know people could do that in public. Interesting! Anyway, didn't stay long at Reagent's Park, I sat under a tree and decided what I was going to do next. I had some time to kill, so I decided to hit up Hyde Park/Kensington Gardens, which would be quite a walk. I hadn't eaten anything so I went to the Tube again, headed off to the Green Park area, and got sidetracked by the most gorgeous looking store, Fortnum & Mason and got some Strawberry Tea in a pretty pink can and some Smoky Earl Grey in a box, which I'm not sure if I like yet. Smoky is just a weird taste for tea. I guess it's more for the Professor Layton tea types. (the more DISTINGUISHED tea drinkers..)
I found a Starbucks and got a chocolate chip shortbread and large earl grey for 3.20 pounds, and headed to Green Park where I had a really nice sit down on a bench and just enjoyed the fresh air, viewing my photos, enjoying my tea and shortbread before I did the walk back to the Tube and went to Hyde Park, which is a huge park with a lake in the middle of it (Serpentine) where you can go river boat paddling.. I walked the great distance, crossed the bridge and went up to Kensington Gardens, where the famous Peter Pan statue was. It was definitely a tourist attraction but I had a few chances to take some great pictures without people interference. Even traded photo-taking with a nice foreign blonde guy. :D (see awesome photo!)
Walked back to the Tube and transferred a bunch of lines, got stuck in CRAZY rush hour and severe delays on my line.. sat in a VERY crowded train for 45 minutes with it barely moving.. Eventually got back and ate dinner, watched House, played Buzz! and had an awesome chat with one of Chris's flatmates :D
With that, I will bring you more adventures.. soon!
Hey isn't that a... I KNOW YOU!!! You bunch of traitors!
ELEMENTARY, MY DEAR WATSON
Me with the Peter Pan statue!
A mini-Tardis outside of Picadilly Circus Tube station!
Beautiful sunset outside of Kensington Gardens
I got up at 10am thinking it was 1:30pm (damn receiver), but it's a good thing I did get up when I did, or else I wouldn't have been able to do all the things I wanted to!
After making a breakfast of a fried egg between a UK 'muffin' (I actually asked my friend where the English Muffins were. HURP DURP) and some tea, I got dressed and braved the outside world. Found my way to the South Ealing tube/train station. I always get so self conscious when I'm in a new country, I always think I'm not dressing properly or I'm wearing something in a certain way that would offend someone. Anyway, it just felt like people were staring at me, which they probably were. After about 45 minutes of transferring, I eventually got to Baker Street, wandered around aimlessly, but saw some really pretty buildings. After doing a bit of a circle, I found 221b Baker St, which is Sherlock Holmes'es address in the books by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. There is a Sherlock Holmes tribute museum there where there are chamber maids that run the shop inside, and there is also a constable outside letting you into the museum. I went into the museum and saw all the cool stuff, which included top hats and deerstalkers. :D I wandered around the really tiny, but really tall house for quite a while, taking pictures and trying to avoid tourists. There is a lot of really neat stuff in there, including some freaky wax figures, and an antique potty, some old chemist sets, recreated old "clues", really old books, and other antique victorian knicknacks. I got the dude inside to take the touristy picture of me wearing Sherlock's hat, sitting in his chair, with his pipe. Observe totally rad picture. Also apparently people write to Sherlock Holmes. All his mail goes into this binder that is sitting in one of his studies. I read the funniest letter from a Japanese girl, and I took a picture of it. It reads..
"Dear Mr. SHERLOCK HOLMES How are you? I am seventeen year-old-girl and a junior at highschool. I have had great respect for you since I read about your distinguished service in the book. I admire you for your discernment, coolness, and prodigious intelligence. I am sure that you are gentleman of the first class, as well as you are the greatest detective in the world. Why have you retired at so early age? If I remember correctly, you were 48 year old at that time. Aren't you going to come back any longer? I have heard you are living in SUSSEX. What are you doing every day except when you raise bees. I hope you live comfortably. English is not much in my line, but I wrote this letter with my whole heart. Pleasure excuse me made some mistake in grammar.. I promise I will treasure your letter if you write back. Please do. I wish you every happiness. Sincerely yours, Rina Nakahara"
Next, I walked down the street to Reagent's Park, but not before stopping off in another small park to do a walkaround it's horseshoe shape to admire the lovely scenery. There were benches everywhere, and there was always one person at the end of each bench. Also, there were some girls in the middle of the park smoking that flavored tobacco out of a huge ornate water pipe. I didn't know people could do that in public. Interesting! Anyway, didn't stay long at Reagent's Park, I sat under a tree and decided what I was going to do next. I had some time to kill, so I decided to hit up Hyde Park/Kensington Gardens, which would be quite a walk. I hadn't eaten anything so I went to the Tube again, headed off to the Green Park area, and got sidetracked by the most gorgeous looking store, Fortnum & Mason and got some Strawberry Tea in a pretty pink can and some Smoky Earl Grey in a box, which I'm not sure if I like yet. Smoky is just a weird taste for tea. I guess it's more for the Professor Layton tea types. (the more DISTINGUISHED tea drinkers..)
I found a Starbucks and got a chocolate chip shortbread and large earl grey for 3.20 pounds, and headed to Green Park where I had a really nice sit down on a bench and just enjoyed the fresh air, viewing my photos, enjoying my tea and shortbread before I did the walk back to the Tube and went to Hyde Park, which is a huge park with a lake in the middle of it (Serpentine) where you can go river boat paddling.. I walked the great distance, crossed the bridge and went up to Kensington Gardens, where the famous Peter Pan statue was. It was definitely a tourist attraction but I had a few chances to take some great pictures without people interference. Even traded photo-taking with a nice foreign blonde guy. :D (see awesome photo!)
Walked back to the Tube and transferred a bunch of lines, got stuck in CRAZY rush hour and severe delays on my line.. sat in a VERY crowded train for 45 minutes with it barely moving.. Eventually got back and ate dinner, watched House, played Buzz! and had an awesome chat with one of Chris's flatmates :D
With that, I will bring you more adventures.. soon!
Hey isn't that a... I KNOW YOU!!! You bunch of traitors!
ELEMENTARY, MY DEAR WATSON
Me with the Peter Pan statue!
A mini-Tardis outside of Picadilly Circus Tube station!
Beautiful sunset outside of Kensington Gardens
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