"London Calling to the Faraway Towns"

(The title of this post is from lyrics of The Clash's "London Calling")

We're just about hitting mid-term around here and most people are feeling it.  Since I'm not in too many classes, things aren't quite as hectic for me at the moment (except when it comes to putting the final touches on mid-term break plans!).  

Thursday night I went to a gig at The Water Rats near King's Cross station.  A band called The Mars Patrol had caught the interest of my workplace, so we went to check out their performance.  They were pretty good; I like them a lot.  The Water Rats itself was a very small venue, but it had a good crowd of people there.

On Friday I decided to check out Covent Garden, which I'd heard about from one of my flatmates.  The weather was SO nice, though, I first, literally, took a walk in the park.  I first walked through Kensington Gardens, which is right down the road from out flat.  I saw the Albert Memorial and Royal Albert Music Hall in the daylight for the first time.

Then I went on into Hyde Park, since it's connected to Kensington Gardens.  I saw the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fountain.

The fountain is an oval-shaped pseudo-river.  One half of it is smooth and the other half is rough, to symbolize the smooth and rough point of Lady Diana's life.  There were lots of little kids playing around, and there was one little toddler who completely stripped down and started running about, much to the chagrin of his mother!

I walked on a bridge over the Serpentine (the giant pond in the middle of Hyde Park).

Then I took a path that led me to the Marble Arch.

The Marble Arch was a former gateway to Buckingham Palace and in the past, only members of the royal family and the King's Guard could pass under.  It has since been moved to Speakers' Corner at Hyde Park and is a center for pedestrian traffic.

From there I took the tube to Covent Garden, a market/shopping district just north of Leicester Square.  It was PACKED!

There weren't many booths out, so I quickly got out of there and, of course, ended up in Leicester Square.  From Leicester Square I walked to Piccadilly Circus, which I call the "Times Square of London."

At Piccadilly Circus I turned onto Regent Street and walked towards Oxford Circus.  Oxford and Regent Streets boast the flagship stores of most of the brands here in the UK, such as the Apple Store, French Connection, TopShop, Armani Exchange, and Hamley's.  Hamley's used to be the largest toy store in the world until the Toys R' Us in Times Square was built.

That night my friend Katie W. and I went to the local Odeon (the main cinema chain in the UK) at Whiteleys (the department store turned mall two blocks from our flats).  The ticket price was way high, but the cinema was really nice.  We saw "He's Just Not That Into You," which was pretty funny.  I definitely want to go to the GIANT Odeon in Leicester Square sometime, where they have the big London movie premieres.

On Saturday I went to the Portobello Road Market in Notting Hill (made famous by the movie).  It was even more packed than Covent Garden!

There were stalls everywhere selling antiques in front of the actual permanent antique shops.  There was also a food market on the north end of the road.  By what I consider a chance of fate, I ended up in this little bazaar because I saw the sign "vintage records."  Sure enough, I found a little treasure trove of original vinyl records, where I purchased a few I'd had a hard time finding in the States.

From Portobello Road I headed to Buckingham Palace.  I had yet to see the palace in the daylight, plus I had a Flat Stanley sent to me by a friend that I needed to take pictures with!

I also came across St. James's Palace, most of which was rebuilt recently but the Tudor gatehouse remains.

I then took Flat Stanley to Westminster Abbey (the main front of which I had missed the first time I'd been there!)

Of course, we also saw House of Parliament/Big Ben.  I then trekked over to St. Paul's but thanks to the London tube system (that of course ended up making me transfer at LEICESTER SQUARE) I made it just after the last admission to the dome of the cathedral passed.  But I still have plenty of time to go another day!

Monday night one of my workplace's artists, Tallulah Rendall, had a single launch at a venue on Charing Cross Road called 12 Bar Club.  The performance venue was teeny, but it had a lot of character.  On Tuesday night I went to another performance venue just across the road from 12 Bar Club called The Borderline.  I was required to go see an American artist called Richard Swift along with everybody else at the IC London Centre who's taking Brit Pop.  I really liked the guy's style of music; I describe it by saying that it's what Billy Joel might have sounded like if he'd started his career in the new millennium rather than the 1970s.  He evoked that prog/classical rock style but with a more modern twist.

This coming weekend will be another one spent in London but everybody will be in town this time because mid-terms are next week (and then Spring Break!!!).  I definitely plan on making it inside more places (such as St. Paul's, Westminster Abbey, or the London Eye) this weekend, rather than taking pictures outside of them!

Finally, A Video from Stonehenge

So, I finally uploaded my video from Stonehenge.  

Yes, Stonehenge is just a pile of rocks...but it's a pretty cool pile of rocks! haha

"Picture Yourself in a Boat on a River, with Tangerine Trees and Marmalade Skies"...yeah, Valentines in Beatlemania-land

Happy (belated) Valentine's Day!  The ridiculously long quote in the title is from the lyrics to "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," for those of you unfamiliar with the song.  With all the love songs the Beatles sang there is certainly a more fitting Beatles lyric for Valentine's Day...but they aren't quite as amusing as that one!

This weekend was spent in Liverpool, a coastal town in northwest England known for two things: football and the Beatles.  Since I'm in the British Pop and Contemporary Music course at the ICLC I basically had to go on this trip, especially since my knowledge of the Beatles prior to the trip was embarrassingly slim.  

After the five-hour bus ride to Liverpool, we then embarked on yet another bus ride: the Magical Mystery Tour.  The Magical Mystery Tour is a two-hour tour of all the historical Beatles sites in Liverpool.  We saw the childhood homes of all the Beatles (sadly, they're planning to demolish Ringo Starr's).  

(That's John Lennon's house, donated to the National Trust by Yoko Ono.  His is the only house that gets a blue plaque because he's been dead for over 20 years.  In about 12 years George's might get one.  Paul McCartney really doesn't want one yet, for obvious reasons.)

We also drove down Penny Lane, stopped at Strawberry Field, and saw the Eleanor Rigby tombstone (which the Beatles claim they hadn't known of before composing the song). 

 

We also saw the church where Paul McCartney was introduced to John Lennon and saw the schools they and George Harrison attended next door to each other.  We ended at the only Beatles-themed hotel in the world, A Hard Day's Night.

That night most of the Ithaca College crew ended up at the Cavern Club, where the Beatles performed regularly and became a Liverpool favorite.  The current Cavern Club is actually across the road from where it originally stood, but it is partly on the same foundation and the brick arches are the same ones used in the original. 

(That photo was taken the day afterwards.  It was a LOT busier the night we went.)

We chatted to some local Liverpudlians (yes, that's what they're called) while singing to all the songs the Beatles cover artist was playing.  We also wrote our names on one of the brick arches (because that's what everybody does when they go there).

The next day we walked down to the docks to the Beatles museum/exhibition. 

 

Basically, the format was that you walked through the Beatles' history.  It was quite awesome; I loved reading all the stories on the walls.  They also had pieces like George Harrison's first guitar, John Lennon's glasses, Paul McCartney's jacket, and Ringo Starr's first set of Beatles drums.  

By the way, I now have a favorite Beatle.  It's George Harrison.  And my favorite song is "Penny Lane."

After exploring Liverpool we went to Crosby Beach just north of the city.  We went there to see the art installation "Another Place" by Antony Gormley.  It consists of 100 iron figures cast from the artist's own body.  Some are in the ocean while others are in the sand, depending on when the tide is.  It's hard to explain but I'm including a link to the Wikipedia article about the installation.

No more trips are in the works for a few weeks.  I'm actually thankful for the breather and am looking forward to seeing more of London during the coming weekends.

EVEN MORE THINGS I'VE LEARNED WHILE IN LONDON:

21) Giant Toblerone bars solve everything.

22) The tube sucks.

23) The buses suck more.

24) Walking is the most fun way to get around London, as long as you have your brolly!!!

25) My name is properly pronounced Britt-a-nee, not Britt-nee.

26) Don't say "excuse me" unless you sneeze.  Otherwise say "pardon."

27) In Europe, ABBA = god.

28) Why do you always  ALWAYS end up in Leicester Square?!?!?!?!?

29) Britons dislike Gordon Brown even more than Tony Blair.

30) Oxford and Regent Streets = :-D!!!

Finally, A Video of the Tor

Ok, so a couple of weeks ago I promised that I would upload videos from the Bath trip.  I finally got around to editing and resizing them for the Internet, but I can still only put one up per blog entry.  So here's the first one (of two that I'm posting) from the trip.  It's the video I took when I reached the peak of the Tor in Glastonbury.  It was incredibly windy, so it's hard to hear anything I'm saying. Basically, I'm just running around the top trying to think what direction I'm looking in but failing miserably!  I also show a little bit of the tower that's at the top.

 

Spontaneity is My Middle Name

It boggles me to think that I've been here for four weeks.  One month down, three to go.  And our flat finally has Internet!!!

This past week has been the epitome of spontaneity.  Like, if you've seen the movie "Mamma Mia!" Colin Firth's character, Harry, is trying to be spontaneous and it's his excuse for everything.  That's a little what I felt like this past week!

This Wednesday I got some last-minute free passes into a Lady GaGa (of the songs "Just Dance" and "Poker Face") performance at the music venue Koko in Camden so my flatmates and a couple of our friends went.  It was especially cool because the concert was being filmed for the album chart show series that being aired later in the year here in England.  Then this past Monday Kara and I went to an All-American Rejects performance at the same venue for the same album chart show.

The next day my roomie Kara and our friend Jeri randomly decided that they were going to Brussels (Bruxelles), Belgium for the weekend, and I hopped onto the decision.  So we took the Eurostar train to Brussels from King's Cross/St. Pancras station early Saturday morning.

For starters, it was my first real train ride ever, and it was freaky going under the English Channel in the tunnel.  I also got to see quite a bit of the European countryside.

Brussels itself was fantastic.  We stayed at Hotel La Madeleine, a small hotel/hostel right in the center of the city.  We familiarized ourselves with the area but half the time we had no idea what we were looking at since although everybody there speaks English, almost no signs were in English.  Everything was in French or Dutch!  Most of what I saw I learned about when I got back to London.

We first saw the Grand Place/Grote Markt.  It's a grandly structured little plaza, first construction being in the 1400s.  There's gold trimming everywhere and there were little Belgian schoolchildren playing tag and Monopoly in the middle.

Next we walked towards the St. Michael and St. Gudula Cathedral (Cathedrale Saints-Michel-et-Gudule/Sint-Michiels-en-Sint-Goedelekathedraal), which was constructed in the 1200s.  It was pretty cool since we were on the steps of the church when the bells started tolling for 2PM.

After that we walked through the main shopping district in Brussels, where there were, of course, three H&Ms on the same street!  After that we went to dinner and then searched for a place to try Belgian beer (one of the Belgian specialties we were told to try while there).  We ended up at a place called the Drug Opera, which sounds dangerous but it was actually a very nice place.  There we tried framboise, a Beglian beer that is fermented using raspberries.  Thus far I haven't found any brews in England that I fancied, but the framboise was delicious!  So that was one Belgian specialty down!

The next day we went in search of a statue we had seen pictures of everywhere: the Manneken Pis (also known as the petit-Julien or "little pee man").  It's a statue of a mischievous boy peeing into a fountain off the Grand Place.  It was built around 1612 for unknown reasons, but it's become a symbol of Belgian cheekiness.  It also has over 160 outfits to its name, donated by Belgium and other countries around the world.

We passed through Brussel's Little Italy on our way to try the king of Belgian delicacies: Belgian waffles!  I could go on and on about those waffles.  I missed them before I was even finished eating mine!  I know I will definitely never be able to eat an Eggo waffle again!

After lunch we picked up another of Belgium's famous specialtiess: Belgian chocolate!  Of course, Belgian chocolate is delicious, and I will probably never eat American chocolate again, either!

Our last Belgian specialty was the French fry (or frites).  The Belgians claim that they were the ones to invent the French fry, but that's a difficult claim to prove (kind of like Ithaca's Purity saying that they were first to invent the sundae).  However, the Belgian frites were delicious and unique in that fact that they're served in a paper cone.

Another Belgian delicacy is the mussel (yes, you must eat mussels in Brussels!), but we never tried it, unfortunately.  We also saw the Royal Palace of Brussels (Palais Royal de Bruxelles/Koninklijk Paleis van Brussel), which looked suspiciously similar to Buckingham Palace.

Our last stop was a place you'd expect to be a big draw for me: the Musical Instruments Museum (Musee des Instruments de Musique/Muziekinstrumentenmuseum), otherwise known as the MIM.  It contained over 1500 musical instruments, but of course I had to see the exhibit on the Belgian clarinet. :-D

All in all, a wonderful trip!

Snow, Rocks, and Abbeys, Oh My!

Ok, so, I'm posting this entry a few days ahead of time because IT'S BLIZZARDING IN LONDON!!!

Which means, all the buses and most of the tube stations were suspended.  Which means, unless I wanted to walk 3-4 miles in the snow to work this morning and back at night, in the dark, I couldn't get to work today.  Actually, hardly anybody got to work today.  Thankfully, I can make the lost day up on Friday.  Today was spent catching up on homework, laundry, and TV episodes missed since I came here.

Anyways, the Bath trip...

We departed early Friday morning for the west country.  We passed through many quaint little English towns and by many a farm before reaching our first stop: Avebury.

Avebury is sort of like a cousin to Stonehenge.  It's a little younger and rocks aren't stacked on top of each other, but the outer circle of rocks is quite a bit larger in diameter than that of Stonehenge.  We walked around the entire circle and went through the village of Avebury before departing for Glastonbury.

Prepare for a quick history lesson: Glastonbury is most famous for Glastonbury Abbey.  Jesus was said to have traveled to England with his uncle, St. Joseph of Arimathea, and built the Abbey.  St. Joseph was supposed to have later brought the Holy Grail to Glastonbury, therefore making it a frequent destination for King Arthur and his knights.  In the 12th century, monks supposedly found the bones of King Arthur and his queen, Guinevere, buried outside one of the chapels, and they reburied the bones underneath the Abbey floor.  Later, King Henry VIII destroyed the Abbey in the 16th century in his quest to convert England from Catholicism to Protestantism.

Some of the Abbey still remains and we got to walk around it a bit.

After our tour of the Abbey a few of us ignored our hunger long enough to venture to the top of the Tor.

The Tor is a very steep, slightly-less-than-600-feet-high hill atop which there's nothing other than an abandoned old tower.  It's said that King Arthur rescued Guinevere from this tower.  The walk may not have been so hard if it wasn't so windy!  But we were rewarded with wonderful views once we reached the top.

After Glastonbury we had a brief stop in Wells in order to see the Wells Cathedral.

It was an extremely pretty and ornate Cathedral, and there was an organ playing inside that gave me goosebumps.  Also, it's home to the second-oldest functioning clock in the world.

After Wells we made it to Bath, where we stayed the night at the YMCA (yes, YMCAs exist throughout Europe).  The next morning we toured the Roman Baths, built while the Roman Empire occupied ancient England.

The effect was slightly ruined by clown noses adorning a bunch of the Roman statues.  It would be funny for April Fools' Day or something, but I don't know why they were up now.  Still, it was all pretty amazing.  Afterwards we explored Bath a little on our own.  A few of us picked up buns from the Sally Lunn's Bun place (circa 1700s).  Then we went on one of Bill's walks, the main focus being the Royal Crescent.

After Bath we ventured on to our final destination: Stonehenge.

Stonehenge is a lot tinier than you'd think.  The stones are probably only about twice my height.  The number of tourists and the tackiness of the gift shop/cafe sort of ruin the effect Stonehenge might otherwise have on the viewer.  I think Stonehenge would be really cool at night, especially with a full moon or something.  Still, we had fun hamming it up for the camera.

I'll post videos at another point, since my temp Internet doesn't have the capacity to upload videos to the Internet.

Churches Galore

Guess what? It's SNOWING here in London. Compared to what Vermont and Ithaca get, it's nothing. Still, the city of London is not designed to function during the snow. The tube will have massive delays and shutdowns, so it will be fun getting back to the flat. It's Sunday morning and I'm back at the IC London Centre since we still no Internet in the flat BUT we just got our landline installed so our Internet should be up within the next few days. Yay!

We just got back from Bath and the west country last night. However, my adventures there will have to wait until the NEXT blog post, since I still haven't talked about anything since LAST weekend.

Last weekend Kara and I accompanied many of our classmates on one of Bill's walks. This particular one took us around St. Paul's Cathedral.

Pretty, yeah? Thank you, Christopher Wren, master architect. Unfortunately we didn't get to go inside, but I'm hoping I'll be able to make a trip back sometime during my stay here.

St. Paul's is in the City of London, which is the "main" borough (there are about 32) in London. We walked around the rest of the City, mostly looking at churches that had been bombed during WWII. We also stopped by St. Bartholomew's Hospital and its two priories, St. Bartholomew's the Lesser and St. Bartholomew's the Greater.

Several movies have been filmed in St. Bartholomew's the Greater, including "Shakespeare in Love."

We then paid a brief visit to the Museum of London and continued to make our way back to St. Paul's. I honestly took no less than 130 pictures that morning, but I'm starting to have a little trouble identifying which pictures came from which church!

I also started my first week at Blurb Music PR. I've made many MANY phone calls to media outlets, asking for reviews of CDs we send out. As more work comes in I'll have a broader range of work to do, but for now I'm just sticking my feet in the water. I also did a presentation in my British Pop and Contemporary Music class on Billy Joel's "The Entertainer." We're learning about the Beatles next week, which will then lead into our trip to Liverpool two weeks from now.

Stay tuned for my next blog entry, which I think I'll put up as soon as we have Internet at the flat. Fast Internet is needed since I took some videos on the Bath trip that I plan to post.

MORE THINGS I HAVE LEARNED WHILE IN LONDON:

11. American peanut butter is not entirely impossible to find but grape jelly is. Grapes and jelly are "gross." (direct British quote)

12. Larger-sized shoes can be found in grocery stores but not in clothing stores.

13. "Skins" is the best show. EVER.

14. Ben & Jerry's in England is not Ben & Jerry's because it's not made in Vermont and does not use milk from Vermont cows.

15. Don't listen to your British friends when they say that black pudding (aka "blood pudding") is delicious.

16. Ditto with toad in the hole, parsnips, and Yorkshire pudding.

17. Free evening newspapers rock.

18. Even though the English are happy that Obama is in office, some will still discriminate against Americans.

19. It CAN get really cold in London.

20. Lion candy bars are almost better than pain au chocolat.