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+5 Faith, +1 Hygiene. England, Day 15.

“Time crumbles things; everything grows old and is forgotten under the power of time”

–Aristotle

This morning, we hopped on a coach and traveled out to Stonehenge. The English countryside is beautiful! Full of green. With trees I’ve never seen before!

I am already highly familiar with Stonehenge, due to my favorite game series Civilization. An excerpt from Civilization V‘s Civilopedia (the in-game encyclopedia): “Stonehenge is perhaps the most astounding construct of pre-history still standing. Though largely in ruins, this mighty relic still has the power to incite amazement, awe and wonder” (http://civilization.wikia.com/wiki/Stonehenge_%28Civ5%29). With all the pictures I’ve seen, though, nothing could top seeing the real thing–standing at this Wonder of the Ancient World was surreal.

We were each given an audioguide to give us information about Stonehenge. Good thing, too, because that left the field open, not requiring plaques of information scattered about the lawn.

How the audioguide worked was you pushed a number and then hit start. I assumed it would start at 1, so when I saw a sign that said “2 – 8” left, I assumed that meant number 1 would be right. I was wrong, and apparently I went “backwards” around the monument. The audioguide had a lot of great information, though. It talked about how it was probably built, who probably built it and why, and what had been done to conserve it. We also saw burial mounds and the “bush hill,” a mound with a single large bush growing on it within sight of Stonehenge.

After seeing Stonehenge, we drove to Bath. I wanted to ask the driver to stop every 15 seconds or so to take pictures, but I held my tongue and took pictures out the window.

This afternoon, we had a walking tour of Bath. Bath was built entirely out of creamy amber colored brick, quarried out of a nearby mine. We went by Bath Abbey, their (much smaller) version of Westminster Abbey and Notre Dame. We went by some bathhouses, saw some circuses (round buildings surrounding a circular plot of land), and toured the Assembly Rooms.

The assembly had three main rooms, a beautiful ballroom, a tea room, and a room called the “octagon room.” The ballroom had a balcony for the musicians, so as to avoid playing in the mass of dancers on the floor. I would love to be able to go to a ball here! I wonder if they still host balls occasionally?

After the tour, I found a bookstore selling incredibly inexpensive books. I think I’ll go back and pick a few up tomorrow.

We then went to a fun restaurant where we were all had a fun time chatting about our trip and about the world going on around us. Some of us were a little bummed we weren’t able to make it to see Spamalot in the theatre here. It wasn’t planned, though, so we weren’t too sad–maybe we can make it another time.

Now having seen the English countryside, I see easily how writers like Tolkien was able to create such fantastic worlds. A lot of the things I originally thought unique wasn’t nearly as unique as I had believed—the Barrow Mounds are a supernatural form of the burial mounds, Weathertop is Stonehenge placed on a hill, The Shire looks exactly like the land surrounding Bath. It still magic to be able to be here, though, and see all the inspiration.

My days sure seem to be blending together! Its incredible how busy we’ve been the last two weeks.

Day 11

On Thursday, the theater group participated in a workshop at a studio owned by the National Theater. We worked with an actor from War Horse, and we learned how to work in a team to create a realistic-looking horse. I was complemented on my horse lore. When encountering big scary monkeys, they tend to backpedal when approached. If the big scary monkey has food, though, they follow tentatively if the scary monkey’s back is turned to them.

After the workshop, a group of us wandered the city a while. We ate food (an American-style burger and malt shop, if I’m not mixing my days up), rode around on the public transportation, and eventually found ourselves at a tea shop.

Some of the tea smelled nice, but I wasn’t much for trying to haul tea back to the states, nor do we have the facilities to prepare it at the hostel. We happened to run into another group at the shop. The others wanted to go back to the hostel to get ready for the play. I was already ready, so I stayed with the others at the shop. Once everyone was done at the shop, we headed out towards The National Theater.

We found a park to sit in, and I played “guess the nationality,” my new favorite game while in London. The game is simple: listen to someone nearby, and try to guess where they’re from based on how the look and talk. Its super difficult, and I suspect I usually guess wrong, since my answers have basically only been “She sounds French,” “He sounds German,” and “I think that group is from Canada,” so far.

We then meander over to the theater, where we watch The Beaux Strategem. I read the synopsis beforehand so that I would have an idea of the storyline before the play starts (I realized after Les Mis that it was important!).

The play was brilliant! I was laughing throughout the entire show–good thing, too, since its a comedy! I loved the music, too. It wasn’t really a musical, but it had a bluegrass Celtic-sounding band playing during scene changes. A couple of short songs were in it, as well–mostly for humor. It had a semi-realistic plot (looking at you, Merchant of Venice). Overall, this was the best play I’ve seen in London so far. Note that I said best so far. It’ll be important later.

After the play, a handful of us went to find a bite to eat. As we were walking, we were talking. In fact, we were even having a discussion. We discussed that we wanted pizza. We didn’t find a pizza place. So we hopped on the underground, hopped off at a random station, and selected to turn right (at random). The first restaurant we found: a Pizza Express. What good fortune!

We were incredibly loud in the restaurant. We knocked over the water jug. We spilled the tomato sauce. We asked the waiter to split the bill between the five of us, even though we only had two appetizers. He refused. It was fun.

Day 12

Friday. We slept in a little bit today. I woke up around the same time as I usually do. We had breakfast. (If Rachel says one more thing about those ham sandwiches… I jest, I jest.)

Today, we tour the Royal Court Theatre. This theater only performs plays that have not been produced anywhere else before. Because of this, they have a different relationship with playwrights. Instead of going through royalty companies, playwrights directly send material to the Royal Court. Play-scripts then go through a strict process to reduce their options from around 3000 to the eighteen or so that they are able to perform in a single year. In the workshop, we were privy to that process. We even had a mock script discussion!

Most of us didn’t like the play we were instructed to read, myself included. One person even gave it an “over my dead body” rating… mine was only a simple “no” rating. Lo and behold, this was a script that they had actually performed!

The Royal Court Theatre only performs full-length, contemporary plays. Full-length in England, though, is only 60 minutes of run-time–60 pages. American full-length is usually at least twice as long. Usually longer.

I will definitely be writing plays and sending it to them.

Day 13

Saturday. My aunt and uncle, who live in Germany for the time, visited me in London for the day. My uncle’s folks came down from Edinburgh too! As I had some time before they arrived, I took some time to meander through Regent’s Park. It was gorgeous. A beautiful pond, lots of flowers (I can only imagine what they look like in full bloom! Just like the Rose Garden in Duluth, I suspect), and I even got to peek at the Open Air Theatre. It was locked up, unfortunately, so I couldn’t look inside. I suppose they take their Peter Pan performances seriously.

I found where the color scheme for the Ministry of Magic in Harry Potter came from. That awesome green? It was ripped right off the Regent Park underground station. I’ve been seeing a lot of stuff from the movies that I thought was super original and now am seeing that it was already somewhere in the city…

After I met up with everyone, we took the underground to Kew Gardens. We tried, at least. The underground wasn’t running all the way out this weekend due to maintenance, so we had to shuffle between a few trains and then get on a bus. We only got turned around 3 times, so I consider it successful.

The area that the gardens are in are gorgeous. Huge beautiful flats, little stores, all the charm that I expected.

The gardens were super pretty. They have 30,000 different plant species in the gardens, if I remember correctly. Giant 10-metre holly hawk bushes, coffee plants, trees from the 1600s, all of it. We even walked along the treetop tour. I was hoping it would actually be a tour along the treetops, like a treehouse, but it was a walkway that simply was up at treetop level. Oh well.

We then went to a pub called “Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese,” but it was super busy and I was on a time crunch, so we didn’t stay and wait for a table. Instead, we went to another place that I cannot remember the name.

We played “Guess the Nationality” here, too. The target this time was the pretty waitress. I guessed German, everyone else guessed Russian. This time she was actually asked, and the result was Ukranian. I had sweet potato and lamb pie. It wasn’t all that good. Great veggies, though.

After eating, I said my goodbyes to everyone and my aunt went with me back to the hostel. I then went to see Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap with two of the others on the trip. I’ve read the script before, but nothing compared to watching it in London. When I read the script, I didn’t understand most of the cultural references (like the meaning behind the name Christopher Renn, St. Paul’s, or Edinburgh). Having spent two weeks in London, it was like watching a totally different script. I was really excited that the script I read had omitted the last scene, so I didn’t know how it ended. And keeping tradition, I won’t spoil the ending to anyone.

This is now the best play I’ve seen so far, bypassing Les Miserables and The Beaux Strategem. There’s a reason The Mousetrap has been running for 63 years non-stop. It’s a shame I can’t say more about it without giving anything away. Go see it. Book a plane ticket to London just to see it. Right now.

…You haven’t done it yet.

Day 14

Sunday. Do I go to the Science Museum, or the Natural History Museum? I decide to wait until the last minute to decide, as they both are at the same underground station. I decide on the Natural History Museum. Why? I dunno. Maybe because it was on the left instead of the right.

The NHM was awesome. Not The Mousetrap awesome, but still pretty cool. I saw some dinosaurs, a whale, a neat film on photography, and the largest laboratory in the UK called The Cocoon. I would love to be able to tour the inside of the facility, since tourists are only allowed on the tourist-floor.

After the National History Museum, I made my way over to the Imperial War Museum, since that was what I found the most interesting in the Museum of London. I spent 2 hours there (they close for the day fairly early, unfortunately), and I wasn’t even able to make it through half of the WW1 stuff. Its amazing how differently the war appeared to the British people. An incredible amount of history occurred before the United States entered the war that isn’t covered in American history classes.

There was a ton of stuff I didn’t see, and I will definitely be going back again.

Breakfast. Sandwiches. Spilling tea on white shirts. Eating yogurt. There seems to be a habit forming.

This morning we journeyed off to the Museum of London. We show up at 9:50 and discover that it doesn’t open until 10 o’clock. No problem, we just chill on the foyer for ten minutes discussing The Merchant of Venice.

The museum is pretty cool, lots of old pots and some spearheads and stuff. Some dinosaur bones. A helmet or two. Then we reach the Roman stuff. There’s a model of city. And tons of coins. Now this stuff is getting interesting.

There’s a bunch of cool maps, some rifles, and other stuff. Like a neat chest! There’s even a Victorian-style city block to walk through.

The World War exhibits. Now these are really something. The whole museum should be about this. Its interesting to see how differently the war went from the British perspective.

There was also an exhibit for the 2012 Olympics in London and a replica of the queen’s carriage.

After the museum, Thomas and I hustled back to the hostel to change for high tea.

The tea was excellent. The sandwiches were pretty great. Most of the desserts were crazy good—the jam was great, the scones not so much. (Don’t tell any Brits I said that.) And there was way too much food. I must be getting used to European portions.

This evening was pretty laid-back. I did some souvenir shopping and accompanied a few others who did laundry. I even stayed at the hostel and got a panini. Then I had a super-cool, awesome experience.

The girl sitting next to me was talking to the person working at the cafe (Would he be called a barrister?), and I asked if she was from France. Note that everyone involved is talking in English the whole time. She didn’t understand what I asked her, so she asked me to repeat it. I oblige. She still doesn’t understand, and turns to the Australian barrister and asks him to “translate” what it was that I said. He repeats what I asked, and she then answers me. I don’t remember what she said exactly–something along the lines of talking about her accent. But what was important was that I was finally on the opposite side of the “hard to understand accent.” Now I’m the one with the thick American-midwest accent that they have a hard time understanding.

That was pretty cool.

Ode to my feet…

Today was a long one. Longest one yet, aside from the one that had 25 hours in it (time-zone jokes, har har).

This morning, we visited the British Library. Its only a few blocks from where we’re staying, so we walked. We toured the facility, but we couldn’t see any of the books. The books are all kept in a vault underneath the library. Only certain employees are permitted to handle the books in the vault, since part of the hiring process is a fitness test. In case of an emergency, you have to be able to get out of the building in under 5 minutes. Not an easy task if you have a hard time with stairs.

The library is a Legal Deposit library, which means that a copy of every book published in the United Kingdom is sent to be stored in the British Library. It is also structured differently than most libraries. Because most of the books are stored in a vault underneath, prospective readers must request books be brought above ground by a member of staff. The library has a system of conveyor belts that bring the books to the surface, preventing people from running up and down stairs all day. The books are then brought to a reading room specified on the ticket where they can be perused. Unfortunately, this system prevents people from perusing the shelves themselves.

This was a lot of walking, and my feet were already sore. Its about 1 o’clock now.

After walking around the library, we ventured to the British Museum. This museum is far larger than I anticipated, and I saw less than 10% of the displays in my 3 hours there. I went through part of the China exhibit, where I found a fantastic temple model.

I also went through some of the Southeast Asia exhibit, and went on a tour through the Egypt one. I saw one of the Enlightenment rooms, and found an interesting exhibit on life and death. The centerpiece of that exhibit was a mesh that had every pill and supplement that the average British person takes over the course of their life. There was one for both a man and woman.

The last exhibit I had a chance to look at was the Parthenon and Ancient Greek exhibit. I remember in high school discussing the fight between the Museum of Athens and the British Museum of who should get the statues from the Parthenon. It looks like they may have compromised and allowed each to have just a few fragments of the statues. I never found the Rosetta Stone, unfortunately. I never found the exit we were supposed to meet at either, for that matter. I ended up finding a few others in my group and following them to the exit.

Now my feet hurt. This has already been a long day, and its only about 4:30.

After the Museum, we took the subway system over to the Globe Theater, where we were able to sit (finally!) through a “Setting the Stage” speech. The orator spoke about the economics of Merchant of Venice, the play we were about to see. He gave a synopsis of the plot without giving away the ending. He also discussed what he believed to be the reasonings of why the various characters acted the way they did. Most of us struggled to stay awake. It was warm in the room, most of us were hungry, and all of us were tired from walking.

After grabbing a bite to eat at the local Starbucks (where I nearly bought a sparkling water instead of a still water by mistake), I experienced a little bit of what it was like for the peasants of the 17^th century to see Shakespeare’s plays at the Globe Theater. We had yard tickets, which meant we stood in front of the stage, under the stars (or clouds, in today’s case).

The play was well-performed. It was also a great piece of work, as I absolutely loathed all the characters (except for Shylock, of course!). I mean it, too–this is one of the few plays that actually brought out an emotional response from me. I take to be a highly successful play. Either that, or I was upset that my feet hurt so much from standing. It is by far more difficult to stand for hours than to walk around for hours. Thus, I didn’t appreciate the awesomeness of the performance until hours later, when my feet finally felt like normal feet again.

After the play, a few of us split off to have another bite to eat, as we had only been eating small portions over the day. After much debate (note, it was a consensus from the beginning), we decide to look for a pizza shop. We found an underground station and took it to a random stop—as luck would have it, we found desired pizza shop–that was still open, mind you, just around the corner of the station.

I dunno what it is about Europeans being unable to split checks.

After returning to London and finally getting to sleep (our return flight boarded at 10:20pm), we awoke bright and early to visit the Warner Brothers’ Harry Potter studio tour.

The studio was astounding. I read all of the books (multiple times!), and I watched all the movies when I was younger. It was amazing to be able to see the props and sets that they actually used in production. I’m not a big movie guy, but I love seeing how movies are made and filmed, so to be able to see the Harry Potter production was really cool.

We started with the Great Hall of Hogwarts. We saw costumes from some of the various characters in each of the houses and the professors.

We then saw a bunch of other stuff, like the Yule Ball ornaments, wigs, sets, furniture, and the costumes for the women at the Beauxbatons Academy of Magic.

Its amazing how the creature shop worked. A lot of the major creatures had animatronic versions as well as using CGI (computer graphic imaging). Buckbeak was a good example of this. We walked through Diagon Alley, and saw the model of Hogwarts.

Since we had the evening free (and I was exhausted from the crazy sleep schedule this weekend), I decided tonight would be a good time to do laundry, work, and stay at the hostel. I got a fish and chips from their mini-restaurant. I don’t know why, English fish and chips are super plain…

That evening, I had my first experience with working through time-zones. I had a conference call with coworkers in New York, Duluth, and California, so it was interesting to see what different times it is across the globe.

Day 1, Friday

Edit: Added pictures of Paris at night. Enjoy!

2:15am, my alarm clock goes off. My bag packed already, its time for Paris! There are 8 of us on this excursion, and only 2 of us speak French. 1 fluently. Megan’s going to be doing a lot of translating. And my translator app too, but I certainly won’t be using it mid-conversation.

Not all of us are as ready to go as me. We have a missing passport, a number of missing people, and another “I need to go back for something” that I didn’t catch and didn’t bother to ask again. Fingers crossed everyone makes it to the airport, on time, with everything they need.

Its a foggy night, nice and cool. My glasses are covered though, so I’m blindly following the others to the train station. No one was hit!

Its amazing how much the city slows down in the early morning. We saw not a single person the entire way to the station, and even in Kings Cross itself we only saw 4 people. The others beat the train to the station, thankfully. (There’s only 1 each hour!)

We board the train, and ride in a half-awake stupor the entire time, laughing at jokes and stories that aren’t really funny and dozing off for seconds or minutes at a time. I really could have used more than an hour or two of sleep last night.

We arrive at our stop, and make our way to the shuttle to get to the airport. Nothing really exciting happened here, at least nothing I was conscious of.

The airport. A bustle of people all trying to not miss their flight. I forget to take my liquids out of my bag. I was too busy wondering why everyone is allowed to keep their shoes on for European flights. My bag gets flagged. I wonder what’s with my traveling that I get stopped, flagged, or selected for a random full check each time?

It’s my shampoo this time. Maybe they can’t see through the black bottle. Maybe its a weird consistency. Maybe they picked it at random?

I’m free to pass through border control, and get on my flight. Hurray for another stamp! I still think they should be more colorful, or have a symbol on it or something. It just says the airport’s name with a box.

The flight is 55 minutes. It feels more like 5, since there is 21.4 minutes of ascent and 21.4 minutes of decent. That would leave 12.2 minutes at cruising height, assuming my numbers are correct (They aren’t).

Nous arrivons à France! (We arrive in France!) Everyone else realizes that they have no idea how to communicate here, and the questions begin. “How do we talk to border control? Where’s the exit? How do I buy a drink?” I’m so exhausted I can’t remember, and I keep quiet while Megan answers most of them.

We approach the border guard, one at a time. The moment of truth. I say, “Bonjour,” and I immediately realize how strong my American mid-west dialect is (as well as how American I look in my plaid button up t-shirts) when he responds with “You can go through,” in English. So much for knowing some French. It probably didn’t help that I was right after the others who knew no French at all.

I’m pretty overwhelmed by the strain of trying (and usually being unable) to understand the speech and text around me. I only had an hour of sleep after all. Fortunately, the major signs in the airport are in both French and English. We find the Great Britain ticket attendant person (the one who sells the train tickets to Paris), and we each get a ticket. Maybe we can do this!

We find the train, and we hop on. I promptly fall asleep, but not before I notice that this train is in far worse shape than in London. Probably because there’s no cameras on this train. I doze for a while. I want to see as much of Paris as possible, so I fight it off. Look at all those suburbs… Reminds me of Los Angeles. The Los Angeles of Europe.

We arrive at our hostel. Our rooms aren’t ready yet, so we leave our bags in the locked luggage room and look around. Some of us walk in the bike lane and get yelled at by Parisian cyclists. (Not me, promise!)

We find a cafe, and can’t decide what to get. The cashier mistakes our silence for being completely unable to speak French, and she isn’t terribly happy about it. Megan helps the others order. I order all by myself. They don’t take cards, so we all have to use our 20s, and she nearly runs out of change. I apologize for not having any smaller bills. “Désole…” She seems happy that at least two of our group can speak French. We’re off to a good start!

We return to the hostel and get checked into our room. They don’t have any towels left because its a holiday of some sort this weekend. The toilet asks us to not flush toilet paper down the toilet. Must have old piping. We all collapse in our rooms, and wake up about 4 hours later, at 2pm. (Europeans would say 14:00)

We decide to take the subway to le Tour Eiffel. The ticket machine doesn’t take cash. I’ll have to keep that in mind, but for now I have enough coins for a ticket.

It doesn’t feel like we’re really in Paris until we get out of the underground station and see the Eiffel Tower. There it was, just sitting there. (What was I expecting it to do though, dance around?) We make our way past the street vendors selling “selfie sticks” and miniature Eiffel Towers.

We meander through town a while, and find a few other monuments. Eventually we stop to eat at a cafe/restaurant. The waitress is pretty happy talking to Megan. She’s also super helpful to everyone else who’s trying to order in French. Hilarity ensues as new French speaking skills get tried, with phrases like “Me sad because of cheese,” “I am ham,” and “Ongion soup, please” being the highlights.

That evening, we go up the Eiffel Tower. Climbing all 603 stairs to level 1. Then 603 more stairs to level 2. The view was great, though!

We stand in line to get to the top of the tower by lift. I meet some nice Canadians behind us, from Ontario. We talk a lot and take pictures a lot and wait a lot.

I’m pushed up against the glass door in the lift up. I sure hope there isn’t a problem and the door opens. It sure is a long way down. I find the easiest handhold to grab, just in case.

We make it to the top without incident. By this time, the sun has set and the tower is lit up. The city sure sparkles at night.

We head back down in groups. Luc isn’t in one of them. We must have left him at the top of the tower. After about 30 minutes of searching, we finally see him stepping off the stairs at the bottom. Found him!

We laugh about how he was forgotten at the top of the tower and head back to the hostel. Megan remembers the lack of towels and stops to get one from a touristy store, and Luc, Jake, and I wait outside. An attractive young French woman approaches us and sounds exceptionally flustered, asking us for help. She’s talking too fast for me to make out what she’s asking and she quickly walks off, assumably to find someone who speaks fluent French. I wish I could have helped her. Maybe next time.

Day 2, Saturday

Off to a late start today. We don’t collectively have enough coin to pay for our tickets for the day. I didn’t realize neither of my cards would work. The machines only support cards with the chip in them. Megan goes through the open-air market nearby and buys some bananas so that she could get coins for all of us. They were definitely the best bananas I’ve ever eaten.

There were two groups today that wanted to go to different places, so we decided to split into two groups. I really wanted to avoid the mass of people that would be at the Louvre as well as be with the fluent French speaker.

My group arrives at our station, and find ourselves in a two-hour line to get into the Catacombs. I really don’t like waiting in line. Being with the others and talking the whole time makes it bearable, though, and I get lots of pictures. We each take turns going to grab something to eat. I get a portable pizza and some sort of pastry with chocolate in it.

There are hundreds of thousands of bones in the catacombs, all sitting in nice, organized piles with trails leading through them. Its pretty morbid. They only let 200 people in at a time, and it’s a really long walk, so there were a few times when I didn’t see or hear anyone around me, and it was fairly peaceful.

When I got out of the catacombs, there was only one person behind me. We then waited another hour and a half after I got out before we decided we should let the other group know we were running late, as we had decided we would meet the other group at 3 o’clock. It was pushing 2:45.

I was part of the group that went to meet them, and we found them at the Arc de Triumph much more easily than we expected. We then met up with the rest and we went on our merry way.

We then went to Notre Dame

Luxembourg Park (where we saw the super-mini Statue of Liberty)

the Lock Bridge

and walked along the river. I loved walking along the bank. We were the only tourists around (that I could tell—it looked like all locals to me), it was a beautiful evening, and everyone was so happy and content. It felt like something out of a storybook. Everyone was enjoying everyone else’s company, playing games and eating together. After dark, we stopped by the Eiffel Tower again, and walked across another monument to get to an underground station. We stopped to see the Arc de Triomphe at night, and went back to the hostel.

Day 3

We split again, as some wanted to take a train to Versailles, and others (myself included), wanted to stay in the city, see some more sights, and have a more relaxed day. We hopped on a subway and took it all the way to the end, getting off at Dauphine station.

One of the things I had wanted to see was the University of Paris. Ironically, about a block from the stop we got off at was the Dauphine branch of the University of Paris. We discovered that most places don’t open until 10am outside of the more touristy areas. We stop by a wonderful patisserie (pastry shop) and I have the most amazing, delicious, fantastic croissant I’ve ever had. As Luc so well put it, “I can’t ever eat a Pillsbury croissant ever again.”

I want to see the US Embassy, so we take the subway to the Franklin D. Roosevelt station and walk down the Champs-Élysées. Its tucked behind a bunch of trees and mean looking police officers, so I don’t take any pictures. Luc also discourages picture taking from his experiences abroad.

We stop by the Louvre to take more pictures, but we avoid the crowds, since its so crowded. (See what I did there?) We rode the subway to the small Statue of Liberty (not to be confused with the super-mini one in Luxembourg Park. Luc and I walked down to a bridge to get the statue and the Eiffel Tower in the same picture. I didn’t realize it was so far away, and I’m exhausted by the time we get back to the statue.

We walked down a pretty island to get to the Eiffel Tower, as we thought it was fitting to spend our last few hours napping in the sun beneath the tower. We decide to get one last treat before we leave. I successfully order an apricot marmalade crepe completely in French and have the cashier respond entirely in French back. There was full comprehension from both parties.

We head out to the airport, and I’m sad that I’m leaving. Its a little bit funny to say that I’m sad to be going to London, but I definitely wish I could have stayed in Paris longer.

After getting through security and border patrol, I decided I wanted to finish my collection of one type of each coin. I was missing a 1 Euro cent, and a 5 Euro cent, so I approach one of the cashers. I try to ask for change for a 20 cent piece in French, but the cashier doesn’t understand what I’m saying. I try to switch to English, but she doesn’t know English well and still doesn’t understand. I eventually resort to saying (in French) “This is 20. I would like 10, 5, 1 and 1 and 1 and 1 and 1, please.” Success, she understands!

As we get in line to board the plane, two of my companions realize their phone is about to die. Their boarding passes are both on their phone. Fortunately, I’m an Eagle Scout so I’m always prepared. I let them use my mobile charger (which I haven’t needed to use yet, thankfully). They were pretty funny looking, joined together by the charger.

I already miss Paris, and I will definitely be making another trip back.

Shakespeare, an Iron Dragon, Birthday’s, and Rain. London, days 3 and 4.

Day 3

I will be brief. There have been technical issues with uploading entries from my phone (my last ones have all been with my laptop, which I did not have access to for a few days). It decides to erase my work as I try to upload it. Computers–I tell you.

On the morn of day three, we journeyed across the city with a guide telling us about all the different places Shakespeare lived, worked, and hung out at. He even showed us a few other places of interest relating to him. (Relating to Shakespeare that is, not to the tour guide.)

We started near a bank, where he pointed out a statue of Shakespeare next to one of Bacon and Sir Issac Newton.

We went by a monument of the 7 Stages of Life, where he recited a speech given by Jaques in As You Like It.

We also toured three places where Shakespeare used to live. Not one of them was still standing. Only one had a plaque showing that it was Shakespeare’s residence. He isn’t well received in London, apparently.

Our guide told us that Shakespeare was actually a very rich man, contrary to my belief about him. I assumed he had been a “starving artist” who barely made anything off his plays. Technically, I was right about not making money off his plays. He was a brilliant businessman and he made his money by owning the theaters in the city, not by writing his plays.

After the tour, we walked to the Tower of London. Inside was the most organized army gear, weapons, and armor I had ever seen in one place. There were some gifts given to the British by the Japanese, Native Americans, and Germans, to name a few. There was also this handsome fellow:

After the Tower, I made my way back to the hostel. I was exhausted. After mucking about the hostel for a while, I decided to get something to eat from a place down the street titled “The King of Falafel.”

I spoke with the owner for a little while, where I just asked for “his most popular dish.” He then asked me if I wanted something on it that I didn’t quite catch, but I agreed anyway. I was feeling adventurous. A woman wandered by the store and asked if she could come in if she didn’t smoke. This is a silly thing to ask, as there really isn’t any reason to prevent someone from entering a store while not smoking. The shopkeeper agreed. She walked in, promptly started to smoke, and was asked to leave.

Outside, I heard her ask how to leave. She called Luc a Yankee, then proceeded to bother the other patrons, who shooed her away.

My wrap was pretty good.

Day 4

On day 4, it rained. But I have a jacket, so I was just fine. I’m prepared! We toured the Globe Theater, had a workshop with one of the actors, had a waiter point us toward the site of the Leaky Cauldron entrance in Harry Potter, stopped by the site of the original Rose Theater, found an open-air market, celebrated Ronnie’s birthday (her first, according to the cake), and watched a hilarious show titled 39 Steps.