Being an account of the momentous bits of my last week in the UK. Because as we all know, Sunday I'm for Brussels.
Monday, in addition to the theater final, we all went out for something of a final group dinner at La Porchetta ("the pig" apparently), which is a fairly decent Italian restauraunt near school. Apart from it being hot enough to do things like, say, forge iron, much food was eaten, and much merriment was had. And by much food, I mean much. The pizzas in particular were spectacularly huge - mediums at least. I, of course, got the one tiny dish on the menu, not that I knew it at the time. But it was good, so whatever.
Tuesday was the second of the finals, the dreaded Ancient Near East exam. Or rather it was sort of the Diet Coke of dreaded, since what everybody REALLY feared was the real, 100% pure always Coca-Cola evil of the Rome exam and Darth the Green Book. So we took the final and went home, whereupon I was going to go see the last Reduced Shakespeare play, but decided not to, since, while we weren't forging iron outside, we were thinking pretty hard about things like bronze. This was all just as well, because Wednesday was a looooong day.
We started bright and early with the evil, evil Rome exam. Three full-length essays, with questions like "So, tell me about the economy of the Roman Empire" and "So, let's talk some about the importance of Roman Britain." Using information from the Greek Book, which is one of those books that likes to use really big words to make itself sound intelligent. It IS intelligent, actually, just you need a dictionary to read it. But that having been done, it was all about celebrating the fact that I'm totally out of school. But you've all heard about that. So instead of telling you about that, I'll simply mention that we made it to St. Albans finally, and St. Albans was good. The museum was chock full of the expected nifty Roman stuff, and we got to see the remains of the theater, which was likewise good. This was made all the better since Dr. Garfinkle actually has a degree in archaeology, and so told us some of how things go on. Happy days. That having been done, we all went back to London, whereupon we all, uh, flew British Airways. The British Airways London Eye, that is. Which, to describe it, is sort of like the biggest Ferris wheel you've ever seen, with capsules that seat 25-30 people. And the people running it were exceedingly nice, making sure our group all got in the same capsule, when booking one usually costs like 300 pounds. Too, we actually got stopped on top of the Eye for a while. Many photographs were taken, and life was good.
And then we went out drinking. Three of us graduated, including me, so we of course had to take some shots to celebrate. So I tried out tequila. But didn't get especially drunk. That, we saved for Thursday.
Thursday, well, the main bit was the Last of the Karaokehicans. I mailed a package back to Oregon for 45 pounds, which is a lot of money, but mainly it was about the drinking and the singing. And there was a lot of both, as it happens. Everyone showed up, and I mean EVERYONE, including Dr. Garfinkle and his wife. And how many schools have you gone to where your prof buys everyone tequila shots, and his wife gets up with the kids and sings and dances? Yeah. And then Dustin went into Garth mode again, and assorted other songs got sang. And, well, we drank a lot. I have no idea what everyone else did, but I've figured out that a tequila shot and 5 Smirinoff Black Ices (helpfully supplied by the bartender, who saw me coming and was like "SBI, right?") will, in fact, make me drunk. Improves my singing, too, sort of. Not to mention my dancing, not that I usually dance, but when random English girls want me to get up there with them, who am I to refuse? It's not quite so comforting when they steal my glasses and caper around with them, but hey. How she actually SAW while capering around, I have no idea, but she managed somehow. But, yeah. Apart from that, I got to be drunk a lot. And do things like jump up and down in front of Laura going "Move! Get up and move around!" Too, I got to sit at home and laugh at exactly nothing for about 5 minutes, whereupon Mike helpfully noted that "You're DRUNK." So was he, but yknow.
All of this revelry meant that Friday I was, um, a little hung over. Just a bit. As in the headache didn't go away all day, but since part of that was a caffiene withdrawal headache, sort of understandable. And I didn't eat a whole hell of a lot. I'm like that sometimes. Especially when I'm rampaging around London sightseeing. Went into Waterstone's and bought like 60 pounds worth of books, then went into the British Museum, took a lot of pictures, and discovered this big Medieval gallery full of cool stuff I never knew about before. Then I ended up at Tottenham Court Road station to take the Central Line over to St. Paul's and do that. Fortunately, I arrived in the station about the time they were announcing that "There will be no westbound service on gigantic chunks of the Central Line today." But hey, I'm going east. No problem. This feeling of good will lasts until I'm on the platform, whereupon they come on to announce that no, there's not going to be any eastbound service either, and since the only line serving St. Paul's is the Central Line, you're sort of screwed.
But, unlike some demented vampire rabbits, _I_ have mad tube skillz. So I leaped the Northern Line down to my next stop at Temple, browsed around by the Royal Courts of Justice for a bit, which is cooler than it sounds, whereupon I went to church.
We pause momentarily for Marechal to recover his exploded brain.
More to the point, I went to St. Paul's, and paid their rather painful 9 pound enterance fee, whereupon I proceeded to milk every bit of it I could out of the place, doing such things as listening to the entire audioguide and climbing all the way to the top of the dome, whereupon I took the obligatory spectacular London skyline shots. That having been done, I obliged Marechal by checking out the tombs and memorials to Nelson and Wellington, which are, as one might expect, rather impressive.
Hours having passed, I finally got out of church, and went on my way down to St. James Park, where apart from hanging out in the most beautiful spot in the city, I finally got my good pictures of Buckingham Palace and the whole Whitehall cluster of buildings. Then I walked over to Whitehall (which, I note, is a street, but has half the government on it), and ducked into the Cabinet War Rooms from WWII, and browsed around for a bit. Tad expensive at 6 pounds, but oh well.
And then I took some random pictures of tube stations, and went home, but not before getting my earphones randomly destroyed by the gate at Charing Cross. Doh. But for my last eventful day in London, not bad, I think. Not bad at all.
And now it's on to Brussels and a whole 'nother round of entertainment.
Posted by Dwip at June 12, 2004 5:31 AM