Friday, January 07, 2005

back in the states

so I made it back to the u.s. yesterday afternoon (or night, depending on what time zone my head was really in). I lucked out again on my flight and had the seat next to me empty. yay for that. I also watched a bunch of movies (alfie - good, before sunset - really good, napoleon dynamite - pretty funny).

so, the last two days in london went something like this:
Tuesday: started off at Tower of London which was really very cool and interesting. I saw the crown jewels (they had a 350 carat diamond!) and some old buildings (some where people were murdered even) and stuff like that. after that I headed over to the Natural Science Museum and the Science Museum which were both interesting in their own way. the Natural Sci Museum had this collection of 22 million different species all contained in little glass jars. it was both gross and cool at the same time (my favorite was the jelly fish). the Science Museum was a bit disappointing, but it's also very hard to please someone with a huge background in science anyway. they did have the actual Apollo 10 capsule, though, which was neat to look at. after that I went to Harrod's which completely blew my mind. it was the most amazing store I have ever been in. they had literally anything you could ever want. and it was all organized so nicely and everything. besides the usual clothes, accessories and such, they also had a full pet store, a sporting section that had a room dedicated to each sport (well, the important ones anyway, like soccer (football), rugby and cricket (which I still don't understand, nor care to), and others), a huge designer jewelry section, and most amazingly of all, they had these food halls that had literally any kind of food you could ever want or need. there was a full butcher section, and then next door, a sushi bar, and then a cheese bar, and then a krispy kreme, and then a chocolate room, and then a tea/coffee room. it was incredible. anyway, I bought some english tea and made my way out of the maze back outside. after Harrod's I headed to the British Library where they had a really cool display of old books and manuscripts and such. they had two of the three oldest greek translations of the bible, the original magna carta, the first folio of shakespeare's works, some of leonardo da vinci's notebook pages, an original copy of newton's principia, beethoven's 9th symphony in beethoven's handwriting, handel's messiah also written out, some of the beatle's handwritten lyrics (with certain words change and things like that. it was fascinating), plus lots of other things I can't remember right now. it was very cool. at that point I was exhausted and headed home.
Wednesday was my zone 2 adventure (zone 1 is central London in terms of the tube). I started out by going north a bit to Abbey Road to follow in the immortal footsteps of the legendary Beatles. I met some nice people from wisconsin there who helped take pictures. the bad thing about Abbey Road is that it's a pretty busy street, so you kind of have to play pickle with the traffic in order to get a good picture. we probably walked across the street upwards of 10 times. hehe. oh well. after that I headed southwest to Greenwich to see the old palace and the Royal Observatory. the observatory was really cool, because besides having some old telescopes and longitude measuring devices, it also had the prime meridian (the line that divides the east and west hemispheres). so, I have a picture of me standing in both hemispheres at the same time. it was cool. after that, I headed back to London and went up to Camden Town and the markets there. it was pretty neat, and also good that I didn't have any spending money (since my suitcase would have been too full). then I went over to Portobello Road markets in Notting Hill and walked around there for a while. later that night, we went to a play, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged), where 3 people perform (sort-of) all 37 of Shakespeare's plays in just 97 minutes. it was hilarious.
Thursday morning I headed back over to Heathrow and got on my plane (which left on time, thank goodness). and now I'm back here. I'm going back to arizona tomorrow and then school starts back up on the 18th.
some of the 315 pictures I took during my trip will be posted sometime next week on either this site or my other one. I'll let you know.


and since I didn't put these up before, my new years resolutions:
1. eat healthier and exercise more (well, duh, isn't that on everyone's list?)
2. watch less tv and read more books (well, I haven't watched any tv yet and I bought 3 books yesterday, so I think I'm off to a good start)
3. study more
4. finish my websites (hopefully this will happen next week when I have nothing to do)
5. cook more often (and also, eat less fast food, if possible none)

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