2/27/12

Well hello everyone!! Notice something with this blog? That's right! I'm actually doing it on time. Haha, I want to say that I will continue doing this but the way my life has been roller-coasting I'm not too sure how solid of a guarantee that would be.

So I want to start with a special announcement. Today is the 21st Birthday of one of my greatest friends, a girl who I love so much! Happy Birthday Becca!! I love you and I hope you had a blast last night and keep that party going for when I come home!!

And now on to today's events!

I woke up pretty crabby today actually, I mean I never enjoy waking up but having to wake up a good two hours earlier than normal and after going to bed about one hour later than normal, lets do some math, which I will admit is not my strongsuit but I think I got this one... so two hours plus one hour equals a really short amount of time sleeping!!! I am not the only one who knows this as I have already been yelled at by Hannah's mom today for being on Facebook so late last night (Sorry Terry!!). So I woke up at 8, a good half hour later than I had meant to which gave me only a half an hour to get ready this morning. Thank goodness I don't care how I look because if I did that would have been a stressful morning. Yea.

We had to be up so early today because we had a tour of the Houses of Parliament... (I am going to apologize again for the lack of pictures, there were only limited areas where we were allowed to use our cameras)...

Ceiling of the Entrance Hall

Window in the Entrance Hall

I like windows okay!

Pretty cool staircase in the Entrance Hall

View of the building on the terrace

View of London Eye from the terrace

Big Ben on the way out

 ...with an actual MP (Member of Parliament, took me a little while to figure out what that one stood for). The MP's name was Dennis Skinner, and he was awesome! He is this really feisty old man who believes in speaking his mind and not bending his beliefs in order to impress anyone and move up in office. He was a really cool guy! I will post a picture of him later that we took of him with the entire group but the picture wasn't taken with my camera. You can google him though, even google image and see him for yourself! While looking at pictures of him keep in mind that he has met Meryl Streep (he was an extra in The Iron Lady) and he is such a B.A. dude that he has been kicked out of session 10 times for what he calls, "opening his mouth too wide." Basically he said something that p.o.-ed some of the other MP's, he told us what those comments were but I think I will keep those private.

When we were done at Parliament it was time for a break for lunch until we had to head over to the National Gallery to look at some portraits from the Georgian era. Again no pictures to show, hope you all understand! So after two hours of no photo taking at the Gallery Jenna, Hannah, and I ventured out for drink and food, and this is where the night starts to get interesting...

It really started out great. Jenna and I wanted post cards and so we went to a shop where we knew there were some for a really good price, and while there I was able to be a bad influence and convince Hannah to buy twice as many as she was planning to :)  Next on our stop was Starbucks and I am not ashamed to admit that. I needed hot chocolate really bad and this Starbucks was really pretty. And so were the drinks.

See, pretty.

Whilst drinking our liquid happiness we had very deep philosophical conversations, about movie stars. Well that's half true, we basically spent the time discussing and trying to determine our degree separation from our favorite actors since we got to London. A little taste of what we discovered includes: Jenna is separated by Darren Criss by only 3 degrees, since the actor who we met last week (Jonathan Cullen) was in a play with Daniel Radcliffe who is associated with Darren through Broadway. Hannah is connected to Orlando Bloom through 3 degrees as well since Jonathan starred in Finding Neverland with Johnny Depp who was in Pirates with Orlando. And my favorite, I am connected to Robert Downey Jr by 4 degrees because Jonathan was in Finding Neverland with Kate Winslet who was in The Holiday with Jude Law who was in Sherlock Holmes with my man Bobby!! We are just this much closer to being man and wife, its fantastic!!

 We finally had our coffee and chocolatey drinks and so we were able to venture out and find a place to eat. It took us a really long time and I really wish I could tell you we went into the nice little Canadian Place that looked real cute,

Reminds me of How I Met Your Mother

or the other cute place that we could only assume serves only potatoes,

Sign made me chuckle

but alas, we did not listen to our hearts, or our stomachs, and instead chose to dine (or attempt to anyways) at a little diner (if you can call it that) down what I can only describe as an alley way. The place looked decent enough and the prices were a little lower than every other place so we thought that we would give it a chance. The moment when I now realize we should have left was when I saw that every meal was being cooked in a microwave. We were all really hungry though and so we decided to pretend we didn't see that. The second sign for us to hightail it outta there was when we then realized that the food being served was taken from a display case under heat lamps, which we thought had been meant for carry outs. Still we sat where we were, drinking our sodas and waiting patiently although a little frightened as well. The final and most disturbing signal that we needed to run and run out of there fast was when Jenna found a little more of the sea than she had bargained for in her seafood pasta dish. It took us a little while to figure out the creature's identity, but we have narrowed it down to either a baby octopus or a baby squid, not just a part of one, a tentacle or two, but a whole baby squid!! Hannah and I also did not enjoy our food as it was either cold by the time we got it or hardened by sitting under the heating lights for who knows how long, but I cannot even begin to fathom the fear and disgust that Jenna must have felt when she saw a creature from the deep peeking through her noodles and creamy tomato dish. Eww. Just eww. I think it goes without saying that we all still are feeling pretty sick at the moment.

Yes this was not the greatest night of my life, but I cannot say it was a total disappointment, since we still had a play to look forward to. While I cannot say that the play was the most exciting thing I had ever seen but I was pretty excited to be just a few mere meters from Mr. Jean Luc Picard himself, that's right ladies and gentlemen, I saw Patrick Stewart tonight in the play Bingo, where he played William Shakespeare!! I wanted to wait and see if I could run into him after the show but with myself and two other girls thinking we might have food poisoning we really just felt like getting home and getting to bed. So I had to deal with pretending to meet Mr. Stewart.

He doesn't look too happy to see me :(

Ok, I need to get to sleep now, but I want to emphasize one little thing to you first. If you get nothing else out of this blog tonight just remember if you notice one thing is fishy (haha, yea) with a restaurant assume many other things are and GET OUT OF THERE!! Goodnight all!