No stain yet on the Moon was seen,
No words were laid on stream or stone,
When Durin woke and walked alone.
He named the nameless hills and dells;
He drank from yet untasted wells;
He stooped and looked in Mirrormere,
And saw a crown of stars appear,
As gems upon a silver thread,
Above the shadow of his head.
A king he was on carven throne
In many-pillared halls of stone
With golden roof and silver floor,
And runes of power upon the door.
The light of sun and star and moon
In shining lamps of crystal hewn
Undimmed by cloud or shade of night
There shown forever far and bright.
Unwearied then were Durin's folk;
Beneath the mountains music woke:
The harpers harped, the minstrels sang,
And at the gates the trumpets rang.
The world is grey, the mountains old,
The forge's fire is ashen-cold;
No harp is wrung, no hammer falls:
The darkness dwells in Durin's halls;
The shadow lies upon his tomb
In Moria, in Khazad-dûm.
But still the sunken stars appear
In dark and windless Mirrormere;
There lies his crown in water deep,
Till Durin wakes again from sleep.
These are four stanzas from the Song of Durin's Awakening, which is about the great underground city of Moria. Gimli sings it in the Fellowship of the Ring. And while London is not an underground city (for the most part at least), I thought this poem would be a good introduction to the city.
BUT FIRST! A quick update about bed bugs. I think they might be all gone. I know a bunch of people have been praying about this, and I really appreciate it. My room is still fairly empty: I still have most of my worldly items sitting in baggies on my bathroom floor or in bags in the living room. But I have my own bed, and a new chair, which I am currently sitting in at my desk as I type this. My sheets are very special. I had a wonderful time picking them out. It was a great nesting experience. They were only 10 euro for a fitted sheet, a duvet cover, and a pillow cover. The fitted sheet is green, and the duvet cover and pillow are covered with green ferns, with some brown and pink in there as well. They are very peaceful-looking and very awesome. I really like sleeping in my bed. And, two nights ago, for the first time in weeks, I slept without socks! And I didn't get any bites on my feet, which is wonderful. I'm very hopeful that the bed bugs are all trapped behind the tape I put over all the cracks in my room, or dead. So, thank you God! Yay!
Now, for London.
First, I will say that while I thought it was a great experience to go to London and I enjoyed myself there, I am not a big traveling person. This trip fell just as I was beginning to feel settled in Dublin, and so picking up and going to a new city, which I didn't know anything about and which is about a thousand times bigger than Dublin, was not something that I was really excited to do. The other regret I have about traveling on that particular weekend was that it fell during TradFest, which is a yearly festival here in Dublin all about traditional Irish culture (dance, music, etc.). I would have loved to get to see some of that. A bunch of my friends who didn't travel that weekend went to dance classes or singing classes and learned how to do some traditional Irish stuff. Which, by the way, is different than the kicking-jumping-stiff-arms-no-smile dancing that you see at the Irish Festival in Dublin, Ohio.
At any rate, London was for the most part very enjoyable. And this is the story about my trip. Get ready for lots of pictures.
The trip began with a trek to the airport starting at 4:30 in the morning. We then flew to London with RyanAir, this really cheap airline that flies out of Dublin. I turned off my phone when we were getting on the plane, and then realized that I had forgotten my PIN number that lets me get back into my phone. I thought that I knew it, but after three tries the phone locked me out and wanted me to type in this 10 digit security number thing, which I obviously didn't know off the top of my head. So, no phone in London. That made me a little nervous, but other people in our group had their phones.
Our group was the same one that went to Howth. This is us on the train.
Melissa, Kaitlyn, and Ashley:
Allison, me and Ryan. Doesn't Allison look so cute in this picture?
You will notice my giant backpack in the previous picture. We had stuffed all our clothes and everything for the weekend in our backpacks to avoid the carryon luggage charge.
When we arrived, we had to take the train into the city. Here's the station we walked out of:
We were very close to King's Cross station. So, you know what that means...
Our next stop in London was the Museum of Natural History. We hadn't checked in to our hostel, so we still had our stuffed backpacks, which was heavy. Here is the extremely beautiful Museum building:
The museums are completely free, which is great. When you walk in, the front room is equally beautiful. There's a giant fossil skeleton in the middle.
The entire floor was a giant mosaic:
Even the ceiling had plants on it!
Our first stop in the museum was the dinosaur room. The museum is really geared towards kids, but it was still pretty cool.
This is triceratops, my brother Derek's favorite dinosaur when he was little. Awww, so cute.
My favorite was stegosaurus, even though it had such a small brain.
Baby Little Foots! Land Before Time, anyone?
Other cool dinosaur:
This is the tail of that one dinosaur used its tail like a club. Wouldn't want to get hit by that, would you?
Here's a dinosaur femur. It's only interesting because I did research with mouse femurs this summer, which are about the width of the tip of a pen. This femur is like four feet tall. That's taller than a hobbit.
Next, we looked at the stuffed animal collection. Not cute fuzzy things filled with cotton, like Build-a-Bear. These animals were once alive.
Cats!
A cute(?) raccoon. His fur's a little faded. That's a picture of him when he was in his prime.
A Dodo! Isn't that cool? They were pretty big birds.
Really pretty blue bird:
Bird with amazingly long feathers coming out of his head!
One of the coolest Birds of Paradise! This is the tutu bird that dances ballet. If you haven't seen the video of this bird, go to youtube right now (yes, now, you're online right now anyway) and type in "birds of paradise," then watch the first video that pops up. It's so cool!
Hedwig:
And a puffin, just for Kyle's friend from grade school. So, even if we don't find puffins when you visit, Kyle, at least I got a picture of this one.
Next was the reptiles. Some of them were stuffed, and some just had skeletons.
This turtle is pretty awesome:
Snakey snake:
Does anyone remember this guy from The Rescuers Down Under?
It's Spuff's cousin!
And finally, some cool rocks! The rocks were actually very cool.
At the Museum of Natural History, we had met some friends from Notre Dame: Kate, one of the people that Ryan and I knew from the Chemistry program, and Jonathan, someone who I knew from Freshman year and Ashley was still good friends. After we were done with the museum, still carrying all our stuff in our backpacks, Jonathan (who is in ROTC) lead us on a grand forced march to Trafalgar square. The goal was to get there in time to get cheap student tickets to a show. On the way there, we passed by a park:
Then we passed Buckingham Palace!
A guard!
The Canada Gate (with construction):
Then we went through a very cool park that had a long lake going through it. I took the opportunity to pause, take pictures of birds for Kyle, and then run to catch up with everyone else. There was such a huge variety of water foul in this park! It was unfortunately very hard to get focused pictures while pausing in the middle of a forced march, so only three of them turned out:
Cool buildings at the end of the park:
There were these guards in cool outfits at the end of this square. I was super excited to see a real horse. As I was taking the picture, the guard opened his mouth to tell me about the horse... and I realized that he was probably about 12. That was weird. But kind of cute. If I was 12, I would want this job. I actually think I'd take this job now even though I'm not 12.
We got to Trafalgar Square.
The square was guarded on four sides by Aslan.
It was also graced by people with fins for feet that spit water out their mouths.
At this point, Jonathan rushed off with Ashley to try to buy tickets. It was now 4:00, and we hadn't eaten lunch. We were all very hungry. We found this cute little sandwich cafe, and man, that sandwich tasted really, really good. Then, we went on a whirlwind tour of the National Gallery.
Unfortunately, you aren't allowed to take pictures inside. But, we did get to see Van Gogh's Sunflowers painting, which was awesome. We also got to see a Botticelli painting (Venus and Mars), as well as a sketch by Michelangelo (Virgin and Child with the Infant John the Baptist and St. Anne). I stole this picture from online:
We ate dinner at a pub/restaurant, which was very nice. One advantage of not drinking is being able to spend money on dessert! I got chocolate-covered profiteroles, which were absolutely delicious. Mmmmm, so much better than alcohol.
We saw the crypt, which is not filled with skeletons, but is filled with little shops. Perhaps this looks a little bit like Moria might have, so maybe the poem at the beginning of this post is somewhat relevant...
We also saw Gandalf's handprints on the sidewalk!
Then, it was time for the evening show. Ashley and Jonathan had picked out tickets to Avenue Q. It was apparently the only show that had tickets left. We had been hoping for Les Mis or Wicked. Now, if any you are reading this now, have seen Avenue Q, and know me fairly well, you may either be laughing or saying "Oh no!" to yourself. Either would be an appropriate response. Let me just say that I was not forewarned about the content of this musical before we purchased the tickets and went to see it. Not that I really had any choice. I wasn't about to sit outside by myself in the middle of London in the dark.
This musical, for those of you who don't know, is a (fairly clever at times) comedic satire of Sesame Street, but instead of the happy Sesame Street, it's set on Avenue Q, which is a poor neighborhood where everyone is struggling to make ends meet and generally has a pretty miserable lives. The main character is guy (a puppet) who just graduated from college with a BA in English and so can't find a job, and therefore comes to live on Avenue Q. He falls in love with a girl who is also poor and also lives on Avenue Q. They go to a bar and drink many Absinthe Daiquiris, and then go home and have very loud and obnoxious puppet sex. Now, these puppets don't even have legs, so the puppets appear a bit like the naked Dumbledore from Harry Potter Puppet Pals: fairly innocent looking, as long as they're being innocently acted. Which in this case they were not. I guess I'm just saying that it could have been worse.
However. I think it is needless to say, that was not a Marita-friendly show. I was rather unhappy to have spent 28 pounds on that ticket.
Moving right along. We went to our hostel. It was a nice enough place. I spent a euro to get a card that let me use the computer for an hour, and sent an email to Kyle. I was sleeping on a top bunk with some random guy (who was already asleep) on the bunk below me (it was the only one left, but whatever). The next morning, we ate our complementary breakfast in the hostel's kitchen: toast with many forms of jam, and cereal, but no cheerios.
That morning it was freezing. I had left my heavy coat at home because I thought it was full of scabies, and boy, it was cold. There were flurries of snow on the ground that didn't melt until like 3:00. Brr. Our first stop that morning was Big Ben. And let me tell you, it is big. The pictures don't look so big, but that's because it's really wide as well as being tall, so it's fairly normally proportioned. But it's huge.
The eye of London (which we didn't go on) was nearby:
Picture of Westminster Palace:
Then we went in Westminster Abbey. It was cool, but again, no pictures on the inside. Even though it's a church (I guess), it's chalk full of tombs. Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth both had their tombs there, one on top of the other. Lots of other kings and such people were buried there too. I think Shakespeare is also buried there, but I couldn't find him.
Then we went to the Globe (which isn't the real Globe, because the original burnt down). There, we met Jen! She's studying in Oxford at Cambridge right now. It was soooo nice to see her. It makes me miss her and all my other friends from my home Dublin just thinking about it!
Here's a little model of the globe:
And here's the outside of the theater (or theatre as they spell here):
This is the real London Bridge. The first one was built by the Romans (of course), but now they have this one. And yes, we did sing "London Bridge is Falling Down" while standing on this bridge. Awesome? Yes.
As we walked along the river, there was this giant warship in the middle of it! I guess it's a fun thing for vacationing families to tour?
There were also cute little open air shopping places:
This is the bridge that everyone thinks is London Bridge, but it's actually the Tower Bridge. Which makes sense. All of the girls, including Jen! Thank you Ryan for always taking our picture.
On the horizon, we could see St. Paul's Cathedral. That's where the bird lady from Marry Poppins sold her birdseed. "Feed the birds, tuppence a bag..." I have that song on my iPod.
We crossed Tower Bridge and saw the Tower of London, which is a great big castle! We didn't go in, because it costs money and we didn't have time.
See the brick building that was built onto the old stone part?
Then we went to the British Museum, which was really cool.
First, we saw some Roman stuff. That was neat.
Cool Egyptian things, like a giant fist:
Here's the Horn of Gondor:
Recognize these faces?
You might have seen them on the cover of Beowulf.
Jason and Medea at the alter of Diana:
Cool Jars:
The best man hair ever. But I wouldn't recommend you emulate this, Kyle.
Very awesome cups.
This is possibly the earliest mosaic picturing Christ:
Anyone remember Torques from Latin Class?
Mummies!
Mummies of cats!
Mummies of a baboon and an eel!
A giant statue that spans multiple floors in the stairwell:
This is an exhibit showing the average number of pills one person takes in their lifetime. I think it's something like 40,000. That's a ton.
And finally... Native Americans! I felt special that some of our home history is in the British Museum.
Unfortunately, at this point, my camera battery died. But the museum was closing anyway, so it was alright. The next morning, we got on a plane and went back to Dublin. All in all, it was a good weekend.
That is my story. I'll be gone for the next two weekends: spring break starts in one week, and we're going on a class trip to Kilkenny. Then I'm off to Florence, and then I'll be going to Switzerland to visit Uncle Peter and Aunt Laurianne. Then comes St. Patrick's Day!
Wow, I'm going to have a lot to blog about.
