Living up to stereotypes one cliche at a time.
Not that Americans are any better.
Could we be any louder about how hungry/drunk/lost/loud we are?
When I so graciously gave your poor souls a rest from my London stories, I had been telling you of Sunday and Monday.
This seems like a good time to procrastinate continue.
Tuesday morning I awaken to an alarm set drunkenly for 8am.
I turn it off.
Our hotel room gets an 8am wake up call that we did not ask for.
I roll back over.
Then we get a knock on our door inquiring after a temporarily-missing fellow student.
Fates way of telling me to go to shower the dried sweat from the night before off of my still-buzzed-from-RedBull body.
After breakfast Dianne, Paige, and I trek back to Picadilly Circus where we invest in tickets for 'Wicked.'
And I am still buzzed on RedBull and can't stop singing.
A Starbucks coffee only feeds the hyper fuel that is allowing me to dance through the streets of London and admire the fine men in fine suits with fine accents on the streets of London's financial district.
To Diagon Alley we go!
Or where Diagon Alley should be.
WHERE THE HELL IS OLIVANDER'S?
Now thoroughly disappointed in the market's refusal to capitalize on the Harry Potter franchise by turning it into a mecca for the true fans, we sadly trudge to the Tower of London where for the first time on a school trip ever, I am early.
Too early.
We read the schedule wrong.
Merde.
We use our spare thirty minutes to walk onto the London Bridge, where I can proudly say that I hawked(sp?) a loogey(sp?) that my mother can be proud of.
Yes, my delicate and feminine self can now proudly say that I spat off of the London Bridge.
Truly a moment for the scrapbooks and memories.
After we reconvene with the rest of our group, we begin what will go down in history, in my memory, as 'the tour where I almost ate the tour guide.'
I hadn't planned ahead and about ten minutes into the tour when I realized that he was going to repeatedly ask us if we could see the giant tower/window/pathway/raven in front of us, I got hungry.
Another twenty minutes in and I was more than ready to eat.
Tack on another hour to that and if he said another word I was seriously prepared to Tower of London style execute him and then flee to the nearest hot dog cart going to get even crankier.
Luckily for him, watching the ravens walk around with their swagger amused me enough to distract from stomach beginning to eat itself.
We leave for our next visit.
Still no lunch.
On our way to Bloomberg's, I make a quick dash [note the British influence!] into the nearest sandwich shop where I find sweet, sweet hunger relief.
Only to discover that Bloomberg has an open kitchen upstairs stocked with every snack imaginable.
For free.
FREE!
Thank god for big purses.
Bloomberg is virtually in charge of the computerized financial organization......okay, I really don't understand exactly what they do.
What I do know is that they work with almost every major corporation, have offices around the world, give me free snacks, and they have pretty fish on every floor!
After we've gotten the tour watched the fish for an hour, we head en masse to afternoon tea.
We all expect dainty sandwiches and quaint cups of tea, now I don't know if they were prepared for American style appetites (i.e. supersize it all for me bitch!) or if British tea time has gotten remarkably filling of late, but we were served endless small sandwiches, endless scones, and trays of rich cupcakes and dark chocolate cake.
Endless, I say!
After looking at our watches the eight of us headed to see 'Wicked!' that evening make a quick, but of course polite, exit from the restaurant and haul ass back to the hotel to have time to make ourselves look less exhausted and charge our phones.
Approximately 10 minutes after arriving back at the hotel, we leave the hotel, prepared to meet the two with the tickets.
They change the meeting location, the remaining six of us walk in the wrong direction.
We continue walking in the wrong direction as the show time grows nearer and the two already at the theater anxiously call us trying to figure out exactly where we are.
A kindly hotel valet informs us that we will need to take a taxi from here to make the show.
A price we're willing to pay at this point.
To the theater, sir!
Four of us arrive two minutes after the show starts and stand behind the lighting booth and watch the show from there for the first twenty minutes while we wait for an usher to seat us.
Damn Brits and their polite 'late-entry' policy. (realistically this is probably all theaters, but I have to place the somewhere. I'm American!)
We sit down.
And the show is absolutely fabulous, phenomenal, amazing, astounding, mind-blowing...and any other Webster's Dictionary thesaurus synonym for FUCKING AWESOME. [my apologies for the explicit language. but sometimes it just helps me express myself. and I blog, which makes me an artist, which means I'm allowed to express myself that way.]
I almost cry.
Twice.
After the show is over we all block the exiting traffic on the sidewalk to take a group picture and then head home via tube.
We are each singing our favorite 'Wicked!' songs.
Loudly and proudly.
For the rest of the night.
But luckily for the rest of the world with ears that don't want to be disturbed, we go to sleep after the show ends.
I dreamt in green.
Bloody hell I'm long winded.
Can you tell I want everyone to just read this blog and not ask me for details via Skype dates?
Wednesday morning after breakfast we make another group trek to the London School of Economics for a lecture on branding.
Of which I remember very little and have no intentions of relaying here.
After that rousing speaker, we break for lunch and three hours of free time.
And by free time, we all decided that meant to go shopping.
And by shopping that meant that I cried on the inside while I looked at prices at Top Shop and then went up the street to Primark where I could get 11pound jeans and a 4pound scarf.
Post my sad shopping spree we all met at BBC for a tour of the facilities.
I didn't learn much, but our tour guides were amusing and I gained an insight into the world of celebrity demands.
[fun fact! Jennifer Lopez demanded a room that was wall-to-wall white and she had her furniture flown in from her Paris apartment. And somebody else who is famous that I can't remember the name of asked for puppies to pet to calm her down!]
After the BBC adventure well, en mass of course, head to dinner in Covent Gardens.
We lose half of our group when they don't get off of the tube with the rest of us and they STILL manage to beat us to the restaurant.
Why? Do you ask?
Well it was our great leader Søren's idea to take the "scenic" route to the restaurant.
Something he failed to mention to us when we disembarked the tube.
You know that feeling when someone tells you that you're going straight to the restaurant so you let yourself start to feel hungry and anxious for food?
Now imagine that hunger growing for an hour.
Apply that cranky, frustrated feeling to a group of about 25 twenty-something-year-olds and you have my core class for the duration of our scenic route.
Søren's life was at risk.
But luckily for him we arrive at Brown's and are promptly served bread and a questionably delicious green soup which was followed by a steaming bowl of shepherd's pie only to be concluded with tiny little cream puffs.
And maybe a few of us split a bottle of cheap white wine...
After the long-awaited dinner we all headed to Trafalgar Square where we head down into a crypt to listen to a jazz performance.
Yea, you read that right, I listened to jazz with old people in a place where they keep dead people.
Cuz you know what they always say, ain't no party like a dead people party cuz a dead people party don't stop!
Except after 45 minutes the party was, in fact, over for us DIS students.
The dead don't buy you drinks and the drinks weren't cheap.
So we head back to the hotel and make the mandatory pit stop at the grocery stop to pick up...well, it varied depending on the person.
I went for the cheap hard cider.
We, as the Danes call it, 'warm-up' at the hotel and then venture into the London night to Zoo Bar.
Dianne and I offer our fellow tube-riders some free entertainment, i.e. some beautiful and loud harmonizing to a variety of different tunes.
The bar itself is crowded but a good place to....make friends.
I make a Danish friend.
An Arabic or Italian friend? [he was ethnically ambiguous]
And a British friend.
And I am definitely not the only one of us who...made friends.
The night ends with a final Jaeger bomb taken alone at the bar when I can't find my friends, avoiding the men who watched me take the Jaeger bomb alone, and frantically searching my bra for my and Dianne's coat check tickets.
An overpriced taxi ride later and I am back in my bed, my leggings still damp with perspiration and spilled beer are piled on the floor along with virtually every other item of owned clothing that I packed.
I recognize that I am my Grandmother's worst nightmare and sleep peacefully.
And now you have read my London saga through Wednesday.
Luck you!
There is no prize other than my charming wit strewn throughout my relayed memories.
7:44pm Denmark
2:44pm USA [I see you springing ahead Amurrica, I see you.]
Something he failed to mention to us when we disembarked the tube.
You know that feeling when someone tells you that you're going straight to the restaurant so you let yourself start to feel hungry and anxious for food?
Now imagine that hunger growing for an hour.
Apply that cranky, frustrated feeling to a group of about 25 twenty-something-year-olds and you have my core class for the duration of our scenic route.
Søren's life was at risk.
But luckily for him we arrive at Brown's and are promptly served bread and a questionably delicious green soup which was followed by a steaming bowl of shepherd's pie only to be concluded with tiny little cream puffs.
And maybe a few of us split a bottle of cheap white wine...
After the long-awaited dinner we all headed to Trafalgar Square where we head down into a crypt to listen to a jazz performance.
Yea, you read that right, I listened to jazz with old people in a place where they keep dead people.
Cuz you know what they always say, ain't no party like a dead people party cuz a dead people party don't stop!
Except after 45 minutes the party was, in fact, over for us DIS students.
The dead don't buy you drinks and the drinks weren't cheap.
So we head back to the hotel and make the mandatory pit stop at the grocery stop to pick up...well, it varied depending on the person.
I went for the cheap hard cider.
We, as the Danes call it, 'warm-up' at the hotel and then venture into the London night to Zoo Bar.
Dianne and I offer our fellow tube-riders some free entertainment, i.e. some beautiful and loud harmonizing to a variety of different tunes.
The bar itself is crowded but a good place to....make friends.
I make a Danish friend.
An Arabic or Italian friend? [he was ethnically ambiguous]
And a British friend.
And I am definitely not the only one of us who...made friends.
The night ends with a final Jaeger bomb taken alone at the bar when I can't find my friends, avoiding the men who watched me take the Jaeger bomb alone, and frantically searching my bra for my and Dianne's coat check tickets.
An overpriced taxi ride later and I am back in my bed, my leggings still damp with perspiration and spilled beer are piled on the floor along with virtually every other item of owned clothing that I packed.
I recognize that I am my Grandmother's worst nightmare and sleep peacefully.
And now you have read my London saga through Wednesday.
Luck you!
There is no prize other than my charming wit strewn throughout my relayed memories.
7:44pm Denmark
2:44pm USA [I see you springing ahead Amurrica, I see you.]
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