The last palace!

Oh, the vagaries of British weather. On Friday, Caroline and I took a bus out to Blenheim Palace. And the day was beautiful:



The grounds, clearly, were beautiful as well. As was the palace:



GORGEOUS. Simply gorgeous. We had all afternoon, and we really wanted to see the palace itself. So we went on a tour of the State Rooms. Alas, they don't allow photos, but here's an online image to give you some idea of what we saw:



Yeah. BEAUTIFUL. The State Rooms were the rooms originally assigned to guests at Blenheim. I think, if I remember correctly, that this one would have been given to whatever royal wanted to come visit. Blenheim is very much indebted to the Stuart line - Queen Anne gave John Churchill, one of England's greatest ever military commanders, the land and money to build Blenheim after he kicked French arse in the mid-1700s. The Churchills (and after them the Spencers - now the Spencer-Churchills) are the hereditary Dukes of Marlborough, so Blenheim is their family seat. Portraits of Queen Anne - very flattering, skipping over the fact that by her death she weighed 20 stone - are ALL OVER BLENHEIM.

*Helen and Daddy - the portrait over the fireplace is of Consuelo Vanderbilt, who you might remember from when we toured the Vanderbilt summer house at Newport. She's the one who got locked in her room by her mother until she agreed to marry the 9th Duke of Marlborough, who then used a huge portion of her huge dowry to make improvements to Blenheim. There are portraits of her everywhere, too. It's fantastic.*

But. We get outside after the marvelous tour. AND IT'S RAINING. And it's not one of those quick sudden fierce rains either. Oh, no. It's a dithering rain. It can't make up its mind whether to be slight and gentle, or whether to hail down in a deluge. And it takes all day to decide. (The one thing it knows is that it wants to be cold.)

So Caroline and I are in a quandary. Do we brave the incredible and famous grounds in the rain? Or do we do another of the tours and wait for it to calm down?

At this point, remember, we don't know that the rain's got the same indecisive mentality as the Leaning Tower of Pisa. We are full of hope. (I am also wearing a sundress, which I changed into because the day was SO NICE when we started.) So we went on the tour of the family's private apartments, which was pretty awesome. The family's always lived in the East Wing, going back to John Churchill. The rooms have changed purpose somewhat, although they're still decorated as they were back then - for instance, John Churchill's bedroom is now the current Duchess's sitting room. Also, the Duke's younger son has his rooms in what used to be the servants' quarters. They're spacious and well-furnished, but it just amuses me. (Speaking of the servants' quarters - we also saw the system of bells for each room! Crazy. About forty bells lined up along the top of a wall, each with a plaque underneath saying which room it connected to. You'd station a footman down there, and when a bell rang, he'd head off to whatever room needed him.) We went on one of the last private apartments tours of the summer - the Duke was coming back to Blenheim that day, and they still needed to finish getting the rooms ready for him.

Needless to say, it was still raining when we got out. So we did one more tour - the "behind-the-scenes" tour with a few scandalous stories (my favorite is the one about John Churchill getting caught in flagrante with Charles II's mistress, Barbara Villiers, by Charles himself). When that tour was done, we said hell with it and went out to the grounds in the rain. We did have fun:



We made it to the Rose Garden, which was gorgeous even in the rain. And we walked around a bit. The grounds are huge, and I'm glad we saw the bits that we did. Then we realized we were starving, and went for dinner at a pub.

Also: Blenheim is literally in the same spot as Woodstock Palace, site of Elizabeth I's "close confinement" and Henry II's dalliances with Rosamund Clifford! The palace itself was destroyed during the English Civil War (one more reason for me not to be a Cromwellian!), but it was still awesome.

A surprising development

You guys. This is a little frightening.

...I might be turning into something of a Cromwellian.

Before you start throwing rotten tomatoes at me, PLEASE let me qualify that statement. I still hate the man's guts for the Irish massacres, the Welsh harpists, and the English playhouses. Nothing's going to make up for those atrocities. And he's a bundle of contradictions - I don't think even he could quite make sense of himself, let alone historians and students 350+ years later.

Buuut...

He's also kind of cool. His string of victories with the New Model Army is pretty much unbroken, so clearly he's got a clever head on his shoulders. He actually advocates religious tolerance - granted, for Protestants only, but given that ten years before, the country was gnawing off its own front leg over two Protestant sects being treated as two separate religions, recognizing that the Protestant churches are all rooted in the same church is pretty damn revolutionary. And the ludicrous belief that everything is "providential," aka it's all God's call, rings less hollow in him than in his contemporaries, because he believed. It's hard to mock him when he agonizes for weeks over killing Charles, because he truly doesn't know what's right.

Add that to my essay topic this week - I'm arguing that he's the only person who could have kept the Commonwealth/Protectorate going, and therefore without him no stable non-monarchical regime could have been established - and I'm having to come to grips with a developing fondness for the man. This is WEIRD.

My day in the Tower

Sunday, as promised, I went back into London. Caroline and I had concocted this wildly elaborate and busy scheme of things to do. As it happened, we accomplished precisely two. BUT WHAT A TWO TO GET DONE.

She hadn't been into London yet, so of course we stopped at the British Museum for two hours. Like I'm complaining! I only realized then that I'd completely missed the Rome wing and a ton of gorgeous Grecian pottery. We saw the Rosetta Stone, the Elgin marbles from the Parthenon, and went up to said Rome wing, where we made the acquaintances of a couple of the Caesars, namely Augustus, Claudius, and my favorite creeper Livia:


If Livia means little or nothing to you, I will lend you the BBC series "I, Claudius." AS LONG AS I GET IT BACK.

We also got to the exhibit of clocks and watches. Holy crap. Some of those clocks are simply exquisite. The detail that went into them is just staggering. Even the watches - ESPECIALLY the watches, in fact. The detail goes into both the watch itself and the watch case. It was pretty depressing to see, at the back of the room as part of the exhibit, a couple modern clocks. SO UGLY. I wanted to stick them under a lightbulb in a dark room and start interrogating them as to their presence amid all this incredibly crafted beauty. "Plastic? Plastic? Plastic has no place here, you 80s fool! Unless you have gold filigree, raus schnell!"

ANYWAY. You will be pleased to know that I didn't do that. I still retain some sense and sanity.

Instead, we hopped the Underground to... THE TOWER OF LONDON!!! Which is AMAZING. Absolutely incredible. The best part is, yes, it's wildly tourist. BUT IT DOESN'T MATTER. The Tower itself, the building, is so much more important and fascinating than any tchotchkes they can throw at you.

Don't believe me? Take a look:



Quick brief on the Tower: It starts with the central square Norman building, called the White Tower because Henry III (great builder, shitty king - Simon de Montfort FOREVER!) had it whitewashed when he built the towers around it in the late 1200s. For a while, kings kept adding to it, building enclosures, sticking towers on the enclosures. It's incredible - the complex is huge, but incredibly easy to get around. (Kind of like the Underground, but even more wonderful.)

Caroline and I opted not to go on one of the Yeoman Warder tours, and instead to poke around on our own. Which turned out to be an excellent choice. That way we actually got to SEE things, instead of being trapped in a horde of sweaty tourists. Things like, say, Tower Green:


That's the chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula in the background. Everyone is buried there. Everyone. They had a plaque up on the inside wall; it took my breath away, reading it. More, Fisher, Cromwell, Anne Boleyn, Catherine Howard, Jane Grey, Essex, Northumberland. It was incredible. The part that really left me speechless was when one of the Yeoman Warders pointed out the altar (this is an ancient picture, but they don't allow photos in the chapel, so this is the best I could do):



Under the altar, at the far end, are buried the three queens. Anne, at the left end, then Catherine and Jane. I couldn't speak. I was glad that a whole group had gathered around, so I didn't have to say anything and could just stare.

We also saw Traitor's Gate:


Yes, the water is green. That's not just the picture. It's legitimately green. I so wanted to go sit on the steps and refuse to budge, but they were fenced off.

We got to the Bloody Tower as well, and saw Walter Raleigh's room and the Princes' cell. That was pretty cute - they presented the story of the Princes as a detective investigation, and at the end you got to cast your vote for whether Richard III had them killed, Henry VII had them killed, or they just disappeared (which is a total BS cop-out and which, of course, had the second-most votes. WIMPS! They died, okay? Deal!). I voted for Henry (Josephine Tey, I'm a convert!). He had 9953 votes, including mine. Richard had over ten thousand eight hundred. GROAN. Shakespeare, your smear job is excellent.

And we saw the Crown Jewels. And OH MY GOD. So incredibly beautiful. The gems in those crowns - beyond belief. I also never appreciated how many crowns there are. There's St. Edward's Crown, worn only at the moment of coronation.


That's the Imperial State Crown, set with St. Edward's sapphire, the Black Prince's ruby, and the Second Star of Africa (#2 largest diamond of perfect clarity in the world - #1 is in the Scepter of the Cross). The Queen wears that when she needs the most impressive non-coronation-only crown in the country - for instance, to open Parliament, or for huge ceremonial occasions. (AFTER the coronation, that's the crown the sovereign wears outside Westminster to greet the adoring public.) However, the regalia never leaves the country - so when George V visited India, they had to make him a completely new crown for that trip. It's never been used since.

That's Queen Victoria's tiny little diamond crown, made for her to wear with her widow's veil after Albert died. (Side note: thanks to Cromwell, all the regalia is post-Restoration. So we have no crowns except for Victoria's from any queen regnant that still have their jewels. Both Mary II and Mary of Modena were crowned along with William and James, respectively, but it was a rush job and the jewels were hired. It just irks me that their crowns are now set with fake gems. And yet the one-use-only Imperial Crown of India still has all ITS jewels...)

There is the Queen Mother's crown, though. Set with the Koh-i-Noor diamond. (It's the big one in the middle.)

They would not allow any photos at all in the Jewel House. It was incredible. Someone would sneak out a camera, and the Yeoman Warders were on him or her like a ton of bricks. "SIR! PUT AWAY THAT CAMERA! NO PHOTOGRAPHY ALLOWED!" I didn't even try.

The display was rather brilliant. They have the crowns and scepters mounted in cases, with a moving walkway on either side. You get on the walkway, and as you go by, the lights in the cases and your own motion make every single diamond shoot light out in every direction. It's breathtaking. Caroline and I went on the walkways three times, looping around and around.

I wished I'd checked beforehand which towers Elizabeth and Gruffydd ap Llewellyn were held in - it struck me when we were there that I really wanted to visit those. But it was still amazing. And this way, if I get to go back, I'll know what I want to look for!

The best artistic day of my effing life

Got up early. Got breakfast. Caught the bus into London. Went to:

- the Waterhouse exhibit at the Royal Academy
- the National Portrait Gallery

I'm not going to post pictures of everything I saw, because it would make this the longest (if also most gorgeous) blog post ever. Instead, I'm going to give you some links. SOME links, mind you - even I can't link to everything I saw today.

(Can I just say, first off, that the Royal Academy is gorgeous? HUGE courtyard - think Bodleian size - paintings on the ceilings, a marvelous entry staircase. The Waterhouse exhibit was in the newer galleries, so I had to climb this fun modern see-through staircase up and around what was clearly once the outside of the RA. Quite fun.)

Then I got into the exhibit. They set it up very sneakily - in chronological order, so that when you first get into the rooms, you don't recognize much. Certainly there are none of his classic dark-haired ethereal beauties. Only when you get into the second gallery do you start recognizing moderately famous works - St. Eulalia, for example. Then I turned to my right and saw The Magic Circle, and my breath skipped for a second. I thought, okay. Now we're getting somewhere.

And I was right. One foot into the third gallery, and instantly I knew what was there. Only one painting could have gathered such a crowd around it, just staring. Only one painting could be that massive, that exquisite, that magnetic. I stood still and just looked. I thought a few stanzas, to go along with it. I couldn't help it.

That whole room was full of beauties. On that same wall, on either side, were A Naiad and La Belle Dame Sans Merci. They framed the doorway into the next gallery with twin Circes. The Lady was in good company - on the opposite wall were Ulysses and St. Cecilia. And at the back, so that I almost missed it (but thank GOD I turned around), was the largest canvas Waterhouse ever painted. Which is saying something. Bless him, the boy painted big canvases. That was one of the things that surprised me about the Tate's Pre-Raphaelites - how many of those famous, gorgeous paintings are so small. Not Waterhouse. The smallest one I saw was this one, about two feet by one and a half, and it was very much in the minority. The Lady is huge; Circe Invidiosa is tall; Ulysses and the Sirens spreads out like a tapestry.

Into the next gallery, I stopped dead at Hylas and the Nymphs, another enormous canvas. This was the first Waterhouse that I knew was his the first time I saw it. It's most certainly in my top three favorite Waterhouses, period. To see it in person was incredible. I'd never noticed, in years of loving it, that the nymphs' bodies are in fact underwater in large part - that their torsos are partly submerged in the green water, but it's clear enough that you can see them. I thought that was marvelous. And in seeing his mermaid up close, she looks a little less evil and eerie than I've always thought her. The RA site has a fantastic feature where you can zoom into the painting: click here for that. Well worth doing.

What else was in that gallery? What WASN'T in that gallery? Lamia (his face is in shadow, but his eyes, looking at her, are incredible. I also never realized that what wraps around her waist and legs and hair is in fact her snakeskin!), Mariana, Nymphs Finding the Head of Orpheus. The Danaides, for my fellow Big Love sisters (the one on the far right, looking out, looks very much like Olympia to me). Psyche Opening the Box, Echo and Narcissus, Ariadne, Jason and Medea - a painting, by the way, that has always frightened me a little. They pointed out that Waterhouse was rather obsessed with Circe, and that showing Medea NOT murdering her children (in fact, showing her as essential to Jason's quest) demonstrates her wisdom and skill. But she's still so frightening - the thick black brows, the look on her face (I can never decide if she's cold and resolute or if this is the moment when she realizes she's betraying her father and brother). And this, which I always forget I adore. It took my breath away to be so close to it.

The last gallery. His third Circe painting, which I didn't know is actually unfinished. The Decameron (where is the seventh lady??). Penelope and Her Suitors, interestingly pointing out that Penelope, as a wise and clever woman, is for Waterhouse a kindred spirit to Circe (and to the Lady of Shalott, the other famous weaver he painted). And, on the back wall, the last one you see: this one.

I looped back through once I'd seen it all. Just to see it all again. It's simply exquisite. It's more perfect than I could possibly have wanted it to be. I still can't believe I've seen these paintings that I've loved for half my life. And that they were even more beautiful than I'd ever thought they were.

I had a thought, comparing Waterhouse to Rossetti, say, or Millais, or Burne-Jones. I love their paintings, don't for a second think I don't adore and worship them and fall on my knees at the sight. But I think I love Rossetti's women because they have a quality about them that is ethereal - that is very much not of this world. They're stunningly beautiful; they keep their secrets closed up tight; they're not quite human. Jane Morris is human; Proserpine isn't, quite. Lizzie Siddal is human; Beata Beatrix is much more than human. Fanny Cornforth is incredibly human; The Beloved simply comes from a different world, one with no flaw.

But Waterhouse's women are flawed. The looks on their faces, the things they're doing - something is off, with nearly all of them. And he lets that be so; he seeks it out, draws our attention to that flaw, that humanness. I can imagine myself as Windflowers; I can dream about being as beautiful and mischievous as the Naiad. There's an opening. There's no opening in Millais' Ophelia, or in Lady Lilith. Those women are complete unto themselves; they're not letting anyone else in any more than they choose. (Not to mention that practically all of Waterhouse's women have dark hair...)

Anyway. There's my bit of art philosophy for the day.

From there I took the Underground to the National Portrait Gallery. And I have to throw in a plug for the London Underground: it is THE most convenient, easy, helpful subway system I have ever encountered in my LIFE. You can get ANYWHERE on a one-time fee, you can loop back and ahead and never run into problems, there are maps and interchanging stations all over the place. It's an amazing system. Every single city in the world with a subway system should take note and reform.

Anyway. To paraphrase Rosalind from As You Like It, why talk we of the Underground, when there is such a thing as the National Portrait Gallery?! More links! Just so you understand the incredible enormity of everything I saw today! (Actually, this reads more like a who's who of British history.)

The family portrait of Thomas More. Richard III. Henry VII. The funny portrait of Henry VIII. Anne Boleyn (my favorite version of this portrait, too!). Cranmer. Cecil. Shakespeare's Earl of Southampton. Drake. Raleigh (and Walter Jr., courtesy of Bess Throckmorton). Walsingham. Essex.

On the far end of the gallery, this. It's huge - hung as low to the ground as the frame could be, she still towers. She's magnificent.

And on the other end of the gallery, so that you turn a corner and it catches your eye: this.

When I turned and saw her, no one else was looking at that portrait. I couldn't believe it. Three other people in that gallery, and they were off looking at Walsingham and Southampton. I stood in front of her; I looked up at her (even this one, smaller than the Ditchley, is above eye level). I could hardly look away. She's mesmerizing. It was as visceral as The Beloved. She has Anne's eyes - too dark and lovely to be Henry's squinty little piggy peekers (although she has his mouth). And she's smiling - that little quirk up at the corners, the look in her eyes. She's marvelous.

There was another lovely thing I noticed. They also have a portrait of Leicester. And they hung it just to the right of the Darnley portrait of Elizabeth. And the lovely thing is...well, just look at their hands.



Each at the edge of their portrait, each reaching toward the other. Never managing to connect - but still reaching. I just thought it was beautiful.

Oh, yeah. I saw this guy too.


The Chandos portrait is my ABSOLUTE FAVORITE and I got to SEE IT!!!!!!!!!! OH MY GOD!!!!

It's just always seemed to get at him best, for me at least. I don't buy the ones with fancy clothes; with the exception of those deep eyes, I hate the engraving from the First Folio; the frequency with which people keep turning up "new authentic portraits" makes me wary. But the Chandos...there's something right about it. He's got an edge to him. This guy could hop out of the portrait and start quipping and teasing. I've yet to see any other portrait capture that.

Quick highlights from the rest, because bloody hell, Harry, this is a long blog post!

Barbara Villiers, Charles II's mistress, with their son, posing as the Virgin and Child. Gotta love it! Nell Gwyn, William Laud (biiig problem for Charles I), Nelson and Emma Hamilton right next to each other. Queen Victoria's coronation portrait, and a bust of Tennyson.

Tomorrow I'm going back into London! More British Museum, hopefully the Tower, and probably some shopping. By the time I come back, I'll know London better than Philly!

I found my article!

And for the first time perhaps in five weeks, I'm going to bed before midnight!

Anyway: I finally found (tonight) an article on the English Civil War that I really wanted to have read before tutorial (8:45 AM tomorrow...argh...). It was one of my tutor's "very good" articles (marked on the week's syllabus), and he'd given it to us twice. So I hunted up and down online for it. No luck. Turned out all I had to do was pop over to the library and find the printed volume of that year's journal. It kind of made me think twice about Our Dependency on the Internet, that grand and lofty topic. And now I know where the printed journals are shelved for future reference!

Also...it's 10:37 PM right now. And I'm ready for bed. I'm going to read a bit (it's me, after all), but I will be going to sleep well before midnight! And this is considering that midnight has for the past couple of weeks been my earliest projected bedtime. YAAAY! Sleepytime! (Plus I've been getting up anywhere from 8 AM to 9 AM, to make either breakfast or a lecture. I have bags under my eyes like you wouldn't beLIEVE. And I thought I was a vampire last semester...heh. Heh. Heh.

Good night; good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow
That I shall say good night till it be morrow.

...Except not really. 'Night all!

Back to Stratford!

Yesterday was RSC Trip #2! Day in Shakespeare-town plus As You Like It. Both of which were FANTASTIC!

One of the nice things about being on a program with a ton of people - you get mass tickets that get you in everywhere. (Of course, it helps when you - "you" here meaning "Liz" - stick around to actually GET said ticket, instead of having to hunt down Dr. Fincham and explain that you thought you got it when you didn't...but enough of that.) It also helps to hang out all day with awesome people who will help you explain at the sites/point out Dr. Fincham so you can track him down.

But basically, we got into all the Shakespeare sites free. We saw the birthplace:



Thomas Nash's house (he married Shakespeare's granddaughter Elizabeth):



the exhibited new portrait (I'm skeptical of any "new Shakespeare portrait," but it was neat to see it), and John Hall's house (he married Shakespeare's daughter Susanna). We didn't, alas, make it to New Place (Shakespeare's expensive, fancy, I'm-the-richest-guy-in-Stratford house). Because we went up the road to Holy Trinity instead.

My opinion may be suspect, since I admit to being a Shakespeare tourist, and since I've now gone to Stratford three times in the company of people I really enjoy spending time with. So while I grant that the town tends very much toward Bard deification and caters to the basest of touristic impulses, I don't mind, because that's exactly what I do. Yes, it would be completely inconsequential if not for the fact that the greatest writer in the English language was born there; yes, even with that, it doesn't matter much, and doesn't quite seem to know what to do with Will. But I don't mind.

Maybe that's a character flaw. Maybe it's a flaw in perception. I don't know.

What I do know is that absolutely none of it mattered at all when I walked down the church's aisle to the altar and saw Shakespeare's grave.

As hideously cheesy as that sounds, it's true.



I had to kneel down to take a picture. And I don't honestly know which came first - the desire to take a picture, or the desire to drop to my knees. I couldn't have stayed there forever, like I could have with The Beloved or Ophelia. It's not the same kind of thing. Being there, kneeling in front of the grave - I couldn't be there without wishing he was there too. I wished I could have talked to him; I wished I could have turned around and seen him.

But he's not like that. He's too secretive. He picks and chooses, and there's nothing you can get from him that he doesn't want to give.

So in the end, I took that, and I was - am - grateful.

I lit a candle, afterwards. They put the candles off in a side nook - I almost missed it. But no one else was there, and that was nice. I picked a candle and lit it, and I never know what to say, or think, or pray when I light candles in churches, but this time I didn't even have to think about it.

Hi. I made it. Thank you.

I nearly cried. I did cry, just now, thinking about it again.

***

Then we went to dinner. Not at the Dirty Duck (the favorite haunt of the RSC actors post-show) - having eaten there twice before, I was satisfied, and the entire group was going to be there, and we wanted to do our own thing. So we trolled Stratford looking for another place, and wound up eating at Garrick's, the oldest inn in Stratford (named after David Garrick, possibly THE great Shakespearean actor, responsible for the Shakespearean renaissance in the 1700s). I got rather tipsy, mostly due to the ENORMOUS whiskey shots we ordered after our meal. To clarify - three of us (me, Kate, and Anastasia) ordered shots, one each. THEY served them in tumblers. We were rather daunted, but we finished every one of them!

I was still a bit tipsy when the play started. But do not underestimate the combination of willpower and a fantastic show - I was cold sober within ten minutes of the start. And it was indeed a fantastic show. Hilarious and smart, thoughtful and zany, adorable and serious. Rosalind was perfect - always endearing and sincere and clever, and never less than she should be. And I may have to stop ragging on Orlando - he was fantastic in this production, very much in love without surrendering either his dignity or the dignity of his love. Which made me take him much more seriously than I ever had before, and it was nice to have Rosalind matched with someone who deserved her.

Oh - and I picked up a few fun presents at the RSC gift shop. Not telling, though - you'll have to wait until I get back to see them! (Which is in about a week and a half!)

OMG Waterhouse!!!

Whoa! Just went looking around online and discovered the reason why The Lady of Shalott (which is in the Tate collection) wasn't on display yesterday.

It's because it's on loan to the Royal Academy for a huge Waterhouse retrospective, with other such Waterhouse masterpieces as Hylas and the Nymphs, Circe Invidiosa, and A Mermaid.

OH MY EFFING GOD!!!! I HAVE TO GO SEE THIS THING!!!!

It's in London, easily accessible by tube, and it's got nearly every major Waterhouse painting, most of which I've worshiped since I could spell Waterhouse. I'm going I'm going I'm so definitely going!! Either this weekend or Thursday afternoon, depending on the progress I make with my English essay. Or, I suppose, Friday afternoon, at which point my essay will be turned in and not hanging over my head.

OH MY GOD! I just cannot believe this. TIMING WIN!!

Great day...feet hurt...

I'm developing a pattern. I read my eyes out during the week, trying to get in command my history books and essays enough to talk about them and write an essay. I'm basically chained to my table in the library (which is right next to the shelves about the history of England from the Anglo-Saxons (Alfred the Great!) to the Tudors. Someday I'll have to start reading the book they have about John of Gaunt.

The second part of the pattern is that, having spent all week in an academic frenzy, I then explode out of Oxford on the weekend, in a sort of "Get me out of here!!!" mode. I'll go ANYWHERE (Salisbury, Bath, London, Stratford) - I just don't want to be in Oxford over the weekend.

In keeping with this, I went to London yesterday as part of a group excursion (every single Sweet Briar girl went on it). We met up at the Portobello Road market, which is incredible. Six blocks of stalls and shops, with fantastic stuff. Antiques, clothes, books, prints, fresh fruit, china (there was a teacup with lilies of the valley that I loved. I might have to go back and get it, I keep thinking about it). I picked up a few presents for people (no, I'm not telling, you'll have to wait). Kate and I split a box of strawberries for lunch. DELICIOUS. Every single one was sweet and perfect.

From Portobello Road...well, that's when the walking started. I was determined to get to the Tate, and I'd planned out the route on the Underground before I left Oxford. Except that once we got on the Underground, they let us know that the line we needed (the Victoria line) was completely down for service repairs. THANKS FOR THE TIMING. So we rerouted through another line, but we got off two stops before we really needed to. The bright side of this was that we saw this as soon as we got off the Underground:


All due respect to V and everything, but the Houses of Parliament are HUGE. As in, ENORMOUS. As in, GO ON FOREVER. I do not know how much dynamite would be required to blow them up, but I'm thinking that a trainload is the bare minimum starting level.

A minute or so of walking down the road from the stop, we also saw this:


That's Westminster Abbey. YEAH. Best Underground stop ever? Quite possibly.

Except that it cost ten pounds to get in, and by that time it was 2:30, and the Tate stops letting people in at 5. So we put off Westminster and walked to the Tate.

...Or so we thought.

We got turned around pretty early. No one knew directions. We wound up walking through half of London looking for this place, stopping in and asking people, finally, how to get to Victoria Station, which was near it. We made it to Victoria at about 3:20, and asked the information desk, only to have him tell us that we needed to get on the train to London Bridge and it was too far to walk. ???

We sat down (we were in desperate need of sitting) and got coffee and pastries, and realized that in fact, what he had meant was the Tate MODERN. Despite the fact that the whole time, I'd been asking about the Tate BRITAIN. Gotta love earwax. Also, I'd noticed a street that I'd recognized from my online route-checking, and I wanted to try it. The amazing Kate was game (after we'd had our sit-down), so we took off down that street. And THANK THE EFFING LORD, it was the right way. We made it to the Tate at 4, and had an hour and forty minutes.

And then it was all worth it.

Can I just list the paintings I have now seen in person? Just to get it through my head?

Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth. Emma Hamilton. Draper's Lament for Icarus. Burne-Jones's King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid. The phoenix portrait of Elizabeth I. Millais' Ophelia. Rossetti's Proserpina. And The Beloved.

That one, I could have stared at for years. I took three steps into the Pre-Raphaelite room and I saw it on the wall. I thought for a second about waiting for it. And then I walked right over to it and stared and stared. I think that was the first painting I ever fell in love with - I don't even know how old I was when I first saw it, but it's always stuck with me. Don't laugh at me; it was almost a religious experience to see it, finally, in person.

And it's beautiful. They've hung it at eye level, so you cannot look away from the Bride. When you see it online, no problem - she's beautiful, but so are the other women around her, and your eye skips from her to them. But standing in front of her - she's challenging you. You don't get that, quite, in a photo of her. But she's so calm, so sure of herself, that you can't but feel yourself a lesser creature, privileged to look at her, but not entirely worthy. There is no one who can make you look away from her.

Except that there's also Lizzie Siddal as Ophelia in the same room. And I had to look at her too. Transfixed again, just standing and looking at her - at the rest of the painting too, of course, it's beautiful, the water and the trees and those flowers - but I could have stared at her forever. And it's strange - I love her as Ophelia, but she's so much more fascinating to me as Lizzie. Maybe because the story paints her as so doomed anyway, the two get conflated in my mind. Especially in that painting, she's so beautiful and so secretive - so very much contained within herself. As Ophelia should be, I suppose. No definite answer to any of the questions.

I almost missed Ellen Terry. I went back through the gallery to find Kate, a little bit before they closed the Tate, and as I turned around, I saw it. I think I stopped breathing. It's enormous - it towers. But it's not lit, so I hadn't even noticed it before. Breathtaking - to stand at her feet and look up and see that expression on her face. I wish I'd had the time to stare at her, as well.

(By the way, she's on one side of a doorway. On the other side is a portrait of Sarah Siddons, the great Shakespearean actress of her day, famous especially for Lady Macbeth. I love the symmetry!)

From the Tate, we walked double-time to the Globe, thinking they might have tickets for whatever show they were doing that night. We made it at about 7:15, but they were sold out, and it was As You Like It, which we're seeing in Stratford this Tuesday (!!!), so we just got dinner. We had gelato on the banks of the Thames, looking across the river at the dome of St. Paul's:


And then we waited an hour for the bus back to Oxford (delays, delays - ARGH). And I have NEVER been so glad to get off my feet in my entire life! Not even hiking in Montana was that bad a foot-killer! I'm still debating whether or not to go on Dr. Fincham's tour of Oxford colleges. It's today at 2. I'll see how my feet feel.

Legends of kebab land

I think I might have just witnessed a VPO mini-legend. I have to blog about this before I forget.

There's a kebab cart (like a pretzel stand in Philly, but awesomer) right outside St. Anne's, and people go there on a fairly regular basis for fantastic late-night snacks. Personally, I'm a huge fan of their cheesy chips (chips here being fries - with REAL CHEESE, people!). Anyway. I went to the Royal Oak (nearest pub) with some wonderful girls this evening, and as we were coming back, we decide to go to the kebab cart.

I get cheesy chips. Kate gets much more elaborate chips. Caroline decides she actually just wants hummus.

Well, the guy's face when she asked for just hummus was priceless. He froze, and he looked at her and said, "I...don't have a...cup or anything to give it to you in..."

She said, "I just want hummus." (If I had a pound for every time she said "I love hummus" tonight...)

He said, "I could...give it to you in a pita..."

"Sure," she said. "I love hummus."

(Kate and I, by the way, were cracking up the whole time. He was so bewildered!)

So she gets a pita with hummus and garlic mayo, which only costs a pound and which is a completely new item for the kebab cart. Lo and behold, it becomes an instant hit with Anastasia and Allison, and they promptly drag her back to the cart to reorder this wild and miraculous new thing. And I think they're just going to keep ordering that from the kebab cart for the next two weeks. We'll see if it winds up making it onto the official menu...

In which I kick tutorial ass!

Holy crap, you guys! This is a first! After three weeks, I have finally had a history tutorial in which I did not make an arse of myself!!!

I'm so excited! And I just can't hide it!

We were talking about Charles I and the Personal Rule (basically, Charles got fed up with Parliament and decided he'd rule without it. That worked for 11 years. After that he needed money and called Parliament again). My paper for this week argued that in fact, the Personal Rule itself didn't create a rift between Charles and his subjects - that in fact it was more basic, a set of miscommunications, that created that rift. I still think I'm right, at least to some degree (although a tutor less kind than Jenner could probably have smashed truck-size holes through my facts, I remain convinced on the essential point). And I argued the point with him, and he didn't tear it to pieces, and I'M SO FRICKIN' HAPPY!!!

Next week we're looking more closely at the civil war itself. (Lots of civil wars! This one, the Wars of the Roses...) It's really, really cool to be reading about this time period. I know so little about it that it's all a discovery. I'm even learning to think a little better of James I. Oh, the Stuarts. The tragic, silly Stuarts. (Though I'm very grateful to Charles II for the whole women-can-act thing. VERY grateful.)

Just had to tell you guys!

Tomorrow I'm going into London to Portobello Road, the famous six-block open-air market. While I'm there, I'm also hoping to get to either the Tate or Westminster Abbey. I WILL see the Pre-Raphaelite paintings while I'm here! I am DETERMINED!

Things British and things not

As fantastic and geek-rewarding as Bath was, I think the British Museum might trump it. Bath was glorious for my Austenmania. The British Museum had Egypt, Greece, ancient Britain, and Japan. And that's only the part I got to.

I have to start with a list of things I saw. Or maybe just a picture of one of the things I saw.



YEAH. I saw it. In the flesh. And I almost missed it - it was in the one Egypt room I didn't get to. We were about to head downstairs, and I looked up and across and my heart nearly stopped. I could have stared at it for hours.


I DID stare at this:



For at least ten minutes. They have an entire exhibit on the tomb this painting comes from. Kate and I went into the room, and I saw this and was just floored. It's beautiful. I also saw the Rosetta Stone (about half my height, beautiful but absolutely THRONGED with tourists taking pictures, so it was tricky just getting close enough to get a decent look), the head of Ramses that inspired "Ozymandias" (does this make me now a traveler to an antique land?), a gorgeous set of samurai armor, two sets of Assyrian winged gate guardians, the Sutton Hoo burial treasures (helmet, shield, sword, grave goods), the friezes from the Parthenon...I could go on forever.

My favorite thing, though, is probably the carvings from the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal's palace of lion hunts. Lion hunting was the appropriate pastime for Assyrian kings - showcasing their manhood, their strength, their fitness to be king by triumphing over the greatest of beasts. These carvings went on for two entire rooms, all over both sides of the walls. They have plenty of incredible scenes with archers and lions that, in terms of dynamic action, quite frankly put Ramses at Kadesh to shame. But the incredible parts were the carvings of the lions alone. Like this one (again, not mine - I was too busy staring to take a picture):



And that's not even the best. The lions themselves were everywhere, and the sympathy they were carved with was just breathtaking.

At four, we (that is, Kate and Jeni and I) met up and had high tea on the top floor of the British Museum. And that was FANTASTIC! I want to have high tea every day for the rest of my life. Preferably with the scones they serve at the British Museum. We each had our own pot of tea (I got lemongrass and ginger - interesting, but never got very strong at all), and we split the scones, the finger sandwiches, and the pastries. (I got the chocolate mousse and the tiny cheesecake.)

Basically, if you ever get a chance to go to the British Museum, DO IT. If there aren't five different things you want to see there, I despair of you.

In other news, I went to see Henry V in the Trinity College garden last night. Interesting at some places, dragged in others. The Blackfriars production remains utterly unrivaled, although this version did the setpiece speeches nicely (particularly "Once more into the breach"). The wooing of Katherine is always a fantastic scene, and they did it well - with plenty of emphasis on how pissed and stripped the king of France actually is at the outcome of all this English patriotic conquest. And while the comic scenes, horrifically, were not that funny (and let me tell you, they ARE funny), this production did feature a priceless little ditty that Henry's army sang as they marched out at the end of the first half:

Harry, he took a tennis ball
And mounted it on top of Harfleur's wall
Gloucester
He hit it faster
But the Dauphin has no balls at all!

(Gloucester and faster rhyme better if you say it with an accent.)

Taking the waters

Almost caught-up! Almost! Only one more to go!

...I keep telling myself that, anyway...

Anyway. Two day-trips, both of which were awesome! And both of which, alas, I have very few pictures, since my memory card was a raging b*tch on Friday and I was too busy gazing in awe on Sunday to take many photos. But that (as I said about the Globe) is what the Internet is for.

Friday was my trip to Bath with Kate. We took the train in on a drizzly day and went straight to the Roman baths. (Get a ticket there and you get free admission to the Pump-room!) You also get to see this:



This, my friends, is the main soaking area. A typical Roman bath - and yes, I mean typical, all classes of people used these baths - is a day-long affair. You leave your clothes and go into the tepidarium, a pool where it's just nice and warm. There you get relaxed, and you also get covered with a mixture of oil and sand. From there, you go into the caldarium, which is basically a sauna, and you just sit and sweat. The theory is that the dirt and impurities are sweated out, but trapped on top of your skin by the oil-and-sand concoction. Once you've sweated clean, you go back into the tepidarium and get the oil (and by extension, the dirt) scraped off you. THEN you get to go into that gorgeous main pool and just soak and relax and feel good about life. You can also use that time to do deals, talk politics, play politics - the essentials of life for a Roman. Extremely awesome. I wish we had more of them.

At the site, they explained how in fact, come the 1700s, no one knew the baths were THERE. They'd just been built up and up and finally built over, and when they were discovered it was (understandably) a HUGE deal. But because of that, and also because the baths themselves fell into disuse and disrepair, you can see the cut-away floors, and the bricks they piled up under the raised floors to carry heat.

Speaking of heat - the water flows out of the Sacred Spring at perfect bath temperature. Kate and I dipped our hands in when no one was looking and we were behind a column. It was wild. We also tasted the waters in the Pump-room (the officially approved, come-out-of-a-fountain-and-are-not-green waters. They taste like sparkling water that's gone flat. It was fantastic.

The Pump-room is now a restaurant. It's also enormous. Perfect for lots of dancing couples, with a balcony overhead for the musicians (who were playing when we came in!). We didn't make it to the Upper Rooms, but we saw pictures, and they look beautiful.

We DID make it to the Jane Austen Centre, of course. Very fun exhibit they have, complete with lots of beautiful Regency-era costumes, many of which they got from Austen movies. I liked that they were up-front about the fact that Jane Austen disliked Bath and barely wrote while she lived there. But at the same time, you can easily see where she got the impressions that turn up in Northanger Abbey and in Persuasion. I thought it was well done.

And then we wandered around! We went to the Circus and the Crescent, which are literally right around the corner from the Upper Rooms and the MOST fashionable apartments in Bath. This is quite obviously not my picture - for one thing, I don't take pictures this good, and for another, my name is not QT Luong - but this'll give you some idea of the amazingness of the Circus.



The Circus, aptly enough, is a full circle of apartments. The Crescent, therefore, is a half-circle. Kate and I both preferred the Crescent, because it has the most breathtaking view in the entire city. I can't find a picture of it - everyone seems to want pictures with the Crescent buildings, not the view FROM the Crescent buildings - but it was incredible. And I'm pretty sure Kate got a picture, so once she gets it on Facebook, I'll move it here.

On the train back, we read Northanger Abbey aloud, each taking a chapter at a time and doing parts (I read Isabella and John Thorpe, Henry Tilney, and Mr. Allen. Great fun). And on Saturday, I did absolutely nothing. I slept until noon. It was GLORIOUS.

Tomorrow: the British Museum! Tonight: Liz goes to sleep!

Stories I forgot to tell

We have a beginning-of-week and end-of-week story. Both (I think) are awesome. But the end-of-week story is the one which, if I know my friends and family (and I flatter myself that after twenty-two years I've picked up a few things), will make people squeal with delight and/or leave lots of comments expressing their opinions. (Shameless hint? Naaahhh...)

And because after twenty-two years you should know me, it should be no surprise that you get the beginning-of-week story first!

Last Saturday, which started the Week of Busy Greatness and Sisterly Affection, Helen and I raced from the bus stop to St. Anne's and from St. Anne's to the train station in less than an hour to make the train to Salisbury. Helen, you should know, had not slept since 8 AM the previous day. So she was drowsy. Sweet and wonderful, of course, but also irritable in that cute-but-terrifying way she has when she HAS NOT HAD ENOUGH SLEEP.

For the record: she took none of this out on me. In fact, she was a champion - a fantastic traveling companion, a hardworking conversationalist (awkward story that perhaps I will tell in person), and as charming and wonderful as she could be. Just so you don't get the wrong idea.

Anyway. We've made our train connection, and she's starting to show how much she's running on empty. Right then, this woman plunks down next to the people right across the aisle from our seats and starts talking IN A VERY LOUD VOICE with an intriguing and unplaceable accent about...her cell phone. She just got it last week, see, and when she got it last week she could leave it on for a week and it would be fine, but now it doesn't hold a charge for more than a few days, and these are the details about the charging process, and here's the phone plan she got, and this is her great-aunt Mildred's picture which is totally relevant even though great-aunt Mildred didn't know what a cell phone was, and...

Okay, I added the bit about great-aunt Mildred. BUT THE REST IS ALL TRUE. This woman talked about absolutely nothing. And yet, somehow, absolutely everything. Forever. Someone flipped the switch, and she did not stop. All quite loudly.

About halfway through the cell phone monologue, Helen looked at me. And I became very glad that I was sitting between her and this woman, because I think she would have ripped the woman's throat out if she'd been a little closer.

I KNEW she would have ripped the woman's throat out when, about half an hour later, the woman had moved on to talking about cheese. (I told you: NOTHING AND EVERYTHING.) "Kraft Singles are the only kind of cheese Americans know about," she declared, with the complete weight of authority behind every word. "You ask for cheese anywhere in America and that's what you get."

At which point Helen looked at me again. And we just cracked up. We were sitting right across from them, and I think they must have noticed, but we couldn't help it. Two Americans, right there, who in fact prefer goat cheese and brie and mozzarella, and - whoops, sorry, there goes my American citizenship. If I don't think of Kraft Singles as cheese, I clearly can't be American. The Woman With the Carrying Voice of Indeterminate Nationality has proclaimed it to be so.

The end-of-week story can be summed up much more quickly. In three words:

I GOT DRUNK!!!

Yes! Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your Pimm's! It has happened!!

Helen and I had dinner on Thursday night at high table at Brasenose College (one of the really old colleges in Oxford), thanks to the charming and hilarious Stephen Smith, who was sweet enough to invite us both. This dinner included the students on Steve's program, who were all funny and smart and completely welcoming. At this dinner, I drank a glass of red wine and a sh*t-ton of really good port (for you, Cheryl!). I can't tell you how much port, because I frequently topped-off more than I filled a new cup, but the table managed to annihilate four bottles.

At that point I had to go to the bathroom. The stairs were a little tricky. When I started laughing (by/at myself) instead of navigating them better, it occurred to me that I might not be in full control.

And from there it just got better. We went to the college bar, and I had two Pimm's and played quite a few arcade trivia games (and knew the answers even in my state!). Then about eight of us stumbled outside and walked down to a club, where I had the most fun dancing that I have ever had in my life. I'm making it a rule now. Before I dance, I must get drunk. I'm so much less awkward and self-conscious. And I have a FANTASTIC time! (I'm a happy drunk. I giggle a lot.)

This story does have a moral, for all you impressionable people out there. When I woke up the next morning, I felt groggy and ill. And I vomited into the toilet bowl. That part was gross. But awesome. The same way that bleeding onto my toe shoe was awesome. Rite-of-passage thing.

I may have to do this more often...!

Catch-up time!

Wow. Busiest week so far, and I've barely blogged at all. That's what happens when I have a sister to distract me, I guess.

I've mentioned it on Facebook, but I'm probably going to be telling as many people as I can in whatever arenas present themselves for the next couple of years: I HAD ABSINTHE!!! On Sunday, the Salisbury group went for dinner to this lovely Mexican place. We were browsing through the alcohol list when Helen spotted that they had absinthe. Without further ado, six of the eight of us, me included, ordered shots. (The waitress raised her eyebrows, and the waiter/bartender came over just to make sure that that was what we really wanted. "Do you have this stuff for breakfast, then?" he asked.)

Not for breakfast. Just for AWESOME TIME!!!



When we got back, we went - oh, lord, where HAVEN'T we gone? Monday we just walked around - I took her to the Bodleian, and we sat on benches in the Divinity School (which they used for the hospital wing in Harry Potter). Tuesday we went to Blackwell's and found a copy of this version of "The Lady of Shalott," which I credit with turning us both into Tennyson lovers:



We also went to the Botanic Garden on Tuesday. They marked Tolkien's favorite tree on the map, and looking at it is like reading his mind when he conceived of Ents and mallyrn. (There's also a tree there that was planted during the English Civil War!) And we saw Will and Lyra's bench. I'd never really had a clear picture of what that looked like, but the minute we saw it, I could imagine everything from that scene, down to where everyone would stand and where Will cut the window through into Lyra's Oxford.

*If you don't know what I'm talking about - go find "The Golden Compass." Now. Read the series. Cry until you can't cry anymore. Then we'll talk.*

And yesterday, Helen got to go see "Julius Caesar" at the RSC! (Yes, the one I raved about.) As of right now, I haven't talked with her about it. I cannot wait to hear what she thinks!

Adventures during the silence

Before you ask: I haven't been blogging lately because I've been nowhere near the Internet all weekend.

I've been near this instead.



Sorry about the long silence. I love you all, but...it was worth it.

So! Salisbury Cathedral (that's SOLZ-bury, or SOLZ-bree in the truly condensed pronunciation) has the tallest spire in the UK. It's incredibly old - going back to the 1100s and 1200s. Going by all the tombs and the amazing effigies was like a who's-who of important people throughout English history. The best part was that all the people who are buried in Salisbury Cathedral are the peripheral ones. You don't get Wolsey - but you do get his secretary. You don't get Edward III - but you do get a lord who fought with him at Crecy and Poitiers (only two of the three greatest English-over-French victories of all time). My two favorites were Lady Catherine Grey, Jane Grey's sister and lady-in-waiting to Elizabeth (and also a member of the Pregnant Maids of the Virgin Queen Club), and William Longespee, Earl of Salisbury and bastard brother to Richard and John (Lionheart and Magna Carta). Mommy, this is for you - you've read "Here Be Dragons." It's that Will. My heart practically stopped. His effigy is beautiful - traces of paint still on the stone.

There is an exception to the peripheral rule, however. And this one's for Mommy, too.



HORNBLOWER FOREVER!!!!

*If anyone did not get that reference, go out right now and find one of two books: either "Mr. Midshipman Hornblower" or "Beat to Quarters." Once you have found and bought them, take a few days off and read them. At that point you have a choice. You can: 1) leave a comment telling me how fantastic the books are and how grateful you are to me for telling you about them, 2) spend the next couple months finding and reading the entire Hornblower series, or 3) SPREAD THE LOVE. Actually, 3 is mandatory. Also? Find "Here Be Dragons." You won't regret that one either.*

Aaaaanyway...

Post-cathedral, we got Thai food for dinner. Helen, who had leaped right off the bus from Gatwick and onto the train to Salisbury, crashed and slept for the first time since 8 AM the previous morning. So our party left her at our adorable B&B and had fantastic dinner. Carina's search for the perfect spicy food remained unfulfilled, but it was still delicious. I tried a bite of hers and it practically burned my mouth off. So in part, I think it's just her. ;)

Then we went searching for a pub. We intended to go to the Haunch of Venison, the oldest pub in Salisbury (and supposedly haunted), but when we got there it was crowded and there was nowhere to sit. So we wound our way through the town (lovely and charming) until we got here:



The Wig and Quill, complete with hilarious pictures of constipated judges with upset stomachs and those wacky wigs! I had a Pimm's there (it's the classic British summer drink, so I'm told), and Doreen - you were right. IT IS HEAVEN. IN A GLASS. I've since ordered it every chance I got. WHY don't we make it stateside? Why do we deprive ourselves of such pure joy? WHY?!?!?! (I also did a shot of whiskey. Yummy!)

On Sunday...

Well, there really aren't words.



Yes, it was micromanaged and touristy. Yes, we had to take a bus instead of walking. Yes, we stayed on the track and couldn't get near the stones.

But you know what? I don't care. I didn't care. Because regardless of circumstances - steering to avoid people taking pictures, being surrounded by inane chatter, asking strangers to take pictures of me - there it was. And there I was, right by it.

And that means more than I can possibly say.

I wish the pictures did it justice. They can show you what it looks like from any angle you like. But they can't make you feel how it felt to stand on the plain with the sky blue and the clouds thick and gray, cold wind blowing strands of my hair straight out in front of me, and the stones there. Everyone talks about what a mystery Stonehenge is. I don't think it's that way at all. A mystery exists to be solved. Stonehenge isn't hiding anything - it is exactly what it is. It's straightforward. It's not a mystery to me.

But it is sacred. It's holy; it's magical. It is there to marvel at, to make you think of stark beauty that is not, quite, of this world. And that is so rare now that worship of that sort, unquestionable, unstoppable, unknowable, has come to be a mystery.

I don't want to know - I don't need to know. Feeling it seems more right to me. More worshipful. More fitting to a sacred place.

The second week is done!

Breathe in...breathe out. I survived another round of tutorials. In...out.

And I didn't make an ass of myself in history! THANK GOD. It's still taking some getting used to, but I think I'm getting the hang of it. I talked more than I did last week. By the time this is done, I might even have ditched some of the keep-silent inhibitions. Because you just can't do that here - or at least, you can't maintain it for any period of time.

Anyway. 'Tis done. Up next: King Lear and the social divide in the 1500s! (Not together, of course.) I kind of want to write on the eye/sight imagery in the play. We'll see what happens after I reread it.

And HELEN'S COMING THIS WEEKEND!!! We're going up to Salisbury tomorrow. Cathedrals! Stonehenge! Sisters! It's going to be fun.

Vivat RSC! No, seriously. Vivat in Aeternum!

So. My favorite performance of Shakespeare ever has been, for two years, the Blackfriars production of Henry V that came to Sweet Briar. It was genius, absolutely revelatory; it had me on my feet cheering.

As of last night, it has a formidable rival.

We saw Julius Caesar as done by the Royal Shakespeare Company, and whoa. It was gorgeously staged, for one thing. The stage itself is a thrust with two alleys going through the ground audience, so they could and did roam pretty much anywhere. They set the play in Rome, which I really liked - transposing is fine, but it was just fantastic to see this one adhering to place and time. (Fun variations on the toga, and the women's costumes were FANTASTIC.)

And they did it bloody. The assassination was horrific - it took Caesar a long time to die, and while I could barely watch it, I could not look away. Actually, they started the play as soon as the audience was filing in, with two actors playing Romulus and Remus. It was extremely cool. They slunk around the stage, crawling, never standing, almost fetal; not speaking, but growling; very primordial, very wolflike, very frightening. By the end, when the audience was all seated, they had broken out into their fight (that was the only time they stood upright), which ended with Romulus killing Remus by biting through his neck. So we had the idea of essential savagery established right from the beginning.

Then on came the play. Simply marvelous on all counts. Brutus was incredible - tortured but honorable in the first half, and he played the second half as if the pressures of the first had turned him into a human powderkeg. It worked marvelously. He was genuinely shocking in the quarrel scene. (I'd also never spotted the moment when he decides to himself to join the conspiracy; it gave me chills in this performance.) I had never imagined Cassius played with half as much integrity as the actor last night gave him, but it works marvelously - his plans may be doomed, but he truly means them for the best, and you couldn't doubt his affection for Brutus. Which all makes it impossible to hate him as the instigator, so you have to commit to him as a tragic character. Fantastic.

Antony was an incredible surprise - as, of course, he should be. They cast a rather heavy actor as Antony, and I was a bit confused - wasn't he supposed to be more imposing? But what that did was fabulous: I'd underestimated Antony just as much as the conspirators do, and when he let loose with the funeral oration, I was blown away. He was incredible, electric. The tension between him and Octavius made me wish they'd just go right into Antony and Cleopatra when Caesar ended.

AND THE THEATER HAD SEATS WITH BUILT-IN CUSHIONS! MADE OF WIN!

I am thrilled that we're going back to Stratford for our third play, not to the Globe. It's great to have been at the Globe, but in terms of which production I'd rather see - no choice.

We actually got there two hours before the show, so we wandered around and explored. They milk the tourist thing for all it's worth in Stratford (Anne Hathaway's Bakery, a pub called Othello's, Midsummer House, etc.). Holy Trinity Church (also known as the site of Shakespeare's grave) was closed by the time we got there. But we did wander around it:



It was very quiet. Not eerie quiet, just peaceful quiet. I liked it a lot.

It was also beautiful:



Next time we go to Stratford, we go for a matinee. And then I will see The Grave. And I think, although I'm not sure how it's possible, the play will be just as good.

Hampton Court!!

I wish, wish, wish we'd had more time at Hampton Court yesterday. Our bus ride took about an hour more than it was supposed to (late starting time plus hideous traffic), so we only had two hours. Which is enough to do just about everything very cursorily.

Luckily, there is no time limit on geeking out! Or, more appropriately, on staring open-mouthed at the incredible beauty and age and impressiveness of the place.



The palace is actually half Tudor, half Georgian. The back part of it was redone for William and Mary, and is really rather gorgeous. But the people at Hampton Court know very well that the money and the tourism comes with the Tudor part:



Yes. The trees have Henry's initials on them.

I LOVE THIS PLACE!!

I don't want to sound sappy or ridiculous, but being in that place was like going back and being there then. It struck me at odd times, because it was so full of (fellow) tourists that it wasn't a complete constant, but there were places where I could feel - not the presence of these people, but the presence-that-had-been. The stamp of personality, the kind of thing that never goes away, that in fact changes the personality of the place just by existing.

And of course, mentally I sent myself back in time whenever I possibly could. I have now leaned out of a casement. And let me tell you: IT'S AMAZING. I've sat on a cushion in Henry's apartments; I've sat at the head of the high table in the Great Hall; I've walked in the gardens and down the stairs and through the Base Court with the sun over my head. You can't NOT imagine that it's then, and not now. (And even if you could, it's so much less fun!)

Oh, that's right. I mentioned gardens, didn't I? Gardens like this:



Of the Globe (which was right afterwards), I have, alas, no pictures. I was all set to take one when I was inside, and then one of the ushers came over and said that we weren't allowed to take pictures. I would have tried again, except I was basically sitting right next to the ushers. And I didn't want to get thrown out of the Globe before the show had even started.

But that's what the Internet is for! All the AMAZING visuals, none of the butt-soreness that comes with sitting through two hours on a wooden bench with no cushion. (A couple had to leave early during intermission, so I took one of their cushions. It was a GREAT relief, but my butt still hurt like anything.)

The show itself was great fun. I was not a fan of their Romeo (nothing changed between Rosaline and Juliet, which is kind of the point, that it HAS to), but Juliet was very good. Mercutio was FANTASTIC, and Paris was a hilarious fop. And it was the GLOBE, for crying out loud! Incredible to go.

(But I'm glad that the other two plays we're seeing are at Stratford. Maybe they'll have seats with built-in cushions...)

Aaahhh...alcohol buzz...

Just got back from a mini pub-crawl with a couple of girls on the program. Great fun, actually. I have now had three drinks in one day - a record for me! (But rest assured, I remain in possession of my faculties. I'm just more buzzed and fuzzy in the head than I normally would be.)

We started at the college bar, where I had my second-ever Guinness (yummy stuff), and finished the whole half-pint in a game of Kings. (Thanks to Julia, Jess, and Cheryl for teaching me how to play last semester!) Then I was planning to quit, when Kate knocked on my door and said that some people were going to go to the Eagle and Child.

Well, tempt me with Tolkien and I'm in!



I discovered there that I like hard cider a lot. It helps with my essential alcohol wimpiness; I still feel like I'm drinking, but there's a buffer between me and the alcohol taste.

Then we moved on to the Lamb and Flag, which is literally right across the road (the Eagle and Child was very full and very warm):



I didn't know the girls we were with that much, but I really like them a lot. I got a delicious cider-esque drink called Thatcher's Gold, made with apples, which was extremely yummy and frighteningly easy to down quickly. Also, I did make the mistake of admitting early on that I was a sipper, which led one of the girls (Caroline) to instruct me to gulp frequently. Out of the four of us who were drinking, though, I finished mine third. Which is an improvement over my typical last-to-be-done thing. I think this is progress.

My head is actually a lot more fuzzy than it's used to being. I keep blinking a lot. And I really, really wish there was a water fountain in every building. I swear, the must-imbibe liquid here is water. There's an incredible shortage. They serve it at meals, but good luck finding a water fountain or a water cooler on campus! (We stopped in at one of the buildings on our way back because there was supposed to be a cooler. It was empty. CURSES.)

I'm going to bed now. We'll see how I feel in the morning for Hampton Court!

(And if I feel dreadful, I suppose I can sleep on the bus to London.)