Today was a Day of Getting Lost. Day 8.

June 29th

On this day, I was planning on waking up at 8:30am to be ready to go by 9:30am, but I overslept a tiny bit, but it was okay, because everybody else did too.  Larissa, Erin and I had made plans to go to the Victoria & Albert Museum before we had Theater class at 2pm.  So we got ready and  got some breakfast/coffee.  Then we walked to the tube and got way lost.

The whole time we were lost, I just felt extremely inadequate.  The tube overwhelmed me and I didn’t feel like I was helpful in getting us un-lost at all because none of it made sense to me.  That made me feel slightly bummed. But, eventually we (they) found our way and got to the museum.  The museum was really beautiful.  We split up so that we could wander around at our own pace.  I was pretty unsure of where to begin so I just walked towards things that looked pretty..lol!

Neptune and Triton by Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini (About 1622-3)

Sunflower (Helianthus annuus L.) by John Miller (1770-7)

THEN I found the Theater and Performance section of the museum and I was hooked.  I spent the majority of my time in there.  They had so many cool things and everything that was there was interesting to me!

The Lion King costumes!!!!!!

 Another thing that really intrigued me in the Theater and Performance exhibit was the beautiful work of Chris Nash.  He did dance photography and I loved it!!

Here's some of my favorites:

 We met back up at around 1:45pm to get to class in time.  I really enjoyed it!  We talked a lot about the history of theater.  Even though I’ve been doing theater my whole entire life, I never really knew all of the definite details on the history of it. So that was really interesting to me and I learned a lot!

After class, we went to the bookstore and some of us bought Imperial College sweatshirts and things like that. Yay!  Next, Allison, Jill, and I went to the library to try to print our confirmation letters for Spain and Amsterdam things, but it was too complicated so we put it off for another day..

Larissa, Erin, and I walked around the neighborhood by our school and ended up at this adorable restaurant named The Bunch of Grapes.

 We had delicious wine and desserts! Look at how pretty mine was!! 

After we were done, we found the tube and got lost AGAIN! It was a sad time.  Eventually we (but really they) figured it out and as we were walking up the steps to get out of the tube we ran into a group of our friends that were going out to the pubs. I decided to turn around and join them!

Once we got off the tube we realized we were at the wrong place, but we began walking…somewhere. I’m actually not positive where we were trying to go.  Allison, Jill, and I walked really fast ahead of the group and we ended up at a Sherlock Homes pub by ourselves.  We got a shot there, and then somehow found our friends at a different pub- I'm not sure which one.

When we got in there our friends were hanging out a pharmacist from Alabama and was in London on a business trip.  He had actually just arrived in London from Paris.  He was very friendly and told us all about Paris.

Overall he bought us all 2 rounds of shots.

After last call, the rest of the group wanted to go back to a hookah place near our housing, but Jill, Allison and I wanted to find a club to go dancing at.  So, we split up.  In retrospect, it was probably a very bad idea for us to go wandering around the city like that.  We’re just three little girls, and it was after midnight-ish..  While we were looking for a club we got kind of distracted and decided to walk towards Big Ben instead.  While we were walking, we could see the London Eye all lit up way in the distance so we wanted a picture in front of it.  We asked a random man named Kevin (who is apparently a boxer) to take it for us.  He did, and then I guess he offered to show us around the city some more and we thought that would be a good idea.  First we walked over to the Westminster Abbey and then we went over to Big Ben and Parliament.  We met a lady who apparently works for somebody important…I have forgotten who though..

We were having a lot of fun, but I was starting to get kind of freaked out by our “tour guide” because when we asked to get a picture with him he refused to be in one.  He was extremely paranoid about it and said stuff like, “if you take a picture of me I’ll take your camera and throw it in the river” – Kind of intense. But, he said he’d help us find a night bus home (the tube was closed by now…) Another weird thing about him was that he seemed to be semi-famous or something..people seemed to know who he was, but we had no clue who he was.

He took us across the river to the side that the London Eye is on and we got some amazing pictures!

 We also met David who owns a little coffee shop by the Eye.  He seemed really nice and said that we were in good hands.  That was reassuring ..even though we didn’t really know David either..

 We were walking down South Bank for awhile when we saw giant “grass” furniture in front of the National Theater! That was really exciting!

Then a bunch of girls who were from India (I think) came and wanted us to take pictures with them. So much fun and so many new friends!!

 We had been wandering for hours and were not having any luck finding the right bus to get us to Bakers Street.  Kevin was asking drunk people for directions…it was not very effective...then he was asking bus drivers and they were extremely rude to us..and somehow we ended up in a very sketchy area.  At this point all we wanted to do was get home safely.  We were more than willing to pay for a cab, so we went inside a store to get a number for one.

The cab finally arrived, and we FINALLY made it home!!

Even though that night was pretty dangerous and sketchy, we did have a lot of fun and a lot of cool experiences and got lots of beautiful pictures.  But I know that I don’t want to be in a situation like that again…just more lessons learned!