Afternoon, Governor!

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So I tried uploading photos from my last entry, but I guess it can't be done, so this entry will include pictures from the last entry, so that means there will be lots of pictures. Scroll all the way down.

Hail, from London. So I arrived safe and sound. The flight out of Moscow was horrible. It was cramped as always, I was completely exhausted, and there was a screaming baby nearly the whole way there, not just screaming, but doing it as if it were their job! But I arrived in Amsterdam, found a place to stow my bags, and headed off for the Anne Frank Museum. I found it no problem and with enough time to grab a super delicious hot croissant and cup of hot chocolate at a nearby cafe. Pretty surreal sitting by the canal while spreading fresh delicious jam on a hot croissant in Amsterdam. Pinch me!

Anne Frank museum was completey amazing and moving. I think the hardest part was actually watching the video clips of Otto Frank as he talked about realizing that he probably never really knew his daughter because what he read in the diary was not the Anne he knew, even though they were really close. That was a pretty emotional thing to watch. From there I headed over to the Van Gogh museum. I really enjoyed it, but have to admitt that the lack of sleep did make parts of it a real chore. I really wanted to read all the placards and get as much out of it as possible, as if I would never have the chance to come back, but it was making me very sleeply, and I had to sit a few times and 'rest my eyes'. After that I really just spent my time wandering and taking pictures. Amsterdam is just a beautiful city and there was a ton of people to watch and brush shoulders with. Of course I ended up having to buy a better map than the one I brought and once I got that then the rest was just a piece of cake.

I found this really great cafe to have lunch/dinner at. Fish and chips that were just amazing. The menu boasted the best apple pie in town, so I gave that a try as well, and I think it might just have been the best apple pie in Holland. I am definitely starting to miss the free water that you get in the states though, I'm not going to lie. After lunch I wandered down to the area surrounding the Centraal Station, which of course included all the Mary Jane shops and the red light district. There were definitely a whole lot of smells and sights in the air. It seemed kind of unreal, like a giant adult playground, and by adult I mean elicit. Now wonder Amsterdam is the party destination for the 20 something crowd. I pretty much kept my camera under lock and key in that area because of all I had heard about the consequences of taking a picture of the wrong thing.

By about 4 pm I was erally exhausted and sat near the war monument and I think I may have taken a couple of cat naps. The weather was so nice and there was a cool breeze and there were lots of people and characters to watch. Of course I made sure I had a hand on all my stuff. I decided to leave a bit earlier than I originally thought for the train to get to my ferry. I am really glad that I did. The train ride was pretty uneventful though it was nice to ride through the Holland countryside, it really is beautiful. I arrived at Hoek Van Holland where I was taking a huge ship called Stena Line Britannica to the UK. My first priority after checking into my cabin, which was very cozy and quiet for what it cost me, was taking a nice long, hot shower. I was very ripe having brought a lot of Moscow and now all of Amsterdam with me. I was tempted to jump right in bed, but there was an observation deck on the ship that I was veryy interested in checking out. I am glad I did, there was a beautiful sunset out on the water, the weather was perfect, there were all kinds of people out on the deck enjoying themselves, it was really wonderful. Feeling a little peckish, I decided to grab a small bite to eat before retiring to my cabin. Sleeping while sailing was awesome, and I slept so soundly. The intercom announcing breakast (which I didn't have) woke me at 5:30 am, and I got up a bit later and packed my things to disembark from the ship.

Going through customs took a bit longer than I thought, so I just missed my train to London, so I had about a 45 minute wait on the platform for the next train. It turned out as a good thing, because I got a chance to re-read my Rick Steve's section on London and refresh my memory of my plans in London. First task of course was to get to my Hostel, which I did. That was more of an adventure than I expected. The directions I had printed out and brought with me weren't as detailed and helpful as I had thought or hoped. I ended up gettting of the bus quite some distance from the Hostel which made for a long walk with my very heavy backpack, and now that I have become familiar with the trains and bus, it is particulary frustrating considering there is a bus stop right in front of the hostel. That wouldn't be the first time I wasted time or went out of my while trying to navigate London. More to come on that not.

My room wasn't ready so I locked up my belongings, secured a metro map, and headed into the city to take care of getting some theatre tickets for that night. I had already bought a three day pass so I was ahead of the game there. I got into Leicester Square and found the TKTS booth and found a discounted ticket to Friday night's performance of War Horse, which had been recommended to me by Lavina, my acting professor. One down! Then I went and bought a better map of London, because the one the Hostel provided was junk, toss that. And by the way, for as clean London is especially the tube they certainly don't have many trash bins around, especially on the metro. I had bought a sanchwich and a banana at a grocery store on my way to the metro and ended up having to hang on to it until Leicester Square because there was no trash can, and that was after changining lines twice. Unbelievable.

I then went and found the theatre where La Bete was playing since apparently the star in that is winner of the Olivier Award for acting and is supposed to be one of the best actors or this generation. I found the theatre and come to find out if I came back on Saturday morning at 10 am there was a chance I could get a 10 pound ticket, so I decided to try for that. I had some time to kill, so I went wondering and found the National Gallery on Trafalgar Square which then led me over to the mall entrance leading to Buckingham Palace. The area around there there is really beautiful. I think however that my impression is devastatingly affected by my month in Moscow. I mean the Russians just do everything so big and grand and so a lot of the stuff I was seeing, while really lovely and grand, just kind of seemed, well, puny. The House Guards was pretty cool and the St. James park was really pretty. It was fun taking pictures of all the stuff around Buckingham. Someone important came out to do a press conference (sort of, there was only only one person asking questions). There was a huge crowd around him so I took a picture, but I have no idea who he is.

From Buckingham I walked over to the Westminster Cathedral, not to be confused with Westminster Abbey. It was really a very beautiful church and it was free to go inside, which is a huge bonus. It's a comparitively newer church so they are still in the process of building and decorating it, but was impressive. After that it was almost 4 pm so I thought I would go and check in and get myself situated. I also wanted to spend some time going over my map and sort of planning out my time in London so I would see all the stuff that I wanted. My room was okay, 6 beds and tiny shower and bathroom, but I didn't come to London for the sleeping accomodations. I am glad I took the time to mark my map, and highlight ways to go, it has made things much simpler, and I took note of place to eat according to where I was going to be which has been very helpful.

I freshened up and hopped the metro back to the city for the show. I had to deviate a bit because apparently there was some fire on one of the lines and they had to shut it down, I was worried it would make me late for the show. I got there just before the scheduled start time but of course it didn't start on time so I was fine. I had pretty good seats actually which provided a really great view of the whole stage. I sat next to Nana and Patricia, two retired women from Baltimore that made the wait and intermission a bit more pleasant. As for the show, War Horse was a pretty interesting show, that used lots of puppetry: full sized horse puppets, puppet soldiers, a puppet goose, and puppet birds. The set was really pretty simple but a favorite element was this massive white screen that went the length of the stage and looked like a piece of paper that had been ripped out of a book. On this screen throught out the show they projected pencil etchings to look like the background of where ever the action was taking place, ie, the farm, a town, a battlefield, and then parts of the projection were also animated which was pretty cool. As for the show, while it was definitely a high quality show, I was pretty disappointed with the acting. Again, here I am surely being devastatingly tainted by what I have just experienced in Russia, but there was so much static action, even the action scenes were pretty static comparatively. There was a whole lot of standing around talking, and actors who were speaking with out any intention or passion, even though they were pretty passionate scenes or speeches. There was lots of stagey action that wasn't motivated or believable, and I often felt like the actors were "doing this because they had been directed to". I am pretty sure that the show was supposed to be pretty emotional especially at the climax of the play, I know I certainly saw lots of people wiping there eyes, but I wasn't even remotely connected to the characters enough to be emotional about what was happening. Now, I will have to say that the puppetry was really impressive, and the degree of control and character that came out of them was really amazing, but having that requires that the live actors have to be so much more dynamic in order to not get washed right off the stage, and that just wan't happening for me. I have a feeling this is going to start sounding like a broken record with most of the shows I will be seing in Europe. Hopefully not, hopefully isn't the only country that's cornered the market for really amazing, dynamic theatre.

After the show let out it was time to eat. I had read about this neighborhood called Neal Yard near Covent Garden so I headed there. I found this really great little cafe called Ola Cafe Bistro where they had all these special of entree and a beer, and by beer I mean Fanta. I ordered the Penne Carbonara which was really amazing. For 7.50, you couldn't beat it. I sat outside and just enjoyed the sights and sounds of being in London on a Friday night. Really, someone out there needs to pinch me. Getting home that night would prove to be a lot more tricky than I anticipated. So here is my first major adventure in London. So I mentioned that one of the lines had closed on the metro and I didn't realize how crucial that was to making it possible for me to get back to the hostel in a moderately direct fashion. So I kept taking these other circuitous lines in an attempt to try and pick up a line that I really needed only to find out that that other line was also affected. Then by the time I found a line that should get me where I wanted to go, it had gotten so late that the metro was shutting down and I was diverted to the street. So here I am somewhere in East London, beyond the scope of my map and at the mercy of a not very good bus map that I wasn't really understanding. So I start thinking maybe I should just walk, but it is getting to be like 1:30, and I am certain the distance is a lot, even compared to the massive amount of walking in London, and not having a good map to tell me how to get there really deterred me from trying it. Luckily a very friendly bloke noticed that I must look completely lost and asked me where I was trying to go. He had me hop on the bus with him and gave me very good instructions on how to get to my hostel. He was from Poland and had been living in London for 7 years and had lived in the neighborhood near my hostel, convenient. As we were riding the bus he said, you know there is this tunnel and if you get off this station right now, you can walk through that tunnel and be in the neighborhood you are going to, so I hopped off and thanked him for his help, only to find out that the tunnel was closed after a certain time for maintenance. So back to the bus stop. So again I am standing at the stop looking at the instructions and directions, and I pass up on jumping on the first bus because I don't think it will take me where I want to go, only to find out that it would have, so I am waiting, and waiting, debating on taking a cab but not know how far it would be and therefore cost, I keep denying myself because I am just to cheap. I finally get a bus that takes me to the Tower Bridge, which turned out to be pretty cool, because I got to walk across the Tower Bridge at night. I finally got on my last bus that took me right to the stop outside of my hostel and it was only 3 am. My Polish friend was right, once you get a hang of the buses you can really get anywhere.

Saturday morning: I got up with enough time to have breakfast and take a shower, I definitely love the included breakfast feature in my Hostel stays, it really makes the value go up a great deal. I hopped the metro into the city and went right to the Comedy Theatre to get my ticket for La Bete. Success! I got a 10 pound ticket for the stalls. She said it was slightly obstructed view, but I am sure I will be able to move somewhere else if it is too bad, but can't beat the price. Then I made my way over to Shakespeare's Globe to see about getting tickets there. Again, lot's of debaucle with lines that were down and having to get of and get on the wrong stationg and backtrack to get where I needed to go. There has already been lots of time wasted with navigating the metro system. I am definitly missing Moscow on that regard, the two just don't even compare. I found Shakespeare's Globe and come to find out the show that is playing while I am here is opening tonight! Henry IV part 2, so I got a 5 pound ticket to be a groundling for tonight's performance, I can't wait. So then while taking photographs of the theatre I noticed that the battery on my camera was almost dead. I was going to head over to St. Paul's Cathedral after crossing the Millenium Bridge, but there was no way I could do that with no camera, so I bit the bullet and decided to come back to the hostel and charge my battery while I updated my blog. Having learned the but system a bit better I was able to take the trip in less than half the time, so it has been time well spent.

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Photos

Fun with cows
This was on the Arbat.

Amsterdam 2
Anne Frank Museum

Amsterdam 5
Dinner

Amsterdam 6
Rembrandt Statue