London!

I return from a well-deserved vacation in London! Previous to this, I had just turned in my first semi-officially-assessed piece of work, the formulation of which made me I realize just how much editing I needed to do to make all of my previous work at all presentable/relevant. Thus, I needed to run away to a different city for a while. Luckily, I had purchased those fantastic tickets for 'Much Ado...", and thus, away Maggie and I went.

We arrived around noon on Wednesday, and went to the Museum of London, which presented archaeological archives from prehistory to the present from London, with artifacts from everywhen, Bronze Age to punk culture in the 80s, and was a ton of fun. I may have tried on a medieval jerkin.

Pure class.

We then met with Maggie's friend Sarah and her parents for the evening, since Sarah was graduating from an MA program in UCL. We all ended up at a cabaret bar...in which I ended up singing with the main performer. No, seriously:

This is me, in a desperate panic.

Less awesome was the fact that I promptly forgot almost all of the lyrics to the song, even though I sing it all the time, so it was sort of ridiculous and terrible, but I stumbled through clinging to the last shreds of my dignity, and no one booed, so I guess it wasn't too horrific. Anyway, it was very random, but fun. And clearly I need to remember how to actually sing in public, because it was rather embarrassing to experience complete brain freeze in the middle of a bar. Yes. I was assured by Sarah's parents that should I ever fail out of my PhD, I could be a lounge singer, but they may have been being kind? Anyway.

On Thursday we watched the changing of the guard in the morning, and then went to the museums of natural history and of science, which were very fun. The science one in particular had tons of industrial age machinery which I geeked out over, including Babbage's difference engines! I took videos of some of their workings.

Also:

Obligatory goofy pose with Darwin!

On Friday we went to the British Museum, in which we gawked over mummies and I spazzed over their exhibit of clockwork (seriously, at least half of my pictures aren't of London, they're of clocks), and I bought a giant antique map poster that is too big for my room, but I don't care, it's getting hung anyway.

Then we moseyed over to the John Soane house, which has been kept preserved as per Soane's orders since his death in the 1700s. It was a really lovely place, and very interesting in both exhibits and structure, since Soane himself was an architect who collected tons of stuff from antiquity, as well as paintings by Hogarth and other rarities, and designed his house to best display them. Some of the windows he built to channel light were truly ingenious, particularly down in the basement, which he wanted to feel like an Egyptian tomb, or somesuch.

And then after having some fantastic Lebanese food, we finally saw 'Much Ado About Nothing'! It was really fun--set in quasi-modern times, which somehow made the changes in mood much more exaggerated to me than in previous experience. The slapstick was hysterical, and all of the performances were very good, despite some occasional rough spots that will no doubt be smoothed out later in the run, and I definitely coveted some of Catherine Tate's dresses. And at one point David Tennant wore sparkles and fishnets. I don't even know. Anyway, it was very entertaining, and we had quite good seats despite West End prices, so it was altogether a very lovely evening.

On Saturday just before we left, I also made a quick jaunt around the British Library to see the Magna Carta and lots of awesome period sheet music. They had also just opened a pretty excellent exhibit on sci-fi that got me thinking in new and interesting directions for my thesis, or maybe just a bit of it. I'll keep you posted on that, if it comes to anything.

Overall, a very successful and packed trip. We returned with sore feet but lots of edification and good pictures.