I was back with Pat and Martin at last! Pat was working so
Martin wanted to take me to London for the day were we were had a bus tour of
London, sailed down the River Thames and went to see Sweeney Todd: The Demon
Barber of Fleet Street. Everything was amazing!
Although it was raining off and on all day it was still
fantastic and made me fall in love with London. I learned so many interesting
facts about London including that Sweeney Todd was an actual rumor in London,
the great fire (seems like all major cities had big fires) and I saw some of
the places Jack the Ripper actually murdered his victims (I later went on a
walking tour of Jack the Ripper, I highly recommend it!). Martin also showed me
the BBC and the news network he used to work for.
After eating dinner at a nice Italian restaurant, (no I am
not snotty and still enjoy Italian food outside of Italy…) it got extremely
cold and rainy and we were supposed to go to Sweeny Todd. Thankfully, we went
to a restaurant directly across from the theatre and stayed in there until we
were able to be seated a mire 5 weeks away from the stage! I bought a Sweeny
Todd pretty program and the official London CD. Shows on the West End are
completely different than those on Broadway. On Broadway, the theatre decorates
to fit the show that is currently being performed in (such as “Wicked” and
“Phantom of the Opera”) where on the West End, they are simply theatre spaces.
And they don’t have to announce where the exits are and that you should turn
off of your phones! The British are so smart!
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| Me at Sweeney Todd |
If you don’t already know the show, go watch it! It is a
dark story built off of an actual London legend about a successful barber banished
from England on false acquisitions because a powerful man wanted the barbers
wife for himself. However, he manages to return to London under a different
name. Upon his arrival he discovers that his wife has died and his daughter has
fallen under the care of the powerful man who banished him. He plots his
revenge with Mrs. Lovett, the owner of a meat pie shop who is clearly in love
with Sweeney Todd. He soon receives the title of 'Demon Barber of Fleet Street' I won’t spoil the ending for you so go watch it!
The show was SPECTACULAR with Imelda Staunton (Dolores Umbridge) and Michael Ball. They
both performed out of character and there was not a trace of previous
characters in the production (aka Umbridge did not show up when cooking meat
pies). Signs of true actors! After the
show, it was pouring so we hopped in an official London black cab back to the train
station and headed home.
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| Olympic Medals |
The next day we went to the British Museum (a free museum by
the way) which houses all sorts of cool artifacts that are Egyptian to Greek to
Roman British history. There was defiantly a feeling of information overload and
I could have gone back for more. The British Museum also has the Rosetta Stone!
I know it is very important for developing writing and society, it wasn’t that
impressive looking. It took us all day to go through the museum and unfortunately,
I had to pack in preparation for leaving them for my study abroad the next day.
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| Rosetta Stone |
