I'm back!
I'm home! Back in the Great White North (although it thankfully wasn't white when I arrived; if it had been snowing in mid-July I would have gone back to England and the rain). Hello everyone! After saying goodbye to the people in Exeter, I met my mum in London and we started our whirlwind tour of Britain. It was the same sort of tour as the one Dad and I went on in Italy over Easter.
Some highlights:
-the Scottish Highlands. The scenery is spectacular and it's so different from anywhere else. And it was fun watching our coach bus manoevre through tiny little one-track roads up the mountainside, praying we wouldn't meet anyone coming in the opposite direction!
-Cardiff and Edinburgh castles. They're very different, but both fascinating. You know me and castles. Cardiff has a Norman keep, which is is excellent shape. The newer part of the castle was elaborately deocorated by a Victorian coal baron and his eccentric architect, so that it looks more like Neuschwanstein than anything else. But less Wagner-inspired. Edinburgh is just cool, and gives a great vantage point over the city. And our guide was great, so that helps.
-Scottish haggis jokes. You can't spend a day in Scotland without hearing about people going haggid hunting, or having someone tell you that haggis have one leg longer than the other, so that they can stand upright on the hills. It seems to be a national joke.
-Glastonbury Abbey, where we saw the hawthorn tree sprung from Joseph of Arimathea's staff and King Arthur's grave. And our guide was dressed as a medieval pilgrim and spoke as if the abbey was still standing (he would jesture to the ruins and talk about the long-gone tombs, and warned us about how to act if we met a monk). He was fun.
-Well, it was true that "the rain it raineth every day," but we were lucky that the worst downpours usually happened when we were on the bus. We got some sun, but it was rare enough to warrant a photo.
-Evensong at York Minster. We got to see inside the Minster and hear an Australian children's choir into the bargain. They were quite good, but in desperate need of altos.
-Culloden Moor, where Bonnie Prince Charlie was finally defeated. It's very interesting, historically, and is marked with memorials and flags showing where the armies advanced and where the clans fell. Also, the bookshop is great (I bought Kidnapped because it's appropriate to the Highlands, and also bought some 2-for-1 Horrible Histories. They're harder to find here.)
-eating haggis and thinking it was strangely spiced cottage pie (because they put mashed potatoes on top). That's probably the best thing that could have happened, since now I can say I've eaten haggis, and I didn't need to think about what was in it.
-London, of course. I love that city.
-St Ives in Cornwall, which is a lovely little town all built on hills. I had some of the best ice cream ever there (made with clotted cream).
-the fact that the naval history monster won't leave me alone. On the second day we went on a tour of Plymouth harbour, and it was NAVYNAVYNAVY. And I had to grudgingly admit that it was cool.
-seeing some of the colleges in Oxford, and then going into the library and seeing an exhibit on "Italy's Three Crowns: Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio." I am not kidding. There was a 1350 manuscript of the Comedy, illuminated manuscripts for all three, and various other nerdy things. Dante is another one who won't leave me alone, but I'm happier with his company than with the Admiralty.
-Stratford-on-Avon, for obvious reasons. We saw the house where Shakespeare was born!
-the sign in Glasgow cathedral directing people to "Blackadder Aisle." Also in terms of pop culture: Glasgow cathedral is St Mungo's, and it's right next to the hospital. Get it? The hospital in Harry Potter is St Mungo's! Yes, I'm sad.
-the scenery, especially in the Lake District and the Scottish highlands. I have pictures, but if you're sensible you won't ask to see them because I have billions. That's only a slight exaggeration. It didn't help that Mum forgot to bring a charger for her battery, so I was taking pictures for two yet again, and she takes pictures of everything.
Theatre gushing reviews:
-The Merchant of Venice at the Globe was fantastic. I was a groundling, so I was really close to the stage. Thankfully it didn't rain during the performance. The actors often used the yard (where the groundlings are) as part of the stage, entering and exiting through the house. I nearly got squished by a procession of masked actors during the carnival scene, but it makes the audience a part of the action. They kept the music in it, but didn't always use the same songs as the ones in the script. Some I recognized from high school vocal, when we did that madrigal unit. Anyway, it was fantastic and much funnier than reading it. I never found MV very funny, but the actors managed to bring out a lot of subtext and physical comedy. By the end my feet were killing me, but Mum says the seats weren't any better. It was worth it, though.
-We saw The Drowsy Chaperone on our last night in London. It's the Canadian musical that won all those Tony Awards last year on Broadway, and it's fairly new to the West End. It is fantastic. I nearly died laughing several times. It doesn't take itself seriously at all (basically, it's a musical within a musical, and its main focus is affectionately making fun of...well, musicals). Elaine Page is a West End legend, and we got to see her live. She was very funny, and she's still as gutsy as she was whem she played Evita. But it's really an ensemble show, with half a dozen characters all with their own quirks. One of the funniest devices is the Man in Chair (he doesn't have a name), who is playing a record of his favourite musical to the audience, and the record becomes the performance by the other actors. But sometimes the record skips (so the cast repeats a movement jerkily until he fixes it) or sometimes he'll replay a moment, and he'll often pause it and make the actors freeze while he comments on the show-within-the-show. Anyway, it's great fun, and if anyone gets a chance to see it, they should take it!
Um, yes. Sorry for anyone who actually read that... but anyway, it's good to be home!
Edit: I just saw the Harry Potter movie. I liked it, even though they cut a lot. I'm not going to say more now, because there are reviews all over the place and not everyone's seen it yet. But I will say something that I saw during the previews: they're making a movie out of The Dark is Rising! I am so excited it's almost sad. Actually, it's passed well into the realm of sad. Please please please don't let them screw it up. It looks like they've made Will an American, which wouldn't make sense, and it looks very action-oriented, which is just wrong. And Merriman looks and sounds wrong, too. And he's so great in the books! Ohmygoodness. I love those books to death (I've had to tape my copy of The Dark is Rising together to stop it falling to pieces, and one of the reasons I was so excited to go to Wales and Cornwall was because of other books in the series), and they had better not ruin them. Walden Media, consider yourself warned. Not that I will be able to do anything but rant if it's awful, but still. I might cry, and nobody wants that. But it might make people besides me read the books for a change!
Even later edit: actually, the more I think about it, the more I realize that the Dark is Rising movie is going to be a disaster. What have they done to it?! It's not supposed to be an action movie, and Will Stanton doesn't go around hitting on girls or saying "awesome" or taking his brother with him on his quests! It looks like they read the basic plot but not the book. And maybe not even the plot...just the character names. I smell a boycott. By...um...me.