Shiri's Lists

Since we've been gone for over two weeks there are lots of things that I miss. Here is a list I have compiled.

Things I Miss (In no particular order):

1. My friends/family
2. My bed/knowing that I am guaranteed a bed to sleep in every night
   
3. The sun
4. My rainbows
5. Panera
6. Panda Express and Pei Wei
   
7. Jamba Juice
8. Driving on the Right side of the Road (aka streets that are not confusing)
9. Spinner (my cell phone)
10. Public restrooms that do not cost money
11. Not doubling every price I see
12. Palm trees

Things I Will Miss When I Leave England:

1. Cute old accented bus drivers who ask me "Where are you headed, love?"
2. Sports sections of newspapers that are devoted almost entirely to football and actually have detailed information about what's going on with transfers, etc.
3. The clicking sound the tube ticket makes when you pull it out of the turnstyle machine thing
4. Signs that say "Way Out" instead of "Exit"
5. Tesco
6. Good chocolate/Flake Ice Cream

Things I Never Need to See Ever Again

1. A guy wearing manpris. Seriously, they will never be in.
   

A bunch of days rolled into one post

So Michal is napping and I am forced to catch up on all the blogging we have failed to do in the last few days. Yippee!!

Let's see, where were we? Oh right. Thursday: We checked out of our hostel early and rushed to central London to catch an early bus to Canterbury. We ended up making it there just in time to catch the first bus out (after some really creative distributing of tasks between the two of us if I do say so myself). When we got to Canterbury it was pretty overcast and windy, a little drizzly, but not full on raining. good. We made our way over to the Cathedral (because that's really the only good thing to see in Canterbury) and lo and behold, we see a sign saying that the Cathedral is closed to visitors on that day because of some International Convention of Bishops. That figures because it just would not fit in with the theme of this trip if we had a full day where everything goes right.

So we couldn't go to the Cathedral so we consulted the Let's Go Britain tourbook that has seriously saved our lives this trip, and decided to head to the Museum of Canterbury instead. It was a cute little museum that told the history of the town, including the story of Thomas Becket, the martyr who became St. Thomas of Canterbury who drew all the pilgrims to Canterbury in the middle ages (including the fictional characters in Chaucer's terribly exciting story The Canterbury Tales). Since it was such a small museum there weren't really very many artifacts but it was informative nonetheless. Next we headed over to Westgate, the first sight of many of the pilgrims coming to the city. It welcomed the pilgrims but was also used as a jail in later years and a watchtower during WWII because it's so high above the city (people would stand there and watch for German planes and sound the air raid alarm if any were spotted). There was a little museum inside and since Michal and I were the only ones there, the nice man who worked there showed us around and took us way up to the top of the tower where most people don't get to go. We got a beautiful view of the city and the Cathedral--it was quite nice. The man was very knowledgeable and told us a lot of stuff we didn't know (i think he had a crush on Michal because he kept following us around. it was cute).

This was kind of all there was to do in Canterbury so we grabbed a bus over to Dover. After stopping in a grocery store to pick up the essentials (a baguette, cherry tomatoes, and carrots), we started the trek up to the Dover Castle. It was quite a climb, but the view when we got to the top was absolutely breathtaking. We found a picnic table in a spot that overlooked the ocean and ate our picnic lunch (amid the horizontal drizzle....the wind was ridiculous) then looked around the old Naval watchpoint on top of the hill. Unfortunately it was too cloudy to see France, but apparently on a clear day it's quite visible (only about 20 miles away, across the channel). From atop this tower we could also see the beautiful white cliffs that Dover is famous for. Next we walked around area, looking at the structures surrounding the castle, including the old Roman lighthouse and Saxon church and medieval tunnels. Upon entering the actual castle I once again attempted to get Michal to play along with my princess fantasy, attempting to convince her how perfectly she fits as Belle (even going so far as to tell her how each of her friends corresponds to one of the characters in the movie) but alas, she refused to join in the fun. So I had to pretend to be Aurora on my own. I was constantly humming princess tunes as we walked through the castle. Now the castle: oh man, the castle was amazing!!! There were endless corridors and passageways to wander through, it was unbelievable. We had a jolly old time exploring all the castle had to offer. When we were done with that we walked all the way around the castle atop the battlements surrounding it, before heading back down to the bus station because the castle was closing and we needed to catch our bus back to London.

When we got back to London that night we had about an hour in the bus station before taking another bus down to Brighton to see Hazel. And that's where we spent Thursday night.

Friday: After waking up quite late because we were all exhausted, the three of us (Me, Michal, and Hazel) headed down to the beachfront to get some real food. It was pretty much the first real meal Michal and I had had on this trip and Hazel really wanted real meat (after eating college food for the past 4 weeks) so we found a little pub and ate some delicious lunch. I was forced to order fish and chips, which wasn't awful, but i definitely will not be eating those ever again. After eating we walked down to the beach and just laid there relaxing for about an hour before heading back to home to the University of Sussex (where Hazel is studying for the summer). It was a pretty uneventful and relaxing day but it was definitely needed.

Saturday: Since Hazel had left the previous night for Amsterdam, Michal and I were on our own again. We headed down to the beach around noon, had a picnic on the beach (constantly terrified that the seagulls surrounding us were going to swarm, so we literally had to take a bit of our sandwhich and then hide it under our sweatshirt while we were chewing so the seagulls wouldn't see it and get any ideas). After lying on the beach for a while reading and listening to music we walked down the peir and looked at all the touristy things that they had. I was amazed at how ridiculously expensive stuff was--the tokens for the rides and games were 1 pound each and some rides required 4 tokens, so that's $8 for one ride on a little 30 second long roller coaster! Not okay! Sorry future children of mine, we're going on vacation to Yemen or somewhere where the dollar is better than the local currency so you can divide prices by 10 instead of double them.

We wandered around the beach for a while longer and then headed into a pub to watch the Liverpool vs Krakow game. The first half was SUPER dull, Liverpool was playing bad, and there were all these players we didn't know playing and the boys weren't wearing their names on their jerseys so it was kind of a sad experience. So we left after the first half, and now we're back at the dorm.

It's been a good couple of days. We definitely need to recouperate and catch up on sleep. It's been an amazing trip but we're exhausted so it's nice to have a few days to breathe before coming home on Monday.
Friday:

Two Shows that Royally Rocked

Hello friends, younger England Adventurer here (aka Shiri). I'm here to tell you about our theater experience in London. Oh boy!!

So whilst in London we saw two shows. The first was We Will Rock You, a musical written by Queen and Ben Elton that is all Queen songs. There aren't even words to describe how absolutely insanely amazing this show is. It's essentially a mix between a Broadway Musical and a Rock Show--SO cool! The lighting and effects were absolutely insane, costumes and make-up ridiculously awesome, and storyline actually really really clever. There were a lot of jokes that were references to old songs or singers or bands, so it was totally hilarious. Michal and I were all but rolling on the floor laughing at certain parts. Not only was the story and everything amazing, the performers were fantastic. Each and everyone sold their part so well--it really was an all around spectacular show. Anyone who appreciates music needs to see it.

The next night we went to a show that was completely different but just as exciting. We saw a production of King Lear at Shakespeare's Globe Theater on the bank of the Thames. We had toured this theater earlier in the trip but just walking through on the tour was nothing like the amazing experience of actually watching a play put on in the same way as it was done over 400 years ago!! There was no lighting for the first half because there was still natural light from outside (and the theater has an open roof) and when the sun went down during the second act the only lights they did have on just depicted natural daylight (because that's how it was in Shakespeare's time). So it was a very intimate show--the actors could see each and every audience member, unlike in theaters today where the audience is completely dark. Also, all the sound effects were done without modern technology. They used rainsticks for the rain, drums and a huge metal sheet for thunder, etc. There was also a little band of musicians and a singer that accompanied the show and provided dramatic effect. We had our own little soundtrack!
We could have gone for the REAL experience and paid 5 pounds for a spot in the yard, where the groundlings stand, but then we would have had to stand for all 3 hours of the show, and after all the walking we had been doing we said no thank you. So we sat in some terribly uncomfortable wooden benches instead, but the amazingness of the show totally made up for the sore bottoms we had afterwards. Once again, the talent that was on that stage blew my mind. I found myself heartbroken watching Lear go mad because the actor was so fantastic, and I felt so connected to all the characters! Oh man. I love that play. And perhaps the best part was that after the show the entire cast broke out into this lovely choral number and when that was done they all joined in with a little jig! It was fantastic!

So that was our theater experience. I loved loved loved it. And I'm pretty sure Michal felt the same way.

War, War and More War

Today was pretty much spent at the Imperial War Museum all day. This museum is totally AWESOME. It's housed in this large dome building with a huge gun in the front yard. Inside are all these old tanks and cars and planes, similar to the interior of the Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C. On the top floor there is a tribute to stopping genocide, focusing mainly on Rwanda and the the whole Balkans area. On the third and second floor is a very comprehensive and information Holocaust exhibit, which was mainly from a British perspective. There weren't as many artifacts like the massive amounts of shoes or glasses that other museums had but what I liked about this exhibit was how it focused on the people and the victims of the Holocaust- in every section there were at least three placards about people involved in the Holocaust including some artifacts- a piece of clothing or a letter or passport or something. It really hit upon the human side of the Holocaust.

The bottom floor is all about World War I, the Inter-War period and World War II. You walk through a long, seemingly unending maze full of stories, artifacts, clothing, guns, weapons, food, placards, information about these time periods. The exhibit is overwhelmingly full of great information about this time period. There was also a Trench experience and a Blitz Experience, the latter which we were not able to experience. After the culmination of WWII, there was a section dedicated to all the places around the world that the British have been involved in- the Cold War and Berlin, Cambodia, Ireland, the Falklands, etc., all the way up to the present day. Additionally, there was a section on the first floor that was full of artifacts- toys, clothing, letters, etc.- of children who went through WWII. Many letters were from children who had been evacuated to the country or from parents whose children had been evacuated. That was probably the most poignant of the war exhibits because it was about the children and how the innocent victims of adult arguments are truly affected.

And that was pretty much our day. We headed back up to the hostel, changed, headed back down the Bakerloo line, stopping at Maida Vale to see the area for personal reasons (one of my stories takes place in Maida Vale and I wanted to see what it was like) and the continued down to the Globe. The plan had been to go get dinner at Pizza Express but we ran out of time and had a little picnic by the Thames instead. Shiri is going to tell about the two shows so I'll let her have the blog for a bit now... :)

Another London Day

After braving our way through a crazy breakfast in the hostel and I honestly could have organized a hundred times better if they had just let me (I know, Scott, control issues....), we headed out to enjoy London. We tubed it down to London Bridge (the new one, not the one that fell down or the one that is in Arizona right now) and walked past Southwark Cathedral and the Golden Hinde (recreation of Sir Francis Drake's ship) to the Globe. There were no tickets left for today or tonight's King Lear so we got really swanky seats for tomorrow night. It will hopefully make up for not making it out to Stratford.

We then headed over to the Museum in Docklands. I had never been there before and it was actually quite fascinating, taking us through the entire history of the docklands area, from Roman times, Anglo-Saxon times, through Norman and Medieval times all the way up to the major changes that are happening right now through the shift from trade to offices in Canary Wharf. I was really impressed all the exhibits, especially a poignant one about the British slave trade because of sugar cane and one about the docks at war and how the docks were affected during the bombing of WWII.

The real reason that we went to the museum though was for the Jack the Ripper exhibit. The exhibit was incredibly revealing as to the nature of the Whitechapel area of London in the 1880s. There were many prostitutes in the area, mostly surrounding the border between the City of Westminster and the City of London, which is where all the banks were (and still are today). Whitechapel was the epitome of the slums, lots of immigrants, homeless people living on the streets, grisly markets, all only a few feet away from one of the richest areas of London. There were police on duty in the area but there were some streets that even the police would not walk down on their own- they wanted a partner with them. Usually though the crimes in Whitechapel weren't as deadly as murder- mostly it was petty theft and vagrancy.

So let me backtrack a little and talk about the information we learned on the Jack the Ripper tour. First of all, Jack had five major victims- all of them were prostitutes living in the Whitechapel area, all of them were living day to day, staying in lodging houses in the area, all in their 40s-50, losing their teeth, unhealthy, most not married but with numerous children. The only one who didn't fit this mold was the last victim. Jack's first victim was Polly Nichols who was last seen boasting about her new bonnet while going into a room with a gentlemen. When they found her body, they discovered that it had been slit from the throat all the way until it couldn't be slit anymore. Her intestines were all spilling out- it was incredibly gruesome. Now, there had been two other murders before this but they weren't really connected to Jack the Ripper. However, at the museum, there were all the witness reports and coroner's reports from these murdered women.

The next victim was Annie Chapman, who also was a mother of at least six kids. She was seen around the same pub that Polly Nichols had been found and her mutilation was quite similar to Polly's. It was around this time where the Metropolitan Police (in charge of the City of Westminster, where the East End is located) started to get letters written in red ink signed "Jack the Ripper". One of the amazing things about the exhibit was that there were a ton of first person documents, including several original "Jack" letters. Polly Nichols and Annie Chapman were both murdered within five days of each other and the police were trying to be ready for another attack but really had no way to track the murderer.

The third and fourth attacks came on the same day- September 7th, 1888. Elizabeth (Long Liz) Stride, a woman from Sweden who was forced back into prostitution upon the breakup of her marriage, was found first. The second one came a few hours later and shew as the only victim to be found in the City of London, not in the East End. This got the City Police involved, as well as the Metropolitan Police who were already involved. Catherine (Kate) Eddows was probably on her way back to Aldergate Church where most of the prostitutes hung out. She had actually been earlier that night arrested for being drunk in the streets and running around pretending to be a fire-truck. She was incredibly mutilated and bloodied- her body was still warm when she was found in Mitre Square. However, to make matters worse, a piece of her bloodied apron was found in the East End with a message. Painted in the area above where her body was found was the message "The Juwes are not the men who will not be blamed for nothing." (Spelled like it was found). There was an indication that it may have been written by a Mason and Charles Warren, the Chief of Police, was a Mason himself and immediately had the message erased.

That brings up another point about the difficulty of finding Jack the Ripper. Despite this being the era of Sherlock Holmes, the Police did not have the deductive reasoning the great (yet of course, fictional) detective used. Photographs were only taken of the body for identification purposes and usually crime scenes were cleaned up right away without searching for fingerprints (which didn't come for another 15 years or so) or any other sort of evidence. Additionally, the telegraph made it easier for news to spread and newspapers made matters worse themselves by interviewing witnesses on their own and coming up with their own theories.

The last Jack murder did not fully fit the pattern. Mary Kelly was twenty years old, had brought a friend home to stay with her and her common-law husband, got into a fight and was kicked out of the house. She was last seen with a few men saying "Seeing you in the morning" but obviously, she never was. She was the worst victim- the landlord of her lodgings looked into the window and saw a gruesome sight. Her body parts were strewn all over the room, her face was beaten, her hip bone had been taken out and put back in, it was incredibly gruesome.

And then, seemingly the Ripper murders ended. There were a few more murders in the area in the next five years but they were never really attributed to Jack. And now of course the problem becomes who was Jack? The police never found out although there were several suspects. One was the Duke of Clarence but he had syphilis and would have been too weak at the time to commit the murders. Another suspect was Dr. Neville Cream but he was hung before the last three murders. Also a man named Montague Druitt was suspected but it turned out that he was in prison in Canada at the time. New theories have arises since- some think it was a woman disguised as a man, someone thought it was artist Walter Sickert, there are plenty of theories yet we never know, which really makes the whole thing so much more interesting.

So there you have it, the Jack the Ripper story. Told from what we could remember from the tour and the museum.

After the Museum in Docklands, we went up to the Dominion Theatre to buy We Will Rock You tickets for tonight, then got ice cream and wandered around Covent Garden Market again. We're back at the hostel now and are heading out in a bit to enjoy some Queen music. It'll be great :)

A Bad Day

Also known as a Serious of Unfortunate Events....

So actually, the bad day began the night before (the end of the good day). We had stayed on Saturday night with a guy that we knew from the kibbutz in Israel (his nephew is in the same grade as me and we were best friends for like three days when I first started 1st grade) and thought that it was OK to spend the week at his place. Our dad had talked to him before we had left for Salisbury and he had seemed totally fine with it. He was having friends over on the weekend so we had arranged to stay with Hazel in Brighton on the weekend instead of during the week so we wouldn't be in the way. So Sunday night, we get to his place and when he gets back, turns out that he thought we were in Brighton for the night and that's when the awkwardness began. We started getting the weird vibes like he wasn't OK with us being there and it was just incredibly awkward.

We wake up the next morning and are planning to head down to Canterbury and Dover when he comes in and says that it's just not working out, that his place is too small and wouldn't we want to be closer to central London anyway? Why do we keep getting kicked out of where we're staying?? So I go to try and book us a hostel and can get us one for Monday-Wednesday only. So I book it and we pack up all our things and head down to Victoria. we completely change plans and decide to head into Oxford for the day and do C and D later in the week, maybe right before we head down to Brighton.

So we arrive in Oxford just fine, can make our way around the city pretty well and get excited to go to the Ashmoleon and the Oxford Museum. Oh, wait,, every museum (except for the Oxford Story and we were not going on that ride because it was literally, a ride) is closed on Monday. Fan-frickin-tastic. On the upside, we saw a lot of cool colleges, including Christ Church, Trinity, St. Edmunds, and walked through St. Mary's and the Bodelian and of course, popped into the Eagle and the Child (also called the Bird and the Babe) where C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien and the other Inklings hung out. We sat in Blackwell for awhile and wandered through some lovely gardens so it wasn't a total loss. No internet where we thought we'd get it though and we couldn't find an ice cream place or a phone that worked for the life of us but despite some of the disappointments, Oxford was a lovely place. Slightly chilly but no rain.

We arrive back in London, pick up our bags and head up to the hostel. It's in a decent area, off the Kensal Green tube stop and we find the hostel no problem. Oh wait, except they only take cash. Which I have about 15 pounds of. And of course, why on earth would the two cashpoints that we walk to work? We wandered around the area for literally 35 minutes before finally finding one that worked in the Sainsburys across the canal. I could not have been more frustrated with life. I was going crazy. Finally we checked in to the hostel, took showers, met one of our roommates (they moved us from a mixed to a female room which was nice) and are now blogging. Hopefully this is the END of the bad day, although right now, Lethal Weapon 2 is playing in the background. there is an entire shelf of movies- they couldn't find anything better???

A Good Day

Sunday morning we arrived at Victoria station literally exactly on time to meet Hazel. We had been there for pretty much one minute when she showed up, a lovely reminder of home. The weather was absolutely gorgeous so we decided to head up north to Camden Market, wander about there and then hit up Regents Park.

Oh Camden. It is absolute madness and mayhem up there but in a good way. There are actually several different markets- Camden Market, Camden Locks, the Horse Stables Market, Inverness Market, just to name a few. However, they're all pretty much the same. Vintage clothes, cheap collectibles, books, tons of ethnic food (right by the canal, it's like an international potluck of food!) and anything weird or crazy that you can imagine. There was one kiosk devoted entirely to motorcycle racing jackets, there was another stable that had the most ugly wedding dresses that you could ever imagine (although we decided that Hazel is going to wear one on her wedding day :) ). It was a treat to wonder what would be around the next corner. Oh, and Shiri was finally excited to get the jersey she wanted. And Youval, we bought you something too. You're going to love us forever.

Eventually though, Camden wore us out and we wandered about until we found Regent's Park. We hiked up Primrose Hill, while snacking on Hazel's Honey Nut cheerios (by the way, you may wonder why we talk about food so much on this blog- it is because we miss it. At this point, we are compiling a list of where to go when we get back. Jamba Juice, Panera and Pei Wei are at the TOP of the list. And Michal wants a turkey burger really badly....) and got a gorgeous view of the city. We could see Canary Wharf, Battersea, the BT Tower, St. Paul's, the Tate, all the major hotspots of London. We were so lucky that it was a gorgeous day because it felt like we could see just for miles. Although we really couldn't. But you know the feeling.

We trekked down into the Primrose Hill area (keeping our eyes out for Jude Law) and got our usual at Tesco. Then we trekked back up the hill and sat down for a lovely picnic lunch. The rest of the afternoon was spent wandering around Regent's Park. We of course had to walk past my future home in Cumberland Terrace (where we spotted a fox! No joke! It was so random!) and then went into the gardens where we stumbled upon a tango show, I guess you would call it. There was tango music playing and a bunch of people were just tangoing. Very strange but really cool at the same time.

We walked all the way down to Baker Street, checked out the resident of the famous detective (and husband to my favorite Mary Russell) and then decided we were tired of that area and our feet hurt and we were looking for a Flake so we tubed it down to Trafalgar, pointed out the Tower of Big Ben and all the monuments of Trafalgar to Hazel and then sat down to eat our ice cream. We spent a good forty minutes people watching in the square, including the most resilient little boy who fell down numerous times, nearly toppled into the fountain several times and enjoyed splashing his sister (but not getting splashed back). And we concluded that "manpris" will never be in.

We met JJ and her friend Ellen at the Marylebone Station at a quarter to five and went to go find St. Mary's church. Let's just say that church was an experience and luckily we all felt the same way about it- slightly lost and confused but also interested and intrigued. To make a long story short (and we will tell the long story if asked), the church (although being Anglican) as recently gotten big on the idea of healing through prayer. Towards the end of the service, they said if you needed prayer for healing to come up. Literally half the congregation (so like over a hundred) came up for prayer and that's when the oddness began. We are not to judge what was real and what was not, but the pastor was going on about how the Holy Spirit needed to come in and how the church needed to be a place of fire and as people were being prayed for, they would sway or do a kind of dance or speak in tongues or moan or even, as we witnessed at least twice, fall over. It was incredibly bizarre and after the service was over, the five of us headed back to Regent's Park to the boat area to discuss. Luckily we all felt the same way about the situation and had a good chat about it but needless to say, I don't think I'll be asking Scott to implement "the fire tunnel" into Thursday night group....

All in all though it was a wonderful day, which we probably would have appreciated more if we knew what was coming the next day.....