Northward, ho!

Hello!
I'm terribly sorry that I'm late yet again. From Monday to Friday last week we were on a long trip to the north of England and Scotland and I only had occasional access to wifi. Then, I had two projects and a paper to do, along with other assorted homework. Long story short, I've been pretty busy, so here is an enormous blog post to fill you in on what I've been up to.
Okay. We left bright and early Monday morning to start our trip to the north. After driving for a good long while, our first stop was the Preston temple. I'm really glad we got to go even though we only stopped for a little while. I've been feeling rather homesick and it was nice to see something that felt so much like home. London is amazing and this has been one of the most incredible experiences of my life, but it definitely still is a foreign country. The temple felt very familiar and it was really nice to be there.

Plus, it was a gorgeous day.
After visiting the temple grounds, we headed into the city of Preston. A local church member was there to show us around a bit since Preston is an important church history site. Preston is where the first English Latter-day Saints were baptized, which is a pretty big deal since most of these new members immigrated to the US and crossed the plains, helping to build up the early church. The missionaries had a lot of success here and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a bit part of the town's history as well. There are three different plaques in the local park commemorating different church events that occurred in the history.

Incidentally, this town is also where President Hinckley served part of his mission. It was in Preston that his father sent him the "Forget yourself and go to work" letter. Pretty cool.
We then pressed on (get it? like Preston) and went further north.
Our next stop was at our hostel in Ambleside, which was on the shores of Lake Windermere in the Lake District. It was the most unbelievably beautiful place. Neither words nor photographs can do it justice. It was just so serene and picturesque and seemed so entirely unreal. I'll talk about it more in a bit because I want to do this chronologically and we only stopped there for a few minutes to drop off our bags. Our bus then took us to the neighboring town of Grasmere, which was the home of William Wordsworth. We had dinner at this diner-ish place that's owned by the Wordsworth Trust. I... would not recommend it. The main course was a bland lamb stew served with bread and a drink that was meant to be lemonade, but was carbonated and terrible. That't that point of lemonade: it isn't carbonated. Or, it shouldn't be. Then, for dessert, they had some sort of cake-like substance served with a mountain of whipped cream on top. Now, I'm not really a whipped cream fan in the best of times, but I'm still pretty hungry, so I'm giving this cake a chance. I guess in England, when they say whipped cream, they mean just that--cream that has been whipped. No other ingredients. No sugar, for instance. It tasted like milk with the consistency of toothpaste. Not a fan. Sorry, cake.
Anyway, after our disappointing dinner, we headed down the road to tour Dove Cottage. This is where Wordsworth lived for about eight years, and where he wrote his greatest poetry (according to our guide. I'm not terribly familiar with Wordsworth's words-work). We learned lots of interesting facts about Wordsworth during our tour of his cottage. Our guide was the curator (I think that's his title, but I may be wrong) of the Jerwood center, which is part of the Wordsworth Trust that holds and studies manuscripts and first editions of Wordsworth and his contemporaries, so he was quite knowledgeable. Wordsworth had a lot of famous house-guests while he was living at Dove Cottage, and most of them were opium addicts, so that's fun. He was best bros with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who wrote the Rime of the Ancient Mariner, and they wrote a lot of poetry together. Wordsworth also played host to Thomas De Quincy, who wrote a book called Confessions of an English Opium Eater, and Sir Walter Scott of Ivanhoe fame (which I confess I only know about because of Betsy-Tacy).
After the tour, we returned to the hostel and I sat by the lake and read for awhile, which was the nicest thing ever (or would have been if it were a little less chilly). The sun was setting and I don't think I've ever seen a more beautiful landscape.

I just wish that instead of this picture, I could take you there and show you what it was actually like. Pictures can only give you an idea, and just seeing what something looks like can't tell you how it really felt to be there. This one view is quite pretty, but without seeing the whole and being surrounded by the inexpressible beauty of it all, this one view can't even be what it was when I took this picture.
So, sorry. I hope you get to go sometime.
Anyway, we went to bed. The next morning, our group split in half. There were two different sessions of a workshop with the Jerwood center. You could either go hiking in the morning and work with the center in the afternoon or work with the center first and go to the Beatrix Potter house. Beatrix won for me, so I went to the center with the earlier group.
The workshop was really good. It was an amazing opportunity that we got to have because BYU has some sort of special relationship with the Wordsworth Trust. The curator guy, Jeff, was very interesting, but he let us kind of steer the session toward what we were most interested in. We discussed several Wordsworth poems, but we also got to look at and even hold some of the treasures they had in the center. The girl sitting next to me asked to see a first edition of Frankenstein, so he pulled it out and had her hold it and read aloud the part when Victor brings the monster to life. She started crying, and I was close to tears myself, which was weird on both our parts since she'd never read it before and I hate the book. There's just something really special about first editions. Here's what it looked like:

Another girl got to look at Wordsworth's personal copy of Paradise Lost, which he had bound with extra pages so he could write his notes into it.

It was just a really neat experience.
Then, we took a terrifying bus ride to Hill Top Farm, the home of Beatrix Potter. Our bus driver for the week was a psychopath named Tracy. She was a chain-smoking, cursing, leggings-wearing maniac who would brook no deviation from the itinerary. She once yelled at us over the intercom for being a bit late back to the bus after our professors had given us permission to stay longer. She also ran into a stone wall that some people said collapsed (I couldn't see, so I'm not sure if that's true) and just drove off.
Anyway, this was probably the worst drive of all. The roads were not designed for buses. They were narrow and steep and winding and terrifying. We did make it, though, thank goodness.
Hill Top was so pretty and idyllic. It was exactly where Beatrix Potter belonged. She had kept very detailed descriptions of her gardens and what plants had been where, so it was almost exactly like how it had been when she lived there. There were even rabbits in the garden:

It was just so perfect.

Unfortunately, so pictures were allowed inside, but it was the coolest thing. They had little copies of The Tale of Samuel Whiskers that you could carry around with you because she'd used rooms in her house for the backgrounds in the illustrations. It was so crazy to look at the illustrations and then see the exact same thing in real life--rugs, furniture, and everything. Another interesting thing about that book is that actual events in her house inspired it. Her cat climbed up the chimney and got stuck. They had to cut out a floorboard to rescue the cat. She turned that event into that book where Tom Kitten climbs up the chimney, is captured by rats who hope to turn him into a dumpling pudding, and is saved by a dog who cuts out a floorboard.
I remembered watching a cartoon of this story at the Johnsons' house, so I looked it up on Youtube. It's the craziest thing to watch. In the book illustrations, you can see parts of her house, but in the cartoon you see so much more and it's all accurate. There's also a beginning live-action segment that's filmed on location. You can watch it too if you want your own tour. Be warned, though. The child voice actors for the kittens are abominable.
Samuel Whiskers Video
We then went back to Ambleside, wandered around town for a bit, and then went back to the hostel.
The next morning, we left to head to Edinburgh. Upon reaching the city, we dropped our bags at our hotel and headed up to Edinburgh Castle. It was pretty neat, but it was also very cold. We got to see the Scottish crown jewels, as well as the Stone of Scone, which is where all the Scottish kings were crowned, including Macbeth. I walked around the city with some people after that. To be honest, Edinburgh wasn't really my favorite. It was cool to be there, but it's kind of an ugly city. The natural landscape around the city is gorgeous, but the city itself is sort of dark and dingy and rather confusing. There are streets sort of stacked on top of each other, if that makes sense. Like, there's a street at ground level, and then there's another street suspended above it somehow. I don't really know why or how.
We looked in a lot of shops, but it was pouring rain, so we headed back to the hotel rather early. I was freezing, so I took a shower and read in bed for a bit. It was nice to have a little downtime.
The next morning we headed back to England. Our first stop was Hadrian's Wall. It was very cold and rainy, but at least there were adorable sheep:

The Romans really knew how to build things, let me tell you. It was amazing how much was still standing after thousands of years of neglect.

Next stop was Durham Cathedral. It was too big to get a very good picture of and no cameras were allowed inside, so you'll just have to use your imaginations. Or google. Anyway, Durham is famous for being the final resting place of St. Cuthbert and the Venerable Bede. It's a traditional site for pilgrimages, much like Canterbury. It was really beautiful, but I just don't really have too much to say about it. It's just kind of an odd experience visiting places that are sacred to others, but not necessarily to you. It feels a little sketchy going to places like this as a tourist. I try to be very respectful, but it's just sort of weird.
The last site that we visited was called Fountains Abbey (like Downton Abbey but completely different). This used to be a Catholic Monastery until Henry VIII had it torn down. It's interesting how often that guy pops up, and what he's usually doing when he pops up is destroying things.
I really, really liked this place. It was huge and open and there weren't many people there, so it had just a feeling of peacefulness. The ruins had a definite beauty to them and I loved just walked around and exploring them.

After we left the Abbey, we went to our lodgings for the night. We were staying in Haworth, the city of the Bronte sisters, so it's no surprise that this is what our hostel looked like:

Professor Cutler refers to it as the haunted hostel. It definitely was creepy and I think forever after, this is what I'll imagine Wuthering Heights looks like.
Since we were in Haworth, our next day's activity was to visit the Bronte parsonage. We took a little tour of the house and museum and then walked through the moors, where I met a friendly horse.
I am not a Bronte fan, myself. Wuthering Heights was our assigned reading for our English class and while I found it interesting, I can't say that I liked it much. The Brontes were crazy, man. In the intro to my Wuthering Heights book, it relates a story about how Emily Bronte got bit by a dog with rabies and, without telling anyone, she heated up an iron and cauterized the bite herself. The story only got out when Charlotte noticed the nasty scar. These girls were something else.
But, being in their landscape, where they lived out their short lives, really helped me gain a better understanding of their books. Their front yard was a graveyard. Every day was lived with the background noise of names being chiseled onto gravestones. The water source ran through the graveyard and was contaminated by decomposing human bodies, so everyone in the town was sick and death was omnipresent in their lives. No wonder Wuthering Heights is a little bleak.
The moors, too, are just quite ugly and uninviting.

 The best thing that came out of our visit was that the lady who gave us a presentation on the sisters mentioned a music video of Wuthering Heights in passing and some girls found it and showed part of it in their presentation on the landscape of Haworth in class. I looked it up tonight to see the whole thing and it is either the best or the worst thing ever. Take a peek, if you'd like:
Wuthering Heights
I accidentally started to kind of love it. So there's that.
Our final stop on our trek across England was Chatsworth. It's a mansion that apparently was the inspiration for Pemberly in Pride and Prejudice and was used as the location for the Keira Knightley movie. We didn't have near the amount of time that I would have liked to have spent there. We took a tour through the house, which was very beautiful, but I could have wandered through the grounds for hours and hours.
I just looked through the pictures of the house and realized that I pretty much only took pictures of stuff that I thought was funny rather than pictures of the house's beauty. That's a problem I have a lot of the time. But come on, when you have a painting like this hanging up, what do you expect me to do?

Why that particular section of horse?
Or this:

Is that not the most terrifying desk decoration you've ever seen? I think you can click on it to make it bigger.
Anyway, here's a nice picture of the house:

Here you can kind of see this maze that I got lost in. I ended up going out the entrance, but at least I got out.

And it was all just really pretty. Then I bought some mediocre ice cream and we left to go back to London.
Okay! I'm still a bit behind, but at least I got this trip written about. I'll try to do some more soon.
Thanks for reading!

Late-y Lateness

Sorry guys.
It's been a little crazy up in here. And I've been feeling kind of sick. So that's why this blog post is so late, and it'll probably be short, too. I just wanted to do a quick update since we're going on a long trip this week and I don't know about the wifi situation.
Anyhow, on Wednesday, we went on a day trip to Bath. The first stop, though, was called Stourhead Gardens. This was the most idyllically, ridiculously gorgeous place I've ever been.
I mean

Look at it

We were only able to walk around for maybe a couple of hours, but I could have stayed all day. This is the England of my dreams. London is very cool, but this, man. This is what I'm talking about.
The highlight of the gardens for many people is this vaguely Greek-ish temple-y building where they apparently shot part of the Keira Knightley Pride and Prejudice. I've seen it before, but I have hardly any memory of that version. I did get a pic, though, just because. Apparently this is the very spot where she leaned. Cue dramatic romance face.

Anyway, we had to go to head to Bath. This is another place that I'd love to come back to. The only thing we did here was tour the Roman baths. Afterward, we had a couple of hours to wander around, but I didn't want to get lost, so I didn't ever stray too far.
The baths were pretty cool, though. I don't think they're something that would really be on the top of my list of things that I want to see. I don't know too much about Romans. The real draw of Bath, for me, is its connection to the stories of Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer. I really wanted to buy a copy of Northanger Abbey while I was there, but I couldn't find one. Oh well. I probably should cool it on the books, anyway, or I'll never get my suitcase home.
I just don't really have too much to say about the baths. It was interesting to kind of catch a glimpse into the past, though. It's quite incredible how long these structures have lasted.

I'm going to hazard a guess that that's not what the water looked like back then. Because I don't think anyone could look at that water and be like, "I'm going to get in there and it will probably cure me of all sorts of ailments and totally not give me diseases. Let's all do it together!"
Anyway, next we went to Stonehenge

Wow. Very majesty. Such magnificent. (Sorry, guys. It's really late right now.)
I really enjoyed Stonehenge. It was peaceful there. There were other people there, but it didn't seem nearly as crowded as most of the other places we'd been to. Maybe it was just because it's in a big open field rather than in the city. It was also nice to just have the one thing to look at. In so many places, you rush through room after room, trying to learn about everything, but here it's just a circle of rocks. There's something very calming in that. One of the young daughters of one of my professors was telling me how boring she found Stonehenge. Her complaint was that it didn't do anything. That's what I liked about it. It's just there. But, the fact that it's there is fascinating. Although, to be honest, I was expecting the stones to be a little bigger, they are still an extremely respectable size. How did people, ancient people for that matter, with no modern technology or equipment construct it? And why? It would have taken so much time and effort to complete. Why was it worth it? It's that mystery that makes it fascinating.
Plus, it's such an iconic place. Everyone knows about Stonehenge. It was very cool to actually be there.

I honestly can't remember what I did on Thursday. That might have been the day of the cemetery fiasco. Briefly, we had to go to a cemetery and take pictures of some graves. It was pretty far away, but we finally got there. We walked around for awhile and then it just poured rain. We all got drenched and decided to just go back to the center. I didn't get all the pictures I needed, so I'll have to go back.
On Friday, we toured Westminster Abbey. They didn't allow pictures inside and I don't like any of the ones I took of its exterior, so just use your imagination. It's a really interesting place to be in, mostly because the floor is just covered in grave markers. You literally can't walk anywhere without walking over someone's grave. I saw the tombs of Queen Elizabeth, Bloody Mary, and Edward the Confessor, among others. My favorite part was definitely the Poet's Corner, where many famous writers and poets are buried. Lord Byron, Robert Browning, Lewis Carroll, George Elliot, T. S. Elliot, and many others are buried there. In one section, Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, Rudyard Kipling, and Handel are all grouped together. It was very neat to see Dickens's grave, since I'm such a fan, but it also made me sad. He never wanted to be buried there. In fact, he actively requested not to be buried in Westminster. He wanted a small, quiet funeral and an obscure burial. What he got was a week of people filing past to see him lying in state and a command by Queen Victoria that laid him in his final resting place. It just made me feel bad and kind of wonder about the whole celebrity culture that we have. It's just like people seeing a celebrity and feeling like that famous person should be obligated to stop for them and take a picture regardless of whether that person wants to be bothered. It seems like we feel like we have a sort of ownership over celebrities and that we should have a say in their decisions, such as where they're buried. I know that they were trying to bestow an honor on Dickens, but it still just feels sad and wrong to me.
Anyway, on Saturday we went on a tour of the Houses of Parliament. Once again, no photos were allowed, but I did get some pictures of Big Ben.

It was just so weird to be in this part of London. You have Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, plus the London Eye and Westminster Abbey all in one place. It's so iconic and surreal to be standing there.
We had a very informative tour guide for the Houses of Parliament. The thing that I learned is that British government is weird, man. It's very ritualistic. Apparently, every year on June 1st, the queen gives a speech and opens up the session of Parliament. The members of the House of Lords are all assembled in the right room, but the MPs of the House of Commons don't come yet. The queen sends a messenger down a hallway to the room where the Commons MPs are. They slam the door in his face. Then, he knocks on the door with a special stick in a special spot, and the members of the House of Commons follow him back to the first room and listen to the queen.
That was just one example, but there's all sorts of other weird stuff about the government. It's not required for MPs to show up. Most votes are decided by whichever group yells the loudest. When there's a tiebreaker, MPs who aren't attending have eight minutes to get there to have their vote counted.
It's just super different.
Anyway, that's how my week has been. Tomorrow morning (or this morning, actually. It's really late) we're leaving for our trip north. We're going to be passing through the Lakes District, lots of church history sites, and Edinburgh. I may or may not update while I'm there depending on the wi-fi situation and how tired I am. Until then,
Bye!

Gotta Get Back to Hogwarts

Hello!

Sorry this is late! The wi-fi at the Centre has been having one of its tantrums, but it's back online again (see what I did there?). Anyway, this post is about yesterday. I think I'll do another one about what happened today (Bath! Stourhead Gardens! Stonehenge!), but I'll probably write it tomorrow because of homework. Anyway, this is my rundown of the HP Studio tours. An alternate title for this post is "A Rant on Commercialism," but I'll get to that later. Prepare yourself for a little bit of crazy, though.

I should probably preface this by letting you know that I have very strong feelings and opinions about Harry Potter. I absolutely love the books. Like so many other kids in my generation, they formed a large part of my childhood. The books are not only fun and engrossing reads, but they have a strong morality and an appreciation for goodness, loyalty, bravery, and, above all, love that is heartening and inspirational. These books and the characters in them will always hold a place in my heart.

So, yes, I love Harry Potter. And I didn’t not love the studio tour. In fact, there were lots of things that I really, really liked about it. I mean, the movies have never really been my favorite things. Don’t get me wrong, they’re actually quite good, but they’re not the books. I understand that they have to cut stuff out to make them fit into movies, and I think they do the best they can, but I feel like a lot of the complexity of the story and characters is lost on the screen version, and you know how I love complexity.  I do still enjoy watching them, but I’ve never really been a fanatic for them. I read the books over and over, but there are several of the movies that I’ve only seen once. That said, I did really, really like seeing the sets, props, and costumes from the movies. There were a lot of details that I got to see that you never see on camera, and it was really cool to see the care and love that went into everything.

I started the day in full-on excited fangirl mode. It was just fun to be there with other people who love Harry Potter and just to be doing something so completely nerdy and fun. The tour starts with a little introductory movie, but on the wall on the side of the line where you wait to go in to the movie they had this bad boy:

Harry's actual cupboard under the stairs! It's so little and adorable and depressing! It definitely got me in the right mood to start the tour. Then, there was this fun movie about how Harry Potter had sort of caught the world's imagination, and how it unites us all or something. Then, we entered the Great Hall. It was really quite cool, but smaller than I'd thought it would be. It was interesting to see the costumes they had there, too. I took lots of pictures, but I'll just post some of my favorites:
Here's Harry's first set of Hogwarts robes:

And here's Dumbledore, Professor McGonagall, and Snape:

There was a section with wigs, which I thought was really interesting. You know that people like Hagrid and Lucius Malfoy are wearing wigs, but they also had wigs for Hermione, Ron, and Draco, which I wasn't really expecting since I'd assumed they were just using their real hair.

Then we got into some of the sets. Here's the Gryffindor boys' dormitory (Neville's bed is in the foreground):

 And here's Ron's headless body standing in the Gryffindor common room. I really want to go back and watch the movies now, because I feel like this isn't how I remember these rooms. Maybe part of it is that I'm never too concentrated on the background when I watch the movies, but I think another part of it is that I have mental pictures of the rooms that are a bit stronger than the movie versions. It'll be really interesting to watch the movies again, though. The funny thing is that all the sets are smaller than you'd expect.

And here's me with the costumes that our trio wore in the final battle at Hogwarts:

The costume that surprised me the most was this one of Voldemort's:

It's like a light lime green color. What? The card says it's from the Half-Blood Prince which, granted, I've only seen once, but I think I would have remembered this costume if I'd seen it. It just seems a little fruity for the Dark Lord. I guess maybe it shows up differently on camera or something. It just made me laugh.
Here's Dolores Umbridge's Ministry of Magic office, which I sort of loved. She's such an awful, awful person, which is what makes her such a great character. She's the reason why the fifth book is so great.

Here are some of her costumes. I really liked the details. The brooch on the one on the left is a cat, which you'd probably never pick up onscreen. I love stuff like that.

Then we went outside. Here's me on the Knight bus, which was pretty cool:

And here's Number Four Privet Drive, which is an actual house-sized house:

My favorite part of the tour—probably everyone’s favorite part—was the Hogwarts castle scale model at the end. It was huge—much bigger than I was expecting. And it was so beautifully detailed. It just looked absolutely real, like you could just walk down and go inside and start your magical education.  And believe me, I wanted to.

It was just absolutely incredible.

Then, at the end of the tour, there’s this quote on the wall from J. K. Rowling: “Whether you come back by page or by the big screen, Hogwarts will always be there to welcome you home." Beautiful.

And then… the gift shop.
(This is the rant bit. You can skip this paragraph if you want to)

This is what left a sour taste in my mouth. It just felt like hypocrisy. There you have that beautiful quote from J.K. and now you’re trying to fleece us for all we’re worth. Everything in the gift shop cost about twice as much as the highest price I’d be willing to pay for it. It just felt so wrong to me. The people who are coming to the studio tour and want to buy the merchandise are the people who’ve purchased and loved the books and movies. These are the people who have made the people of the Harry Potter franchise very wealthy, so it seems like the movie people could stand to give back a little. It just felt wrong of them to try to take advantage of people’s HP love like that. Don’t tell us that we’re all one big happy Potter family and then try to rob us. I get that it’s a movie franchise and it has to be commercialized because that’s what movie franchises are for, but I felt like it could have been done in a less tasteless way. In all fairness, much of the merchandise was very well made (except for some designs on t-shirts and sweatshirts and things that were very tacky) and I had to keep telling myself no on lots of things. I would happily have purchased plenty of things if the prices had been the least bit reasonable, but it just felt like they were money-grubbing to me. It felt like a desecration of art. I guess it’s just using economic principles to charge more since the people who love Harry Potter the most are usually willing to pay more, but it just gave a bad taste to the whole experience. I'm not saying that I think there shouldn't have been a shop or that the movie people aren't entitled to make a profit off of their work. I think there is a balance that can be struck between commercialization and respect for art. This gift shop, however, just hurt my soul. It’s very similar to how I felt about Harry Potter World in Orlando, except I disliked that much more (I won’t get into that here).

Maybe I’m just a crazy cheapskate. Everyone else absolutely loved it, and I definitely loved the tour part of it, and I’m glad I went. The detail and craftsmanship on the sets, props, and costumes were beautiful and I really enjoyed seeing them. However, my deep and abiding love for Harry Potter also gives me very strong opinions about Harry Potter and I don’t like to feel like I’m being taken advantage of, especially by something that I love and something that claims to love me as a fan (see the above Rowling quote). I guess that’s just a problem with the entire movie industry in general, I just don’t care about most other franchises the way I care about HP.

Anyway, that’s my take on the Harry Potter Studio Tours. If you get the chance, I would definitely go. Maybe the parts that bothered me won’t bother you, and even if they do, there’s enough good for the experience to be worth it.

Thanks for reading and putting up with my craziness. If the internet doesn't go down, I'll tell you about Stonehenge and stuff tomorrow!

Bonjour!

Hey all! Long time, no blog!
Sorry for the late update. I'm back in the London Centre and the wi-fi has been a little temperamental. Other than that, the London Centre is amazing! I'd encourage people to come on this study abroad just so they can live here. Apparently Johnny Depp has an apartment just down the street and several people have seen him walking around, so that's pretty cool too. (Speaking of celebrities, some girls from my group went to stand outside the Maleficent premier and got pictures with Brad Pitt. They were in a local newspaper too. Crazy stuff.) I'll need to post some pictures of the Centre, but I think I'll save that for another post since this one's going to be ridiculously long.
Okay, Paris. So, we left at about 4 am on Tuesday morning in order to catch the Chunnel train at about 6:30 at St. Pancras station. I think I fell asleep during the part where we were under the English channel, so I can't really tell you what that was like. Anyhow, we arrived in Paris at about 9 am local time--it's one hour ahead of London.
The first thing we did was take the Metro over to the Pompidou Center, which is right by an LDS church where the BYU Paris study abroad group has their classes. They gave us a little introduction to the city as well as some advice (say "bonjour" and "pardon", don't buy things from people by the Eiffel tower, don't go around by yourself) and then sent us on our merry way.
A few girls from the Paris group showed a group of us around to a few places. We walked down the Champs Elysees for a bit, and I had this song stuck in my head the whole time, even though I only know about three words of it:
Champs Elysees song
We then ended up at the Arc de Triomphe.

And they were doing construction on it, so the picture's kind of lame. We walked around under it for a bit too. I feel bad that I don't know too much about it. There were signs with historical facts on them, but they were in French, and I couldn't decipher them very well with my limited French skills. I would look it up, but I need to get a move on, since I still have homework I need to do tonight. There was also this terrifying clown wandering around, which leads me to my first observation about France. They have a lot of weird street performers.

For instance, there was a guy in a superhero outfit breakdancing by the Eiffel tower, and later a guy fire dancing in the same place. I saw two different Michael Jackson dancers, one of which was dancing inside a Metro car as it was moving, and numerous bands in various places.
Another observation about France, while I'm thinking about it, is that there are lots of creepy men who are very forward. There were several guys who asked if we wanted to go somewhere with them or asked us where we were staying. Rachel kept having guys try to hug or kiss her, which was pretty creepy. Moral of the story: if you're pretty and blonde, men will harass you in Paris, so be on your guard.
Anyhow, back to my day. We next went to Notre Dame. It was incredibly beautiful to see it in real life. You just don't get the idea of how big it really is from seeing pictures, or even from watching the Disney movie. It was gorgeous, though, and I loved being able to recognize the Gothic details that we'd learned about in my history of architecture class. As we left, we heard the bells ring, too, which was really cool. No sign of Quasimodo, though.

Just a side note: check out how blue that sky is. The weather was ridiculously beautiful (except for the one time it rained) the whole time we were there. Paris is just a gorgeous city.
Next, we tried to go to the Catacombs (at least I think it was next. My chronology has gotten a bit messed up since we did so much), but they were closed, so a couple of girls and I went to the Eiffel tower. We hung around there for quite a bit, waiting for it to get dark so we could see the tower light up. We got really good crepes at a stand and ate them in front of the tower, which was pretty surreal. It was just about the most French thing ever, to eat crepes in front of the Eiffel tower, and we enjoyed it thoroughly. We also took lots of pictures. This one is probably my favorite:

It's like High School Musical up in here. After it got dark, the tower lit up, which was really pretty. Then, it started "sparkling," which basically means that a bunch of lights on the tower flickered on and off randomly. I found that a little bit tacky, personally, but it was still fun to see.

The sparkling was hard to get a very good picture of, but this one gives you a bit of an idea. After that, we headed back to our hotel and went to bed, since we were all pretty exhausted from walking around all day on only three hours of sleep.
Next morning, we got up and ate the hotel breakfast. Now, I'm not usually a continental breakfast fan, but (besides Granny's bacon/french toast breakfast) this was the best breakfast I've ever had. I had baguettes, croissants, crepes, pain au chocolat, you name it. And an apple so it was healthy. It was beautiful.
Some girls and I then headed to the Louvre.

It was enormous. And beautiful. We were only in Paris for three days, though, so we had to move pretty quickly. I feel like a total jerk, but we probably only spent an hour and a half there, and you'd probably need at least two days to see it properly. I did see the Mona Lisa, though. The room was absolutely packed. It was insane, and smelled terrible. To give you an idea:

And it got even more crowded. I managed to squeeze in a little closer, but this was the best picture I could get:

I actually don't get what all the fuss is about. I mean, I like da Vinci and everything, and it's a nice painting, but it's not really all that cool, to be honest. It's pretty small and it's just some lady with no eyebrows. Yet hundreds of Asian tourists pack into a room to see it and it's probably the most famous painting of all time. If anyone knows why it's so special, please let me know, because I'm quite curious.
We then went to the Eiffel tower, as the girls I was with had tickets to go up to the top. I got a few great pictures on our walk from the Metro station to the tower. Look at this pic of the Seine. It was the prettiest day. I can't even handle that sky.

There was a big group going up the tower, and a few of us who didn't have tickets were able to buy some there. Unfortunately, as we found out later, our tickets were printed wrong or something and we were only able to go up to the second level. I wasn't too upset. It was cool enough to just be there. Plus, there were some really great views just from where we were.

Beautiful. My favorite part of the tower, though, had to be this little warning sign on the elevator door. Despite the single tear and the slight frown, he doesn't actually seem all that distressed by the giant red sunburst of pain around his hand. It just made me laugh

The next stop was the Musee d'Orsay. This was the place that I was the most excited to go while we were in Paris. I love the style of art in the Orsay much better than the Louvre, even though the Louvre is cool and all. However, we arrived too late. The museum had shut its doors for the day. My only consolation was a nearby crepe stand and this statue of Thomas Jefferson, which I thought was funny because I didn't expect to see him in France.

There's also a Metro station named after Franklin D. Roosevelt (and one called Stalingrad, which is irrelevant, but interesting), which I think is funny because you always hear about how much the French hate Americans, but that hasn't really been my experience. It seemed, to me at least, that the French were friendlier than the Brits. We ate out one night and our waiter kept refilling our water pitcher and bread basket, which has never happened so far in England.
Anyway, we next stopped on this bridge. There are lots of bridges like this in Paris with these locks on them.  Looking at the other bridges that we saw later, I don't think this was the original one, since there were a couple where you couldn't even see through the handrails since there were so many locks. I'm not really sure what the significance of the locks is, other than that it has something to do with love. We got a picture, though.

We then met up with the entire group to go on a boat tour down the Seine. It was pretty cool to see all the sight from the river and see where places were in relation to each other, which you don't really get from taking the Metro. After that, we walked around the Champs Elysees for awhile again, trying not very successfully to find a bathroom. Public bathrooms aren't really a thing here.
Next morning, we ate another superb breakfast and headed out to Versailles. I was really stoked to see it since I'd learned about it in my architecture class as well. We took about an hour's train ride to get there. Unfortunately, there was some sort of strike going down and the palace was closed. The sad thing was that lots of people in our group had been saving Versailles for the last day and nobody got to see it. The pictures I took aren't even worth posting since we couldn't get past the gate. Boo.
So, we took another train back. The kicker was that we had to pay extra for the train since it was so far away, and we didn't even get to go inside the palace. That hurt.
The good news is that we got to go to the Musee d'Orsay after all. Unfortunately, no pictures were allowed, so you don't get to see. We went through the Van Gogh exhibit, which was very cool. I really like his landscapes. My favorite of the ones of his that they had there is called Starry Night Over the Rhone, which isn't the Starry Night that you're thinking about. I just really love the reflections of the light in the water. I wish we could have spent more time in the Orsay, since we only saw a small portion of all the gorgeous paintings that they had, but it was our last day and we had to keep moving.
Our last stop was the Palais Garnier, which is the opera house where the Phantom of the Opera is set. It was beautiful, but quite opulent. I mean, take a look at this hallway:

It was also a bit creepy, in a way. There were lots of archways, some with mirrors, and some without so it was hard to tell what was real and what was just a reflection. It gave the whole place an air of mystery and unreality. It's not a place I would want to be alone in after dark. It's hard to explain, but it did kind of give me the jibblies.
After that, we picked up our bags and headed back to the train station to go back to England. It was a pretty crazy three days. I don't think I've ever had sorer feet. We were just on the go constantly. We saw lots of really cool things, but I was very tired by the end and very glad to get back to London. I guess that's what this little trip did most for me: it made London feel more like home. London just feels much safer. I don't know if it really is (one of the girls in our group had her phone stolen today) but at least men aren't always harassing you. I much prefer the Tube to the Metro, and it's nice to see signs in a language that I understand. Paris was very nice and I really enjoyed going, but I think my heart will always belong to England.
Anyway, that's the Paris trip for you!
The past couple of days have been pretty unremarkable. It's mostly just been settling into the Centre, doing laundry, and meaning to do homework but never actually getting much done.
I did give into temptation and buy these, though. Take in the majesty:

And I bought tickets to go to the Harry Potter studio tours on Tuesday, so look forward to a full report of that.
Anyhow, I've got homework to do and miles to go before I sleep, so I'll blog at you later. Thanks for reading!