Jennie's Visit to London

Matt and I in front of the Seven Sisters cliffs.

For more pictures of Jennie's visit, go here.

Matt's cousin Jennie is studying in Seville, Spain this semester and she came over to visit us in London for the last four or five days. She got in around 2AM last Wednesday night! I felt bad for Matt and Jennie, but I was already asleep by the time she got here. We technically broke the rules a bit and have her signed in as our guest with our apartment complex, but she actually slept at Micky and Julia's since they have more space. We on the other hand don't have enough space to inflate our airbed.

The next morning, neither Matt nor I could show Jennie around because Matt was at work and I had classes most of the day until 5PM. So Julia showed Jennie around a bit with Evan.

That night we all ate spagetti at Julia's and when Matt came home from work, we examined the newspaper to see what theatre shows we might like to see and what was cheap. London is one of two towns (the other being New York) which is amazing for theatre. Basically you can see any of the major plays of the time in either place at any time. London has all the same shows as NYC, and it's highly likely they were originally done here. So we decided that The Lion King looked great. It was originally done in NY by Julie Taymor who is a very interesting movie director. Matt read a review of the original show afterward and they said that with the creative energy of Julie Taymor, and the deep pockets of Disney, the show was an unforgettable experience. And it really was pretty amazing. The costumes, movable sets, etc. were wonderful and innovative. Sometimes in theatre, it's just interesting to see how they resolve issues of representation. Example: how do you get the idea across of an ant hill? You dress someone in a cone and have a revolving line of articulated ants swirling around them. How do you convey romantic love blossoming between two young lions? Have pairs of ballet dancers suspended in the air above them, moving in flowing, sensuous tandem. The music was great, the singers were great. Here is the best part. When we walked up to the show, one of the ticket guys was standing outside trying to give away two free tickets. A large group had shown up and been without two of their members who couldn't come, so they asked the theatre to give the tickets away. So we took them! Matt bought the third ticket and even though we were all in separate seats for the first half, the second half we got three seats together which were fine. And the free tickets were 53-pound tickets! (That's over $100 per ticket for you Americans.) So they were really good seats and since it was a weekday show and it wasn't that busy, we got even closer for the second act. See the play of The Lion King actually reminds you how good the movie actually is too. Matt and I certainly YouTube-d some musical numbers afterwards.

The next day, Matt had to go to work again, but I didn't have any class. I had to go to the library in the morning. This inevitably turned into a prolonged affair of having to deal with cranky librarians (why are they always so cranky!?) and Jennie and I met up around noon to take a walk. We went to see the British Museum for a while, then took a long stroll around the center of London. Jennie liked walking around and seeing buildings and neighborhoods, and Matt and I really like it too. So we walked down Shaftsbury to Picadilly Circus, down to Trafalger Square, then back up through some more winding backstreets, through Soho to Oxford Street, which is a big shopping street. From there we headed back toward the British Museum and from there back home. It was a nice long three-hour walk, so we got close to Micky and Julia's habitual four-hour walking time. Jennie had already run that morning. That night Julia, Jennie and I had mad cravings for pizza. And not just any pizza, but AMERICAN pizza. Luckily I had seen a Pizza Hut off of Russell Square near our place the other night. We went there and ordered two large pizzas and took them home to eat. Matt got in from work and we all watched a BBC tv show that stars the guy from Bend It Like Beckham, called the Tudors about Henry VIII. It's an interesting show but you do end up hating the main character (Henry).

The next day was a Saturday and Matt didn't have work, so we decided to hit the road and see something other than London. We decided on going to Eastbourne which is on the southeast coast of England, because in the area are some famous sea cliffs made of chalk (yeah, it really is literally chalk) which have been continually eroding away for centuries. They are brilliant white and most of them are sheer drops into the crashing ocean below. We took the train to Eastbourne and a taxi out to the cliffs, which were fantastic. We saw people paragliding over the cliffs apparently there is a pocket of wind where you can just float above them and not fall. We walked all along the edge from a point called Beachy Head to a lighthouse (maybe one and half hour's walk) where we had our packed lunches. Then we carried on until we could see the Seven Sisters chalk cliffs. Basically, what they are is a series of peaks in the line of the cliffs, because there are these seven hills and valleys that have been cut as though by a razor in cross-section by the erosion from the ocean. There was a little part just before them where you could walk along a stone beach, so we walked down to it and enjoyed the nice beach sounds and watched kayakers in the water. Then we had to walk through some fields and such to get to a main road where there was a bus straight back to the train station.

Back on the train, we got back to London at the end of a big rugby match so there were bad crowds on the Tube. We decided to leave the train station and walk to the next nearest Tube station and take it from there. On the way, Jennie decided to start her run and she went and ran in Hyde Park, which was close by and is a very famous, enormous park in central London. Matt and I went on home because we had arranged to make chicken curry with Micky and Julia that night. We set to work and whipped up a fantastic chicken curry and we all gobbled it down. (I had it with some really good Tesco-brand wheat bear.) Then we all watched Wimbledon, which was a pretty good movie about tennis and love. (Love means nothing in tennis.)

Sunday everyone went to church and Matt and I took a long walk to Hyde Park across Oxford Street. We sat down on a bench next to an older man at the edge of the lake in Hyde Park called the Serpentine. He started feeding the birds and it seemed like every bird in a mile radius swooped down and swarmed around us.

That afternoon I had to go to the library and work, so Matt took Jennie on the famous "Westminster Walk" which Julia taught us, so they saw St. James's Park, Buckingham Palace, Green Park, the royal horse guard, Number 10 Downing Street, Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament. Then they went to Tate Britain, a museum housing some of the great British artists' work. Then they took a river ferry from Tate Britain to Tate Modern, the modern art component of the London Tate Museums. Tate Modern used to be an old enormous warehouse. Now about a quarter of it houses its permanent and temporary collections, and the rest is this huge empty space which if you think about it has huge potential for cool art. For the last year or so the big installation exhibit there were these long twisting 7-8 story slides. You could get in the line and have a slide down, and they were hugely popular. This year, the slides are gone and in their place is... a huge crack. Literally a crack in the concrete of the floor of the museum that you can walk all around and examine. Matt and Jennie said what was most interesting about that though was how interesting everyone else seemed to be in it. (Translation: they didn't think it was that cool. Ah well, modern art, hit and miss.) Also outside the museum back by popular demand was a giant metal spider about thirty feet tall. Across the river from Tate Modern, by taking the Millenium Bridge you can see the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral. Then back home where I met up with them.

Jennie had to leave at 4:00AM the next morning so we said goodbye the night before and wished her well. We'll see her again at Christmas. Micky and Julia in the space of a four day visit talked about visiting Seville with Jennie, bought plane tickets and made a hotel reservation for two weeks from now! They got super cheap tickets so they and Evan can go for about $80!

Matt and I are pretty much London-bound for a while. But we're really enjoying it. There's always somewhere to walk, something to see, something to do. And it's really safe so we can enjoy the nights out past 10PM (unlike DC for example.)