PICTURES!!!

So.

It's been a while.

This is pretty much the vibe I've been getting from people:

I don't really have anything to say about that.

Who's ready for some pictures?!?! :D

First, here are some pictures of my flat that I've been staying in for the past couple weeks. It is fabulous and way better than I was expecting. :)

Here's the main hallway in my flat. I'm standing in the bedroom doorway, the bathroom is open on the right, and the door at the end leads to a shared kitchen with the other flat.

This is the beautiful view from my bedroom window. . . Lovely, I know. :)

My bed! The mattress isn't the best and I think it is collapsed a little in the middle, but it works. :) Plus I have my homemade ninja turtle pillowcase, so all is well. :D My room only has two people in it, but the others have three or more. I'm special. :)

I have my own wardrobe closet. :) Although, I'll admit that I've pretty much just been living out of my suitcase against the wall since I got here. Still haven't really unpacked. . .

A VERY nice bathroom, especially since it is only shared by two people and not six. I've heard that it is a lot bigger than in the flats downstairs with the bigger rooms, and I feel a little guilty about that. . . but not really. :P
However, we didn't have any hot water for the first two days, and that was NOT OKAY. But they came and fixed it. :)

SUPER nice kitchen, fully equipped with flat screen tv, stove, oven, microwave, toaster, and two fridges. This kitchen is shared with my flat and then flat two which has a separate door going into their room, so there are only five of us. :D

My spoils. >:)

I don't really know how I'm going to structure this post, so let's just bring on the pictures, shall we?

This is the first meal that I bought after starting my study abroad. A fish cake and chips from a little Arabic cafe place called Gelgela (or Felfela, it was written differently on the menu and the table and the walls. . .) It was pretty okay, especially for it only being £2.30.

The Peter Pan statue in Kensington Gardens, cool because the book was written in the park.

And here's a selfie to prove that I was really there. . . Something is weird with my phone front camera, so all of my selfie pics turn out blue. . . :/ 

A cute little cottage in Hyde Park

And now for the vegetation gallery from the park . . .

These look like the flowers from Horton Hears a Who. . .

We found this little fountain in the middle on the park and we all took turns drinking from it. :) We realized as we walked away that it might not actually be for human drinking, but more of a cattle trough. . . It was delicious though.

This is a giant carved tree stump. You can't really see, but there are dozens (hundreds?) of painted animals and mythical creatures and designs carved right out of the tree, but it looks like they were there naturally. It is awesome.

Another fountain that we wanted to drink from, but it was dry. :(

Kensington Palace from afar

Queen Victoria? :/ I don't remember, but this statue is in front of the palace at the end of the driveway/path

Skip ahead to our field trip to Hampton Court. :)

Train Selfie! I got almost everyone in, just a couple people didn't get the memo and were not looking at me. Then I covered some poor person with my face and accidentally cut Rachel's face in half in the corner. 

First view of Hampton Court Palace!

I found a golden archway and decided to be fabulous.

The palace's awesome brick twisty chimneys. :) One of my favorite parts of the palace.

We went into the gardens first, and in the rose garden we found this statue. I remembered it from when I was there five years ago and made sure to get a pitcure with it. :D

And another.

And another. :)

 Enter gallery of Hampton Garden flowers! (and other forms of cultivated vegetation)

My face! Lest you forget that this blog is, in fact, about me, not beautiful flowers. . .

These were possibly my favorites. I love that the leaves and stems were almost black; that's not just weird lighting. :)

My groupies in the tunnel of leaves. . .

Beautiful gardens that we weren't allowed into. . .

Another chimney. :)

Some black velvet flowers. Why not? :)

DRAGON

A very photoshopped-looking flower

 Moving inside the actual palace—we were sort of rushed because we spent so much time in the gardens that we only had a couple minutes before it closed.

I like this ceiling and how the painting spills over onto the walls. :) also the perfectly formed rainbow in the left corner. :D

Apparently it is a thing to make wall art out of weapons. We were talking to an employee, and he said that each rifle and sword and pistol is taken down one by one and cleaned on a regular basis, and that every weapon on the walls has seen real combat before being retired to wall-warming duty.

Ok, bad picture, but the sun was rude enough to show up and ruin it. But this is proving that I was in Surrey, as in  Private Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey. :D

While waiting for the train back to London, I caved and got a Galaxy bar. SOOOOOO GOOOOOOD. Way better than Hersheys chocolate. . . :D

We went to the Tower of London again as a group:

Found the hugest book I've ever seen, but was disappointed to realize that it is just a ledger of receipts and other boring stuff from hundreds of years ago. . .

More weapon art. :D

We spent a while in the interactive room of the White Tower. I am a crackshot and got "DEAD ON TARGET" on my first try, accounting for distance and wind speed and direction that was changing constantly. :D Just call me Hawkeye.

I was too slow to get the pic when DEAD ON TARGET was flashing. :P

Watched Katy destroy the enemy archers as they were fleeing. :)

Also caught her and her very majestic royal lion twin. :P

Could have reached out and touched the men in uniform. . . :)

After we left the Tower, we crossed the Thames to find Tooley street and Borough market. We only got a little lost trying to find the London bridge and ended up underneath it.

Int the middle of the London Bridge looking over at the Tower Bridge. 

Well, we found Tooley street easily enough, but ended up getting lost by walking the wrong direction down it. . . :P But we found this cool little food court, covered shopping district

With a moving boat sculpture monument thing in the middle. :)

Egg.

Building egg. FUNNY STORY: We rounded the corner and saw this building. I was joking "Ooo, look. Let's take a picture!" Apparently I sounded like a super-tourist which cracked Katy up, and then suddenly I was laughing so hard that I seriously couldn't breathe. It lasted for a long time. We walked all the way from where this picture was taken to the other side of it before I could talk normally again.

We eventually found some other BYU people and asked where we were supposed to go to find the market that we wanted to go to. Yep. We had walked right away from it immediately after crossing the London Bridge and had made it all the way to the Tower Bridge (scroll back a couple pics to the one I took of it from the London Bridge and you'll get just how far we had walked for no reason.  . .) Anywho, we were set right and we went to visit this Southwark Cathedral and it was gorgeous inside. (Shakespeare is buried there, and he has a stained-glass window  above his monument inside that has all of his characters from his plays in it. It was awesome) But I wasn't allowed to take pictures inside. :(

Proof I was there!

We eventually found Borough Market (right across the street from the cathedral) but we got there right as everyone was finishing up closing their stalls. >:(

Our next big trip was out to Oxford. :D We almost missed our train. Seriously. We were sprinting to catch it on the platform, and then we all got split up trying to squish into the compartments. Standing room only. It was horrid. But we made it eventually. :)

Oxford University doorways. :) All off of the courtyard in the middle 

My people! The school of linguistics. :)

Oxford Selfie!

Still just in the courtyard. . .

We were walking across town to the Oxford University Press when we passed the Eagle and Child. This is the pub where many famous authors wrote/planned/partied, including JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis. . . It's only a little important. :D

It began pouring. Raindrops were falling on my head. And umbrellas were at the level of my eyeballs at all times.

The tiniest bibles you will every see. . .

I mailed in my (LEAST) Favourite word. FURNITURE. FERNERTER

There was a really old children's book called "The Talkative Turtle" so I couldn't resist. PLUS you might notice the "Eagle of the Ninth" in the corner. :D

Ate in the OUP cafeteria. The fish was okay, but the chips had no salt or ketchup and the carrots were weirdly seasoned

We found a Geek Museum of Science and spent waaaay too long in there. It was cool, but not really. . .

Then we went to the Ashmolean. :D Amazing museum. But we spent too long in the coin gallery downstairs and the museum closed and kicked us out before we got to see the Stradivarius violin on the second floor. >:|  

We all congregated back at the Christs Church to attend the Evensong. The courtyard was beautiful.

And look!!! This is where they filmed the part of the first Harry Potter movie when Ron and Hermione are leaning over the railing and talking to Harry after he gets out of the Hospital Wing. :D I couldn't go in though. And I also couldn't go into the Great Hall of the church that was the inspiration for the Great Hall in the movies. :(

 The Evensong was amazing. It was a men and boys choir and was incredibly powerful. The solo soprano man was incredible.
I would probably have enjoyed it even more if I wasn't smelling the warm bacon and brie bagel melt that was in my backpack because I was about to eat it when we were rushed into the church. . . (It was delicious BTW, even if it was a little lukewarm by the end of the service.)

Later, we went on a little Fangirl adventure. :D [FUNNY STORY: We popped out of the underground station right up into the middle of the Gay Pride parade people. . . It was interesting and colorful. :P ] First we went to Baker street and the Sherlock museum (though we didn't go into the actual museum because it was rather pricey) and we went into the shop next door.

If I had bought something, it would have been this. The violin is seriously less than two inches long and it has real, individual strings and a velvet case. I almost want to go back and get one...

 Then we went to King's Cross Station to sate our Harry Potter needs. . .

Here are the REAL platforms nine and ten. . .

Now at the other Platform 3/4 :D I think I would be a Ravenclaw. This picture was fun because we stood in line for a long time, then there was a worker guy there that held the scarf and waved it like it was moving in the wind while we took pictures. It was fantastic.

Then we made it out to the Who Shop, which was tiny and underwhelming. I did see some sonic screwdriver earrings that I really wanted, but I wasn't prepared to pay £17 for them...

We went and saw a performance of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar at the Globe Theatre and it was awesome. :D I had a standing "seat" and was right up next to the stage in the middle, in the spit-zone. It was great because I got to see all of the actors' faces and a lot of the time there were actors mixed in with the crowd being peasants reacting to the speeches on stage. At one point one of them was standing right next to me (as in pretty much on top of me) and grabbed my shoulder and looked me in the face and nodded at me, like I was agreeing with him about what Brutus was saying on stage at Caesar's funeral. It was awesome. :D Plus I was right up next to Caesar's body after they stabbed him (repeatedly and violently) and was up close and personal with the blood pool that continued to flow and bubble out of him as the scene continued . . .

Epic picture of St. Paul's Cathedral on the opposite side of the Millennial Bridge (the one that gets attacked by dementors in the sixth HP movie) on the way to the Globe  

This was the stage at the beginning

Here's the stage at the end. The guy on stage right now is mopping up all of the blood. There was a lot of it. :D

MOVING ON:
Here is the beginning of my three-day trip to Cardiff, Wales.
We started off by stopping in Windsor and going to the Windsor castle. TOTALLY worth it. It is one of the longest running castles and has been in CONTINUOUS use for over a thousand years. That means that it hasn't been abandoned and left to ruins or "redone" to reflect the era. There were armed guards walking around with machine guns.

Super fancy gardens with waterfalls and such

More men in uniform :D

 We left the castle and had some time to explore Windsor before getting back on the bus. We found a fowl river. :P

One Goose

Two Swans

Then turn the corner and BAM

They have ugly feetses.

This one was making angry noises because we didn't have food

This one never put its right foot in the water. . .

I FOUND A ROOTBEER AND I DRANK IT

Then we drove to Bath.

Really gross water that we weren't allowed to touch

Fresh, natural hot spring

Awkward Bath selfie time

All the coins in the indoor pool made it look like stars. :D

I was a little disappointed at the "mythical spring water of bath" fountain. But I drank from it anyway. It was hot and tasted like stump water, but I drank two cups "for my health" :)

We found a Waterstones (which seems like the British equivalent of Barnes and Noble) and spent over an hour there. :D Here are some example of the awesome British alternate covers (for Mistborn, Percy Jackson, and Assassin's Apprentice)

We drove to Cardiff then and stayed the night at a super seedy, gross, sketchy hostel. :/ The shower was disgusting, the bed was squeaky and I could feel the springs of my mattress. :( I didn't sleep well at all that night. I'm not looking forward to staying in hostels for the last two weeks of the summer during the traveling section of the study abroad.

But we went to Cardiff Castle the next morning, which was fun.

These two were painted on the walls around the rooftop garden. They crack me up. :D

There are the itty bitty people that I know as seen from the top of the keep

Selfie from the top of the Cardiff Castle keep looking over the city

We went to Salisbury Cathedral next to see the Magna Carta. (This was on the Fourth of July)

Then we stopped at a little shopping center to eat dinner for the 4th of July and ended up dominating the outdoor seating area of a restaurant called The Boston Tea Party. We thought it was fitting. :P

We stopped at an actual hotel for the last night, and it was probably the nicest hotel I've ever stayed in. The bed was amazing, the shower was amazing. It was the best sleep I've gotten since getting on the plane. I really wish we could have just stayed there for the rest of the summer. :)

Yes, I got the big bed to myself. :D

In the morning, we got up and drove out to Stonehenge on our way back to London.

We passed this sign. . . :D Yes little fishy, I do want you. . .

Trying a human Stonehenge. :P

Here's a better one. :D

Then we went to Jane Austen's house.

I really liked this coat. . .

FLOWER

Such handsome men. The only unmarried ones on the trip. :P

And then we went back to London and lived happily ever after. :P

Alas.

I was going to catch up to real life today, but I'm still a couple days behind. But it is now almost midnight and I have been working on this since about 8. I'm sleepy.

:D Good Night!