The Last Four Days

                This week we are going to start buckling down and stop our touring, for the most part. On Monday we stayed in the flat literally all day applying for jobs. We also did laundry which meant we had to buy laundry detergent and not break the machine. We didn’t and our clothes are okay. Hurray for adult life! We accomplished quite a bit amidst watching around six movies over the course of the day.

                The one other important thing I got done Monday was transfer my money to my UK bank account from my Canadian one. I was putting this off as long as possible because I thought it would be difficult, but it actually turned out to be quite easy. I used a company called CanadianForex (www.canadianforex.com). You tell them how much money you have to transfer and they give you a rate. Once you hit Okay, they prepare to transfer the money to you. In the meantime, you go on your Canadian bank account and pay them the money, essentially giving them money to give you money. Because I’m with RBC they actually show up as a Payee so it was relatively painless. It takes them about three days to get the money and about one day after that for me to receive the funds in my UK bank account, which is why I really wanted to do it at the beginning of the week. I did leave some money in my Canadian account, just in case. The only issue I ran into was minor. They have to call you to confirm the deal. Of course, they have my Canadian number. So they sent me this panicked email saying they had to get ahold of me before processing the transaction. So I gave them a call on my landline. The girl I spoke to, Hilary, dealt with everything swiftly and it was completely painless (I hate making phone calls). 

                Tuesday was another day at the flat spent watching movies and applying for jobs. The thing that nobody tells you is how hard it actually is to find a job. Your university degree is basically useless. Everybody wants experience – even entry level jobs. It’s a bit disheartening. And everyone is a telemarketer masquerading as an actual job. Sorry, but I know how my parents treat telemarketers and they are probably nicer than some people. Not happening. On the bright side, I received a phone call from Google to discuss future job opportunities. Not immediate, but maybe future ones. It at least broke the ice in terms of actually talking to a professional so no matter what it was a good thing.

                We decided to put pants on and go to dinner at a restaurant down the road called Le Querce (http://lequerce.co.uk/). It’s an Italian restaurant and not too expensive but what it ever delicious! I got the ravioli and some fries and Sarah got lasagna and we both were very satisfied with our meal. I also got some wine in a gracious amount, which is better than I’ve seen at most pubs. We got dessert. Sarah had ice cream and I had cheesecake. My cheesecake could have been better, to be honest. We definitely want to revisit this restaurant, and hopefully soon.  

                On Wednesday we took the train to Surrey Quays to see The Amazing Spider-Man 2, which we get a couple weeks before the USA. That doesn’t happen very often so we made the most of it. I loved it. Definitely better than the first and Dane DeHaan (who I love) was so good as Harry Osborn. A million times better than James Franco.

                Thursday we decided to actually go do something before our self-imposed isolation on Easter weekend. After we got up in the morning we went to Nando’s for lunch. I got the actual chicken this time instead of chicken wings and was not disappointed. I also had a caramel cheesecake for dessert which was just to die for! We then tried to visit the National Gallery (www.nationalgallery.org.uk). We wandered around for a little while looking at the art but it was quite crowded with tourists and school groups so we didn’t stay for very long. I’d really like to go back on a quiet day and spend the whole day there with an audio guide just completely nerding out.

                Side Note: I started watching American Horror Story because they have it on Netflix and I’m completely obsessed. I watched the entire first season in less than 24 hours. Evan Peters is amazing. That is all.  

A Day of Art and Shake Shack (Which is Basically Food Art)

"A sincere artist is not one who makes a faithful attempt to put on to canvas what is in front of him, but one who tries to create something which is, in itself, a living thing." - Giorgio Morandi

                Today was another rainy day. It was technically our last day of ‘freedom’ (since tomorrow is our orientation meeting which means we will actually have to do stuff after that, like get a bank account and a job) but the weather put a bit of a damper on it. To begin, we went to Leicester Square to get some show tickets for the night. There is a booth that sells discounted tickets called TKTS. I know it because they have it in Times Square in New York City, as well. Fortunately, the line is much smaller in London, and they open at 10:00am. We got there around 11:00am and, after a short wait, got tickets to War Horse. I’ve seen it twice at Lincoln Center in New York but never in London and Sarah has never seen it period. Our tickets are in the tenth row and should have cost us £62.50 but because we used TKTS they only cost us £26. We had budgeted for £30 so we saved some money! Yay! If there hadn’t been tickets to War Horse we were going to look at Once and Wicked. Not all shows are available at the booth. Some, like The Lion King, you have to buy at the box office because they don’t need to sell discounted tickets: everyone goes anyway.

                After getting our tickets we walked to Covent Garden so Sarah could finally try Shake Shack! And it was delicious! It tastes just like it does in New York. We had burgers, fries and milkshakes. If there was any reason to complain about Shake Shack it’s that they don’t adjust the prices for being in pounds, so it’s a bit pricey for fast food. Oh well. Totally worth it.

                When we finished our lunch we headed to Trafalgar Square. The original plan was to visit the National Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery, but we ended up just visiting the latter. The National Portrait Gallery (www.npg.ork.uk) was the first attraction I ever visited in London. I really like it. We spent almost two hours there. It’s basically portraits from the last five hundred years. Sarah and I laughed at all the self-portraits, because they are the original selfies. My favorite gallery is actually the first gallery you see: The Tudor Gallery. It has portraits of Henry VIII and most of his wives and his three children. I love that period of English history so it’s really cool seeing their pictures. Sarah had remarked earlier that it was too bad people didn’t do portraits anymore…and then we found one of Kate Middleton. Oops. The last exhibit, which is always changing, was on Vivien Leigh. I love Vivien Leigh so I definitely looked and read every single thing in that room. I just love her so much.

                As I mentioned, our initial plan was to then visit the National Gallery, but we felt a little too museumed out and wouldn’t appreciate the art enough. It’s free so it’s not like we can’t go back another day. Originally I had thought if we didn’t feel up to another museum we could use our Historic Royal Palaces membership card to get into Banqueting House, located down the road, then wander around Green Park and up to Buckingham Palace before grabbing some supper and heading to War Horse, but when we got out of the National Portrait Gallery it was raining and pretty miserable out. We had six hours to kill so we ultimately decided to head back to the flat. We had been saying for a few days that we wanted to organize our suitcases better (instead of the panic packing gong-show they all currently were) and we wouldn’t feel like it tonight, since we wouldn’t be back until after 11:00pm. So we took the train back and did just that, while watching Gone With the Wind (inspired by the Vivien Leigh exhibit, of course). Sarah’s never seen it before now. We couldn’t get through the whole thing, of course, because that movie is four hours long and we did not have that long, but we will finish it tomorrow.

                After some research, I decided the quickest way to the theater was by bus, and even that was going to take an hour. Somehow we managed to get on and off at the right stop. Yay us. We had an hour before the show so we stopped in at a pub next door and had some chips and garlic cheese bread. Supper of champions right there. It got freakishly busy at one point but then they all realized there was an upstairs section and disappeared. Afterwards we headed to the show (well, walked past it, technically). After buying some overpriced wine we went in to sit down. We had row K, on the right hand side of the stage. The theater is an almost semi-circle so there’s no actual bad seat. The show was great. There were a few small changes from the New York performances I had seen, which was interesting. The show originated in London (with Kit Harington aka Jon Snow as the main character) so I guess they know best. One thing I didn’t like was that they didn’t give out any programs. I’m so used to perusing through Playbills when I see Broadway shows that I really noticed their absence. The show lasted two hours and forty minutes and at the end you could hear everyone sniffling in the audience and I guess the lady next to Sarah was absolutely freaking out and her husband had to hold her down. I’m sad I missed that. All I got was some American lady who thought clouds were smoke from an explosion.

                After the show we went to get the bus back…but the road only went one way. So we went to look for a bus stop going in the right direction. We walked for a bit and eventually realized we were walking over Waterloo Bridge. Oops. Fortunately, we did find the bus in the end. After a bit of a wander. We didn’t get in until around 11:30pm so there went our plans for being well-rested for our orientation meeting tomorrow…

 

Adventures in South Bank

"Good wine is a good familiar creature, if it be well used." - Othello: Act 2, Scene 3 

Today was our third day in London and we decided to focus our efforts on one area: Southbank. We went to bed lateish last night (for jetlag people) and getting up this morning was difficult difficult lemon difficult. We meant to get down to London Bridge by 10:00am but it ended up being closer to 11:00am. It didn’t really matter, though. We had plenty of time. We started our day by walking along the Thames to Shakespeare’s Globe (www.shakespearesglobe.com). I am a huge Shakespeare nerd so I was super excited. There is an exhibit detailing Shakespeare’s work, the Globe itself, and costuming and stage fighting of the time. We were overrun by a lot of French school kids and were worried they would be on our tour but fortunately that was not the case.

                After thirty minutes in the exhibit we met our tour guide. She was hilarious, mostly because she decided everyone was foreign (they pretty much were) and decided to mime everything she was saying. It was a pretty interesting tour. She took us right into the theater, which is reconstructed as accurately as possible, right down to the thatched roof. It was a Silent Tour, which means the guide talks quietly over a microphone, because there are rehearsals in progress. The last time I was here they were rehearsing for The Tempest. This time it was some actors preparing scenes from Shakespeare’s plays for schoolchildren that are visiting in a week or two. We watched them rehearse one scene from The Taming of the Shrew and one from Julius Caesar. It was pretty cool. Our guide wasn’t holding anything back and afterwards said it wasn’t a big deal we were taking pictures of the inside of the theater “because it’s not like those actors were going to be famous one day anyway.” Tell us how you really feel, tour guide. Overall it was really interesting and educational and I got out of the gift shop without buying anything, unlike last time. There was a Romeo & Juliet tote I really wanted, though.

                After our tour we went to the Tate Modern next door to kill time (www.tate.org.uk/visit/tate-modern). I really enjoy art but I just don’t get modern art. One day I would like to buy an audio guide and actually listen to their explanations. But not today. Fortunately Sarah felt the same way. We just kind of wandered around for an hour, occasionally remarking how a piece of art was cool-looking or, as was more often the case, speculating as to whether or not they were a serial killer.

                After our brief visit to the Tate Modern we went for lunch at Nandos (www.nandos.co.uk . This was exciting for us because we are One Direction fans and Ed Sheeran fans and they are always talking about it. There was technically one in Calgary but it was in the North East and we don’t go there. So finally, two years after we first heard about it, we got to try it. It’s a sit-down restaurant and we had to wait to be seated but you place your order at the front, like in a pub. Sarah and I both had identical conversations with our cashiers.

                Them: Do you have a Nandos card?
                Us: No.
                Them: Do you want one?
                Us: Not right now.
                Them: Are you sure?
                Us: Is it free?
                Them: Yes.
                Us: Okay.

                It was pretty funny. The card actually seems like a pretty good deal. After three visits we are entitled to a free ¼ chicken, which is awesome. I’ll probably hoard mine until I have no money. The food itself was pretty good. I had chicken wings with peri peri sauce. They were very spicy. I liked it. I think next time I will get a ¼ chicken because the girls at the table next to us had that and it looked really good. Overall a very satisfactory meal.

                Up next was Vinopolis (www.vinopolis.co.uk). It is basically an interactive wine museum. You purchase tokens and use them to taste different wines. The exhibits discuss everything from growing techniques to storing temperatures. It was very informative. Unfortunately, Sarah and I didn’t really like the wines. We had gotten the highest token package, thinking the wines would cost 2-3 tokens each. No. They cost 1, for the most part. Apparently we are very set in our wine ways and this was not going to change them. This was also the day we tried sherry, which will henceforth be known as the Devil’s Drink. It is disgusting. We wanted to die. It basically ruined the last half of the experience for us because it was so gross. And we both tried a different kind. So obviously it wasn’t that we chose wrong, it’s that it is evil. It was pretty fun, overall. If you ever thought about doing it I would probably get the middle group of tokens. The first level is too little but the third (the one we got) you suffer through trying to finish. We caved and got a 4 token wine and we still had 6 tokens left. It was brutal.

                And that was pretty much it for the day. It was only our third day in London, after all, so there’s no point cramming the entire day full of activities. Even then, we still didn’t get back to the flat until about 5:30. We did stop at Sainsbury’s to grab some groceries. We’re going to be here awhile so it’s not like we can afford to eat out every night. Of course, our groceries probably don’t resemble your groceries, but we are working on it. We even bought items on sale! Snaps for us!