Saturday

Happy 86th Birthday to the queen today! There was a 62 gun salute at the tower of London, but we ended up leaving before it happened.

I don't know what I was expecting for tower of London...I think just a single tower, or turret, or something, which goes to show how much I was paying attention to architecture class before we left (I was struggling with art history). It's more like a castle, so I got way more towers than I bargained for.

We got to see the crown jewels, which was just as impressive as you might imagine. I learned a lot about the coronation ceremony, and how each monarchy's crown is different/special. The room has one of those flat escalators, like the moving floors in the airport or penguin exhibit at the zoo, so no one could crowd around too much.

We saw the ravens, which are caged there because one king (I don't remember, again. Womp.) was under the impression that if the ravens left, he and the castle would fall. There also used to be all sorts of zoo animals that were really poorly cared for because they didn't know what to do with them. Animals from different continents being housed together and eating each other, stuff like that.

We saw the bloody tower and learned about some scandals. There was the torture tower, which was kind of creepy, especially with the interactive audio system of screaming people. There was also a barrel that someone was drowned in, but it had this video screen on it that if you look on top there was a face in it being drowned. Grody.

Alex and Dominique and I were going to see Sweeney Todd, it we had some extra time so we stopped at Baker Street and found the Sherlock Holmes museum. We didn't actually go in, but we stopped at the gift shop to see if there were any goodies. Most of it was really expensive, but still fun.

I'd never seen Sweeney Todd live before, just the movie. It was surprisingly similar, just a little darker and more gruff. Helena Bonham carter and Johnny Depp are both incredibly beautiful people, and Michael ball and Imelda Staunton (prof. umbridge from Harry potter) played characters that were harder to sympathize with. The result is me caring a little less how it ends, and not being entirely sure what side I'm on. I guess the characters were just a little less likable. It was still a brilliant performance though, and I'm so glad I went.

I had a hard time figuring out to do with my day after that, though. We played pretend April reign and kept updates on how things were going at home, but I was in a weird mood from the show and was feeling pretty disassociated from what was happening at campus. I did finally get to Skype Doug though, which was the first time since Rome, so that was really nice. I got to see Maggie too. I miss them both like crazy, so it was nice to have that for a little bit.

Shout out to my alpha sig brothers at home- April reign champs 2012! I'm such a proud sister. Wore the letters the next day to represent :)