Hanging Out, Playoff Hockey, And Some Wedding Thing (Days 114 - 118)

(Being the events of:)
APRIL 26 - 30, 2011

After a week of fun with the family, it was back to the daily routine - and sleeping in! I imagine this is going to be a relatively quick post, with the wedding taking up the majority. But I'll get to that later.

Spring break technically came to an end, but I've still got some time before I have to get down to studying. Not much really went on this week: watched some TV, hung out. And the Pens games.. man, was that disappointing. Wednesday's game 7 was unreal. I was losing it, but we just couldn't put it in the net. After they scored, everyone sort of knew it was over, regardless of the effort they put in afterwards. Powerplay was a disgrace too, but what can you do.. Thank god we'll have Sid and Geno back next season - hopefully we don't lose half the team to injuries again. And here I thought the movie I chose to watch that night might have an affect, especially after I watched that depressing movie Monday night and it resulted in a loss. So Wednesday, I took a brief respite from the WWII flicks and chose to watch 'Kick-ass', in hopes that the Pens would follow suit. Fantastic movie, with some solid scenes and a hilarious performance by Nick Cage - not to mention that like 10-year old girl. Crazy. But, Pens lost, so I guess it wasn't my fault.

Also watched 'The Big Red One', an 80's WWII film featuring yet another Star Wars star: Mark Hamill, or Luke Skywalker. Liked it a lot - much more than a couple of the other ones I've seen. Pretty good stuff!

And I started reading the 'Walking Dead' comic online, which is pretty good. I liked the show a lot, but it was such a short first season that I needed more zombie action to hold me over until the next season in October!

Anyway, on Thursday evening, met up with a bunch of pals and had a 'pre-wedding party':

Including, amongst other yummy things, wedding-themed cupcakes!

Afterwards, we walked around London for a bit, looking at all the decorations for the wedding and all the crazy people camping out overnight to get a good spot along the procession path.

On the big day, I woke up around 10:30 and forced myself to get out of bed and head out to the wedding festivities. It was crazy. I figure it WOULD have been better to go early and get a good spot, but I liked sleeping in, and still saw enough to say I was there! But bad luck struck in the form of my camera running out of battery - so I had to use my lesser-quality iPhone camera..

SO many people!

Couldn't even get closer than this to Trafalgar Square, they gated it off after so long. Still tons of people outside

Eventually wandered around for a somewhat better view of the big screen and watched some of the wedding

After that, I basically wandered around the whole gated area surrounding the procession path, in hopes of finding a place to get in. No dice. I was over by Westminster Abbey, where the wedding was, at one point, but it was nuts over there.

Ended up here, near St. James Palace, pushing through the crowd to try and get a glimpse of the procession on The Mall

SO many people!

Moved a bit to the right, and actually could see enough to see the horses and carriages going past! Too bad my iPhone camera didn't have good enough quality to zoom in and get in on film

After the procession made it to Buckingham, they opened the gates and let us onto The Mall. So many police!

Walking down the crazy-crowded Mall

Outside Buckingham with thousands of other people.

The fly-over!

You could see a couple of the Royals on the balcony, but they're pretty much dots in my pictures..

So many people with crazy outfits

Possibly famous people..? No idea. Big cameras, so thought I'd take a picture to see what it was about.

After all the wedding festivities, pushed my way back through the crowds and headed back to my place for lunch. Eventually, I needed a nap. That night, a couple pals and I went out to a bar called 'Queen of Hoxton', where they were having a wedding-themed party including karaoke and dancing. Best part was  that the karaoke was backed by a fantastic live band! So that was pretty fun

Yay karaoke! As you can imagine, there were good ones and bad ones.. but it was still fun!

But that was pretty much my week. Tonight, I plan on hanging in and taking it easy (on my wallet, mostly!). I'm thinking about watching 'Das Boot', the classic German U-boat WWII film. We'll see. It's like 3 hours long, so I'll see if I'm up for it! Got four finals coming up in May, so I'll probably start studying early this coming week. Other than that, not really a lot going on!

Good music of the moment:

Ratatat - 'Nostrand', off their album 'Classics'

Not a HUGE Ratatat fan, but I do love this song. 1:50 on is my jam. Good stuff.

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Kind of a lame post, but oh well. Not a ton going on! I'm up to over 2,000 views now?! Who reads this stuff?!?! Haha :p

Cheers!

The Family Visits London! (Days 106 - 113)

(Being the fun week of:)
APRIL 18 - 25, 2011

Well now that I've settled back into sleeping in and watching a lot of TV (loving this break thing..), I can finally put out this update for the week my parents visited! We had a ton of fun and it was great to see them - and have them pay for everything! Here's the pictures I took; I may update this later if I get my hands on all the once my mum took:

After I picked up the flight-weary travelers from the airport, took the tube ride to central London, and got them settled into the (correct!) hotel on the river, we got to a bit of sight-seeing in the surprisingly beautiful weather! We walked around for a while - my apartment, Strand campus, the Strand, Trafalgar Square, Big Ben - before grabbing some pub food and a pint! But at that point, they were pretty tired, so I dropped them off and came back to my place to watch the Pens in Game 3. Much better game than the past one - won it 3-2 after quickly going up 2-0 in the first. Wooooooo

On the second day, we walked through a bit of Green Park before checking out Buckingham Palace - but the changing of the guard was off that day..

Outside Buckingham Palace - all prettied up for the wedding! Such beautiful flowers

After that, we headed to the Tower of London to check it out!

Entering the Tower of London!

Trebuchet in the now-empty moat, and the tall walls

Up on Tower Hill inside the inner walls. Neat old houses

Tower Bridge past the walls

Building with the Crown Jewels on the left, armory on the right

An old church in the background. That coffee table-looking thing with the glass pillow is a to mark where they used to chop people's heads off in the old days!

Afterwards, we walked for a bit towards St. Paul's Cathedral, though there was a service going on and we couldn't go in. We settled for admiring the outside and surrounding gardens, followed by a nice Italian dinners - one of my first in London since being here!

Neat pillar outside St. Paul's Cathedral

On Wednesday morning, we hopped on the tube and headed to Paddington Station to catch a train to the beautiful town of Bath!

St. John's Church in Bath

Such a neat little town! Although apparently not so 'little' - population of around 80,000 according to Wikipedia!

Cute park

First look at the Bath Abbey

Front of the Bath Abbey

Entrance to the Roman Baths

The rest of the family!

The old baths!

Another side of the Bath Abbey

Ruins of the ancient Roman Temple!

Remains from the original entrance to the baths

Steaming waters heading to the baths!

Hanging out by the pool

What a cool place!

Doors to the Abbey

Inside. Huge place

Busy shopping alleyways

Looking at Pulteney Bridge, similar to Florence's Ponte Vecchio with all the shops along the side, hanging over the water

So pretty

Rugby pitch over the river

Last look down the river and towards the residential surrounding hillsides before heading back to London for the evening.

After a couple more pints, I left the fam again to watch Game 4. Another great playoff game by the Pens - keeping me on the edge of my seat (and up until 3am!) all the way to a second overtime, where Neal's surprise heroics ended a 3-2 game for the Pens! Wooooooooo

Slept in Thursday (had to after staying up so late!), but headed through Covent Garden and Piccadilly Circus in the afternoon. Lillywhites in Piccadilly was a lot of fun with all of us getting cheap football jerseys - got myself a cool new Celtic F.C. one!

Mum and bro on Waterloo Bridge!

Regent's Street, decorated for the wedding

That evening, we went and saw Les Mis, which was fantastic! I'd never seen it before, or heard much of the music, but it was so good - the music and story were great, not to mention the voices of the actors! Definitely one of the best shows I've seen in London so far.

The Queen's Theatre and Les Mis!

Inside the theatre

Looking down at the stage

Friday involved another trip to Covent Garden in the afternoon to do a bit of market shopping and grab some lunch, then went to the British Museum for a little while to see all the neat stuff (granted I've seen it all before, but it's still awesome)!

A neat church in Covent Garden

Did a miniature 'pub crawl' that evening, hopping a couple pubs around Covent Garden and Leicester Square and having some fun and some good pints! Our 'Cheers bar', as my mum called it - basically our home base pub near the hotel - was called 'The Rose' and was pretty fun! After a couple nights in a row, the friendly Spanish bartender was able to recognize us!

On Saturday, we went to Portobello Road and looked at all the neat stuff for sale! After that, with ominous-looking storm clouds (the first ones we'd seen all week!) nearing, we headed to the 'Isle of Dogs', where all the apparently hooligan Millwall fans cheer for their football club, Millwall F.C.

'The Den', the stadium of the Millwall Lions

Watching the game with the rest of the Millwall hooligans- I mean fans!

Millwall went up 4-0! Great game to watch! Poor Preston fans on the opposite side

The match was a lot of fun, and we had no problems with the 'crazy' fans. Granted, they were loud and rude in all their chanting and cursing, but no more-so than any other true English football fan! Plus, we were protected from the rain under the overhangs! Had some Chinese in Chinatown after getting back to central London before heading home. But after such a fun day, there was some absolutely awful news: Pens played while we were at the match and ended up losing Game 5 8-2. Absurd. Good thing I missed it. Pens still up 3-2 in the series though.

Sunday: Happy Easter! We got all dressed up and headed to Westminster Cathedral for Easter mass!

Inside Westminster Cathedral

Christmas card..?

The altar

Neat building!

So pretty

Afterwards, we went to a local pub for some traditional English Sunday Roast! Delicious! Now that the weather was nice again, we decided to take a boat ride along the Thames, which was really nice! I didn't take any pictures though, as I've pretty much seen it all before.. but it was a fun last day of their visit!

The next morning, I took them back to the airport for their flight home. It was an awesome and fun week and I'm so glad they all came to visit! We saw some great stuff, had fantastic weather, and shared a lot of laughs! I'm sad to see them head back home, but if the next month goes as fast as the past couple, I'll be home for summer in no time!

After hauling my tired self back to London (hey, 8am is early for me!), I restocked on some groceries, grabbed a quick nap, and got back to the relaxing! Actually, there was a bit of catching up that I had to do - emails and such (possible job offer this summer!), as well as TV shows of course! Plus I had to get up that Rome post that was sitting forever on here unpublished. Since there was still nothing really going on, and with a Pens game later that night, I figured I'd keep up with the WWII theme and find another new flick to check out. After a quick search for some forums on 'Best WWII films', I came up with a 1985 Soviet film called 'Come and See' that seemed to appear pretty high on a few lists I saw.

First thoughts: this thing is depressing. It makes 'Schindler's List' look like 'Toy Story'. But I see where a lot of people were coming from in describing it as one of the most realistic portrayals of the horrors of war - especially from the perspective of the Soviet Russians being invaded by the Germans. Good film, but man it got pretty intense: scenes where German soldiers burn down churches with people inside stay with you. I wouldn't put it at the top of my favs list (I'd probably have to still reserve that honor for 'Saving Private Ryan'), but it stood as a pretty good non-traditional WWII flick.

Quick aside for something I forgot to elaborate on in my last post: I liked 'The Pacific', but it will never be up there with 'Band of Brothers'. I've read a lot of reviews about how it focused more on the characters - three in particular - than the battles, but the stories just got boring in a couple of the tamer episodes. An entire episode dedicated to soldiers on leave in Australia, just hanging out drinking and getting with the Aussie 'Sheilas' for an hour, really didn't do it for me.. When it was good, it was great, but when it was bad, it was just slow. But maybe I'm biased because I've watched BoB so many times. Oh well.

Anyway, back to Monday night. Turned out that a depressing film was NOT the one to watch before the Pens game that evening. A well-fought game where the Pens, after going up early, just couldn't get the bounces and could not put together a single powerplay opportunity to quell the eventual Tampa comeback. 4-2 loss puts the series at an even 3-3. Oh man. Game 7 looming. I don't know if I can make it through it!

In the end, it was a fun week with the family - a nice reprieve from hanging out in my room, and from paying for everything myself! If I get a hold of more photos from the week, I'll eventually get them up here as well

Good music of the moment:

Bob Dylan - 'Blowing in the Wind'

No idea, just heard the song while browsing some sites and couldn't get it out of my head!

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Whew, almost caught up!

Cheers!