Aaaaaand I'm Home!

Well, it's been over a month since I've been home now and I'm only just getting to this update. That's pretty much a good indication of how much fun it's been (and how busy I've been..) since returning stateside!

I don't know if I'm feeling very reflective or anything, so we'll see what happens.

Anyway, might as well start with what happened after that post wayyyyy back at the beginning of June.. when I was still on the other side of the world..

There it is. Everything I owned in England packed up into a couple bags and a guitar case. It's so small  and empty without all my stuff!

And so I ended up grabbing that last pint, saying goodbye to some friends, some of whom I may never see again - but some that I'd like to reunite with sometime down the road. I'm all for keeping in touch with every single one of them, and hope that our travels may someday bring us all back together. Just as we managed to accidentally run into friends in Florence, Italy, I'm sure we'll randomly see each other around the states..

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On Saturday morning, I awoke for the last time in London to a beautiful blue sky and warm weather (which, as great as it was, was not very conducive to lugging all my things around!). After that last look-around through my room (funny how small you remember it is, when you'd been passing it off as 'cozy' for the last 5 months of your life), double- and triple-checking for last minute things. Eventually, it was that time, so I slung the bags onto my shoulders, grabbed my duffel, and locked up room 20E for good..

Down Stamford Street, onto Waterloo Road, onto the London Tube for the last time; slowly making my baggage-laden way to London Heathrow and that long plane ride home.

Shovin' off for that long plane ride home..

No problems getting through security, to my gate, and onto the plane. So now it's down to 'what will entertain me for the next 7 hours?'

Well, it wouldn't be my blog if I didn't throw movie reviews in!

Being the middle of the day, there wasn't going to be any sleeping, so I thought I'd take advantage of the free onboard movie selection!

To put it simply, I was able to watch about 2.75 movies, before the third was cut short by that silly stateside landing!

Anyway, 'The King's Speech', 'Paul', and 'Due Date' rounded out my plane ride - and made it quite enjoyable as all three brought their own fun to the table. King's Speech was just as great as all the reviews said - with the superb acting putting the exclamation point on one of the year's best. I'd read some reviews about 'Paul' when it first came out, and heard good things. I'm a big fan of Simon Pegg and his films, and I heard this one was a pretty good sci-fi comedy, with a lot of great nods to other sci-fi classics. It didn't disappoint! Last was 'Dude Date', the 'Planes, Trains, and Automobiles' reboot with the hilarious duo of Robert Downey Jr. and Zach Galifinakis. It was pretty good-had me laughing a couple times-but I missed the end due to the flight landing..

I wasn't too bummed - I was finally stateside again for the first time in five months.

After getting all my things together in the Newark airport, went on over to the airport Marriott to stay the night in preparation for my early morning flight home!

Ahhh a real bed and big room all to myself for the first time in 5 months!

Got to watch most of the Vancouver-Boston game that night - I was glad to be back watching hockey on a big screen!!

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In the morning, for the second time in a couple days, I gathered up all my things to go hop on a plane - but this one would be my last for a while!

And so that was pretty much it! After landing in Pittsburgh (home sweet home!), it was just a car ride away with my family before stepping into my house, and room, for the first time in what felt like forever! And let me tell you, that first sleep that night in my big ol' bed was just heavenly.. 

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Since then, I've just been working at the new job, which is going well, and hanging with all the pals I missed while overseas. This weekend, I actually went to visit Brittney in Kansas, which was just a fabulous time! I definitely missed her tons!

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And so I think we might be coming to the end, for what seems like the second time. I may be repeating myself, but who knows if and when there will be another post. Perhaps a final one to just list the highlights of the blog, making it easy to jump to the good stuff, rather than having to sift through all my silly nonsense posts. 

But for what it's worth, I bid all you lovely readers adieu. It's been fun, and I hope you've enjoyed my adventures quite as much as I did myself. Thanks for your love and support, and maybe invite me along on your future travels! Cheers!

Good music for the long ride home:

Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros - "Home"

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My Last Day In London (Day 152)

JUNE 3, 2011

No more picture. No more new experiences, stories, or pints at the local pub (barring tonight, of course). I've had the last of my European adventures, for the time being, and so this blog is slowly losing its relevance. This may be the last post, or it may not. Who knows. Maybe I'll throw in a couple more once I'm home, just to round things up.

But it's not about the blog, or anybody spending time reading my ridiculous writings or ogling my amateur pictures. You've seen and heard it all - through the good and the bad, we've come up roses. And now it's time to head back home.

For today, it was just about exploring my favourite haunts and enjoying those last bits of London that I want to remember most: the view from Waterloo Bridge, King's College campus, Covent Garden Market and pubs, the flashy sights of Leicester Square and Piccadilly Circus, the imposing Buckingham Palace, the fountains and pillars of Trafalgar Square, Big Ben/Parliament and Westminster Abbey rising up into the cloudy London sky, and finally the tourist- and street performer-packed Southbank area surrounding the London Eye.

And it was an absolutely beautiful day, which made it all the better.

Top it off with some fish 'n chips and I'd say it was a damn good day.

Nothing left to do but pack up what's left and catch that long plane ride home.

But maybe a pint at the pub with some pals first..

Good music of the moment:

Islands - "Swans", off their album "Return to the Sea"

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Get busy livin' or get busy dyin'.

Cheers!

The Last of the Museums: Victoria & Albert, and Science (Days 149 - 151)

(Being the museum-themed events of:)
MAY 31 - JUNE 2, 2011

Man, the days are just flying by. Two days until I'm stateside again, for the first time in 5 months. Geez. Color me excited.

So, as planned, this final week has been all about enjoying the last bits of London I haven't experienced yet, as well as the bits that I'd like to have engrained in memory as my last moments of living in London. I continued with the museum binge with the last few on my list: the beautiful Victoria & Albert Museum, with it's art, history, and international culture exhibitions, and the slightly kid-friendly, yet enough I'm-kinda-a-big-nerd-and-get-excited-about-science stuff in the Science Museum.

Passing St. James' Park

So it rained a bit early Tuesday afternoon, and I was worried about making the hour-long walk to South Kensington, but then the sun came out so I thought I'd give it a go.

Halfway there, it of course started raining again. Oh well. As you'll see, the sun did end up coming out again and it turned into quite a nice afternoon.

Harrod's. Place surprises me every time with how large it is. 

Just a neat building. This area is Brompton, I think..? Still in South Kensington, which is the over-arching area, and one of the more posh areas of London.

Just a neat church.

The Victoria & Albert Museum

Reminded me of like a smaller version of The British Museum, with its variety of historical artifacts, sculpture, and art. 

An old map of the world, which I thought was cool

One of Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks!

The architecture section, which was actually pretty neat with all its models and insights into the reasons behind different types of architecture.

The metal artwork section

Psh British people..

Looking down into the southeast Asia section, I think..? I don't remember. That was another thing that was similar to The British Museum: that after the main sections, they would have smaller exhibitions centered around specific cultures.

Psh, I've already seen the real David. No big deal.

.. and the real Trajan's column, seen here in two parts due to its size. Neat replica though. 

The Japanese section, obviously. 

Sculpture

Inner courtyard of the museum

Closer look at our friends from before.

A neat little section on photography. Gotta love it.

Crazy stuff going on in the central area of the museum

A quick look over at the Natural History Museum before calling it a day!

Of course, after walking all the way there through the rain, I had to take the tube back (with the sun now mocking me) to grab dinner in time to get ready for the show..

Waiting outside Shakespeare's Globe Theatre to see 'Much Ado About Nothing'!

Inside the Globe! What a neat place, with it's open-air stage and circular seating area. Although, we were down in the standing section for 'Groundlings' (must be Shakespearian for 'Cheap Folks'). But we were right up literally against the stage and two feet away from the actors, which was neat! Granted you had to stand for 3 hours, which was a bit of a bummer..

The stage

So close!

The show was absolutely fantastic! The actors were hilarious, and would even subtly interact with the audience sometimes. I never read the play, and didn't really have any idea about the story, but it didn't even matter - even though they spoke the old English and basically performed the play line-for-line, they were great and it wasn't hard to understand at all. And at the end of the play, who would have guessed there would be a random straight Bollywood-style, choreographed dance-routine?!? Yeah, it happened. But it was still hilariously awesome.

Oh, and did I mention one of the main actors was Joseph Marcell, the guy who played Geoffrey the butler from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. It was crazy.

I think that night I watched the movie 'Eastern Promises', which focuses on Russian organized crime in London and stars Viggo Mortensen (consequently, I'm watching Lord of the Rings as I type this. woah.) as a Russian "cleaner" for the mafia family. Now, I don't speak any Russian, but I assume his accent was pretty solid. At least it sounded pretty good to me. Anyway, pretty good flick, I must say.

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Then on Wednesday, I finished off the last of the main London museums that I wanted to get to: the Science Museum. OK, I kinda gave into my nerdy/kid side, but I was basically a kid in a candy store, amongst actual kids. Which was a little silly, but I enjoyed myself.

AND it was another beautiful day, so I made the walk all the way back to South Kensington again!

Now, I've already been here briefly and snapped some pictures of the space section, so I'm just going to start off with the sections after that..

A neat old lighthouse lamp

Planes, Trans-Siberian Explorers, and Automobiles. I think that was the name of that movie, right..?

Apollo 10

The prototype of clock of the 'Future Now', with the ability to tell the year for the next 10,000 years. Crazy.

Man, it kinda makes me feel old when things I grew up with start showing up in museums. I remember playing with Mike's Super Nintendo Entertainment System back in grade school, and still own my old GameBoy!

Section on time.

Anyone know what time it is?

This thing was kind of neat. It was called the 'Listening Post' and had the tag-line "Hear what the Internet sounds like!" or something like that. It was basically like 100 little LCD screens that would flash different words and phrases, while a computer-voice read them out - and the words were all compiled from random tidbits of chatrooms/forums from all around the net. Pretty crazy. Plus it's always fun to hear a computer say things like "I'm a 16-year-old girl!", "Rockin' out to some Metallica", and "What's going on, bro?" 

My major, 100 years ago. Back when Computer Engineering meant 'I built this huge thing to add two numbers and take an hour to give the result'.

ERNIE = Electronic Random Number something something. Basically, he was built back in the day to choose numbers 'randomly' for some drawing the government was doing for something or other.

The marine section was MASSIVE. We're talking hundreds of ship models and different kinds of ship engines. I'm not a huge boat-guy, but you gotta respect how they built some of these monsters back in the day.

The Queen Elizabeth

Some battleships.

Aaaaand that was about it. Well, at least that I took pictures of. I spent a good amount of time in each section, checking out the neat things, making sure I'm still a bit of a nerd. You know. But eventually, called it a day and started the long walk back home in the beautiful weather. It's been a comfortable jeans-and-a-tshirt 65 over here, so I have no idea how I'm going to be able to go home to the 90s they're getting now. Ugh.

Saw this on the way home. Oh Ron, you're so silly.

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And that was the last of my museum binge. It had a good run.

Last night, I went out for one of my pal's last night goodbye festivities, hitting up a couple bars, karaoke here and there, and ending at one of the campus bars. Fun night! Sad that it's one of my last in London..

.. but getting ready to go home at this point. Only a couple more days! I think tomorrow I'm just going to take a day to stroll through my favorite parts on London, maybe grab some fish 'n chips for dinner as a last hurrah. Maybe grab drinks to say goodbye with some people.

Then it's just the long plane ride home..

Good music of the moment:

Radical Face - "Homesick", off their album "Ghost"

Woah. Once again, this just happened to be the song that came on iTunes. Crazy how relevant songs keep randomly popping up.

.. Oh wait, never mind. As I was typing, it changed to Say Hi's "Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh", which isn't very relevant at all.. How silly.

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Two days left.
Cheers!