And Sometimes There's a Third, Even Deeper Level, and that One is the Same as the Top Surface One. Like With Pie

So more epic failure on the blog. But I’ve been on a rampaging search for a Virgin Megastore for the past day and a half (rampaging and a search because I don’t think they exist anymore here :(() so I cannot be held accountable for my actions. They have been in the search for more wonderful DVDs…you know what, no one can have too many British DVDs! Ok?! OK?! RIGHT.

Anyway. Pub crawl, church crawl, Soap. I did promise.

The pub crawl happened three Tuesday nights ago and was kind of amazing. I mean, seriously. Pub crawl. For class. With our professors. I think the UW needs to take notes.

Anyway, we went to six historic (and very fascinating) pubs all around London, starting at the Strand and ending in Southwark and hitting many historic landmarks along the way (Samuel Johnson’s house, the place where the Canterbury Tale pilgrims started their pilgrimage, etc.) Not to mention pubs. There were a lot of pubs. Many of them historic (Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese on Fleet Street has been there since the 16th century and the building has been there since the 13th!) I had my fair share of whisky and scotch and we all had quite the merry time on a beautifully lit London night and walked an awful lot for a group of students at uni who had been drinking. I actually ended up being quite able to hold my alcohol, as I was able to recite Shakespeare at the last pub and have a very literary discussion with my professor about the merits of Jane Austen and Chaucer. Who said drinking couldn’t be educational?

The next day, many people with sunglasses showed up to class and we had a church crawl to follow our epic pub crawl of the night before (as London pubs and churches are inextricably linked, according to Peter). We went to six Wren churches (you know, the bloke who built St. Paul’s? Yeah, epic) and learned basically how awesome he was. Seriously. I have an ye olde school crush on Chris Wren. Though the highlight (?) of the day was at one of the last Wren churches in The City where Wren carved a wooden screen for the altar, his only attempt ever at carving. It was, of course, spectacular and in my attempt to get a closer look at that and the work of the pulpit, I accidentally knocked the screen. By accidentally knocked, I mean accidentally hip checked it so that the entire thing wobbled on its frame. And by wobbled on its frame I mean NEARLY FELL OVER. I almost broke a priceless Wren artifact. After the initial shock, it was kind of tragically hilarious. Mostly because it hadn’t fallen over. I felt like a character from one of those face-palm comedies that are designed to make the watcher feel uncomfortable. Oh, when fiction becomes reality.

And now, Soap. Wednesday night was play night for the week and we arrived at the Riverside Studio with only the words ‘bathtub’, ‘acrobatics’, ‘funny’ and ‘sexy’ as any indication of what was to come. You have to love the baffled critics of experimental theatre. Funnily enough, it kind of summed it up. ONLY NOT. They forgot to mention that it was CRAZY AWESOME. Cirque de Soleil meets Sea World meets sexy men with their shirts off doing acrobatics. And one of them looked exactly like Neil Patrick Harris. I mean, come on. But it really was a fascinating, very existential performance, the acrobatics amazing and the cohesion surprisingly there for the fact that there were basically opera singing-clown school attending-acrobatics doing-actors there performing. Ridiculous. And shocking. And wonderful. Ah, how fondly we will look back on Soap. And I sang A Very Potter Musical on the way back on the tube, delighting (again, ?) the rest of my class. Ah, exhibitionism at its finest.

Tune in soon for my reviews (and mostly CRAZY RAVES) about Scotland!