Hmmm...Remember me?

Now the dirty secret is out...I'm horrible at keeping things like journals. I still have a diary I bought when I was in 7th grade that I still kind of write in...and it's only half filled, if that. Oh well. :)

So, obviously, I made it back from London, although the trip was...interesting.

To start things off, my camera broke somewhere from the day before and going through the security at the airport, which made for an excellent start of the trip. Thankfully, both of my friends had digital cameras and I bought a disposable while I was there, but I'm kind of bummed - it's only a few months old. Now I get to try a repair shop in Spanish! Eek.

So, Friday we went to the Tower of London, which was pretty cool. It's kind of weird being in a place where someone was kept until they were executed, or being in a room where people where tortured for various things in that exact location. We paid for the audio guides, which were well worth it, and thankfully I was with other nerdy types so we all ended up listening to the extra information on each site. They even had people reading writings that people made there, including this one guy who was tortured by being hung by his wrists in metal manacles. He said that when the pain got so bad that he passed out they would lift him up until he woke up and then let him hang again, and that they did this about 9 times. They wanted him to renounce the Protestant belief or something to that effect, and he told them it was crazy talk and he wouldn't give up his soul to save his life. I definitely liked the whole torture stuff. :)

We ended up spending a lot more time there than I wanted to, since I had a time limit they didn't have and didn't really care about the armory that we ended up being in for over an hour. (And it was crawling with a school group of 8 or 9 year olds, of which my friends told me they lost me in the crowd..ha ha. I was only shorter than about half of them, so there!). Then we went to the British Museum, which I had wanted to see more, but I only had about an hour and a half. I decided to call it a wash instead of getting really pissed off, so I saw the Rosetta Stone and went to the ramen place I read about in my guidebook for dinner. (Yes, it's an addiction, but it could be much worse!)

Then I went to see the Lion King! Which is why I had a time limit my friends didn't. It was the coolest thing I have ever seen in my entire life! I could go on and on about it, but I'll be nice and won't. If you can get a chance to see it somewhere, do, and pay for the better seats. When they did the opening of Circle of Life the different animals came down the aisles, as well as at some other parts. They did a really good job of turning a cartoon with animals in it into people-animals in person. It's amazing.

Then the next day I went to York, which I can't show you any pretty pictures because I was all by myself and it's on a disposable. It was good, I got to walk along the original city wall that was built by the Romans and then rebuilt later on, and then I think a little more later on, so my feet and the Roman parts were far removed, but it was still pretty cool. I discovered, not surprisingly, that I wouldn't be able to shoot arrows through the arrow slits, since I could barley see out of the bottom of it. (To which Karli, at Tower of London on a similar wall, made a lovely reference to Lord of the Rings and asking if I would need a box to stand on or if she should just describe everything to me. Let's just say I feel the dwarf's pain, I really do.)

There was some major stumbles in the trips and some changes and all that resulted from it, but I'll save that for another day since this is a little bit long already.

Cheers,
Anica