Stratford Upon Avon

I have realized that when I do things I need to blog about them right away because when I put it off I totally loose the motivation and interest in writing about them.

But anyway on Wednesday, very very bright and early Jenny and I set off on a nice long train ride to Stratford Upon Avon, which is not only Shakespeare's birthplace, but Jenny lived there for a year when she was 7 so that was her main motivation for going back and I figured "why not come along on the journey? It'll be fun!" and it was!!!

Our first day there we not only saw Julius Caesar in the Royal Shakespeare Company theater but we knocked on the door and met the lovely family who leased Jenny's family their house when she lived there. So kind of them to let us in and talk to us and show us around the house, it was adorable! Later that night after we saw the play we met up with Andy, the son of the people who own the house and he took us out for drinks at a nearby pub called the Dirty Duck. It was a blast! I love how friendly people are in England!

The next day we ate a scrumptious b&b breakfast and then spent the day sightseeing more around Stratford and wandering around and having more delicious tea. We even got to go out to the country a little bit and sat in the sun and had a grande old time. Later we wandered Stratford more and sat by the river and had fun watching the hilarious combinations of people row past in their boats. Then we met back up with Andy again before saying goodbye and catching the train back to Brighton late Thursday night. The trip was soooo much fun! I'm definitely not properly expressing how fun it was in this post. The whole weekend we just kept bursting into giggle fits. We still talk about it and burst into giggle fits, haha!

Read about it on Jenny's blog here. And see more of my photos here.

Yesterday was a class trip to London to see the Changing Face Of Letterpress show at the London College of Communications that our letterpress technician, Rose had work in. But since we weren't supposed to meet until 3pm, Jenny and I decided to go get a full day's worth of entertainment in London!

We took a train up to London and went straight to the Natural History Museum. It was great!!!! So many animals! There were some weird ones that I couldn't possibly believe were real unless they were in a museum.... some looked like pokemon, some had the spindliest legs ever and I don't know how they could walk on them... it was great! We also saw tons of dinosaur bones and fossils, as well as a giant huge baby fetus in a dark room that was incredibly frightening...

After the museum, we went to go to LCC to find the gallery show. We eventually got there and saw a few of our classmates and our two teachers there, as well as Rose who's work was amazingggg!!! The show was really nice to see, lots of beautiful work, and it makes me want to get back in the lettepress studio back at Brighton and make stuff! We got a little tour of the gallery show and then looked around before getting a tour of their actual letterpress studio at LCC, which is HUGE! It was niceeeee and big and pretty. Then, since it was an open day (kind of like "experience mcad" days), Jenny and I figured we'd take the opportunity to go exploring around the school. It was really confusing but we had a good time seeing what it would have been like if we applied there instead of Brighton.

By then it was about 5 and we decided that since we spent money on our train tickets up to London we were going to make our trip worth the money and not just go back home. Sooo we decided to see a play/musical! Off we went on the good old tube till we found ourselves in London's west end and theater district. We ended up seeing Sunset Boulevard (the musical) at The Comedy Theater. But after we bought our tickets we had about 2 hours of free time to kill, so what else would we posibly do other than find doughnuts and smoothies for ourselves!?! As we wandered in search of a good smoothie, we passed Fortnum and Mason, an incredible store which I had visited with Sam a few days before. And I just knew that it was something Jenny needed to see and something I needed to see again. So we went in and basically were in heaven the entire time. I treated myself to a giant blood-orange macaroon which I ate on the train ride home. Yummmm. Then we found this nice little place called Cilantro Cafe that had smoothies so we went in and got ourselves smoothies AND A GIANT CHOCOLATE MACAROON which basically made my life complete. Beyond delicious. Then we found a doughnut place and headed back to the theater.

sunset Boulevard was great! I only knew a little bit about the plot because it's my dad's favorite movie but I'd never seen it before so I was so excited to see it and then tell my dadddd yayyyy! The storyline was reallllllly great and the main character is FIERCE AND INSANE AND MENTAL IN SUCH A COMPELLINGLY GREAT WAY! I really enjoyed it. The theater was really nice and tiny and old and beautiful too.

Then at the end of our journey we caught the train and made it back to Brighton by midnight. Another splendid day in London!