Housekeeping

June 13, 2016

This morning, we had class for about an hour and a half to discuss all of our experiences abroad over the weekend.  Lots of people from our group went to Ireland, and I was glad to hear that they all had fun, but it made me slightly jealous that I hadn’t gone with them.

After class, I had to do some housekeeping things after getting back from Paris.  I unpacked my suitcase, took a shower, went to the grocery store, did my laundry, and FaceTimed with my sweet boyfriend.

By this time is was 4 in the afternoon, and I knew that we had a blog post about London markets due this evening, so I decided to go to one, even though we had to be at the National Theatre at 5:30. Bad decision.  I went to Camden Market, which was wonderful, but huge! There was no way I could have seen everything.  By the time I got to that part of town, I only had about 20 minutes to walk around.

Camden Market was a huge complex of booths selling jewelry, painted signs, graphic t-shirts, and pretty much any food you could ever imagine. Parts of it were indoors, other parts outdoors.  It is actually six markets together in the same district of London.  To say it is very large is an understatement.

This is now the third market I’ve been to one this trip, the other two being Borough Market and Greenwich Market.  I absolutely love going to markets. The products sold are so diverse and so are the people.  It is so fun to look around and explore everything that’s offered, even if you don’t have time to see everything.  But it’s probably a good thing that I didn’t have a lot of time today, because I probably would have spent too much money.

I grabbed a quick dinner there at a booth run by a husband and wife called “Mr. Piadina.” Piadinas are sort of like an Italian flat bread thing.  This booth had two piadina options, the Mr. Brie and the Mrs. Prosciutto.  I got the Mr. Brie, of course, because brie. This is definitely the best dish I have had containing brie on the whole trip.  It had mozzarella, brie, tomato, lettuce, and basil leaves. Very good.

Here comes the bad decision part: I ran out of time.

I rushed to the tube station and got on the wrong train.  I was headed in the right direction, but the Camden station splits the Northern Line into two branches.  I got on the wrong branch.  So, I got off the train at a station that I’d never been to, and proceeded to run around like a chicken with my head cut off trying to figure out which line connects with the Embankment station, which is closest to the National Theatre.  The Circle line was the train I needed.  After waiting ten minutes for the train to arrive, I still had to travel through 9 stations, and the Circle line travels about 5 miles an hour. Not really, but it is like the slowest line in all the Underground. 30 minutes later, I alighted at Embankment. It had started to rain, and I still had a ten minute walk to get to the theater.  Of course, I got stuck behind the inevitable slow people and the people who decide to stop mid stride…I will never understand these people.  Ten minutes later, I arrived at the theater, soaking wet, late, and out of breath.  I sat down just as the house lights were dimming for the pre-show talk back for The Threepenny Opera with the artistic director of the theater and the director of the show. This was a very informative and inspiring discussion, and I am glad we had the opportunity to go.

The show was strange.  As expected.  The script was really weird, so I wasn’t expecting the stage presentation to be any different.  It was done well, but the composition of the music all started to sound the same after a while.  I found this underwhelming because one of the directors had said during the talk back that the music in this show is his favorite of all time.  My favorite quote from the director and playwright of this particular version was, “You could say it’s a bit of a mess…and it is.” It was a fine and entertaining show, but it definitely doesn’t hit my top five or even ten of the trip.

We’re all back at the hostel now, having snacks and writing blogs. Tomorrow we are going to the sky garden and the Victoria and Albert museum.

Good night!