Sunday, January 25, 2009

Lovin' London

Boy-o! Have you ever been to London? You should, I think. I didn’t really want to go, but decided that I should go because everyone else said it was the thing to do. Thank goodness for peer pressure! (That’s not something you hear every day.)

I think my dad summed up my feelings about visiting London when he talked about going to Niagra Falls. He didn’t really want to go, and it was out of the way and he was tired, but he decided to go see something new. When he got there he couldn’t believe that he might have missed the opportunity to see something that amazing. (Yeah, I listen when you tell stories, dad. What of it? Maybe later I’ll talk about life’s wheel of fortune!)

Friday night I went to the glow in the dark dance party. It was amazing! The picture shows sort of what it looked like, though it was cooler than the picture of course. It was four hours of crazy, colorful dancing. It made all my glow stick practice worth something. I was ecstatic! I could dance to my heart’s content without strange, sometimes pitying looks. And here’s something interesting in case you ever find yourself going to a glow-in-the-dark party: highlighter glows in UV light. I had neat drawings on my arms that glowed! Well, that got done at 3:00 and by the time I showered it was 3:30. Then a fire alarm went off at 3:45... So I didn’t get to sleep after 4:30 and had to wake up at 8:30 to go to London.

Needless to say, that morning was not one of the happiest times of my life. I was pretty low on life’s wheel of fortune. But with one quick swing of fate I was in London and again at the top of the wheel! (Got another one in, dad! Maybe next I’ll talk about the translations saying you told.) First I went to Piccadilly Circus, and saw fake guards that danced, pigeons eating off of plates right next to people, and Darth Vader with storm troopers. I almost said to Darth “We Americans have already defeated the evil empire! haHA!” but thought that he might use the force on me if I did that.

Maddie and I chillin' with the storm troopers.

We walked from there to the Royal Opera House and then to Trafalgar Square. From here on I was so excited I was practically salivating. (Ok, maybe I was a little. Let’s not talk about it. Just kidding of course!) The amount of monuments astonished me. In Arizona there are a few statues, but nothing nearly as majestic as the statues in London. Nelson’s column, as seen below, is tremendous. It was my definitely one of my favorite sights, especially when seen in conjunction with the smaller statues and fountains.

Nelson's Column. It's bigger than it looks here.

We saw Big Ben and Westminster Abbey from the square and they actually took my breath away, as lame as that may sound. I’d seen them before on postcards and calendars, but never fathomed their grandeur. Big Ben, as I kept saying, was so big! Westminster Abbey, next to it and the Houses of Parliament, was also beautiful. The sign said that there had been services there for nine hundred years. Westminster Abbey has a littler clock, (though it is still humongous) which probably has serious self esteem issues being so near Big Ben.


Can you guess which of the two clocks is more famous?





I’m afraid I’ve already written too much today, so will conclude later. I also have to read Phaedra. It’s originally in French, so I have to read a translation. And you know what they say about translations. “Translations are like women - if they are beautiful, they are not faithful; if they are faithful, they are not beautiful.” Ouch!

4 comments:

  1. Stop being such a couch potato, will ya? I don't remember the wheel of fortune talk--but I would like to know how your weekend compared to hockey.

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  2. I just can't get enough of this Wisdom of Dirk stuff.

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  3. I was thinking about postcard writing: Post cards are like hockey games. You can't just mail them in...

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  4. Actually...you CAN just mail them in. What does that say about hockey?.....hmmmmmmm.

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