#palalce

[yewenyi]

Gatehouse by Brian Yap (葉) Via Flickr: The gate house of the imperial palace. Korea Seoul20061010 IMG_7646.jpg

[mindthegapadventures]

Day 78, Day 79, Day 80, Day 81, Day 82

Day 78

I stayed at my mom's hotel the night before and we got up early and I brought her to catch her train to the airport. We had to get there about 7:30 so we left around 7:00am to make sure we got there on time. I didn't want to say bye to my mom, but I had to. When we got to the train station, the train was leaving in like two minutes so we basically ran to the platform and said a really quick goodbye. I was not very happy about that. Good news is she made it to her flight on time and made it home safe back to America!

I went back to campus and fell asleep and did homework for the rest of the day. Nothing too cool happened.

Day 79

I had two classes today. I had a presentation in my second class which didn't go too bad, but I hate presentations so much so I was very happy to get it over with. After class we grabbed some lunch and hung around until dinner time. For dinner we went to the student bar on campus and stayed there for most of the night. It was karaoke night, so we thought it would be nice to hang out on campus instead of going out to Walkabout where it would basically be the same experience.

We got some dinner (I had nachos) and then we hung out and Jackie and I got some Strongbow. The night was interesting to say the least. There were these two girls that basically took turns singing songs and they were absolutely dreadful. It literally hurt my ears to listen to them and this one girl that was working was visibly distressed by their singing and that was kind of funny. Anyway, this went on for a few hours until other people started getting more drunk and decided to sign up for songs. The night got better as it went on and those girls stopped singing. I think the people working were pretty happy as well.

Day 80

First of all, how is it already day 80... I feel like I got here like two days ago.

Anyway, today... I did nothing. Oops.

Day 81

We decided to walk around a bit today so we did a quick walk in the park and then headed over to Trafalger Square where I saw online that there was going to be a giant pillow fight. There was so many people; it was hilarious. It literally was a mob of people having a pillow fight in front of the National Gallery. It was so funny to watch. There were feathers everywhere though. Literally the second we got off the tube there were feathers in the underground. It was crazy. It only got worse as we got close to the actual pillow fight. The streets were filled with feathers and they were all over the air and in people's hair and there were cops everywhere. It was quite the sight. It reminded me of the giant pillow fight I went to in Boston when I was in high school expect feather pillows were banned from that one because they're so messy. I wish I had a pillow because I definitely would have joined.

After we watched the pillow fight for a while we walked over to Covent Gardens because we had wanted to see around there since we had first seen it when we did the scavenger hunt in the beginning. It was so pretty. It reminded me a lot of Faneuil Hall in Boston. There are loads of food places and stores in a little square. We walked around there for a few hours and watch a few street performers. It was really fun. We even got some of the infamous Ben's Cookies. To be honest, I was expecting them to be spectacular with the way everyone describes them, but they were just normal cookies. Maybe I didn't get a good one.

After we had walked around there for a while, we headed back to campus. Alyssa and I decided to go to Nando's for dinner because the refectory is closed on Saturday nights. The meal was delicious, per usual. After dinner we headed back to campus and I did a little homework and we hung in for the night.

Day 82

We got up around noon, got some lunch, and headed over to Kensington Palace. I wasn't expecting it to be as pretty as it was. It was a bit overcast, so I'd imagine it's even more beautiful when it's nice out... but the palace is in the middle of a garden! It's beautiful. I can see why Will and Kate want to live there.

There are four exhibits that people are allowed to go into but one of them was closed so we did the other three. The first one we went into was called Fashion This! and it was filled with different dresses that Princess Diana, Princess Margret and Queen Elizabeth II wore in the past. Some of them were absolutely beautiful. I would almost be afraid to wear some of them because of how pretty they were. After that section we went to a part called the Queen's Apartments where we learned all about Queen Anne and her 17 pregnancies (one of which she was pregnant with twins). It was basically about her struggle to get an heir to the throne and how she was the last of the Stuart Dynasty. It was really interesting to learn about all this stuff because I really don't have any idea about how the whole monarchy thing works. I can't even imagine how traumatic it was for her to have 18 of her children die. The longest any of them survived was until the age of 11 when he died a few days after his 11th birthday. Queen Anne then went on to die of Lupus where she was bloated, shaved her head, and was advised to walk around with garlic attached to her feet to help cure her. This obviously didn't work. So she wen through a lot in her life. After the section we went to a part called Victoria Revealed where we learned about Queen Victoria and her life. This was by far the largest part of the museum that we could see. There was so much in all the rooms. Queen Victoria grew up and lived in the Palace so we got to see where she lived and where her family lived. Not to mention she was in power for such a long time, so there was a lot of history between her and the Palace as a whole. We got to see everything from her clothes to the toys her children used to play with. I actually think this section was my favorite because there was so much to see and so much to do. It took us about two hours to go through the whole Palace. I was really hoping we would accidentally bump into Will and Kate but no such luck.

After the Palace, we got some Ben's Cookies from the tube station and headed back to campus. I went to Chipotle with Anya, Jackie, and Kathleen and we ended up staying for a few hours and just chatting. It was nice to finally catch up with them. I feel like I haven't seen them in so long.

I'm about to do some more homework for now and then head to bed.

Cheers!