Three for Three

The last three days have been just fantastic! Well, every day is pretty fantastic in London, but these last few days were especially awesome. It all started on Thursday, when two of my friends and I got front row seats for only 20 pounds each, to a play called Our Boys, which stars both Matt Lewis (Neville Longbottom from Harry Potter) and Arthur Darvill (Rory Williams from Doctor Who). Of course, those two were my main motivations for seeing the play. Call me a crazy fan-girl, I don't even care. Because it's 100 percent true haha. The way we got such good seats for such a good price was showing up to the box office when it opened at 10 in the morning and asking for "day seats."

And let me tell you, it was more than worth the 20 pounds spent!! Our seats were great, obviously. We didn't have to worry about an inevitable tall person sitting in front of us and blocking our view. The basic premise of the play is about six army men all in military hospital at the same time, all for different reasons: one got shot in the head and has brain damage, one man's toes literally froze off in the line of duty, one had to get a circumcision because he kept getting infections down there...you get the idea. Basically, they all hang out in the hospital together while waiting to be healed, and form a sort of rag-tag brotherhood. However, military hospitals are strict, and when the hospital authorities discover they breached protocol over a bit of fun, suspicion and betrayal ensue.

To start off with, this play was probably one of the funniest things I have ever seen!! There were no other cast members other than the six actors, which worked well because they had such excellent chemistry, it would have been detrimental to throw another actor into the mix. The humor in the play was quite raunchy, but I could not stop laughing! In fact, I laughed till I cried a few times. It reminded me of The Hangover in that way. Of course, the play did have serious undertones, especially at the end. But they pulled off the drama very well. It was awesome to see Matt and Arthur act on stage, after only seeing them on screen before this! They both did such excellent jobs. And after the play, we made a beeline for the stage door, where I got autographs and pictures with both of them!!!!! I was literally shaking, I was so excited. I am so pathetic, sometimes. Matt came out first, and he was so nice and SO handsome. Oh my gosh, when I think about how he looked through most of the Harry Potter movies, he was pretty shambly. But he grew up into such a handsome guy! I felt so stupid. All I could stammer out to him was "You were just so wonderful." He probably thought I was the dumbest girl he's ever met. But I was just so starstruck! And then Arthur came out, and luckily I managed to be a bit more eloquent. In addition to telling him he was wonderful, I told him that I missed him on Doctor Who (his character just got killed off in the mid-season finale) and he said "Oh, it's alright! It's still gonna be great to watch!" It took all I had to remain composed. He was so sweet! Ahhhhh. I give the play two thumbs way, way up!! It was such a hard decision between the two pictures of me with Matt and Arthur for which would be my profile picture on Facebook, but Matt won out in the end ;)

Okay, enough fan-girling for now. The next day was Friday, and I took the free day to visit Kensington Palace. It was lovely! It is quite a small palace, more like a mansion, but it was exquisite! Kensington Palace, of course, is where Princess Diana lived, where she raised her two sons, and remained her London home until her death. Additionally, it is the London residence of Prince William and Kate Middleton. I know for a fact they are in London right now, because I saw on the news that they attended a fundraiser in London for their alma mater, the University of St. Andrew's, the night before. With this in mind, I waved to the back windows of the palace, where I assume their living quarters are. Hey, it was worth a try.

There were three main exhibits: the King's apartments, the Queen's apartments, and a brand new exhibit called "Victoria Revealed," which was all about Queen Victoria's life (she grew up in Kensington Palace and lived there until she became queen). They had so many different artifacts from her life, like her famous wedding dress (she was the one who started the white wedding dress tradition), sketches she drew as a child, a piano she played duets on with her future husband, Prince Albert, and so many other cool things. One really nice touch about the exhibit was that on different surfaces, like mirrors, walls, and tabletops, were printed excerpts from Victoria's diaries. It really added a personal touch to all that I saw, especially when I got to the room where it was all about her and Albert's courtship and marriage. She wrote so lovingly about him in her diary that it was hard not to go "awww." And there were also excerpts from some letters that Albert wrote to Victoria, and he was equally adorable in his love for her. Theirs was truly a fairy-tale romance, because even though it was an arranged marriage, they truly loved each other, which was so uncommon for royals at the time. There was even some sheet music on display that Albert had written for Victoria while they were courting! Why can't more men like him exist?? He was musical, intelligent, handsome, actively involved in social justice issues, and completely loyal. I can't handle how perfect he was, and how cute they were. It nearly made me forget that they were first cousins...haha. I actually teared up when I got to the room where it was all about Albert's early death from typhoid and how devastated Victoria was for the rest of her extremely long life. So sad!! I can't imagine how heartbroken she must have been. There were many other rooms to look at too, like the room about her Diamond Jubilee ( they actually had video from it!!) and about the Great Exhibition of 1851, all of which was so interesting! I am really glad I went there.

Today was also very exciting, because it was the day of the Lord Mayor's Show. No, it did not consist of Boris Johnson singing and dancing while juggling flaming torches. The Lord Mayor is different from the Mayor of London. He is basically a ceremonial figure-head, whose office has existed for about 800 years! The Show is essentially a huge parade where the new Lord Mayor is inaugurated ever year. Lord, if I saw one military marching band, I'm sure I saw at least fifty! The huge procession included representation from all the historical guilds of London, like as the candle-makers and apothecaries. There were lots of fun floats, dancers in crazy costumes, and of course the Lord Mayor in his gilded carriage. It was bloody cold, but really cool to see! I took lots of video and pictures.

Well, there's my amazing three days for you! Too much awesomeness to handle. With such fun things to do all the time, it will be so hard to leave London in only FIVE weeks *gulp*. Nope, not thinking about that now! Call me Cleopatra, Queen of Denial.