Digital Story

The One Time I Met Richard Armitage

A couple of days after I arrived in London, my friends and I were running from one stop to another on the tube, and one friend noticed a poster advertising The Crucible. She pointed it out to me, saying something to the effect of, "Hey! The Crucible! I'd like to see that." I glanced at the poster, and noticed the attractive man on it. I then did a double take, because that man was none other than Richard Armitage. If you don't know who that is, check it out here, and then go and watch everything he's in. I'll wait.

Finished? Good. So my friends and I looked up the tickets, and discovered there were tickets available for less than £20. So we decided buying tickets would be a good decision in our lives, and booked our seats to see Richard in the flesh.

It was finally the big night. We had a lovely spaghetti dinner, and then it was time to head to the theater!

When we got off of the tube, we realized we hadn't exactly looked up how to get from the station to the theater, which was a tiny bit problematic, but thanks to the help of a police officer, we found the exit we needed to take, and luckily, the theater was right outside of the train station.

Because we got cheaper tickets, we were in the "restricted view" section. I was a little nervous our seats would be really bad and we wouldn't be able to see anything, but they were actually quite good! The theatre was in the round, so we were pretty close to the stage, and definitely close enough to see Richard's angry, distressed face. The only bad thing about our seats is we didn't have a backrest, so I was pretty darn sore by the end of the night, but there are worse things.

The play was amazing. I'm a little ashamed to say that this was the first time I had seen/read The Crucible, but boy, oh boy, it was so flipping good. The production was super creepy, and Richard Armitage's performance was flawless. (Especially the part where he took off his shirt. Woo baby!) He played the part extremely well. And the other actors were outstanding as well. It was such a great performance.

Our program director told us we could go back by the stage door and meet the cast after the show. So we decided to do just that. I don't really have the best reputation for being normal when meeting famous people, so I should have thought through what I was going to say to him, but all of that went out the window when my friend said, "Jen! He's posing for pictures with people!"

So he comes over to us, and I'm trying to spit out something along the lines of, "That was a wonderful performance. You're so talented!" But I think I was just mumbling. For your convenience, here's a transcript of the conversation my friends and I had with Richard:

Jen: mumblemumblemumble
Sarah: You did such a great job. That was an awesome performance!
Richard: (in his characteristic deep, sexy voice) Thank you! I really appreciate you guys coming out.
Jen: (blurting out) Can I get a picture with you?
Richard: (charmingly) Sure, where's your camera?
Jen: (points) Uh, there
Richard: (puts his arm around Jen)
Jen: (swoons)
While Richard is putting his arm around Jen, Jen feeling his soft leather jacket on her skin, her friends are fumbling with their cameras, trying to get a picture. Because of the darkness, the cameras take an abnormally long amount of time to take one simple picture. But Jen doesn't mind.
Richard: Uh-oh, digital.
Picture snaps
Jen: Thank you so much!
As Richard walks away, Jen thinks to herself, "Look back. Look back at me."

Basically, it was a fantastic, wonderful evening. Richard was so nice and charming, and it was so lovely to meet him in person. If you are in London sometime before September, you need to go see this. And if you can't make it to London, just go watch North and South a couple of times.

My Photo Book: An Overview of My Adventures Studying Abroad

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A Story in Six Frames

Today I experienced the Harry Potter Studio Tours, which was brilliant. But you won't get to hear about that until tomorrow. #Sorrynotsorry

Today our photography assignment was to tell a story in just a few frames. I had every intention of doing something at the studios, but I was in awe the whole time, so I kind of forgot. Instead, I used inspiration from a few souvenirs of the day to create this story of friendship. Thanks to my great flatmates for being such great actors.

Tea Time and Pixie Dust

"Every morning we goes where we wishes, we's as free as fishes, sure beats washes dishes. What a fine life!"

Why am I singing the Newsies, you ask? It has absolutely nothing to do with what we did in London today, but I found out two of my flatmates love Newsies as much as I do, so we've been singing it all day long. For the past two days.

Anyway, back to London. This morning we took a walking tour around the neighborhood we're living in, and found out some well-known literary folks lived in the area including Virginia Woolf, George Orwell, and Charles Dickens for a brief time.

Orwell based the Ministry of Truth off of this building at the Museum of London in 1984.

After the tour, we headed off to Hyde Park and Kensington Palace.

Our photography focus was to capture water.

 We found the Peter Pan statue in Hyde Park, which I had been looking forward to seeing for a while. This statue is located in the exact spot where Peter lands after flying out of his nursery in The Little White Bird. This statue was actually secretly erected in the night and "magically" appeared on May 1, 1912. How cute is that?

But Peter, how do we get to Neverland?

After the park, we toured through Kensington Palace, and got to see dresses of the queen, and Princess Margaret and Diana. We also got to learn more about Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, which we really enjoyed.

Then we went to one of my favorite things we have done so far, which was afternoon tea at the Orangery. We got delicious finger sandwiches, scones, and desserts. I got a yummy wild berry herbal tea, and we had an awesome time pretending to be proper.

Doesn't this look delicioso?

 So, as I was daintily sipping my tea, my friend told me I should eat a whole sandwich in one bite. Little did she know that if someone tells me to do something, it doesn't take much convincing to get me to actually do it. So after sneakily looking around to make sure none of the cute waiters were watching (every single waiter in this place was so very attractive. It must have been a prerequisite for working there), I stuffed the sandwich in my mouth, while my friend documented the whole thing. Because why be proper at tea when you can act like children?

We also ate the sugar cubes that were supposed to go into our tea, but I won't talk about that.

Later that evening, a few of us went on a walk down the Thames River. We were in search for some literary surprises that I will talk about in another post, but we're getting ahead of ourselves. Spoilers.

We passed the Australia House, which was a filming location for Harry Potter. They used the interior for Gringotts. But just the foyer. They don't actually have roller coaster-like contraptions that take you to your bank vault. Or dragons. They don't have those either.

We got some drinks and sat on the edge of the river and watched the sun set. It was a lovely evening, and even though we got a tad lost on the way home, we had a fantastic time.

Poets' Corner and Other Cool Things

I can't tell you how good it is to be back in London. I loved Paris, but I feel much more at home in London, and I missed it in just the few days that we were gone.

This morning we took a guided tour of Westminster Abbey. We met with the rest of our group and dumb me forgot my Oyster Card (the card you need to take the underground and buses around London), so I resigned myself to going back to my flat and finding my way by myself, when my friend said that she forgot hers as well. So our program director kindly walked with us to Westminster. It was quite a beautiful walk, so I was okay that we forgot our cards, but it was still a tad embarrassing.

When we got there, we had a hilarious tour guide who told us tons of cool facts about the Abbey. One of my favorite parts was when he took us to the Poets' Corner, where there were so many burial sites of authors like Chaucer, Charles Dickens (although it was against his wishes), and Rudyard Kipling. It also has memorials for authors such as Jane Austen, Shakespeare, and the Bronte sisters. I had no idea this Poets' Corner existed, so it was a nice little surprise.

After Westminster we headed over to Trafalgar Square, where we took the obligatory picture with the lion.

It was scary getting up there. But it was scarier getting back down.

Sarah photo bombed me, but it ended up being the best picture of the trip thus far.

Then we went into the National Gallery and looked at more impressionist art. I continued on my tour of Van Gogh this summer (I've seen his paintings in D.C., New York City, Paris, and London so far) and saw his Sunflowers. I also loved his Long Grass with Butterflies. I could just stare at his paintings for hours.

But alas, I did not stare at his paintings for hours because, as my friend Sarah puts it, "my dogs were barking", and I was hungry. So we went home for lunch and I just hung around the flat until it was time to go eat dinner in a crypt. That's right, a crypt. We ate dinner while sitting on dead people's tombstones. But you forget about it quickly enough when eating the yummy food.

Our photography assignment today was to take a panoramic picture. I got this one from the steps of the National Gallery looking onto Trafalgar Square.

Tomorrow we will be doing a literary tour, as well as visiting Kensington Palace. It should be a treat!

My Weekend in Paris

Bonjour, mon ami! I just returned from a weekend in Paris, and boy, was it an adventure. We woke up super early to take a taxi to the train station, and I slept blissfully the whole way. When we got to Paris, we first learned to say "NO!" to anyone who asked us if we speak English. Then we made our way to a fancy-shamcy boat cruise. It was blistering hot outside, so being inside an air conditioned boat on the Seine River wasn't too bad. And the food was delicious!

Escargot. The sauce was so good it made me forget I was eating snails.

Steak and mashed potatoes. With tons of butter.

White peach gratin... mmmm...

After the lunch cruise, we made our way toward Montemartre for a walking tour. It was miserably hot, but our tour guide was very good, so it wasn't the worst experience I've ever had.

The third floor is where Van Gogh lived. 

The view of Paris from Sacre Coeur.

After our walking tour we went back to our hotel to shower and rest, since we had been up since 4:00 in the morning. We were scheduled to go to the Eiffel Tower at 9:30 but due to some complications (getting lost because we didn't have a guide with us) were late getting there. We ran to the line, which was very difficult to find, and they let us in, no problem. I was just happy I didn't have to climb any stairs this time. When we got to the top, it was definitely worth the hassle. Paris is stunning at night.

My friend took this picture of me by accident, and we couldn't stop laughing about it.

View from the top.

What a beaut.

The next day we started early so we could get as many things in as possible. We had a Paris Museum Pass, which let us in to a bunch of the museums for free and skip the lines. Which saved us hours. We saw the Hôtel des Invalides,  Musée de L’Orangeries (which has Monet's water lillies - they were beautiful), Le Jardin des Tuileries, and Sorbonne, just to name a few.

Some of my favorite things from Saturday in Paris was the Musée D’Orsay, which has an impressive impressionist collection, including Van Gogh, who is my favorite.

We also hit the Musée de Louvre, which I didn't get to go to last time. My friend and I got stuck wandering around the Renaissance paintings, it was kind of torture. But we did see the Mona Lisa, Venus De Milo, and Ramses II. So that was cool.

Horus makin' shadow puppets on the wall again.

We also headed over to Shakespeare and Company, a bookstore that was a gathering place for authors like Hemingway. It is now a bookstore and a reading library. It's so stinkin' adorable, with little nooks and crannies all around that you can curl up and read a book. I loved it.

While trying to find the bookstore, we stumbled across what we think was the Latin Quarter of Paris, which was so fun to walk around. There were restaurants, and gift shops, and bakeries up and down these cute little streets. We decided to get some gelato from one of the shops, and then headed over to the Seine to sit and eat our ice cream. It was the perfect end to the day.

The next morning we went and got crepes at a cute little restaurant and then went to the Arc de Triomphe, which has some amazing views. It's almost better than the Eiffel Tower because it's central, so every direction has an awesome view.

Then we walked down the Champs Elysées and got my favorite treat - macarons! I got passionfruit, rose, and vanilla raspberry, and mmmm, they were delicious! I have to say, I think the rose one was my favorite. If you turned a rose into a delicious treat, that's what it tasted like.

Then we headed over to Maison de Victor Hugo, which was where he lived while in Paris, and they have now turned it into a museum. While trying to find the exact apartment, we ran into this, so feel free to listen to the lovely french music while reading the rest of the post:

The museum was really cool, and I found out Victor Hugo was not only a talented writer, but a decorator and furniture designer as well. We found this cool piece of furniture, which Hugo made for an auction to help poor children. He got 3 other well known writers of the time, including Alexandre Dumas, to donate their inkwells, pens, and a handwritten letter, and made this stylish table, complete with their names. Unfortunately, the table didn't sell in the auction, so Hugo bought it himself.

There was also his writing desk in his bedroom, and I found out that he actually preferred to stand up as he wrote. You can see from the chair next to the desk that there's no way he could have sat down to write at this desk. It was a very neat museum, and it was absolutely free, which made it even better.

After the museum, we headed over to the Notre Dame and Saint Chapelle for a quick walk through. We ended our trip by sitting by the Seine. It was such a great trip to Paris, but I am excited to be back in London for my last week!

Our photography assignment for the weekend was to find our name from letters and shapes around the city, so here's what I cam up with:

Au Revior!