the fun is in getting there

today was a lovely lazy day. woke up at 12, and went to the Sherlock Holmes pub for lunch. I had eaten breakfast so a friend and I split a spotted dick. hahaha, don't go crazy now! spotted dick is a classic english dessert and it is actually quite tasty. from what I gathered from eating it, it is a sweet cake/bread with raisins in it (that would be the spots) and then it was covered in custard. although to me it was more like instant vanilla pudding or something. I was pleasantly surprised that my second foray into english food was more satisfying.

then we went to the national portrait gallery to visit a "searching for shakespeare" exhibit. actually, it was homework, but it was pretty fun too. our assignment was to look at the 6 portraits of shakespeare and discuss the artists techniques and their reasons for portraying him as they did. it is going to be a good paper because I have a lot to say on the subject.

for starters, there are no known portraits of shakespeare in his lifetime, yet the gallery had 6 hanging on the wall. of the 6, two were titled "unknown englishman, painted by unknown artist" and two others were confirmed by the gallery to be fakes! (yet were still hanging in the exhibit as legitimate portraits) so that leaves me two portraits with untainted histories on which to base my opinion of what shakespeare looked like. great. but there is plenty to write about on the fakes and uncertain ones. mostly for me I dont think they should have been in the exhibit, but that would have left the gallery with very little to show for the £5 entrance fee.

then the rest of the day was in search of a good place to eat dinner. our favorite pub was too busy for the 5 of us to find a place to sit - and it is 4 floors of pub! - and we took the tube at the busiest time of the day to get there and ended up just riding it back to our home station and walking by our hotel to another restaurant that wasnt open (because, you know, everything closes by 8 pm here) so we found this hole in the wall local pub with amazing food! I could be biased because I was starving at the time, but we all decided we would be going back to that place. it only took us 2 hours to find a place to eat. unfortunately that is not the first time that has happened to me. (what is worse is that the longer you walk around looking for a place to eat, the more places close for the night.)

Tomorrow we go to Bath and Stonehenge!! yay!


P.S. € = Euro. the rest of Europe and Ireland are on the Euro, but England, Wales, and Scotland (AKA the UK) still use the £(=pound). it works out splendidly for England because the dollar is about a 1.80/1 ratio to the pound and the Euro is about 1.30/1.