All You Need is Love

So I was going to wait to update until this weekend, but I was worried I'd forget things so here I am again! I bet you're sick of me - oh well! ;)

We went to this fantastic Spanish restaurant for dinner the other night - it was called Salvador and Amanda (http://www.salvadorandamanda.com/) and it was absolutely delicious! The place didn't look like too much from the outside, and you walked into this tiny foyer and downstairs into this astonishingly large room. It had a great atmosphere. They served very small portions (tapas), and I had the sarten con patatinas, which was phenomenal - very rich, very flavorful. We were there for happy hour so we got a pitcher of sangria, and Amber said it was the best sangria she'd ever had, so I shouldn't get my hopes up for the next time I try it. But it really was good! Mom, get ready - this might be one of the places we try.

The National Gallery

Wednesday, Emily and I went to the National Gallery - we saw a lot of really cool paintings (and a lot of ugly representations of the baby Jesus - I guess everyone just assumed he was really, really fat. Emily said that a lot of early Renaissance painters didn't like painting Jesus as a baby, so they would just paint a really tiny man. Talk about creepy looking). I got to see some Van Gogh, some Monet, and Raphael, some Michelangelo (half of the ninja turtles!) - there's this really cool DaVinchi exhibit going on, but it's really hard to get in...we think we're going to try anyway!

Trafalgar Square

The Gallery is in Trafalgar Square, which is really cool. There's a great view of Big Ben in the distance from there, a lot of sweet lion statues, and a countdown to the Olympics that you can see in the bottom right of the picture right over there. There were also some street performers, a living statue guy, and a lot of pigeons. But that's pretty normal. (Also, Mom - note that I added captions for you. See, I listen to your guys' suggestions!)

Us? Tourists? No.

After heading home I had a lovely impromptu skype session with my wonderful roommates back home, all of whom I miss very much, but all of whom seem to be doing fine. And that was yesterday!

I am the walrus, koo koo kachoo.

Today, we played the tourist again and headed over to Abbey Road. We walked across the crosswalk (and took pictures of each other doing so - Abbey Road is busy and it's kind of awkward to walk through the traffic with someone taking pictures of you. Oh well). We also wrote on the walls outside Abbey Road Studios. It's very cool; the whole brick fencing up and down the street is covered in writing. They paint over it again every few months, I would guess, but it's still cool to have ourselves on the wall for now. That picture at the top of the blog is a tile someone added to the wall. I have a lot of other pictures where I tried to be an artsy photographer - they're all pretty embarrassing, but will probably be posted on facebook at some point or another.

We then acquired some books for class (as a side note it is next to impossible to find notebooks, pencils, etc, in this city - we're probably looking in all the wrong places, but without a WalMart or Staples or even CVS, I have nowhere to look! We're going to find them tomorrow, though - that's our goal). I have two separate but very similar Renaissance Drama Anthologies - of course. Can you guess from the picture which one I like more? There is a whole lot more I'll be reading for class this year, but a lot of it is done online - whole books, even! And I'm going to be utilizing the library as much as possible. Note that I, of course, like the honors kid I am, got myself a planner - I'd be lost without it.

Well, I'm going to relax for a while more and go to bed. These days of constant walking are very tiring. But I'll be nice and fit by the end of this semester! This weekend the tube line out of our station is closed so I'm going to have to be creative to get myself to King's Cross to meet Shelby, but I'm sure it'l all work out. I'll just give myself an extra hour (or two) to get around haha. Directions aren't my thing. I miss you all! Cheers. :)