Today was a later start for us. Meredith and Dawn went to water aerobics at
10am, but I decided to pass. Instead I decided to do a little reading on Italy,
to start planning for Florence.

Last night we planned pretty much all of Paris, and it looks like we will be
talking two day trips outside of Paris to Versailles and Giverney/Vernon. We
decided we better make the best use of our Global Rail Pass.

We also have changed the dates of Venice and Vienna around a bit. Everyone we
have talked to said Venice can be done within a day, and it is really expensive.
But Dawn told us we should try our hardest to get to Budapest. We have a hostel
booked in Budapest for 2 nights now, but we need to make train reservations.
And the train reservations can only be mailed to us, and not printed out online.
So we have to wait until we get into Paris or Florence and try to make those
reservations at the train station. If we cannot then we will just cancel our
reservations in Budapest. But if we can, we are going to cancel the last two
nights in Venice, and our first night in Vienna.

Anyways, back to toady. After they got back from water aerobics we made a
fabulous breakfast. Spinach and feta omelets with crumpets :) Yes, crumpets!
We are so British. Then we headed out to the train station. With it being a
bank holiday weekend, a lot of the trains are not running so we had to take a
different way into the city. Thankfully we have Dawn to guide us and we got
there with no problems.

We got into London around noon, and had dinner reservations at Real Greek at 5pm
for one of Dawn's friends birthdays. And then we were seeing Macbeth at 6:30pm
at the Globe Theater! Before the theater, we were just going to walk around the
South bank. We saw the giant lawn furniture. And when you sat in them it felt
as though you were Alice in Wonderland. We continued to wander down the South
bank and take various pictures.

Our other stop was at the Tate Modern. Which is the art gallery in the old
factory building. It had a balcony with an amazing view of the Thames River.
The art gallery itself was pretty interesting. Though I am not the biggest art
person, I can still appreciate the creativity. And trust me, some of it was
VERY creative? If that is what you want to call it. I was much more interested
in the photography, and there was a great exhibit about the New York City
Underground in the early 1980's.

After the Tate Modern, we decided to head out towards the Globe Theater and
restaurant. We got there an hour early, but just sat and people watched along
the river. After everyone arrived we went into Real Greek.

The food was very good I had the vegetarian gyro (which is called something else
but i can't remember) ... After dinner it was time for Macbeth!

I really didn't know what to expect with the globe theater. I had to do a
report on it in high school, but that was the extent of my knowledge. Inside it
was extremely cool. It was rebuilt since Shakespeare's time, obviously, but all
the historical character was maintained. We had standing room only, which is
the main floor. And to our surprise, there was a black stretchy curtain type
thing extending from the stage to the back with little head holes. So we had to
stand under the black curtain and just our heads were popping up. It was the
STRANGEST thing, and we got some good laughs out of it.

The definitely incorporated the black curtain into the show, and had the three
evil witches running around your bodies. They also had some holes reserved for
the actors, where these bloody men would pop out of right next to you. Haha, it
was definitely a different experience.

Overall the production was really good. I understood most of the story line,
but I definitely don't speak Shakespearean. Luckily, another girl we went with
knew the story line and filled us in. In the intermission we had a little camp
out under the curtain and sat down for 10 minutes, which was AWESOME, seeing how
it was over a 3 hour show!

Macbeth was also extremely hot and ripped, so all of us ladies enjoyed the
shirtless scenes... which there were plenty, but still not enough :)

After the show we made our way back to Romford. Once again, due to the bank
holiday, a lot of the trains were closed. So we had to go into Barking. And
seeing how no one had school/work on Monday there were stil a lot of people out
and drunk. Barking isn't the nicest area and after waiting for the bus for
about 20 minutes, we decided it was best to call a taxi.

We made it back, and I just skyped my parents :)

Tomorrow is Les Miserables! and our last day in London :(

-brooke.