Improvising. Our kitchen here is really small and I don't exactly have a lot of room to store food. In fact, I have exactly half a drawer in the freezer, one and half shelves in the fridge, and one shelf in the cabinets. So sometimes, I have to be creative with my dinners. This is what I made last week and it turned out absolutely AWESOME. I wasn't sure how it was going to turn out, but boy, did it ever. I wanted to try and make breaded chicken, but I didn't have any bread, so instead I tried crushing up croutons. That didn't really work, so I just threw them in with the chicken and some butter and let them cook. Then I warmed up some frozen veggies (to be healthy) and also melted some cheese over left over spaghetti noodles. It was super tasty. I'm pretty sure I'll be doing the 'croutons-as-breading' thing again when I get back home. I can't wait until I have a full kitchen and my disposal again, though. There are a lot of recipes that I want to try out that I just can't here. Specifically ham and egg corn muffins. They're like cornbread, but with ham and egg in them! A portable, delicious breakfast. :) Yummy.
Went to go see a musical in Piccadilly! This one, actually, which I've seen before, but it's super awesome and I found some pretty cheap tickets, so I went again. I got the tickets at the TKTS booth in Leicester Square, where they sell tickets for shows that aren't sold out yet the day of. My Phantom of the Opera ticket cost me about 42 pounds, which translates to about $55 USD. I'm probably going to buy tickets there for all the other shows I'll be seeing, like Lion King and Sound of Music. Yay musicals!
This is the theater I went to. It looks big, but once inside, it's actually quite small. I'd actually say that my high school auditorium was about the same size, or perhaps even bigger than the theater. I liked the performance though. The small space made the show feel more cozy and the singers were really spectacular, especially the girl who played Christine.
Kensington Palace!! Rumor has it that William and Kate are going to move in here soon. Right now though, there is a lot of construction going on and there's also a gallery thingy featuring all the royal princesses who have lived there. In order to get here you need to walk through the Palace gardens. While I was walking all I could think about was "MAN! I missed green things so much!" There isn't a whole lot of open space or grass anywhere in London, except for the parks and palace gardens. That's definitely one thing I miss about America. So much space there!
This is just a neat garden arch in the palace gardens that I found. :) I thought it was cute.
A cool mirror in the displays in the Palace.
IT'S A GHOST! Just kidding. Another display thing. A lot of displays were very sad and haunting. British princesses were not very happy ladies.
SQUIRREL! The wildlife, if you can call it that, here are not shy at all. I was standing about two feet away from this squirrel and he was just like 'Meh. I'm eating this nut.' Also, not a whole lot of people know this, but I'm kind of like a dog when it comes to squirrels. I think they're cute, so when I see one, I yell out "SQUIRREL!"
Pelicans in St. James's Park. They were really big and a little intimidating.
I also went to a little art gallery. This is just giant blobs of acrylic paint on canvas that the artist swirled around to make this image. I thought it was really cool, because up close you could see each and every individual paint blob, and even some white canvas underneath where he left it open.
The Beatles, obviously. But this portrait is made out of VINYL RECORDS! How cool is that??
Doesn't this look absolutely delicious? It's actually just strips of paper rolled up and bent in certain ways, then glued onto a board. This form of art is actually pretty old. It originated back in the 1800s and was called "quilling." Originally one would wrap the strips of paper around a quill, thus the name.
Walked down what is called an 'arcade,' which is basically like a mini strip mall, but also sheltered from the rain and weather. This particular arcade was near the Bond Street area, which is famous for being the center of shopping in London. There were soooooooooooo many fancy dancy shops there, like freaking Louis Vuitton and Chanel and all that name brand stuff. Very posh. Anyways, there were also a lot of really neat jewelry shops. All way out of my price range, but super duper pretty. I don't know what this skull was made out of, but it looked really cool, so I took a picture. :)
OMG SO SPARKLY! Some of these jewelry bits ran up to like, 14,000 pounds. THAT IS SO MUCH MONEY!! D: But they were so pretty.
Fancy perfume bottles. Didn't see a price tag, but no doubt they were all very expensive.
This green pendant reminded me of the Sailor Moon locket. LOL.
Really neat little pins!
OMG LONDON! Guards. I wanted to take a picture with them, but I was traveling with a group, so I couldn't stop.
The changing of the guards! It was pretty neat to see, actually. I didn't want to take video, because my iPod was running out of battery.
The view of Westminster from St. James's Park. You can see the London eye!
Here's another shot of Westminster Abbey, which we walked by. I think I'm going to have to go take a tour of that before I come home.
Other than exploring London, I've really been into playing Portal lately. It's a physics based puzzle game that is super duper fun! It came out in 2007 in a sort of "game pack" and quickly became a indie favorite. The whole premise of the game is that you are a 'test subject' who must solve puzzles using a 'portal gun,' which can shoot two interconnected 'portals' onto any 'portal-able' surface. The portals are set up so that when you step through one, you come out the other, and momentum and gravity are not affected by the portals at all. So, if you shoot one portal on the ceiling directly above you, and then shoot the other directly below you, you would fall FOREVER. It's so much fun, but can be pretty disorienting if you play it for too long. Anyways, the game company, Valve, just came out with a Portal 2 a while ago, and I haven't been able to play it yet. I've watched a few people play it on Youtube and it looks sooooooooooo fun! Once I get back home, I will definitely get it though. Yay! Fun!
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