Patience is a virtue...one that YOU apparently do not have!

Synopsis/Abstract: Irish friend, Grainne, visiting our humble abode here in London; searching for a good club to go to on Friday night and failing miserably I might add; a quest for cupcakes Saturday morning followed by a bit of shopping and some serious nap time; Saturday night yet another search for a club to go to (this time with much more success); sleeping in Sunday morning; going to a movie Sunday afternoon; going to class Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday (walking around Piccadilly after Tues’ class); going on a walking tour of Shakespeare’s London Wednesday night (in the rain…) followed by a trip to the Imperial College student union pub; Class Thursday- field trip to Apsley House; All American Rejects Concert Thursday night; tour of Parliament Friday morning; followed by a well deserved nap; and finally…dun dun dun… a shiny new post for the blog! Now that I am fully dedicating the next hour or so of my time to updating you people on the various exciting (and not so exciting) things I did this week… you can all stop complaining about the distinct lack of updating. It’s not my fault if I’m busy! You will just have to wait patiently between each post, which I know can be difficult for those of you living vicariously through my adventures! So, without further ado…here you have it, installment number 19 of Hobbs Goes to London: The Wonderful Exploits of Gabby. Actually, one more thing, just a tiny little ado, I’m going to throw a little disclaimer out here about the length and quality of the following post. It will be long… and it will be amazing. No, that’s not what I meant to say. Well the long part is true…but I’m not too sure about the amazing. That is up to you, dear reader. But what I actually wanted to say is since this is in fact going to be quite lengthy, I can guarantee you that I will not be proofing it. So please disregard any grammatical, informational, and/or contextual inaccuracies or catastrophic blunders you may encounter. They are not my fault; you are just reading things wrong. Okay. That is all I am going to say on the matter. Case closed.


The Things People Do for a Cupcake
and various other tales…

Hokay, so here is the Earth. What? No, wrong topic… my mistake. Lets start with Friday night, shall we? I believe where I last left you, I was writing Friday morning excited about the impending visit of Grainne, a friend from Ireland. She arrived around seven o’clock Friday night. We were originally planning on having her stay in our room with us…but apparently overnight guests are not allowed in this building. We thought about sneaking her up, but the idea of skulking around the building wheedling our way past the front desk worker all weekend was a little but too stressful to handle, so we ended up checking her into a cheap hotel down the street. I have never in my life seen a hotel room that was so minuscule. They do things small here. Real small. All it had room for was a single bed that had walls on three sides of it, a small desk, and sink. It was about the size of a pantry. As I mentioned in my preface to this post, we did attempt to find a club on Friday night that was within walking distance from our rooms. We discovered a place called Opal that is pretty much on the end of our street. It was ten pounds to get in (expensive) but the guy at the front desk assured us that it was a great place to go. It was not. The cheapest drink was five pounds (not worth it), the music was some sort of trance-like techno-y mix, and the actual space we were in looked like a very small cave. Now, ordinarily, the idea of a cave bar could be somewhat intriguing…but it was very small and the crowd was not exactly the kind of people we wanted to be BFF’s with. So we ended up calling it a night early (well, early as in not quite yet the wee hours of the morning).

(Random Tube station...)


Saturday morning, Grainne insisted on waking us all up by 9:30 so we could go on a quest to find these apparently amazing cupcakes that were sold in the Market place at the Duke of York Square. Not entirely sure where this market was, we set out anyways. We ended up, without getting too lost, finding our way to the Crumbs and Doily’s stand where there were cupcakes aplenty! They were worth the trek =) When we got back we discovered that our shower was broken. The nozzle/snake/pipe thing had unglued itself and was whipping around like an uncontrollable hose, until it finally broke off and water was just shooting up from the pipes. Yes, it was not convenient at all. Fortunately there is another bathroom with a shower down the hall, and we all just snuck into that one =) Saturday night, we decided to risk another try at a club. This one was actually quite fun. The music was great for dancing (they played a good mix of oldies, pop, hip-hop, and pretty much anything anyone requested) and it was filled with people our age. Overall, it was a successful night.

(The greatly anticipated cupcakes!!)

(Grainne, Me and Melissa at the club Los Locos)

(All of us!)


Grainne left Monday afternoon (tear), but Melissa and I will see her soon! We are going to go visit her over spring break. Monday night was my Shakespeare class and Tuesday morning, British Life and Culture. I went shopping for a little while at Piccadilly Circus Tuesday after class. I had to buy two books for my Shakespeare class…and was directed to go to a bookstore that wasn’t even open yet! After walking around for a bit, Mary (one of the other girls from SCU) and I found a Borders and I was able to get my book there. I was a little bit disappointed though, as I had wanted to say I went to an authentic English bookstore!!!

Wednesday morning was class again and then laundry time. I’ve been putting off doing laundry for as long as possible…mostly because it costs four pounds… but also because I didn’t actually know where the laundry room was! Hehe I found it though, without too much trouble and now all my clothes smell nice and clean =)

Wednesday night was the walking tour of Shakespeare-land. Basically we walked around the river Theme’s where the new Globe is (the Globe is the theatre where Shakespeare worked, acted, wrote, and pretty much lived). The old Globe was destroyed by a fire and was never rebuilt, but a few pieces of it remain. It was really cool to see them both! We also walked around the area and saw various authentic (ancient) buildings that where there when Shakespeare was. One interesting, yet slightly creepy site we walked by, was a fenced off area known as Cross Bones Graveyard. It was a very old graveyard where unknown people (paupers, criminals, prostitutes, or simply people know one knew the identity of) were buried without any recognition or marking to show that they were there. Even though not a single identity is known of the hundreds of people buried there, visitors have made a memorial out of the site; putting flowers and original poems on the gate. It is an interesting thing to see. Overall the tour was pretty cool, but it unfortunately started raining while we were walking so it was cut short. Definitely worth the trip though for anyone at all intrigued by Shakespeare and his works.

(The new Globe...please note the rain)

(Prostitute Graveyard....interesting tour choice...)

(This pic was meant to go down at the bottom, it's in Westminster Hall)

Thursday morning I had my History of Modern Design class. It was a field trip day, so we blessedly did not have a three-hour lecture! Instead, we went to the Wellington Museum, or Apsely House, home of the first Duke of Wellington. It is right in the heart of London at Hyde Park Corner. It is an amazing house filled with famous paintings and statues. The Duke of Wellington is famous for defeating Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo. The whole house is a filled with tributes to this. It was pretty cool.

After that, Melissa and I went to the All American Rejects concert and it was amazing! We had horrible seats…but it was still worth it because the show was so good =) It was pretty funny when the crowd started chanting for an encore, we could totally here the English accent as they all yelled “We want more!” only, they said it as ‘moh’. It was fun.

(Apsley House)

Today, we all (the SCU students) had a scheduled tour of Parliament this morning. It was really really interesting. We weren’t allowed to take pictures once we got inside, but the whole building is massive and ancient and all around spectacular. It was pretty awesome to actually go through each room and see how the British government works. The House of Lords had a giant throne that is gold plated- for the Queen to sit in of course. The House of Commons was less impressive decoratively, but still just as cool to see where all the action happens!

(Big Ben and guess who!)

(Inside Westminster Hall, before going into the House of Parliament)


After the Parliament tour, I took a giant nap, which was splendid and that brings me to right now. I am typing. Yes, we have reached the end of this tale! I didn’t think it would happen…I impress myself sometimes. =)

Soo, I am not too sure what the plan is for tonight. Melissa is going on a date with a very nice English boy she met the other night. He is one of Cameron’s football (soccer…) teammates. She is about to leave right now, so I’ll just have to wait to see how that goes! Jenna, Mary and I have plans to go get Indian food for dinner and then maybe do something afterwards. A pub? Maybe…it's definitely a possibility. Other than that I have made no concrete plans for this weekend. I am running out of ideas of touristy places to go- amazingly enough I think I’ve done all the big ones! If you have any suggestions, feel free to let me know and I will take them under consideration =)

Well, I think that this is all for now. I need to go take a shower. But you probably didn’t need to know that. It is supposed to be wickedly cold starting on Sunday; negative degrees at night and only in the 30’s during the day. Snow is a possibility for Tuesday. Hopefully I will not freeze to death! I’ll do what I can to stay warm… Let me know if anything interesting happens at home. I appreciated the long comments and emails people have been sending! Apparently a little complaining can go a long way!!!

xoxo