London Town

Like I said, all our time in London has become a blur to me. One massive, beautiful, wonderful, magical blur. What follows are my favorite pictures from London in one big blur:

Sherlock Holmes statue on Baker Street

221B Baker Street

Westminster Abbey

Westminster Abbey

Buckingham Palace

The Globe for A Midsummer Night's Dream (feat. the best ever Nick Bottom)

Me and Hannah Wing living the dream at Harry Potter Studios

Butterbeer 

Number Four Privet Drive where the Dursleys were very normal, thank you very much. 

Diagon Alley

Hogwarts

Ollivander's Wand Shop

Audrey, Hannah, and Me waiting to watch our last production at the Globe: The Tempest (feat. Colin Morgan who is apparently famous for something). 

Note: Caliban crawled out from under his rock and then poked me right in the forehead. 

St. Paul's Cathedral

St. Paul's

Atop St. Paul's 

Jackie, Me, and Hannah at the Tower Bridge

The only drinking fountain we ever saw. 

Paling in comparison to the Crown Jewels

The Tower of London

Getting along with Prince Harry 

London, England Temple

Peter Pan statue at Hyde Park

Somewhere in this blur we also toured Middle Temple (one of the four law schools in London where Shakespeare's Twelfth Night was first performed), the Houses of Parliament, strolled through St. James Park, Hyde Park, took countless trips on the Tube and the fabled double-decker buses, bought anything and everything from Portobello Road (which really is as wonderful as it seems in Bedknobs and Broomsticks), I went to see One Man, Two Guvnors, and somehow did not go to one single museum. Not one. I also did not go see any of the plays that I most wanted to see. Well all I really wanted to see was Les Miserables, but there was no way I could afford it by the end of the trip. I could have easily gone to see Wicked, but for some reason I wanted to save it for my trip to New York (which I am taking soon?). 

One might think that not seeing any of the museums (which I desperately did want to see) or any of the plays (which I also desperately wanted to see) would have made my stay in London worthless, but it didn't in the slightest. I had the best time in London, and even though I didn't get to see so many things I know that I'll be back. I could (and still can) feel it in my bones. 

The worst part about England was leaving England. As excited as I was to see my friends and family back home, I absolutely did not want to get on that plane. The flight attendants seemed to be quite concerned about me because I was on the verge of tears for the several hours it took to get back to Salt Lake City. And don't begrudge me those tears because I had just had the best experience of my life and lived out so many dreams that I never thought I would be able to. It's a little hard to get to the end of writing all of this down because it feels as though I'm saying goodbye to England all over again. It was one of the best decisions of my life. I saw so many things and made so many wonderful friends. I got to write and read and be in England. England was home. 

A map I stole from Andrew depicting everywhere we had been. 

Edinburgh to the banks of Loch Lomond to the Lake District and up Scaffel Pike, from the Moors to the Pennine Way, Fountains Abbey to York, from the East Coast to Cambridge to Kenilworth Castle to Stratford-upon-Avon, from Oxford to Bath to Wales to Tintern Abbey, Lulworth to Weymouth, Glastonbury to Tintagel to Boscastle, from Stourhead Gardens to Salisbury, Stonehenge to the Isle of Wight, and Winchester to Chawton to London. 

A very unexpected journey.