The Brave Little Illustrator Goes to Europe PART 7

Goodbye London, hello Bath. We left London this morning and traveled by train to a city called Bath, named for the Roman hot springs here (which are really pricey to use). It's been fun in the city, but it's nice to get out of the cramped, crowded atmosphere and out to a more rural and medieval-looking city. It's actually really gorgeous here. Here are some of the views from today:

And here's to catch you up on everything I couldn't cram into the last 3 weeks of London:

At the Tower of London

 

A dragon made entirely of weapons and armor inside the Tower of London armory.

By the Thames River

In front of St. Paul's cathedral

On top of St. Paul's

Back on the ground by St. Paul's

At Hampton Court Palace, home of Henry VIII

Singin in the rain style in the gardens outside of the Hampton

At the Courtauld collection visiting with my man Van Gogh 

In front of the British Museum

The Victoria & Alberts Museum

And looking through a freak show of medical oddities including this - a literal cut-out of a human face.
Good-bye London!

The Brave Little Illustrator Goes to Europe PART 6

For all of you Sherlock lovers, eat your heart out: 

That's me standing next to the big guy himself. And if that wasn't enough to boil your biscuits...

Yeah, that's me in front of THE Speedy's next to Sherlock's apartment as seen in the current BBC show "Sherlock." And we ate there for lunch too. Later that day, Who did we go see? Yes.

That's a rack of a bunch of Dr. Who stuff... We went to the "Official" (?) store located on the east side of London, complete with a backroom "museum" of authentic Dr. Who paraphernalia. This place had official comics, novels, movies, DVD series, CDs, creepy photos of the 70s Dr. Who, helmets of the cybermen, action figures, and on and on.

And there's me next to one of the previous Doctors. You can't see it, but I'm in front of a sign that says, "This booth featured in the movie 'Dr. Who and the Daleks.'" But where are the Daleks?

Right here. Complete with plunger arm. That paper there says something like, "Do not take photos unless given permission." Did I get permission? Only after I took the photo... heh heh.

Speaking of strange stores, we passed one where this was apparently the advertised fashion. I'm not sure if the Wario suit really comes like that or if you're supposed to be fat in the first place. Or pregnant.

The Tower Bridge is all decked out for the Olympics, and I'm there to see it like a boss.

Because apparently they are the most dangerous people in the area.

Found the RIGHT Abbey Road! And here I am in front of the studio.

The wall under the fence surrounding it had all these names graffitied onto it, so I added mine.

And I wrote this there while I was at it. Don't get it? http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0823592/#Actor

And after alot of fussing and dodging traffic, we recreated the Abbey Road image... more or less.

We passed a restaurant today and I felt like I had to share this. Can't say I ate there. I think you can guess why.

Found the Peter Pan statue at Kensington Gardens as well. Paid my respects to it as you can see.

The Brave Little Illustrator Goes to Europe PART 5

This weekend we took a visit to the British Library. We visited a gallery that held the original compositions of Handel, Schubert, Beethoven, early publications of Shakespeare, original copies of the Magna Carta, original pages from Leonardo da Vinci's workbook, and hand-written first drafts of some of the Beatles' songs: Hard Day's Night, Help! Yesterday, and others. While feeling this Beatles-y mood, we set out to find Abbey Road, and find it we did! We felt so proud of ourselves...

Until we realized that it wasn't the right Abbey Road. 

Bummer.
Sunday after church, a group of us headed to the Kensington Orangery to have the British Tea Time experience.

When in doubt, pinky out.

Eating some of the tiny finger sandwiches that came with the full-out tea time set. There were a total of four: cucumber, ham and mustard, egg and mayo, and smoked salmon.

Also included were an assortment of tea-time pastries...

And a scone with butter and jam. 

This is me with Kensington Palace in the background - apparently that's where William and Kate are going to move in soon and it's some sort of big deal.

This is all of us that went out to tea with the Orangery behind us. The tea time was an interesting experience and I'm glad I tried it, but I don't think I would do it again unless I had alot of money and some really close friends and here's why: it was crazy expensive. The tea time set that we got was supposed to be for 1 person, but it cost the equivalent of what would be about $35. On top of that, the service was very deliberately slow. Because the Orangery (and pretty much the majority of London restaurants) can demand higher prices for meals and food service, and because of the general culture of the UK, they don't rely on the turnover of tables like we do in the states. So mealtime conversation lasts much longer, which is obviously more comfortable with people who are closer friends. 

The Brave Little Illustrator Goes to Europe PART 4

So besides the Harry Potter Studio Tour, here are a few of the other places I've been to. We have classes Monday through Thursday and we usually go somewhere in town to draw and to a park to paint (I'll put my first week's sketches and painting up soon). Aside from that, we usually get the rest of the day to go where we want, explore, etc. and on the weekends we will usually take a group trip to somewhere new.  

Our first weekend we went to Portobello Road (anybody have the Bedknobs and Broomsticks song stuck in your head now?), a huge outdoor market on one long street.

For our sketch class we went to Westminster Abbey this week - it's a huge cathedral/church still being used by the Anglican church. I'd have a separate post for it with pictures if they didn't have some stupid rule about not taking photos inside. So instead you'll just have to use your imagination and think of the most glorified mausoleum you possible can, decorated with all sorts of medieval graves and coffins, banners, swords, engravings, statues, sculptures, and surrounded by Gothic architecture. Many members of the royal family are buried inside as well as numerous famous Britons: Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin (I stepped on his grave), George Frederick Handel, Geoffrey Chaucer, Rudyard Kipling, Laurence Olivier, and Charles Dickens. There's a monument to Shakespeare as well, but it's not actually where he's buried. We stayed there for the Evensong where the church choir comes and sings/chants during an Anglican prayer service. It's hard to describe  the feeling of listening to the "Olde" English prayer chanting while sitting inside a massive cathedral - staring up into the archways and at the stained glass paintings and religious sculpture - it was unreal.

There I am just chilling on the bridge right outside British Parliament and Big Ben

And on Sunday we went to go see the developments on construction for the Olympics that will take place just after we leave (thank goodness...). I'm glad we won't be here when all of that crazy tourism flares up, it's busy enough in London as it is. The tower behind me is some sort of... "art"sy tower they built just for the Olympics. Some people say it's supposed to be the British Eiffel Tower, others say it looks like an awkward roller coaster, and I think it's kind of gimmicky and would maybe have gone with different colors other than red railing. Far to the right (and not seen in the photo) is a huge International Mall that was built pretty much just for the Olympics. It's not bad. But also kind of gimmicky. 

The Brave Little Illustrator Goes to Europe PART 3

Harry Potter Studio Tour part II:

Snape's classroom! Some of the spoons in the cauldrons were stirring themselves too and changing colors.

Oh snap! I found the Chamber of Secrets!

This was one of the coolest parts of the whole tour - the Magic Is Might Statue from the Ministry of Magic scenes. It really was a masterpiece, even if it isn't made from real stone.

Getting up close to the statue was incredible - each figure was detailed and being crushed in anguish. I swear, I must've walked around the whole thing several times just to make sure I looked at every muggle under the slab.

Professor Umbridge's outfits from the 5th movie! I found out that throughout the movie, her outfits got progressively pinker as she rose in power.

The tapestry for the Black family tree - you might not be able to see it, but the name right under that burnt part in the upper left corner is Sirius'. The middle bottom is Lucius and Narcissa and the bottom right is Draco's spot. Just above Draco's on the banner without a portrait near the middle is Bellatrix's name.

The giant chess pieces from the first movie!

Didn't know this either, but I guess in a ton of shots Hagrid's head is actually an animatronic face mounted on a large stand-in actor...

ITS THE CREEPY VOLDEMORT BABY! And it moved...

The head of the Hungarian Horntail

And at the very end of the tour they had THE Hogwarts castle in all of its modeled glory... It took them 40-some weeks to set up the whole castle inside the room of the studio tour. This thing was fantastically huge and breath-takingly beautiful. You could walk around the whole model on a spiral walkway and see every spire, every tree, every window. They had screens where you could see the shots they would take with the castle in front of a green screen, where they matched it up with shots of water (for the Black Lake) and/or the actors for those zoom-out shots of them walking around the castle.

The lighting would change between daytime brights and nighttime blues and they whole time they played this inspiring music in the background that made you want to cry... because you were seeing the actual Hogwarts. I gotta say, this was the icing on the cake and the part that totally blew me away after everything else that I had seen.

After the castle, the only room left of the tour was the inside of Olivander's Wand Shop where they had thousands of the hand-decorated wand boxes stacked with names of the studio employees that had worked on the movie during the last decade. In the middle was a screen that said this: "The stories we love best do live in us forever, so whether you come back by page or by the big screen, Hogwarts will always be there to welcome you home." - J.K. Rowling.