Celeste & Christi's Trip to Europe

In the UK

June 28th-July 2th	London, UK:	Astor's Leinster Inn 7 Leinster Sq, Bayswater (near Notting Hill) Tel: 020/7229 9641
June 28th	Arrived, found our hostel. It's next to Kensington Palace and Hyde Park. Very small, but kinda cute. Tried to stay awake and sleep at normal hours, but it was hard.
July 29th	Went to the British Musuem. Got thru Egypt and the Americas. Going back later for Asia, and.. well, everything else.
having a great time, wish you were here. (we're writing boring postcards. jet lag is a bitch. the food here is weird since the curries are the best food i've ever had and the local dishes are exactly the opposite. i had broccoli, chese and burning rubber soup for lunch. it's locked in epic struggle with lactaid. report on who wins coming soon. stay on the edge of yer chair. -- celeste
June 30th	Went to Gay Madri Gras. There's lots of differences between Gay pride here and Gay Pride in the US. First of all, no one takes off all their clothes- probably because it's raining, but maybe because they all realize that we don;t actually want to see naked guys wandering around.. hmm. anyway, there was a march, which was nice, and didn't have coperate sponsers, and then EVERYONE got on the underground and rode across town to a different place where they had the actual party. There was bungi jumping, and food, and weird stuff, and WE GOT TO SEE SCARY SPICE PLAY!! it was like the high point of.. well, that 5 minutes anyway. actually, we couldn't see her because we were too far away from the stage, but there she was, on big screen TV, projected 50 x times larger than life. -- christi
July 1	Went to the Tate Modern Art museum. It is the largest such museum in the wold. Also has the best permentent collection and is probably the best organized as well. On of the favorite exhibits of both of us involved a mechanical piano hanging upside down that ever 5 minutes or so would fall apart and make a nice noise. Then reconstruct itself and start anew. Then we went to the Globe Theatre and saw Cymbleina, a Shakespeare play. A comedy. We got standing room tickets. We're hoping to get back there later and catch MacBeth. We also walked by quite a few monuments and didn't go inside. They're all conviently clustered next to each other so lazy tourists need not even exit those open topped double decker busses pointing them things out. Well, we're not like those people. We're lazy, cheap tourists and walked past everything without stopping instead of driving and saved at least Ł10 in the process! ha! (southwark Cathedral, Winchester Castle, The Clink, Model of Sir Francis Drake's boat (it's small, by the way, it would be like sailing with forrest to england), London Bridge (it's boring....is the real one in arizona now or something?), the ruins of the original globe theatre, the rose theatre, st. paul's cathedral was visible for the cafe of the tate, especially if you squinted hard thru the fog. Travelling in europe is a changing experience. Now that i've walked past all these monuments, i now have a worldly air that you america bound folks can never hope to quite comprehend)- celeste
July 2-3	Scotland	18 Eglinton Crescent Edinburg EH12 5DD Scotland Tel: 44-131-337-1120
July 2	Well, we caught a morning train to sctoland. Why? Why not? We went thru newcastle on the train, but didn't stop, since I was carrying some coal with me and it would have been silly. Most of our belongings are resting at the hostel in London where, if they are stolen we won't have to carry them around anymore. Although I will miss all that underwear, but I think I can make do without it. Edinburg is a beautiful town. We're staying in the new section. It's only 300 years old. Our hostel is the dorm kind. We vistted several places (actually going inside this time) including, St. Mary's Cathedral, a CEmetary containing the inventor of the logarythm (whose grave we failed to locate or photograph, sorry matthew) and we went on aghost tour lead by a graduate student of history at the local university. It was very silly but historically accurate. We saw no ghosts, which ought to be a source of releif and not dissappoint, especially after they finished telling us all the bad things that happened to the people there. --clst
July 3	We climbed up to Edinborough castle and looked around. It's got stuff set up for a military tatoo, which is apprently some sort of exhibition, or they make a REALLY big deal about getting those hula skirt girls on their arms. The castle has only one medeival building left. The rest all got blown up. I think 200 years from now people will be touring missle silos and other instilations we have now looking for historical stuff. A whole lot of people died there, but war is all very glorious. really. If you're ever here, you should go see the castle, but it's mostly about cannons and stuff. We went into St Giles Cathedral, which is a site that has had a religios building there since 900, so it's pretty old. It's very pretty. Apparently the graveyard got so overcrouded that your dead relaives limb's might stick up after the rain. Now it's under a parking lot. There's a little memorial to their mosy beloved pastor under spot 44. There was car parked there, but we tried to take a picture anyway. The queen will be there tomorrow knighting a couple of people. Christi was poking at her seat, so she's now touched someplace the queen's bum will go. (that's brit speak. are you impressed yet? give me some crisps! mind the gap!) We tried to go to the nice palace in town, the one that wasn't always getting blown up and that is actually the sort of place you might want to live in, but, duh, somebody does. The queen was there for the knighting ceremony, so the palace was closed. We stood outdside the gate for a while, but non get any paparzi-like photos of any of the royals. We tried chasing a car for a while, but there aren't that many tunnels around here and besides, we're on foot. Tommorrow we're going to goo se a place that was bricked over after the plague but still under the streets and maybe try to catch a glimpse of the queen. Then we'll be back at the hostel we were at before in london. Where the floor is rottin thru, but at least there are no dorm mates to spend the whole night puking up all the shots of whiskey they did during the evning. The whiskey is good here, but not worht tasting twice, if you know what i mean. geez. --clst
July 4th- July 6th	London, UK:	Astor's Leinster Inn 7 Leinster Sq, Bayswater (near Notting Hill) Tel: 020/7229 9641
July 4th	We saw the queen. no really. I have pictures to prove it. There were less people lookinbg at the queen than there were at scary spice, but she was still the queen. I also have random pictures of other old ladies entering ST giles Cathedral- I thought one of them might be the queen. Here's a hint for all you unenlightened types: if you see someone who might be the queen, and the military isn't at attention, it isn't the queen. she was wearing a silly hat.-- christi In addition to trying to get a glimpse of everyone's favorite monarch, we also saw a fourth of july parade. ok, it was just a marching band for the queen. In addition, that day we went by the scottish parliament, a infamous plague outbreak area and we climbed up to the tippy top of the monument to Sir Walter Scott. They like Sir Walter Sxott so darn much that I'm wondering if Scotlandmight be named after him. Anyway, if you ever want to climb to the top of the monument,don't. the steps at the top get so narraow, you can picture pepperoni on them (it's a spiral staircase, they're like pizza slices. no exageration.) Then we caught a train back to london. --clst
July 5th	We spent the whole darn day at the British Museum and we still haven't seen everything. that place is huge. We were adamantly trudgingg through everything until all the exhibits started to blend together, becuase we were going to see the whole thing, dern it. now i have almost no idea what i looked at. don't make this mistake. museum death marches are bad. Anyway, we did see some icons, which i immediately recognized as such due to an enlightening conversation with Catherine's friend Thomas a couple weeks ago. We did not see St John the Baptist having trouble with his head,but he was in one of them. And there weremany many many other amazing one of a kind super exciting things there. Wemight even have pictures. Boy these are where memories come from. I wish I could tellyou about them. I did see 100 paintings of Mt. Figi though.I remeber that. It's got snow on the top and looks volcanic.--clst
July 6th-7th whatever	Going to some cathedrals, tower of londer, and tea at kensignton palace. next day we are flying to finland and then taking a train to russia. so if you don't here from us for a while, it's 'cause we're busy.