I still have the Benny Hill theme song stuck in my head

'allo chaps! (I'll stop that now.) I am back from foggy London town. Back to school, back to writing papers and doing other things that I am not thrilled to do.

I had a wonderful time, and can't wait to tell you all about my trip, but I have a lot of work to do this week, along with preparing for Oslo this weekend, so don't mind if the updates are sparse.

I woke up terribly early on Wednesday in order to get out to Charles de Gaulle Airport in order for my 8:55am flight. Everything went smoothly on the way over. I took EasyJet which meant that everything was bright orange. This was my first experience with how British kids' whining is much cuter than American kids' simply because they have an adorable accent. I got to listen to "Mummy, I want another bite of chocolate!" from a few seats in front of me more than once.

I flew into London Luton, an airport about 50 km away from the city. Alex arrived a few minutes before me, so he was waiting for me outside of customs. I was thrilled to be back in an English-speaking country. Alex and I had a half-hour to kill before our bus left so we got some pounds sterling and bought some food.

The bus ride was pretty boring until we got near London.

I saw my first double-decker red bus.
We soon found our hotel and got all situated. Our plan for that night was to visit the Houses of Parliament, Big Ben, and Westminster Abbey. We decided to buy unlimited passes for the Tube, which turned out to be an excellent idea. This was the wall tiling in the Baker Street station. So fun!
We came out of the subway and were like, "Where is Big Ben?" oh wait. It was right next to us. We walked over the Thames and took a ton of pictures.




We also saw the London Eye, which we had tickets for on Friday afternoon.
Walking over to the Abbey, there were some crazy people protesting across from the entrance to Parliament.

The Abbey was really cool. It was expensive to go in, but Alex convinced me. No pictures were allowed inside the Abbey, so I don't have any. What I can do is find some on the internet.


This was one of the best parts of the Abbey. There's a crazy ceiling that was once known as one of the wonders of the world. It was beautiful. My neck hurt from looking up at it.


"Poet's corner" was also very cool. It is where many British writers are either buried or honored. Almost all of my favorite writers were listed. For example, Charles Dickens is buried there and Jane Austen has a memorial.

As we left the church, an evening service was taking place, so we sat down for a few minutes. As we were finally leaving, an old woman came over and tried to convert us to the Church of England. We had to break it to her that we were Americans. I mean, people first came to my country to escape that church...

We went back over to the Thames and took a few pictures before deciding to head over to Buckingham Palace.


The palace looked nothing like I imagined it. I really did expect something with gold all over it. It was cool at night though.



At this point, I was starving. We went back over to the Paddington area where our hotel was and found a restaurant called "Garfunkel's". I devoured chicken and ham pie with mashed potatoes and gravy. SO GOOD.

I needed sleep at this point because of my food coma. There was a lot to do the next day!

P.S. Here is my favorite use of the Benny Hill theme song ever. I can't watch this without laughing hysterically.

Pere Lachaise Cemetery/London Calling

Yesterday was a beautiful day in Paris. So was today for that matter. 60 degrees and sunny--perfect fall weather. I needed to get out of my apartment and since it was so nice out I decided to seize the opportunity to visit the Pere Lachaise Cemetery.

Visiting a cemetery doesn't sound like a barrel of laughs. The cemeteries of Paris, however, are so full of history and important people, as well as beautiful sculptures and family graves, that most of them are worth a visit. Last time I was in Paris, I visited the Montparnasse cemetery which too was very beautiful.

Pere Lachaise holds about 300,000 people with about 200 famous ones. I entered at the up-hill entrance so that I could walk through going down most of the time. This brought me in near Oscar Wilde's grave. I didn't have a map so I was only referencing the large one that they put near the entrance.

I ended up doing a little wandering before finding it.

I saw some beautiful fall flowers:
Maybe because it's close to Halloween, but the place seemed kind of spooky. Not in a scary way, but there were ravens and cats wandering around, and things were so mismatched and overgrown.

There were a lot of plaques on graves. This one was very pretty with dried flowers in resin. It reads "Remembrances to our friend".
I came upon the grave of a famous frenchman. I don't exactly know why he's famous though...
Many family's have places where living family members can go pray (on top of the family's tomb). These little houses have some very pretty stained glass and iron work.

Some people seem to take it over the top, though.

I found Oscar Wilde's grave by following the crowd. The sculpture "Flying Kiss" is placed on it. It is traditional to wear lipstick and kiss the grave leaving an imprint. I didn't do this.


After I saw Oscar Wilde, I was far away from a map and didn't know where to find any other famous graves. I decided to just throw caution to the wind and wander. I am glad I did. It was my favorite part of the day.



I found the grave of Sarah Bernhardt, a famous French actress:


There is a huge history of freemasonry in France, so there were a lot of random colomns and pyramids.
I heard scraping and noticed that someone was working on an open grave. Creepy!

I found a Bastian family tomb. That is my grandma's maiden name! I wonder if it's a relation...? I will look at my family tree when I get back to the states.


This was the grave of a painter who had a good sense of humor. It says: "Finally alone!"
Right next to it was the grave of Chopin, the famous composer.
I really liked this headstone--it was a giant book! It was supposed to be the life story of the man buried there.

Looking up the hill was neat.

I eventually found the visitor's center where I got a map. I sat down to rest and found the famous graves that I definitely wanted to see.

There were the famous lovers:

The Opera composer Rossini:

Georges Seurat who painted the famous pointualism painting:
Jacques Louis David, another famous painter:
As I was looking for Balzac, this cat ran by. It was adorable.

Still looking for Balzac, I got distracted by this huge freemason gravestone.

Finally, there was Balzac, a famous French author:

Then there was Marcel Proust, a famous essayist and author:

This was the on-site chapel. It was impressive.
This complex is known as the crematorium and it is where cremated remains are placed:

This was a sad grave. I noticed it because the sculpture was of a small boy and his dog. It turns out that it is the grave of a 7 year old boy who died in 1911.

I found Edith Piaf, the famous French singer of "La vie en rose":


One of the most famous graves in the place doesn't belong to a frenchman, but to Jim Morrison the lead singer of the Doors. They have to barricade his grave because it and the graves around it have fallen victim to vandalism.



At this point, I had been wandering for 5 hours and my feet hurt! I made my way to the metro and got home to sit in my bed for the rest of the day.

Today was spent packing for my trip to London tomorrow! I wake up bright and early at 5am for my 8:55am flight. I will arrive in London at 9:15 and meet up with Alex there. Then, we have a bus ride to the city. We are staying near Paddington station.

My hotel does not have free wireless, so I probably won't be updating for the next few days, but prepare yourself for my future never-ending babbeling on Harry Potter, the Beatles, "'ello govena'!", etc. etc.

Cheers!