St. Paul's + Celebrity Watch + Harrod's=A Weekend Well Spent

Hello all!

It's been a whole five days since I last posted here! I've had a busy weekend, as you'll soon see, and any spare moments I've had have been frantically spent writing papers in anticipation of the study week that I will be...well...not studying. But as they are almost done, I have a bit more breathing room and time to share my weekend adventures.

This weekend's touristy adventure started off at the House of Parliament yet again. This time we were aiming for Westminster Abbey, but our timing was a bit off, as we arrived right as mass was starting. Pressed for time (Kevin and Vanessa had friends visiting who wanted to cram in as much as possible in one weekend) we opted to snap a few exterior pictures and move on.


We stopped by Number 10, Downing Street, home of the Prime Minister for a few minutes:


While we were continuing down the street, we saw people staring across the street at a rather expensive looking car with body guards. Curious we stuck around for a few minutes and were soon able to catch a glimpse of Simon Cowell! In the picture below, he's the fellow towards the left of the picture, right above the trunk of the car in the white shirt. For those who don't know, Cowell is a judge and exec for the show American Idol, and was here to be a judge on the show Britain's Got Talent (which has a sister show in America, America's Got Talent).


We made our way down the River Thames to St. Paul's. As it was late in the afternoon, we weren't in time to go up the steps to the top of the dome (another trip!) but the sun set did make for some wonderful photographs.





We wrapped up with a trip to Byron, a restaurant whose slogan is "Proper Hamburgers." Located near High Street Kensington Tube Station, we had originally spotted it on an architecture field trip and decided that it required some investigating. Our results were absolutely superb. Delicious hamburgers, fries and milkshakes, albeit at a bit of a cost. Definitely a wonderful end to the trip.

The evening did go on with a trip to the local cinema to see Revolutionary Road. Heart-breaking, but man what a performance by Kate Winslet. She should have gotten an Oscar nod for it (but will have to make due with a nomination for The Reader instead).

The next day we went to Harrod's to explore and fantasize about our future lives as millionaires. We looked at dresses that cost more than I make in a year and an electric toy humvee big enough for two children to drive around in, at a price greater than my yearly college loan. To console ourselves, we went to the Chocolate Bar on the second floor and bought milkshakes for the hefty, but relatively affordable price of 5 pounds. After drowning our sorrows, we proceeded to leave the store. On our way out, we stopped at the one place where photography is allowed (hence the dearth of pictures): the Princess Diana memorial. Her love interest at the time of her death was the son of the man who currently owns Harrods, so he built this in their honor.



You know the drill, link to photos of my excursion here.

Today I had a busy schedule of Hitchcock lecture (screening: North by Northwest), research at the library, figuring out electronically filing taxes (refund, yay!) and working on an application for a paid summer internship at Warner Brothers (fingers crossed). Later, I'm going with friends to check out the local student-frequented pub. Over the next few days I'll be worrying about details for my trip to Italy and Switzerland, so this may be my last post for the week. I will be leaving Thursday afternoon and returning a week from Saturday.

Until I post again!

Caitlin