Cheers, London!

This update is going to be kinda short because we're literally out the door in a few minutes. Buuuut I have to try to make is good because it's the last one...that's a lot of pressure. I'll just do the highlights plus a ton of photos. And since a picture says a thousand words, and there's like 20 photos in this post...that's over 20,000 words, which is waaay more than the other posts we've made. Yay! I feel better.

Yesterday was fun! We woke up late and missed the first bike tour we were supposed to go on at 11, but made it juuust in time for the one at 3:30! Below are photos of us at Golder's Green station, our favorite and temporary home.

The bike tour was four hours long. I know what you're thinking, jesus christ they go on a lot of bike tours, they must reeeallly like to ride bikes! Actually, before this trip it had been about three years since I even sat ass on a bike, and like ten years for Audrey. Somehow we ended up taking a bike tour of every European city that we visited. They were all so much fun! Neither of us fell once and we only had two almost collisions. Honestly I can't imagine a better way to tour a city, t'was a blast. As soon as I have money for anything other than rent and food I'm buying me a bike! Huntington Beach to Irvine by bike? Best work out ever.

Anyway, we met up with our group around three-thirty and started a-ridin'! Pictured below is Matt, our tour guide... We fell in love. He's asked me to marry him and we're moving into that palace pictured behind him. Some queen lives there now but Matt said it shouldn't be a problem. He's British, I trust him.

This is us in front of Buckingham Palace right before the royals asked us to come in and join them for afternoon tea! Unfortunately they wouldn't allow us to photograph anything inside the palace, including the make-out seshes with William and Harry. Something about national security-- we understood completely. I'm sure you do too.

We thought this gate was the most amazing thing ever. Unicorn dancing with a lion? Yes, please!

Audrey the bike pro



The back of Westminster Abbey

Flowers in Kensington Park


Cutest squirrel ever!

Our goals today were to go to Abbey Road, Hamstead Heath one last time, and Camden market. We accomplished all three but with much wandering and getting lost. It was the nicest day ever though, so we didn't really mind.

In case you can't tell, that's a cat in a yellow submarine.


We were going to try and take better quality shots from the correct angle but it's actually a really high traffic area. Apparently drivers get kinda pissed when you stop in the middle of the road and pose. We gave them the finger a few times, fuck you we came a looong way to get this shot. But then my camera was acting weird and Audrey got stung by an A-BEE-Y road bee so we were over it.

The Heath!


Camden Market!


Well, I better stop here. We're going to some house party in central London tonight! Gotta say bye to everyone before we leave tomorrow.

America, here we come! MBO us a safe flight.

E & A

The Cat/Bunny Says: "Indulge!!"

So today was a day that needs to be told in reverse. Addressing the most important part and working backwards. Sometimes an experience occurs in your life and you look back at all the steps that led you to that point and you see how each little piece fit perfectly together to culminate in a life-changing moment. This is a slightly melodramatic way of putting this event. But, I do feel that we had a great chance meeting that will affect the way we decide to sculpt our life paths.

Earlier this week Erica and I were taken to dinner by our two friends, Rich and Ines. To a little Italian place in Golder's Green. The man who owned the restaurant took a liking to us and told us to stop by again before we left for the U.S. on Thursday. We then ventured out a few nights later and happened by the restaurant again as the man was standing outside. He greeted us warmly again and told us we must come by again. He is a delightful old Italian man and we decided we would have to oblige and stop in again. Besides maybe he'd give us free booze?? He did seem to love us for whatever reason. So tonight we decided we were over the frozen pizza we had in our fridge and wanted to go out to dinner. We figured we might as well go to the Italian place since it was delicious and he was so insistent that we return. Half-way to the restaurant we nearly detoured and got Fish N' Chips instead. A more traditional English meal. But for some reason decided to dash across the street...barely missing the cars as usual...and eat at the Italian place.

We didn't have any cash on us and were just going to make sure they took card. Which they did so we decided to stay. We got there and the hostess told us we could sit wherever we wanted. It's more of a little cafe than a restaurant so there weren't many options, but we looked around and settled on a little table outside in the corner. We instantly regretted that decision. There was a table of loud, drunk Italians next to us and we kept exchanging looks throughout the meal when they would burst into particularly loud and unbearable laughter. Midway through our meal though the woman leans over and says "Where are you girls from? I can't quite place it." We're use to people commenting on our accents by now so we just say "California" and wait for her to make her assumptions about us. She just says "Oh that makes perfect sense. I use to live in NY and your accents are nothing like theirs!" We laughed and then she went back to her company and we went back to our conversation. Something about the cats...most likely.

We finished our food and then I ventured to the bathroom and when I returned Erica was chatting with the Italian woman. I sat down and started listening to her share about her travels and thoughts on life. She's a genius! She is a travelling musician and writer and seems like she knows everything about everything! She's a Libra....our first assumption was a Sag...but after talking to her we saw her Libra side come out. She spoke to us all about what a terrible job our governments were doing in fulfilling their job. To protect and provide for their people. She recommended a movie to us "Wag the Dog". It's about a government who starts a war elsewhere to distract it's people from all the shit their doing back at home. Sound familiar?

Anyway...then she proceeded to tell us about living in Cambodia and travelling all over southeast Asia and Europe. She had advice for us since we are planning on travelling absolutely everywhere! She then asked about ourselves and once she found out we were interested in Anthro and Environmental Sciences and holistic medicine she told us all about different places in Europe and Asia that teach those kinds of things. She literally could be our mentor/guru/advisor. She is everything we want to be! Absolutely fascinating. After we talked for quite some time she gave us her e-mail and number and asked for ours and told us to contact her and she'd give us a ton of helpful information, as well as a place to stay if we ever needed it. She has places all over the world. Holy shit! Fate? Thanks! We literally had just been talking earlier about how we needed to make connections that would enable us to travel and learn as much as possible. There was so much more to the conversation, but it was too intricate to really recreate it for the blog. Basically we just feel incredibly lucky that we met someone who has so much (knowledge, experience, material things) and is willing to share that with complete strangers just because she liked what we had to say. Amazing!

I'll let Erica fill you in on the rest of our day....the other part wasn't too eventful because we didn't wake up until 1 again. Had to sleep off the wine! And here we are again at 2:30am still not sleeping. Looks like tomorrow is gonna be another late starting day. Dammit. I think I'm gonna pass out...Erica looks a little more peppy than I do...hopefully she'll be more entertaining!

Thanks, girl! Well told, I couldn't have said it better if I tried. Thus I shan't. Instead I shall give a brief summary of our day before that life-changing encounter with our new idol, interspersed with photos of the adventures... Plus one from a couple of days ago that doesn't really go along with this blog, but that I'm including anyway because I think it's cute.

We started off the day by taking a lovely little walk to the Hamstead Heath. We brought sandwiches with us and had a little picnic on a giant hill overlooking London. On the walk through the greenery of the heath I discovered my new favorite tree. Isn't she glorious?!

This little guy is pretty amazing too

After all the tree adoring and sandwich eating we decided to take a short tube ride into Central London. We made the Tate Modern our first stop. We had been wanting to go for the last few days but things kept coming up like us sleeping in and only having an hour or two to get there, or that time it was Sunday and we woke up really late and it was already closed. The Tate Modern, one of four Tate Museums in Britain, is known specifically for it's international modern art. We were there for about two hours and visited three of the five floors before they closed. Which is a lot considering how massive the building it. There were many pieces of work that moved us, some that inspired us, and a couple that kind of scared us. Art <3>


The only thing that we could find that said "Tate" on it was this food cart. But it was one very artsy food cart.

London!


Remember that song London Bridge is Falling Down? This is that bridge! (replica):


Us on the bridge, Tower Bridge in the background:

Tower Bridge!

Overall I would call this a very well-rounded, productive, and enlightening day. I love those.

Cheers!

Isolation Day One: Laundry, Wine, and Blockbuster

Tonight's blog update is half update of our European adventures and half film review. Audrey's comments and opinions will be in red and Erica's will be in...grey.

So today was pretty uneventful. I did find that doing laundry in London was much more fun than doing it in California. First off we were greeted at the door by a large British man with a glorious white beard rolling a cigarette and a small Asian woman. "Ah yes, come in and spend your money!" said the bearded Brit. So we did. And after 18 trips back and forth from the flat to the laundry mat we managed to get our laundry done.



K, I have to insert here...on our fourth and final visit to the laundrette we witnessed a hilarious interaction between a mother and her son. We were folding all of our clothes as fast as we could because it was ten minutes before closing time and the lady who worked there was basically waiting on us and this one other woman to leave. She was kind of just standing there with her purse and her things, keys in hand, checking her watch "Are you OK? Everything OK?" "Yeah, perfect!" Awkward! I've never folded so quickly.

While we were folding frenzied we overheard the woman lecturing her young son "You have to respect the shop, this woman works here, you can't just do..." "Yes, yes mother, I know! Respect the shop, respect myself! I know, mother, I know." She said a few more things to him under her breath, and as they were walking out he kind of raised his voice to say (in the cutest little British accent) "I only want to please you, mother but pleasing you is the most difficult thing of my life!" We start laughing hysterically, the mother looks back at us, smiles and shakes her head "Husband material, eh?" He was probably about seven. Seriously. So. Amazing.

Short booze break...brb.

Alright back. So we smoked the last of our Amsterdam contraband and apparently aren't capable of sleeping without the aid of some substance or another. So we trekked out into Golder's Green at 2:30am just now (mind you it's an area of all Jewish community and it's a Sunday night hmmm...) However we managed to find a 24 hour shop! Delightful!

We walked in and as we were browsing the booze section...totally sober at this point...a youngish Persian man approaches us and says "Sorry...but we cannot sell alcohol after 12...and it's now (checks his watch) 230..." And then kinda laughs at us. But the sadness on our faces seemed to change his mind. The next words out of his mouth "But where are you girls from?" "America." We hesitantly say. And then as soon as we say "Well California" He gets a huge smile on his face and says "Ok well if you're quick I will still sell it to you." So we grabbed the nearest bottle and he rings us up and says "The rule is that we can't sell after 12 but if you come back again I will sell to you. Just bring your own bag. Something dark and discrete." Hahaha. We cracked up at that. And Erica goes "I'll put it in my coat!!" To which he replies "Good girl!". SO mission accomplished. (Pause to drink). Mmmmm. Yum.


The initial plan for the evening was to rent movies and eat pizza...we couldn't come up with anything else to do. That and the fact that we have no money made us decide to stay in. Therefore part of tonight's Blog will be a movie review. Convenient for those of you who share our taste in movies. Well the selection was: Doubt with Meryl Streep, Amy Adams, and Philip Seymour Hoffman. House Bunny with Anna Farris and that girl from Superbad...Jules in that movie. I don't know her real name and can't be bothered to look it up. We also got Revolutionary Road with Leonardo Dicaprio and Kate Winslet. Reunited at last. And Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Reviews to follow.

Doubt: Well this movie was very interesting to me because I was raised in a very religious manner. So other people's views/opinions of Religion I always find intriguing. This particular movie is about child molestation in the 1960's in the Catholic Church. The film addressed the subject in a very subtle and indirect way. Nothing about it was explicit or too in your face. It's a sensitve subject and I felt that they dealt with it appropriately. The whole movie is centered around Meryl Streep's character, a nun at a school for young Catholic boys, who suspects the head Priest of molesting one young boy in particular/the possibility of others in his past. She struggles throughout the movie to prove this with the help of Amy Adam's pious and naive character.

The movie centers around the idea that people sometimes have to choose between faith/intuition and concrete evidence. When do you decide to value your gut instinct? And when to you succumb to supposed proof that contradicts what you KNOW? Which is the basis for a lot of questions regarding religion. Which is faith based. In order to be religious you must be willing to deny fact sometimes and focus on what you "believe in your heart." And this movie addresses whether or not this is the best approach to things. Meryl Streep's character shows this struggle because throughout the movie she just seems to "know" that the Father is preying on these young boys and yet she can never seem to some up with concrete evidence to support her accusations. She continues to push and search for the answer though because she sees it as her duty to protect these young boys. Long story short...there is a pretty commonly purported theme throughout this movie. Sometimes evil is disguised as good and vice versa. You really have to use facts and intuition together to be able to discover the truth.

In this movie the Father seems inviting, modern and caring. Where as her character is rigid and overly-conservative. The entire time you struggle with who to believe because their characters are opposite of what they seem to be fighting for. But ultimately they both show you that religion is flawed because on the outside he seems like a loving and caring person to these boys, but clearly has his own selfish motives behind his actions. And she seems like an over-bearing zealot who ultimately was just drawn to religion because she does want everything to be perfect and right and religion tells her that it is the only means through which that can be achieved. In the end however you find that the person who seemingly is a nice and caring person is really just selfish and cowardly and the one that seems uncaring and harsh is really just trying to do what she believes is right and just. And religion tells her that this is the way to go about it.

The theme of doubt encompasses the whole movie, but my favorite part is at the end when- after everything she has gone through she finally begins to doubt religion, itself, because she starts to see how it can become a cover/justification for harmful and evil actions. Anyway. That's what I got from it without giving away too much. If that sounds interesting to you go rent it! I definitely enjoyed it and it was pretty short too. Which is nice because usually movies like that are too drawn out. Thumbs up. Here's Erica's opinion about the film:

Wow. Audrey wrote a lot about that movie...hmm. I'm not gonna read her review as to avoid biasing my opinion. All I know is that I have way less to say about it than she does. And that the wine is starting to kick in so typing is quickly becoming an issue. Doubt. First of all, Meryl Streep gave an ammmaaaazing performance as the tough as nails, deeply intuitive, driven by her inner strength and moral compass Sister Aloysius. Philip Seymour Hoffman did an equally impressive job of portraying the likable but equally suspicious Father Flynn. The story is basically about doubt vs. certainty.

Principal Sister Aloysius is certain that Father Flynn is having an inappropriate relationship with one of the young boys at her school. She and Amy Adams' character, Sister James confront him, he denies it. Going on only her suspicion and certainty (this is stressed a lot in the film) that she is right about the issue, Sister Aloysius pursues the matter...which goes against her position in the hierarchy of the Catholic church but is in keeping with her philosophy that in the pursuit of wrong doing one steps away from God. I thought that the film did a good job of addressing a subject that is difficult to address. There were times when things weren't very clear because they were sort of just alluded to rather than discussed directly, but it all came together in the end. It was a very well-acted critique on organized religion, the flaws and dangers of blindly trusting information that's fed to you, and the importance of trusting your instincts.

More wine please! Audrey's turn.

Jesus Christ. It's 430am now. Little drunk. Time for another one? I don't know if I have it in me...what did I mention next? House Bunny? That one shouldn't take too long to review. Well Anna Ferris is always hilarious. Between her and the girl from Superbad all the humor is supplied. The rest of the supporting cast does a very good job, but the two of them steal the whole show. It's your typical feel good comedy (which I normally can't tolerate) but this one is silly enough and doesn't try too hard to make a point. Anna's character is a play boy bunny who gets kicked out of the mansion because she is too old.

She finds herself at a college campus and is drawn to the sororities because they, to an extent, resemble the Play Boy Bunny Mansion. She becomes a house mother to the "reject girls" of the sorority world and teaches them a few things about being girly and getting boys. Which if course in the process she finds a guy who doesn't respond to all of her tricks and is looking for a girl (more like the girls in her house) who can carry a conversation and is herself. So in turn she ends up learning a thing or two from the girls. This is the basic premise, but the actual movie is HILARIOUS and adorable as a matter of fact. It isn't too cheesy or cliche. I won't give away anymore...it isn't a complex enough movie to go into too much detail. All I can say is it is worth it! Watch it...right meow!!


Uh, I'm so over this movie reviewing thing...aren't you over reading about it? I'll sum the others up real nice and short like. House Bunny: Cute, funny, a little cheesy in a non-barfy way. Revolutionary Road: Tragic, poignant, made me not want to get married even more than I didn't want to before. See it, it's worth it. Vicky, Christina, Barcelona: Beautiful, passionate, perfectly articulates the unpredictable nature of love. Probably my favorite. Done! I can't do this anymore lest I pass out on the keyboard.


I just rolled my first joint cigarette thing all by myself! I declared it my first born child and then I smoked it. Mmm, first born tobacco-y goodness. The sun is coming up but we cannot sleep. I've lost all concept of time. We just finished our bottle of wine and now I think we're off to find paint to paint ourselves and dance in the garden.

Audrey, anything to add?

Ummm...I just tripped on a bean bag? Ohh Karen O....we love you so much, thank you for providing the tunes for our blogging experience!!!! Peace out everyone else. Too late and too much wine to care to write more. Muah!

Cheers!

E&A