I know its been quite some time (a week) since I last updated you to what i've been up to so I'm going to break the days into separate entries so that you can digest them a little better.
Tuesday we went to Hampstead Heath and Kenwood House. Hampstead was a gorgeous little town with all sorts of delights and history, as every British town or village. This one had a really neat church cemetary where I learned about people being buried beneath their headboards instead of gravestones. Hampstead also appears to be celebrityville. I saw Jamie Oliver's house, H.G. Wells' house, 2 of the spice girls (Baby and Sporty) and a host of others. One of the highlights was the Admiral's House. Now, for those of you that have seen Mary Poppins the movie. This was the house that was the location for the guy that entered things in his log and shot off cannons......I SAW THAT HOUSE!!! better yet, you know who lives there now? Russell Crowe...right down the street from Ridley Scott. I don't know why but i'm getting sucked up into this whole British obsession with celebrity, drat it all.
After a lovely romp through Hampstead Heath (it was hard to imagine being that close to the city but having these lovely woods to meander through) we passed by a pond that had ducks. Now I was being quite the motherly figure and therefore had a ziploc baggie full of cheerios to snack on and to sustain my fellow travellers and I thought that the ducks and geese and swans would appreciate a little multigrain goodness and so i fed them. All was well until a loose dog decided to take this time to attack the fowl by running through my legs! Scared the beejeebies out of them and me!!!! Its on video as well. Later whilst walking I continued my tradition of falling down as I have on every walk we've been on.
We stopped the official London Walks tour at the delightful Spainard's Inn. Apparently its haunted.....food was good but expensive. I devoured a lovely wild mushroom pasta....it seemed like everything had mushrooms in it....crazy wooded areas...
After the Inn we went to Kenwood house, where I continued my crazy Notting Hill journey. Kenwood was the place where they filmed the scenes where Julia Roberts was filming a Henry James movie. It was pretty cool. I took a lot of pictures and did a cartwheel in the huge grassy area in front....good times...
After that we waited a good amount of time for a bus that would have been faster to walk to get to where we needed to go. I think at this point it was more a matter of laziness than speed though. After that I decided to go and see some theatre because, well thats what i do. I went to see "The Aristocrats" by brien friel. Good old irish plays...Anyway, it was really good and there were some FSU kids there AND to continue the Notting Hill business, one of the actresses, Gina McKee ,was in the play (she played Hugh Grant's wheelchair bound friend). Oh how life comes full circle.
I'm convinced that whenever I leave the National Theatre it rains.....because it did that night. I wandered around the South Bankish area for a bit and then caught the tube home.
This is the end of Stephanies Week Part 1. Please go to the next entry....DING!