Tour/Eurovision

Tour

for all those who wanted, we got to go on a bit of a tour around london. we had a tour guide who was great and had some great stories for us. even though she took us to a couple of sights i had already been to, i learned so much having her there. tour guides really make a difference in enjoying a place. for example... they've really made security super tough at buckingham palace. apparently in 1982, a guy actually climbed over the front gate, walked right past the guards, wandered around the palace untouched for 3+ hours, found the queen's bedroom, and sat on her bed until she woke up. then he asked her for marriage advice bc he and his wife were having trouble. basically this guy was "looney" and put in a mental institution. also, there's a statue of queen victoria in front of the palace that someone actually climbed up and chiselled the nose off of. so they had to replace the nose and you can see the different shades of stone. of course, i never would've noticed if she hadn't pointed it out.

queen victoria is the stone image facing the camera

the current guards for the day are malaysian bc the royal army is apparently stretched thin with fighting going on in afghanistan and iraq. and apparently it's quite an honor to be allowed to guard the queen and promotes goodwill between countries, etc etc.

st. paul's cathedral (2nd largest dome in the world - it's huge!)

globe theatre!
tower bridge

tower bridge - do you see the smile? it really made my day. :)

i don't know what this sign was all about but it really amused me

Eurovision

i don't know if any of y'all have heard of eurovision, but apparently it's a really big deal in europe! i think there were 25 competitors across europe - one representing each country. and they perform a song in a really elaborate performance that makes american idol look like a streetside performance. at the end of all the performances, all of the european countries have 15 minutes to call in their votes, but you can't vote for the country you're in. then they make a big deal about a host in each country listing their country's top 10, and those countries are awarded points accordingly. 43 countries voted. at the end of all that they announce the winner, which is obvious bc we've watched the scores being tallied country by country. russia surprisingly won, ukraine was second, and greece third. and since russia won, they host the show next year (it only happens once every year). i watched it with a few friends in the cafe here but i was surrounded by greeks! and they were all about some eurovision!! they were rooting their country on quite enthusiastically. it was exciting. :) i was actually rooting for latvia bc i liked their performance/song, but ukraine and greece did well also. i wasn't a big fan of russia's but they did have an ice skater dancing around the singer on a really small oval. that was very original and i give them points for that alone.