Holiday Weekend

It's a lazy Monday, full of muffins at an adorable place called The Cinnamon Bar (the tables are full of cinnamon under glass) and laundry. I only have one class on Mondays - European and International Labor Law - and thank goodness, because the European Courts of Justice write their cases like I write blog entries - without editing and little logic. It's translated from German (or is it French?) so maybe that's the issue, but I doubt it. I think the ECJ just enjoys being cryptic, like Yoda, only not as squat and green (although, I haven't seen the ECJ panel - maybe they are squat and green...). I haven't memorized all the EU treaties like they have, so it's a little slow going when they refer to roughly 50 different parts of 3 treaties within 2 sentences. I would fear for getting out alive except that many of my classmates (excluding ALV, of course) seem to forget the "school" part of "summer school" and have taken to showing up to our 11:15 class hung over and without note-taking implements. After BLS, it's kind of shocking. It's weird that I only have culture shock inside the classroom, surrounded by Americans (and a few Australians).

Anyway, ALV spent her weekend in Ireland, so I toured London over the weekend with others. July 4th was celebrated in Covent Garden (the theatre district) with a Indian food and English pubbing (I heart irony). Saturday was spent walking around Portobello Road Market, where everything I loved was ungodly expensive, proving once again that I have costly (but very good) taste. Speaking of ungodly expensive, I went to the movies on Saturday night to see Sex and the City (no one with me wanted to see, oddly enough, Wanted - that'll have to wait, I suppose). It was a movie I could have just as easily waited to see on HBO, but it was a nice night out, I suppose. British cinemas are strange, we discovered, as we sat and watched what was the longest string of commercials EVER before the movie started. It clocked in at 27 minutes and included only 2 actual trailers, one of which I'd seen before. My mother said that British ads were amusing, but she hasn't been here in about 15 years. 15 years changes a lot, apparently.

Yesterday, a friend and I took the Underground to Kew Gardens and walked around for 4 1/2 hours, despite the wind and on-and-off rain. It's really lovely, actually, and I don't even know anything about plants.

I liked the Water Lily House the best, with the giant water lilies that I've seen in Peru:

Kew Gardens is, of course, home to Kew Palace. George III lived there during his bouts of porphyria and Queen Charlotte died there. We saw the actual chair in which she died, which was creepy and reaffirmed my belief that Brits are rather morbid:

I liked the Japanese Gateway:

Inside the Temperate House (the largest Victorian greenhouse), there's the tallest indoor plant (a Chilean wine palm), which is 150 years old and 16 meters high:

And then we went up 18 meters into the air on the Treetop Walkway. A wee bit nerve-wracking:


After that climb, I'm feeling a bit better about my ability to get up to St. Paul's Dome sometime this trip. I swear, I'll make it this time!