I Only Wanted to Throttle a Few People - Really!

So I'm pretty sure that the second best museum in town (after the incomparable British Museum) is the Victoria & Albert Museum, down near Kensington. ALV and I went down there Friday after classes and had fun pretending to decorate our fictitious mansions with the gorgeous stuff there. ALV went for an ornate French style and I was very much drawn (as I usually am) to the simpler Asian look. The best section was probably the new jewels exhibit, which only opened recently and was not something I'd seen last time I was here. If I had, Jon would have made a quick exit for all the sighing I was doing over the pretty, pretty shiny things. Photographs were allowed inside, but not in the jewel exhibit, which was really the only bit I wanted to photograph. (I did take a few pictures in the courtyard, mainly of the beautiful hydrangea flowers they have, but they've mussed it all up with this hideous new sculpture that fills the lawn. It looked like they were doing construction and I'm still not entirely certain that they weren't.)

Yesterday was an adventure of getting to Windsor Castle, outside the city. We had to go to Paddington Station to get the train and oh good Lord, I hate First Great Western Rail. National Rail said they had a line direct to Windsor but instead of answering our questions ("Where is National Rail in this station?"), FGW employees told us instead to take THEIR train. Thanks, that's not what we asked though. By the end, although we figured out that Windsor Castle's section on "How to Get There" probably needs updating, we were very, VERY reticent at giving FGW any business whatsoever. I was seriously considering creating a scene, which would have included much more colorful versions of asking our one, simple question. But that probably would have broken my own singular rule for this trip - that is, don't get arrested. *sigh* Well, anyway, I was a BIT mollified by finally seeing the Paddington Bear statue at the station:

(If you don't know who Paddington Bear is, your childhood was severely lacking in one of the cutest series of books ever.)

Anyway, we finally (and begrudgingly) took the FGW train and got to Windsor. And then we waited outside as security people made a hash of handling the crowd. (My one non-colorful comment was that if these were the people that helped protect the Queen, she was toast.) After our personal space was violated more times than I could count, we finally got inside. It was, thank goodness, rather pretty:

The Round Tower:

This bit you're not allowed to go into, since it's a "working castle residence" and the royal family actually goes there. Although I don't think I'd ever be comfortable about looking outside my window and seeing tourists gawking over the fence:

St. George's Chapel:

The State Apartments were pretty and full of really fancy furniture that no one has sat on in 50+ years. I wish I could have at least taken pictures of the ceilings which were, oddly, the prettiest parts. That was workmanship, certainly. But overall, it was not as much as I expected, considering the price especially. On the other hand, I've seen it AND I had a very stereotypical English lunch of Shepherd's Pie, which I've always wanted to try. It was quite fantastic, actually.

Still, it was a lot to do and a lot of unnecessary aggravation, so I've taken it easy today. (Again.) My annoyance at yesterday's crowds resurfaced when I tried to go back to the British Museum to see the bits I had missed the first time around. Unfortunately, that included the room with the Egyptian mummies and geez, you couldn't even move in that room. And those audio tour things just make everything worse - people just stand in the middle of the room, in the way, staring blankly at stuff they would have moved right by otherwise. When I came close to tearing one out of an oblivious person's hand when they kept stepping on me, I knew it was time to leave. So I gave up and came back to the Hall. I'll try again after the 24th, when the exhibit on Hadrian opens (I hope there are no audio tours of that). Jon will be sorry he missed it, and I'll have to take a lot of pictures there.

Speaking of Jon (and I don't know why I forgot to mention this last time), I did receive good news from home from him - he officially has a job working as a math teacher for Waco ISD! "Exciting" doesn't even begin to describe how we both feel about this. In two years, Jon has worked at some god-awful jobs (2 of the 3 really were terrible, even in the "if I don't work, we can't pay rent or eat" standard). I am thrilled that that town has finally scrounged up a job that my overly-qualified husband can take without feeling as if college were a waste. He will be an excellent teacher, because he has precisely what good teachers need - intelligence, never-ending patience and a sense of humor.