Just like Marilyn Monroe...

It has been a crazy, but fun first few days here.  We were only in London for about 24 hours, so I think we got the fastest tour of London humanly possible, it was exhausting, but so cool to see a city that has so much history.  We took a three hour bus tour of the city on Friday afternoon and saw pretty much everything you could want to see in London: Buckingham Palace (beautiful, but you can’t get close enough to the guards to try and make them move so that was disappointing, plus they weren’t the kind that wore the big, furry black hats), Westminster Abbey (where I got my coveted picture in a red telephone booth, which smelled like pee for those of you who were wondering), St. Paul’s Cathedral, London Bridge, you get the idea.  We wanted to go on the London Eye (the Ferris wheel which gives an incredible view of London) after the tour, but our tour guide informed us it was closed—lame.  After the tour some friends from UMD, as well as three girls we just met, went to dinner at a typical English pub (goal number two checked off) to eat dinner. After dinner, we walked around the West End, which is sort of like a mini-Times Square. I was completely mesmorised by the city around me and probably could have walked around and people watched all night long.  We saw a British musical (although I'm hesitant to use the word musical) called "Blood Brothers".  I was so excited to see a show in the West End, but "Blood Brother" did not even come close to living up to my expectations--it was the most bizarre production I have ever seen.  It was about twin brothers who were separated at birth, one growing up rich and the other poor, and then they become friends, and in the end find out they are brother and one ends up killing the other and the other dies seconds later (sorry I spoiled the ending, but trust me, you don't ever want to see this show, ever.)  The music was horrific, it was all keyboard-y and 80s sounding and they probably had two songs that repeated the whole time and the lyrics just changed every so often.  One song compared the characters' lives to Marilyn Monroe's and this song repeated over and over and over again, till the point where you could predict what they would say, and my friends and I were dying of laughter at the most inappropriate moments, and never want to hear the name Marilyn Monroe ever again.  If you cut out the music though, and look at the show as a play, it would have been pretty decent, but some really bad composer decided to add tacky music to an otherwise good play.  Also, they told us Mel C. (aka Sporty Spice) was supposed to be in it and she wasn't.  And then there were the three drunk people sitting in front of us being extremely obnoxious--awesome.  I'm glad I got the British theater experience, but from now on, I'm sticking to Broadway.  After the show, I was SO TIRED (I hadn't slept in like 24 hours at this point) and we took the Tube home (so cool, it's different then the subway because you literally feel like you're in a tube, it's very enclosed and I don't recommend it if you're claustrophobic).  Then I finally went to sleep and woke up at 5 am (yes, you read that right), to go to SIENA, ITALY!!!