Greetings! As some of you know, I just got done with a beautiful, whirlwind tour of Europe, and now I'm back, studying for finals. I had an amazing time, and I'm going to talk about those trips super soon, but right now I want to talk about some fantastic events that happened awhile ago. A couple of weeks ago, for example, I was fortunate enough to go to a Royal Ballet production in London of "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland," and more recently, I went to a One Direction concert at the O2 arena in London. Please, get your eye-rolls out on that one because I'm going to talk about One Direction way too much. But, first, Alice!
I took the bus into London on a Wednesday to see the production with a couple of other girls. My ticket was ₤15 for a nosebleed seat. Not bad, eh? I sat in the top balcony on the side. To get to my seat, I had to go up four flights of stairs, up, up, up. My seat was pretty good, considering what I paid for it; I could see the whole stage except for the top right side. The lap of luxury, really; I was pretty happy. I was definitely better off than some: Some unfortunates had bought standing tickets, which meant they stood hunched over a railing for three hours, poor souls. Despite having plebeians breathing down my neck, the production was fantastic.
As you can guess, it told the story of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland but through dance, so there wasn't any talking. Alice was older than her book counterpart because she and the Knave of Hearts had a thing going on, aw, yeah. That is to say, they kissed. Oooooohhhhh. The visuals of the ballet were insanely cool. When Alice fell down the rabbit-hole, a screen dropped, and a whirlpool image was projected onto it. A large puppet dressed like Alice showed her tumbling down. The scene where Alice grows small and then large was brilliant as well. A huge, tall sheet behind Alice served as a whitespace onto which images of doors were projected. When she became small, the image of the doors grew larger. When she grew big, the image of the doors shrank, and a little, motorized door scurried out from behind the curtain. Alice approached the door and could fit her torso through it, but that's all. Then, amazingly, she somehow climbed into a tiny room that was part of the curtain, embedded in it. The room, probably a box, was painted so that it started out wide and grew small towards the back. When Alice climbed inside, it looked as though she was in a small room that could barely contain her.
My favorite part, however, came towards the end, when Alice met the Queen of Hearts. Alice and the Queen played croquet with flamingos, as they do in the book, except here, the flamingoes were ballerinas. The ballerinas were dressed in pink from hand to foot. Their hands were painted with orange lips and served as the head of the flamingo. It was cute how the ballerinas bobbed about, their hands pecking the ground. I got really excited here because I thought Alice and the Queen would pick up the ballerinas to play croquet, but they were handed puppets instead, boo. By the way, the Queen was fantastic. None of the dancing in the ballet was crazy-good-wonderful because the moves were very simple, but I loved the Queen's attitude. Click on the link below to see a video!
On a side note, there were three intermissions, and during one, I descended the one million steps to the lobby to get some ice cream. I joined the queue to the concessions stand like a civilized, normal person, but some beastly, squirmy child cut in front of me as the lights flickered, indicating the show's start. I looked at him, wounded, and eyed his mother standing across the way. She shrugged at me, as if to say, "Oopsies, my bad, I've raised a monster." Then, rubbing salt in my wound, when it was the kid's time to order, he claimed THE LAST CHOCOLATE ICE CREAM. When it was my turn, I was like, "One chocolate, please?" And the cashier was like, "The kid got the last one, I'm afraid." So much anger. Stupid strawberry had to suffice.
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| My view of the stage! |
One Direction too involved strawberries, although this time the fruit was enjoyed with glee. One weekend at the beginning of April, my friend Victoria and I got the insanely wonderful idea to go see One Direction, the boy band, in London. Victoria especially wanted to go see them because her flight back home was the day after the concert, and she wanted to exit England with a bang. After surfing the Internet for some last minute deals, we scored two tickets pretty close to the main stage. I didn't realize what that meant until we got there, and I saw that from our seats, we could actually see the faces of the people onstage. What's more, the secondary stage was ONE ROW BEHIND US. But more on that in a second.
We traveled to London with my other good friends Vicky and Lisa, who went shopping while Victoria and I swooned over the lads. Victoria was so, so sweet in that she paid for a nice hotel room in the middle of London, so we didn't have to stay in a hostel and could leave without a fuss in the morning. Before the concert, Victoria and I went out to dinner at a Mexican food place near the O2 arena and got a way-too-expensive strawberry daiquiri to share. Vicky and Lisa will tell you that that explains the extreme energy of Victoria and I after the show, but don't believe them.
After our meal, Victoria and I had to wait in line to enter the arena, and the lines were so long. As we languished in line, the minutes ticking by, Victoria felt something nudge her back. And then again. And again. She looked back and was horrified to see an older man's protruding belly massaging her spinal cord. He knew it too. Every time we shuffled forward, he would lunge forward, his belly enjoying its new resting spot. Soon, he tired of Victoria's curvature and settled on mine. Not as polite as Victoria, I mumbled something like, "Whoa, there, big boy, back up," and thank God he understood, extracting his flesh from my backside. I gave him evil eyes for the rest of the line whenever I looked back. Fact: I could write a book called 50 Shades of Creepers from my experiences this semester.
After we got inside, everything was better. O2 is a big place, and Victoria and I had fun walking around. There were a lot of restaurants and stores, and it had a movie theatre. My happiness went completely skyward once we found our seats and I saw how close we were to both stages. We missed the first opening act, which was okay with me because the woman's voice was so-so. The second opening act was a little better, this time the boy band 5 Seconds of Summer. They all played instruments, which I liked. Nothing, however, could compare to the main act.
When One Direction hit the stage (on time!), the crowd went nuts. I think I went momentarily deaf from all the screaming. Victoria quickly slipped me some earplugs when she saw I was struggling, hallelujah. In the shock and awe that One Direction caused, the woman next to me spilled her drink. On me. Down my leg. It splashed down my jeans and formed a tidy little puddle at my feet. Before the show had started, I had taken off one of my layers, an Old Navy shirt, because it was so hot inside the arena, and this she now used to mop up her mess. She smiled as she did this, explaining with her eyes, "Hey, look, I'm fixing the problem!" Good thing that top cost $2 at Goodwill because I left it on the floor, R.I.P.
Despite my great sacrifice, I really enjoyed the show. One Direction performed all their biggest hits and actually sang live, no lip-syncing. The best part came when they left the big, main stage to go to the secondary stage, the one that was right behind Victoria and me. A silver platform descended from the ceiling, and they got onto it. It traveled forwards, into the audience, sailing above everyone.
As they came closer and closer to the secondary stage, Victoria and I fan-girled out because they were making eye contact with everyone, including us. Louis and I had a moment. Maybe. He was probably blinded by the light, literally. Sadness. Anyways, they eventually landed, right behind us. They were only on the secondary stage for a bit, maybe 20 minutes, but it was great to be so close to them. Here, they answered questions from Twitter that audience members had tweeted at them. One question asked them to sing Shaggy's "It Wasn't Me," and someone else asked them to rap "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air." They promptly performed each request. Another asked them what they would have as their stage names if they had to have one. After this and a song, they popped back on their platform to travel further back into the audience, before reverting backwards, back to the main stage.
At the end of the show, huge balloons were released from the ceiling, and, awkwardly, a lot of girls kept them and brought them onto the Tube. When Victoria and I left the show and made our way downstairs to catch the subway, multiple girls shoved the balloons through the small Tube doorways. The Tube was chaos. As the stop is right under O2, many people took the subway after the show. There were so, so many people. Victoria and I eventually managed to catch a car and shove our way inside before the doors closed, but one girl was not so lucky. I didn't see the whole thing, but as we entered and the doors lurched closed, I heard gasps and turned around to see a girl, maybe a tween, clutching her head. People crowded around her and started petting her. Victoria leaned in and whispered that the doors had closed on her, smacking her head. She was okay, it seemed, but ow! A few people yelled at her companion, an older man (Dad?), who apparently had yanked her onboard as the doors were beeping, indicating their imminent closure. Bad parenting at its best.
Victoria and I returned to our hotel room super happy, excited, and hungry. We were met by Vicky and Lisa, donning their pajamas. We were so jazzed with good vibes that we made Vicky and Lisa change and come get some food with us at the train station. Everything was closed, and Burger King was closing, so I got possibly the coldest bacon burger I've ever experienced, but it was food! I think I told the cashier I loved him as he gave me my milkshake, so great was my joy about everything. It was a great night.
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