My sincere apologies, dear watchers that I haven't updated in the time I've been away but the last few days have been somewhat exhausting. Not in a bad way, but I seem to have been missing out on a lot of sleep as tends to happen when I'm required to actually get up before noon to go somewhere. Despite that it's been rather enjoyable - I can deal with sleep deprivation for a few days at least.
On Monday we arrived here, after a horribly, and ridiculously long train journey (I don't know why there isn't a more direct train to Reading, seriously, it would actually be quicker to go to London and then go to Reading from there) in which I fell asleep rather a lot and so on, that's all been talked about. Dad made his awesome cottage pie which I ate a whole third of and then we all sat around geeking out on our laptops. Because we're cool that way. I also swiped the keyboard from dad's old laptop which was fortunately the same model as mine, so I can now finally stop using a USB keyboard.
On Tuesday dad and I went down to Portsmouth, on the south coast, to see the
HMS Victory, the flagship of the British fleet under
Admiral Lord Nelson, during the
Battle of Trafalgar in 1805.
There was more there than we thought there would be. Another ship, several small museums, and an exhibit on the third floor of a 250 year old building housing the sail flown by the Victory at the Battle of Trafalgar. The sail is so large that a third of it is rolled up, and it has to be kept in extremely stable conditions because of its age and delicacy, so photographs weren't allowed. It was still awesome to see it, though.
As well as the Victory, there was also the
HMS Warrior,
'the first iron-hulled, armour-plated warship, built for the Royal Navy in response to the first ironclad warship, the French La Gloire, launched a year earlier'. We went on that one first.
(Photos are clickable as always)
( Picspam here. )Full album here.
After we were done there, we went down to the Mary Rose museum. The
HMS Mary Rose was completed in 1512 under the reign of King Henry VIII. She was recovered in 1982 and unfortunately was undergoing some serious restoration work which won't be finished until 2012, so we couldn't see the ship herself. Still, there was a lot of neat stuff going on and dad took a photo of me in a helmet, which, if you really, really want to see it, is
here.
We then went back to the flat and had pizza for dinner. I ate a lot of it and impressed everyone. Yay me.
Yesterday (Wednesday) we went into London to see
Wicked, which I've been wanting to see for years, and it was awesome. I wasn't sure dad would like it but he did, and Amy liked it too. It seemed funnier than the American version. At least, it got quite a few laughs at parts that were obviously meant to be funny. I don't know, maybe that kind of thing just appeals to us more. I did the silly thing of putting my underground ticket into the same pocket as my phone, which meant it no longer worked in the machines. Luckily we weren't out sightseeing or something because that would have been an absolute
pain. We had McDonalds that day. Om nom.
Then we came back home today, another long and boring train journey delayed by around half an hour by a slow train and then a fire at one of the stations ahead of us, and my sister had the urge to kill someone the entire way while the brat behind me for half the trip kept hitting the back of my seat. Not the most pleasant train journey I've ever been on but certainly not the worst.
Glad to be home, though. I missed my bed.
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nasty_show. I was waiting until she got her entry up so I could snag her photos and if I could I would be lazy and link to it but it is unfortunately friends locked so here we go :V
