Summertime in the UK Part I: England

I haven't posted much recently because the majority of my summer has seen me spending long days at the library reading endless literature on identity, political violence, and Northern Ireland. Exciting, I know. But I have been lucky enough to take a little time off recently for fun stuff. I just returned from a trip up to Scotland, which I will write about in my next post, but for now, here are some highlights of the past few weeks.

I was finally able to see a performance at the Globe Theatre and it was well worth the wait. Not only was their production of Macbeth fabulous in itself, but I was super surprised and excited when I saw that Billy Boyd (aka Pippin from Lord of the Rings) was playing the part of Banquo. I had a nerd moment. Standing for two and a half hours in the heat watching the show was worth it for that.

The day after the Globe I attended a quite different type of show. It was an all-day concert/festival put on by Mumford & Sons featuring them (of course), Vampire Weekend, Ben Howard, and Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros. It was an absolutely incredible show and Mumford & Sons gives one of the best live performances I've ever seen. Who knew banjos could be so badass? They ended the show by bringing everyone back on stage and performing a cover of 'The Chain' by Fleetwood Mac. Epic. I also greatly enjoyed the shenanigans by some of the people in the crowd, mainly when one guy after another decided to climb one of the festival flagpoles, each of them becoming progressively less-clothed. The final one was entirely naked and then the pole proceeded to tip over. Not good. But he seemed to be alright. Other than the fact that a huge crowd had just witnessed him fall off a flagpole completely nude.

Another highlight of the past weeks, although not quite as exciting, was a Jack the Ripper walking tour. Morbid? Yes. More than a little disturbing? Yup. But really interesting and pretty awesome? Definitely. It was really fascinating to walk around parts of London that I knew and learn not only the gruesome details of certain areas, but also what they were like in general during that time. Plus I now know the location of the pub where Jack and his victims hung out (which is still operating).

Recently I was also able to get out of London for a day trip to Bath and Stonehenge. Bath was very pretty and a nice mini-escape from the city. But the highlight of that trip was stumbling upon a funky little reggae bar with great (water buffalo!) burgers. And because I'm a bit of a huge history nerd, Stonehenge was just awesome, in the true sense of the word.

Well that's it for now. A pretty eventful couple of weeks. And now it's back to the books for a bit. Scotland post to come soon.