Muse video

For those who want to see, this is the Muse concert we went to. For free!

Muse!

Robert again Managed to get some free tickets, this time for Muse! Muse were playing a free concert in the middle of London in the courtyard where the changing of the guard happens as a part of the premiere of Brad Pitt's new movie World War Z. Something like Muse had a lot of songs in the movie or something. Anyway, The concert was put on by Brad Pitt and he was there! Way at the back in the VIP area. It was an amazing show. Muse truly are incredible live! 

 Brad Pitt!! Can you see him? He has his back turned and has very long hair! It's like Where's Wally.

Here's a zoomed in version! I wish I had my fancy camera. I would have been ale to zoom right in on his face.

My pictures aren't very good as it was hard to stay still in all the moshing! So you will need to use your imagination! 

They sang all their hits - Starlight, Supermassive Black Hole, Knight of Cydonia, and all the other ones! But not Plug in Baby.

Chime for Change

 On Saturday Robert and I went out to Twickenham stadium to watch the Chime for Change concert which was a charity event funded by Gucci to raise money and awareness for womans' rights and education. It was incredible! It was a seamless 5 hours of music, speakers, videos and zumba! 

 Holy Freaks and Geeks, is that James Franco? Why, yes it is! And he was only one of the speakers! There was Ryan Reynolds, Madonna, Blake Lively, Aishwarya Rai, Selma Hayek and maybe more that I have forgotten!

 Florence was amazing! Everyone was actually! There were so many performers - Jessie J, Rita Ora, Beyonce, J-Lo (she sang Jenny from the Block - it was all I wanted in the world), Ellie Golding, Mary J Blige, Jay-Z, Timberland, John Legend, and other people who I don't know. Holy Moly it was such an amazing night! 

J-Lo and Mary J Blige sang a duet of Come Together which was so awesome. Madonna made a big speech and at one point told the audience off for not listening haha woops sorry Miss! The founder of the charity told us that a billion people would be watching the concert live around 150 countries! Like, wow. But maybe that was a bit of an overestimate!

 Beyonce's legs! Wow she was good! And Jay-Z came out and sang Crazy in Love with her! He cuddled her on the stage it was so cute. And she sang single ladies! But she did it a bit different it was really cool! And she sang survivor and when she sang If I Were a Boy she wanted the whole crowd to join in but no one did so she just laughed it was funny. She tried again and everyone sang!

 There were 52,000 people there!

Jessie J!

When it was time to go home we got as far as the station where we were met by about 8 mounted police telling us that the trains weren't running because of an incident in Putney. So basically 52,000 people were stranded! There were public buses of course but limited amounts of them as it was getting very late and no tubes because they were closed for planned works for the whole weekend! It was such a terrible end to the night we had to walk to Richmond because there was no room on any buses! I won't go into all the details but basically it took us 4 buses and 5 hours to get home! Insane! And I had to start work at 8 the next morning. 

Dublin!

 Well I made it to Dublin at around 12pm and check in at my hostel was at 2.30 so I dropped my bag off there as they have free storage and wandered around the city for a few hours. 

 This is the view out of my dorm window! The hostel was right in the heart of Temple Bar which was awesome! When I checked in I even got offered a bottle of beer which I promptly and gratefully accepted! They do love drinking in Ireland!

 This is one of the streets in Temple Bar!

 Temple bar also

 This church is like 900 years old or something crazy like that!

 This bridge has padlocks all over it... I don't know why.

When I got back to the hostel I met a few of the people who were staying in the room too and we all decided to go out to the pub later as someone from another room had heard of a place that had pints for € 3.40 and that is very cheap for Dublin! Most drinks are like €6 or €7 it's madness.

Anyway so we all met up at about 9 and went to find this mystery pub located under a train station. There was quite a group of us actually - Tanja and Ben from Germany, Susie and Kacey from Nebraska, Billie from Canada, and Matt from San Diego. 

We found the pub, which undoubtedly hadn't changed at all for 400 years, and drank there till it closed. We swapped stories of where we were from etc and all made friends fast! We then moved on to The Temple Bar where we again drank till it closed! We were then desperate for somewhere to go and ended up at the worst place I have ever been! It was called something like Madonna's and it was a dance club but it was revolting.Worse than any student bar I have ever been to! Dirty floors, toilets were... I have no words, and a bunch of awful people. 

After a horrifying toilet experience I decided I had to leave but couldn't find anyone so I started walking to the door. When I was half way up the stairs I heard Tanja and Ben calling for me as they wanted to leave as well and were going to come with me, then Matt came up to us as he was already outside and had seen us leaving then the other three appeared from inside as well because they wanted to leave and had been searching for us all!

We then decided we still didn't want to stop drinking, ut nothing but Madonna's was open. In classic drunken style we searched the streets for any store that was open! But to no avail. We did find a pizza place though! Matt bought a pizza to share and as there was nowhere in the hostel for us all to sit together, we sat in the lobby with Arthur, the kindly hostel attendant on that night! All in all it was a great night!

We got up early the next morning to all have breakfast together as Matt was leaving that day. We then decided to reconvene at 10.30 and go to the Guinness factory! 

 It was really fun actually there is so much that goes into making Guinness! Crazy stuff like they take a sample of the yeast from ever batch of Guinness and grow the new yeast culture from that, so, in theory, the same strain of yeast has been used in every batch since it began!

 My favorite bit was watching the video of how they used to make the barrels back in the 50s! Without measuring or machines or anything!

 You can sit on that seat if you want and pretend to be in a Guinness ad! We were going to do it but the line was insane.

 This is my Guinness! It's a little fuzzy but it is good for a first try I think! Better than the woman who somehow couldn't do it at all any of the times she tried and our teacher literally said "I'm speechless"!! Haha!

 Me with Tanja and Billie and our Guinnesses... I had already drank some of mine hehe.

 The inside of the Guinness factory is actually shaped like a pint of Guinness so this would be the foamy head part! It had windows all around with such great views of Dublin! There are 5 floors to the Guinness factory so so much to see! You don't get too watch them making anything but it is fun to read about how they do it and pour you own! I even got a certificate saying that I can pour the perfect pint of Guinness how exciting!

 After a big day at Guinness - we were there for like 4 hours! I fell asleep. I woke up to a note from Billie saying they went out to dinner and to call them when I woke up if I wanted to join. I went and met them and we had a few drinks around the place. Ben and I were determined to see an Irish folk band but had to settle with an acoustic covers band... They were Irish though so that's ok! And they played Galway Girl first as well so it was great! People sure do love to party in Ireland. Everyone always gets super drunk but are always really happy! It's so great! Perople slowly started to leave as everyone was leaving the next day. So many goodbyes.

When I woke up the next day pretty much everyone had gone and I had to check out. I left my bags in the hostel storage again and wandered around Dublin listening to Irish radio stations on my phone.

 Here is a house covered in plants!

 Lots of famous literary figures came from Dublin. Like James Joyce! Finally that whole semester studying nothing but Ulysses is going to come in handy!

 A classic Dublin street!

 Even though they look like storm clouds, it was sunny pretty much the whole time I was in Ireland!

 And Oscar Wilde!

 Are these... dinosaurs?! 

 This is where Oscar Wilde was born!

 When I was staring at a statue and my map for ages looking lost a bike messenger helped me out. I didn't hear him talking to me because I was listening to the radio so he had to chase me down the road a bit haha. He was really nice and told me all the best places to go see. He said he used to be a tour guide so he was very helpful! Also he sounded exactly like Colin Farrell which was awesome haha. Anyway, he told me to go see Trinity college and see the Book of Kells. I went to the college but I didn't want to see the book because it cost €9 and I basically had no money left! It was a beautiful college though.

 James Joyce again!

 For any other Joyce fans out there, here is Leopold Bloom's house!

This is apparently where Saint Valentines was buried!