American Bar and American Religion

Tuesday night, I went to a bar/club with some people called O'neils. I had heard of it as an American bar, but it was actually almost a club. However, there was no cover, so that was cool.

I got to try a new drink at the Bar called a "Honey Bomb" which is like a Jaeger Bomb but with Jack Daniel's Tennessee Honey Whiskey (my favorite whiskey) instead of Jaeger. They had really cool shot glasses and they poured the red bull in the bottom and then the Honey Jack on top and when you drank it the red bull came through the honey jack and mixed really well.

There was a band playing a bunch of super American songs (American Idiot, I love Rock N' Roll, etc.) and at one point, all the kids from Indiana University started chanting U-S-A and got the whole 3rd floor of the bar to do it so that we could hear it from the second floor.

On Wednesday, I did not have class so I went to the Prince of Wales Theatre (haha stupid Brits and their spelling.) For every show, Book of Mormon has a raffle where they choose people to buy front row seats for 20 pounds. You can put how many tickets on your raffle ticket that you want (either 1 or 2). They start giving out the forms for the raffle 2.5 hours before the show and do the raffle 2 hours before the show. Since they have a matinee on Wednesdays, the drawing was at noon. Since most people put 2, they ended up drawing about 12 cards. Two other friends came with me, but they left after we didn't win the raffle (the play is sold out until September). I got in the returns line for people that returned their tickets. I was third in line, but the people in front of me only wanted a pair of tickets so I was first in line for a single ticket. It turned out that someone who won the raffle didn't want the tickets (which is dumb because you have to be there when you win so they had already waited around for like an hour), so the 2 people in front of me got 2 tickets in the front row or 20 pounds ea. 10 minutes later the same ticket guy came out and told me he had one ticket for 47 pounds. I bought it even though I'm pretty sure it's the single worst ticket in the theater (theatre), but I didn't care since I had wanted to see the play for so long.

It ended up being a great play and I was really happy that I stayed in line.

Afterwards, I basically went home to start studying for my final on Friday.

 Prince of Wales Theater Tuesday Night

 BT Tower announcing "It's a Boy" view from my window. (Click to enlarge)

 Honey Bomb and a Jaeger Bomb

Just before the theater opened the doors

France Days 3

Day 3 in France began with our second morning in Nantes.

I woke up early on purpose to make up for over sleeping the night before.

We hung out for a bit, ate some breakfast, and played more Fifa.

Then we went to a castle that I don't really remember the history of, but it circa mid 1400s if I remember correctly. I bought a Britagne flag at a little gift store. It will be a nice edition to my Irish Guinness Flag on my wall next year.

After the castle, we went back to the house and had lunch outside in their garden which was very nice.

Then we went go karting. It was an outdoor course, unlike the 2 places that I have go-karted in the US. I was surprised how they had less safety equipment than the ones that I have been to before.

Both dads and all the boys raced go karts. Arthur ended up clipping my kart on the second to let lap (on purpose) and I got knocked off the course because he did it when I was going around a turn. I didn't get  to finish since my kart got turned around and I had to wait for the guy to come get me. Since I was so close to the pit area, he just had me drive the wrong way back.

After go-karts, we went back to the house and grabbed our bags. We said goodbye to the boys and Pierre-Yves and Sandrine drove us to the airport. Pierre-Yves promised that they will come back to California in 2 years, after Victor finishes his Bacalaureat tests.

The TGV took 2.5 hours again and then we took a cab to our hotel when we got to Paris. We walked a couple blocks to a little pizza restaurant and we each had a pretty big pizza and I got another Orangina in a cool glass. My pizza had an egg on top of it which I thought was pretty cool.


Then we went back and went to sleep.

 They had fake people floating in the moat. 

It's a boy

I don't know when/If I'll get to talking about the end of France, so I'm skipping ahead.

Yesterday I went to Buckingham Palace after class hoping that the Royal Baby would be born. We got there around 5:30 and went and grabbed food to bring back. We sat in front of the gate for about two hours just hanging out. It wasn't very crowded. Then around 8:15 everyone started running towards one of the side gates...so we followed. The police were pushing people back trying to open up a path.

About 5 minutes later a car drove in. Someone got out and handed a lady a piece of paper and she walked into one of the side doors of the palace. 

A couple minutes later everyone started running over to the front gates and I followed. They were putting out the golden easel for the birth announcement.

I was hoping for something more like this:

Then the lady that had gotten the piece of paper starting carrying out a plaque. She walked really fast straight to the easel, securely attached it, and then quickly walked away. Someone quickly shouted "it's a boy!" and then people started getting excited and snapping pictures left and right.

It was pretty awesome. Here's the pictures I took (remember you can click them to make them bigger):