SoMe BeAtLeS aNd tHe WoNdErS oF HaRrOdS

Saturday, October 25th

This morning I slept in a little bit, and then went over to get lunch by 11:00am. The original itinerary for the day was to go to the Victoria and Albert Museum and explore Harrods for a while before heading out to Royal Albert Hall for Carmina Burana. However, after eating lunch with Shawn, Kim, Chad, and Luke, Cody and I decided to join them for a Beatles excursion over to Abbey Road.

We got to the famous street, and signed witty Beatles comments on the columns outside of the recording studio, along with millions of other fans. I wonder how many times the columns have been painted over and over again to allow more signatures and comments. Of course, we had to go across the crosswalk and take the famous pose. The guys were much more successful than the second group of us that went, but it was fun stopping traffic with our madness. I was sad that we didn’t get the picture-perfect pose, but I felt silly going more than twice. It was still a good time. Yay for the Beatles : )

After this, we left to go to Harrods, the world famous, ridiculously extravagant department store. We walked into a several huge rooms dedicated to cosmetics, decorated with chandeliers and all kinds of fancy, elegant décor. We carried on to the food stalls, where our 9 person group quickly dispersed due to the crowds and many different flavors being presented to our wide eyes and stomachs. There were several huge rooms filled with different meats and sandwich bars, chocolates and pastries, ice cream, candy, all kinds of ethnic foods, and more. Cody and I spent a good deal of time in the coffee and tea room, where she bought some grounds and I bought a container (I don’t know the actual name of the jar-ish thing) to hold hot chocolate. I was going to buy some tea as well, but decided I want to get some from an authentic English tea shop. We spent a good deal of time lavishing over the chocolate display, before finally settling on some extravagant, and absolutely delectable strawberry cheesecake. There were counters and counters full of chocolates. My eye caught some with little treble clefs frosted on them, right next to the ones with little sprinkles of gold leaf on top… wow. Talk about high-end!

We finally made our way past all of the amazing goodies, and continued to explore the gigantic store. I felt like a little kid’ it was so exciting! We went past restaurants with piano players and opera singers, and the escalators and elevators to go to each floor were so extravagant. They even have men standing to hold the door for you.

We wanted to work our way up to the toy department, but when the elevator doors opened to an entire room full of Christmas, we immediately took advantage of the detour. We literally walked into Christmas. It was such an incredible feeling. I LOVE Christmas! I usually get a little frustrated with decorations being out before Thanksgiving, let alone Halloween, distracting from the other holidays, but this was completely ok with me! The room was dimly lit, glowing of red and green, with extravagantly decorated Christmas trees everywhere, and filled with stockings, and other Christmas decorations. Nutcrackers, figurines, ornaments, and statues- this place was filled with festivities. Even Santa’s sack was in the department.

We moved on to some other rooms, making our way to pet’s heaven. This floor was filled with every accessory your pet could ever want. Complete with a pet bakery and dressing rooms, racks full of clothing, chew toys, and pillows, all dogs would go to heaven. There was even one freakishly real mechanical dog that would respond to you touching him. I enjoyed the real dogs walking around in the department with their owners, waiting to go into the dressing rooms to try on clothes… I’m absolutely not kidding… for real.

After this, we finally made our way to the toy department… absolutely huge! I turned to Cody and said that it was like a Christmas catalog come to life! The first huge room we walked into was the plush toy room. It was absolutely filled with all kinds of stuffed animals, tiny and insanely large. There were teddy bears bigger than me! It took everything I had not to buy one of the adorable plush monkeys… I love monkeys…

My favorite part was the animated teddy bears. There was a huge assortment of mechanical bears, all inside of a giant toy globe theatre. Some were sword fighting on stage, another peeking from behind the curtain, others twirling around or playing instruments or watching the performance from the gallery. It was awesome!

We went to a room full of princess outfits, dolls all over the place, aisles and aisles full of legos, and toys flying and rolling all over the place. It was like walking through a Christmas toy movie, like a Miracle on 34th street. There were remote control birds and planes flying through the air, cars and puppies all over the floor, and space ships flying at you. In this room was also a huge powerwheel-ish hummer, with firemen bears inside: only 18,000 GBP!

The employees were riding around on glittery, light up roller blades, and throwing toys in every direction. I particularly enjoyed the guy who was making snow. That’s right, I said making snow. He had a big bin full of snow, complete with a T-Rex to venture through the Winter Wonderland. Apparently, when mixing these ‘crystals from the north pole’ with a bit of ‘holy water’ the mixture makes a magical (chemical…) reaction, foaming cold, crystal snow into your hands. He demonstrated on me, and cold snow literally did blossom out of my hands. It was pretty cool. My favorite part was his enthusiasm and ‘oooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhaaaaa! Magical Snow!’ comment every time that the snow blossomed up.

We made our way onward, looking at all the wonderful toys, and then decided to head back downstairs, grab some extravagant sandwiches, and head out for CARMINA BURANA!