Welcome Home, Miss Wolf: It. Is. Hot.

Today was the hottest day I feel that I have ever experienced. I know at 80º the London summer can't even touch the 120º of Arizona, but still. It was hot. The mad dash to class this morning was miserable, and the lack of indoor air conditioning nearly killed us all (I got to sit by the window because I came later to class. Suckers!)

After class, we decided to approach our group project for Dr. Facinelli's class. As our final project, we have to go to specific~~ally vague~~ places in each of the three countries and take pictures with our whole group in them. Then we have to summarize them and write about the significance of each place, etc. Basically, Facinelli has sent us on a wild scavenger hunt throughout the UK and Ireland!

At the churchyard at St. Bartholomew's

William Wallace commemorative plaque

At St. Bartholomew's, we took a bit of a side trip to see St. Paul's cathedral! The cathedral is more ornate and grand than I imagined, and the Baroque details were stunning!

St. Paul's! And Queen Anne, ever vigil.

We ran around for a while, but surrendered to the summer heat and had to depart. We could think of no better place to head than McDonalds for some Cadbury McFlurries! But not just any McDonalds. No, we went to a very specific McDonalds...

Attend the tale...

The McDonalds on Fleet Street! It is said (by Liz) that this McDonalds was constructed on the very spot of the famous Sweeney Todd incident! I don't know if I believe that, but the McFlurries were tasty!

I'm allergic to pies anyway

From there we made our second stop to Boudicca's statue, which was located next to Parliament (where we went yesterday). We had some interesting encounters with some of the characters that apparently frequent that bridge...

So that guy there... Not part of a statue

Our final stop for our picture tour was located in Chelsea, at Thomas Moore's statue. However, Chelsea is in a bit of a wild and crazy state at the moment. I'm talking, of course, about the Chelsea Flower Show! Thousands of people were flocking to Chelsea from all corners of London to attend the Flower Show, which is apparently a hot event (tickets were up to £300 last week, so I heard!) Humanity, it seems, really enjoys flowers. And it really enjoys viewing flowers en masse. After asking a confused bobby for directions and fighting the endless stream of people, coaches, and cycle rickshaws, we made our way to the Chelsea Embankment, where we were instructed to go to find the statue. However, the statue was nowhere to be seen. With nothing but some questionable wi-fi to guide our way, we trekked for almost an hour in the heat, trying to find this <insert swear word here> statue! Essentially, we all wanted to die. And we may as well have, it was so hot and humid. However, after what seemed like an eternity, we found it!