cowgrrl

I've decided to put part two here instead of my (mostly) fic journal because I got so many comments I was constantly having to back and forth between the two journals. So I'm making this a public post. This post is going to focus on the Doctor Who and Torchwood fans, and also a little on Brittrack, the wonderful people who made this all possible at Dragon*con. ( click here for lots of pics including bears, fans, costumers, and all sorts of wonderful and creative people. )

On Tuesday, January 8, we left Cardiff and took the train to Birmingham, checking our luggage at the station and heading to the Hippodrome to see John Barrowman in a Panto of "Alladin". I had no idea the Panto itself was going to be so fabulous. For my American readers (who are sadly without this art form because they don't do Pantomimes here in the States) you can read about it on Wikipedia. An excerpt from wikipedia: Traditionally performed at Christmas, with family audiences consisting mainly of children and parents, British pantomime is now a popular form of theatre, incorporating song, dance, buffoonery, slapstick, in-jokes, audience participation, and mild sexual innuendo.

Words cannot begin to describe how much fun this was. Between the sense of humor, the 3-D glasses that actually worked (3D glasses usually make me ill), the audience participation, and OMG, John Barrowman! It should be illegal for anyone to be that beautiful! And there we were in the second row! *swoon!*

But the best is yet to come... After the show, we noticed a small group of people at a side entrance to the theatre so we decided to join them there. We didn't really expect to see John Barrowman, after all, they had a second performance to do that same day. But then I noticed the two actors who had been hilarious as the policemen in the show, but before I could go photograph them, I realized John Barrowman was now there, signing playbills.

And now here's when things get really interesting. In Cardiff, we'd used a guide to Doctor Who/Torchwood filming sites written by a fan who'd stayed at the Inn. Her friend, who'd also stayed there, had gotten her photo taken with David Tennant while they were in Cardiff -- he'd been amused to see that she was dressed exactly like his Doctor Who character - and this photo was in the guest book at the inn. So, back to the present: we're with a small crowd of people crowded around John Barrowman, and suddenly I notice a woman who looks exactly like woman in the photo at the inn, dressed, once again, like David Tennant's Doctor Who. And I went "omg, it's YOU!" totally startling the poor woman, who wasn't expecting to be treated like a celebrity. :-) I found out both she and her friend (the one who wrote the guide to filming sites, who was dressed that night like "The Master!") are on livejournal - and since returning home I've been in touch with both of them, exchanging photos, that sort of thing, and you can read their versions of the event at their LJ's if you choose: they are nightbeast and todd_loves_mc. Both of them of course had their writeups of that night posted long before me since they didn't have to travel all the way home to the States.
( and now for the photos! squeee!!!!! )

Our first full day in Cardiff it rained almost continuously. That didn't stop us from riding the buses out to Cardiff bay, where we visited the Millenium Centre and the Doctor Who exhibition. The following day the weather was much better so we walked to Cardiff Bay (a little over a mile from the B&B), revisited many of the places we'd seen earlier, took photos of filming sites (using as a resource a really helpful list a previous guest at the B&B had given the innkeepers--it was better than the map from the Doctor Who exhibition), and eventually making our way to Cardiff Castle. We'd hoped to take the waterbus to the castle (getting in both sightseeing and transportation) but it wasn't running on sundays in the winter. (grrr...) Meanwhile, back at the B&B, I'd gotten my own room so I was able to sleep a little better, and I'd sampled laverbread, a traditional Welsh food that my stomach hated, and bubbles & squeak, a traditional British food that my stomach quite liked. ( and now, on to the photos! Lots of photos! )

(I'm currently having a weird problem with photobucket--the photos are appearing in LJ really large even though I reduced their size. Right now the only thing that's working is for me to post thumbnails instead. When you click on them they should enlarge to the size I actually want them. What a pain. Sorry to make you take that extra step to see the pics larger! Next time I'll use another site, but photobucket used to be so easy!)

Ok, on to the trip report, continued. We saw two museums and one play. (Denice saw two plays.) ( this will be mostly photos )

In case anyone was wondering what sophiaserpentia and I ended up doing last weekend after we canceled our New York trip, here at last is the answer. We decided to go all the way to Rhode Island (a whole hour away by car!) to go to Waterfire. Neither of us had ever been to this event before. We thought about getting a hotel room and staying in Rhode Island but decided it wasn't worth spending the money so we went there and back in one afternoon/evening.

( here's what we saw. Sorry I take crappy night pics but I did the best I could. )

After a high cholesterol breakfast at a nearby diner, we checked out of the hotel and walked two or three blocks back to Times Square. Magic_Girl was doing a gig at the giant Toys 'r Us, demonstrating magic tricks for sale at the toy store so we headed there to watch her make things disappear. The store is huge! It has an indoor ferris wheel and several floors of merchandise. Magic_Girl told us about the large animatronic dinosaur on the 3rd floor so we had to go check it out! There were also enough giant Lego structures to remind me of Lego Land.

After the toy store we tried to meet up with secret_willow's Platonic NY Boyfriend for lunch but he didn't have much time to spend with us. We contemplated an NBC Studio Tour, we thought about lunch, but I was hot and cranky and didn't want food yet. What I wanted was Central Park. By now it was about 2pm and if we'd been sensible we would have been heading home. We weren't sensible so off we went toward Central Park (a mere 15 blocks or so from where we'd started out. In oppressively hot weather.)

The first thing we found in Central Park was a strange sculpture!

( strange elephant sculpture )

And soon after we entered the park we came across the Central Park Zoo! And admission was inexpensive. Oh what the heck...we went in, looked at animals, birds, snakes, sea lions (who looked like they were having fun swimming in nice cool water!) And then we entered the nice, airconditioned, penguin building where a lecture about the penguins was taking place. The speaker told us penguins are extremely monogamous and mate for life. They apparently also only have one baby at a time, because a female laid two eggs and pushed one of them out of the nest. So, the humans who work at the zoo got the brilliant idea to give the rejected egg to the resident gay male penguin couple! The gay penguin couple took care of the egg and raised a baby penguin of their very own! Just don't tell the right-wing Fundie lunatics, otherwise they'll be picketing the zoo!

( penguins! )

It was getting late so we reluctantly left the zoo and started the long walk out of the park and back to the hotel.

( A last look at Central Park )

It seemed insane to go back to Chinatown when we were walking distance from Port Authority Bus Terminal. We just had to go through Time Square one last time to get there.

( some pics of Times Square, since we spent so much time there! )

However, when we got to Port Authority we discovered an absolutely humungous ticket line. There were ticket kiosks all over the station but all of them were out of order! It was now 5:25 and there was no way we'd get through that line in time for the 6:00pm bus. Even worse, the price was $28 per person, much higher than the $15 Chinatown bus. We decided to take a taxi to Chinatown, in the hopes of hopping on the 6:00 bus there, but due to traffic, we reached our destination just in time to see the 6:00 bus pull out! (We wouldn't have made that bus anyway because we discovered the bus was cash-only and we were out of cash, and needed time to find an ATM machine.) So we were stuck in Chinatown for the next hour, but even with the taxi fare we still paid less than we would have for the trip home than if we'd stayed at Port Authority. And this way we had time to round up a few meager snacks for the long bus ride. The bus pulled into South Station at 11:30pm and we were home a little after midnight (after paying for yet another taxi).

The weather's gone back to being cold and dreary -- last night it was so cold the heat was on! I'm groggy two days in a row, probably from the shock to the system of the temperature dropping 40 degrees! But this makes it a good time to revisit a recent warmer, sunnier weekend.

( pics from Ogunquit, first weekend in June )