Spring Break Days 5 & 6: I'm I'll

I did go to I'olani Palace on Wednesday. It was a very interesting place, and very beautiful, although something about it felt a bit too cold for me--There wasn't any life left in the place, not like I felt at, say, The Hermitage in Tennessee. The Palace was just kind of sad. Most of the furniture and decorations are gone, because they were sold by the conspirators who overthrew the Hawaiian monarchy and have not yet been recovered. It felt rather empty. Then too, so much has changed around it since its glory days. When it was first built, one could stand on the second floor and look out in one direction to see the ocean right there in the bay, and look in the opposite direction to see nothing but sweeps of jungle and green and then the mountains. Now, there's skyscrapers all around blocking the ocean and government buildings and more skyscrapers and development taking the place of the jungle, not to mention all the houses that now dot the mountainsides. I suppose that was part of the problem. The Palace was built to be grand, impressive, and beautiful, and although it is still beautiful, it now feels somewhat dwarfed, no longer living quarters for anybody, no longer the tallest building on the island. It's like it fell out of time into the wrong century and place.

That's not to say it wasn't interesting to tour the rooms, but nothing felt natural. All the rooms felt a bit too sparse and staged for my liking. Though the King's library was (of course!) delightful.

Since I walked to the Palace and back, I stopped off at St. Andrew's Cathedral and got my picture taken. Usually I don't like posting photographs of myself online, but I can't resist this time, because it's just too cool. Remember this scene from "The Constant"? (Or, well, not this exact scene perhaps, but the whole Desmond-meeting-Faraday-in-1996 deal. The student is unimportant. This just happens to be the best pic of the background I could find):


Well check this out:

Same hallway, peoples! I made it to Oxford University at last! ^_^

Except the little Physics Dept. placard is mysteriously missing and the lighting is a lot poorer, but, you know. I've been suspecting the episode filmed at this cathedral for a while now, so I decided to check it out, and I managed to find the spot. Which, since "The Constant" is absolutely my favorite episode of the show ever (although "Ab Aeterno" is awful close now), is a big deal, haha.

I double-checked online later, and apparently this church is used for basically every single 'old building/church in England' scene in the show. So Charlie came here to confess, Eko came here, and Desmond meeting Penny for the first time? Happened right here, peeps. The cathedral was built by a Hawaiian queen, using stone imported from England and built after the design of a British cathedral, so it really is a nice place.

It was a pretty fair day. But then I woke up yesterday with a full-fledged head-congesting, hacking-cough, sneezing cold attacking me, and Spring Break has kind of gone downhill from there. I'd been having a little bit of throat trouble all week, but at least the cold waited to hit me until after I had done my sightseeing.

Of course, that means that I now have to study for two midterms and write four papers while battling a horrific head-cold, but whatever. I'll manage somehow.