Lottery Winner: The Merchant of Venice

I didn’t make it to breakfast! I said to the ladies who clean our room, “Ten more minutes!!!” but they never came back. I was hoping that they would knock just one more time and jolt me out of bed. So I walked out of my room at nine o’clock, disoriented, and wandered into the first Starbucks with Nichole. We read there for a couple of hours, went to the Bodleian and then back to Lincoln College for lunch. Although the English food is drenched with sauce (which we now call funk), I have to admit the quality of the fish here is incredible. I have salmon or white fish for lunch and dinner every single day.

At 3pm I met the members of the Page to Stage class along with the lottery winners for the Merchant of Venice at the Trinity College gates. We arrived in London at 5pm, which gave us a couple of hours of leisureuntil the beginning of the play at 7:30pm.

I walked around and found a quaint store called Funki Fresh on Gabriel's Wharf, on the same side of Shakespeare's Globe Theater. I bought a nitted skirt and comfortable shoes (which I wore). Afterwards, I had a greek salad and a glass of red wine at "The Real Greek Restaurant" near my final destination.

The theater is a replica of a typical playhouse in Shakespeare’s time. The seating reflects the differences between social classes, with the groundlings (the poor) standing during the entire performance while the wealthier viewers sat in balcony boxes. We got balcony seats right in front of the stage, so we got to see the actors interacts with the audience without getting wet!

I liked this comic rendition of the Merchant of Venice because it kept me entertained throughout the production, which is extremely important when you are seating in wooden benches for two hours!