Day ELEVEN. Miss Arizona.

Day ELEVEN. Miss Arizona. Saturday I bought a ticket to go inside Buckingham Palace today (Monday). I thought that it was my late start with 3pm classes. After purchasing the ticket and coming home i discovered my classes started at 1130, and my ticket was for 930. The website said it takes 2 hours to get through the palace. I thought I was doomed. I called the tiketing office to see if I could swap/trade days but they said its not swappable as I had the actual ticket in hand. The lady did say that I could go Monday, and get my ticket stamped, for a one year pass to come back to the palace for another visit. The palace is only open to the public for two months when the queen is away. It closes this weekend. I got up this morning, and ....went inside dun da duh duhn da dah da doo do doo... Buckingham Palace. [If you made it through that paragraph bless you.] I got there early, but so did 50+ other people. I was in the second group to go through security, get my headset, and head in the castle. It was amazing. It actually felt like I was on a set, and not actually in the real thing. The ornate ceilings, chandeliers, carpets, paintings, were clearly all one of a kind. One of the rooms is where the formal wedding portraits take place. Crazy to think that Will & Kate, the Queen and King, and others had all been in that same room, or all the rooms. In another room, they had the baptismal font that royals had been baptised with, and the bapismal dress of William/George in a glass case. Crazy to think that living peoples items are incased in glass for others to see, and they are not even dead yet. There was a display of "Childhood in the palace" with some amazing photographs of the Queen & other people as kids in the palace. They had a room that was set up just for all the toys/gifts that had been given to the kids. There was the coolest kid size airstream trailer the Queen had when she was little. There was an Alpaca blanket given by the Obama's to George at his birth. I was walking constatly, never stopping for longer than 5 seconds at anything. I have no idea how many rooms I got to see, or how long the tour was going to take. Before I knew it the tour was over. I blasted through the castle in 30 minutes. Ha! I wanted to go backwards, but people were giving me the stink eye for reversing my course. I asked a worker where I get my ticket stamped and she said at the end of the tour, a ten minute walk through the garden grounds. What? 10 more minutes of walking? Oh. my. goodness. As much as I am a lover of history. I am a lover of nature. This was like the palace's own Central Park. It was amazing. A big long green grassy area, about the size of a football field or two, a trail with a pond and the prettiest dripping trees reflecting in the water below. Sigh. When I go back, not sure if I want to stare at the yard or at the walls more. Wow. Again if you made it this far, go grab a glass of water. I made it to class with plenty of time. We seem to have the same chef teaching all of our demonstrations. He is new to the school, and very fast at times, and slow at other times. He spent 2 hours on one task today, making Tuiles, decorative cookie like things for our creme de caramel and creme brules. Two hours. It was painful, as the schedule showed that he had much more to show us, including plating, negative space on plates, fruit slicing, and he took 75% of the time to show us one thing. I finally spoke up and asked him as he worked in silence, and asked if he would talk to us about something else on the schedule as he continued making Tulies. He said he would in a minute. He kept going. He went over by 20 minutes, and that meant no lunch break, we had to rush, and get ready for our practical with no food in our bellies. Many of us had dampened spirits with no food, especially going to make something and get a critique from another chef when we werent trained properly. Practical. I walked in and to my surprise, it was a chef that specializes in Sugar Sculptures. My flatmate said that she has not even had a class from him yet and she is going into third term. He's done competitions for sugar work arround the world, so he's pretty legit. I was washing my scissors off in the sink, and sliced my thumb. I had to go to chef to get a bandaid. Once he heard my accent, he asked where I was from. I knew he was american by his accent. Arizona. "Arizona? What? I am from Tucson. I've been teaching here for two years, and never have had someone from Arizona before you." Wow. I am a rarity. We had a nice little chat. He was really nice, and patient, showed me how to make a sugar bowl by shaking the sugar by shaking my hand like I am 'ringing a bell.' When Chef came around to me for my review he called me Miss Arizona. After my royal morning I felt like a beauty pageant contestant, only my work today was not up to my standards. My creme de caramel plating was terrible. I didnt even take a picture of it. My chocolate piping, and decoration was a bit too over the top. My Creme brulee did not look like it does in my instagram picture at the time of my critique. The chef suggested to have the fruit flow from the brule down to the plate, as I only had it on the plate. I knew my caramel had too much going on the plate, so i tried to go simple is better approach. We had a third class, from 630-900 tonight. Luckilly Chef Arizona kept us on time, so we actually got to eat our lunches before our final class of the night. Tarte au Citron. aka Lemon Tart. This is one of the three dishes that will be for our examination. 1/3 is randomly picked and we have to do it step by step from memory, have it be edible, and decorated exactly like the chef shows us. I took more notes on thie Lemon Tart then any other dish so far. Three pages. Luckilly it was a new Chef tonight (not our slow Tulie maker) who kept us upbeat and entertained. There are lots of steps to make a Lemon Tart. He also showed us a Tarte au Chocolate. You can all guess which one was my favorite when we got to taste them at the end of class. It was simply devine chocolate, fluffy yet thick, creamy, smooth, amazingness with all of my senses getting rewarded for a long long day of classes. I am in night classes all this week. Should be interesting. There she is Miss Arizona