London Calling

Saturday night, naturally, we had to celebrate being done with finals... so I went out with a bunch of my friends. Unfortunately, Chelsea was sick so she didn't make it out as she was trying to sleep whatever it was off before we went to London. I made it home around midnight ish, but didn't fall asleep until sometime after 3 am (counting crows reference anybody?), which sucked since we had to leave to catch the bus at 6:15 am. So, exhausted, I woke up, grabbed my bag, and left... when I promptly realized that I had forgotten my cell phone. Oops. Ran back upstairs, then back downstairs and met Chelsea on the corner outside the Croft, and we walked up to Waverley to get on the airport bus. We got to the airport wayyyyy early. Security was a breeze, except when Chelsea realized she had forgotten to pack her toiletries in the travel friendly sizes. We had a little funeral for all the stuff she had to throw away, after trying to figure out every possible way that she could get them back somehow.

We got to our gate, then they told us the flight was going to be delayed. But then it wasn't going to be... then it was cancelled... then it was back on. EasyJet is weird. Finally, we got on the plane, and we flew into sunrise as we got to London one short hour later. After a little confusion, we ended up pretty close to my friend Osman's place, where we would be staying. On the walk from the train station to his flat, Chelsea and I started a game where we took a picture of Chelsea with any signs we saw that said Chelsea. Once, we found something that said Claudia, and we took my picture next to that... but it was at the British Museum, so it doesn't really count. Osman made us tea, and we made a gameplan for the rest of the day. We decided to walk to Buckingham Palace, Hyde Park, and the Victoria and Albert Museum. It was a pretty long walk, and it was pretty cold, but I was really glad we did it. When I was in London in August, I took the tube absolutely EVERYWHERE, and so I missed the heart of the city, which was silly of me. So, we sightsaw all the way to Buckingham Palace, where Chelsea was a little disappointed that you couldn't get very close to the guards, but it was cool to see them anyway. In Hyde Park, we stumbled upon the Christmas market, which was delightful. We tried to find the statue of Peter Pan and failed miserably, and after being a bit lost, we made it to the V and A, which was super duper cool. There were some obnoxious ladies in one of the exhibits, but we got over it, and Chelsea found this one sculpture thing that a professor (adviser?) of hers said she had to see. Anyway, the whole museum was really fabulous.

The last thing we did was go to Harrod's, which is splendiferous at Christmas time. There are lights everywhere, and sooooo much decoration. And amazing toys. I almost died of amazingness in their toy sections. Plural. So many toys. So many expensive, fancy, awesome toys. And giant teddy bears. And cute guys selling weird fake snow. Yeah.

We walked back, planning to go to the giant Tesco we had seen earlier, but it turned out that it was closed at 4 on Sundays. So stupid. So, we had to go without meat for the stir fry we were going to make. We popped over to the corner market and invested in stir fry sauce and ben and jerry's, then Chelsea and I made dinner. The three of us played Scrabble over our stir fry and had an all-around lovely time.

The next day, I had been hoping to meet my dad's friend, Clare, who as you may recall, helped me out at the beginning of my odyssey by allowing me to store my bags in her office. Clare had just had a baby, and unfortunately we ended up not being able to meet, which was sad! However, Chelsea and I, walking in the direction of her office, ended up getting to see the changing of the guards, which was great fun. We then decided to walk in the vague direction of the British Museum, via the National Gallery. There were soooo many cool things in there... it was huge and a little overwhelming. We saw some Van Goghs and lots of other art that I cannot at the moment specifically recall. On the way to the British Museum, we decided to stop at hte post office to exchange money as we had heard that debit cards without electron chips tend not to work in France. This was an ordeal... we waited in line for over 45 minutes! This was especially painful when we saw the commission free Euros ATM at the train station the next day. Anyway, we had just enough time to look at the super awesome clocks, the Elgin Marbles, Rosetta Stone, Mausoleum, and some of the Far Eastern art before we had to jet to the British Library. There, I got to see the Lindisfarne Gospels, which was amazing, since we had been reading about them in Latin last year. Unfortunately, the manuscript for Alice and Wonderland was not in at the moment, but Chelsea thoroughly enjoyed seeing the Jane Austen stuff and some of the original musical compositions. In the meantime, I lent my voice to a study on pronunciation of the English language.

When the library closed, we went to King's Cross to take pictures at the silly Harry Potter platform 9 3/4 wall. We were miffed because this platform was NOT between platforms 9 and 10, and it was just a picture of bricks in a back alley wall... so tacky. We called Osman, but he had already eaten dinner, so we decided to go to a pub that had a dinner special on Fish and Chips, so we had those. Mmmmm mushy peas. When we got back to Osman's, there was a really big football match on, so Osman went to the pub to watch it with some friends. Chelsea and I showered and were pretty much asleep by the time Osman got back at the half. We were exhausted! We said our goodbyes since we were leaving so early in the morning. It was sad to say goodbye, since Osman had been so nice as a host!

We woke up ludicrously early, took the tube to King's Cross/St. Pancras, and managed to locate the Eurostar terminal. We got our passports checked, and then we were on our way to Paris!