Love at First Sight and Other Happenings

As I guess you can tell from the lack of posts, the monster that is graduate school has eaten my life.  A lot has happened since my last post, but I haven't had time to sit down and hash it all out.  So here goes a whirlwind description of my last month.

The biggest thing to happen to me was pretty monumental - my first trip to London.  It was, believe it or not, love at first sight.  I've decided that I've been misguided for the last 23 years.  I've been looking for a man when really all I needed was London.  Yeah.  It was that great.

Sadly, scheduling made it so I could only spend two days in the city.  My friend from Sweden (who had also never been to London) flew into Gatwick on Sunday evening.  I had class on Monday and Tuesday.  There was a graduate scholarship reception on Wednesday evening.  Thursday and Friday were spent in the city.  My friend flew home on Saturday morning.  So our mission, as we chose to accept it:  See as much of the city in just under two days as humanly possible.  It was an arduous task, but we persevered.

We got an early train in on Thursday morning so we made it to the hostel by 10:30.  Basically, we dropped our stuff and went for it.  The first thing we tried to find was Big Ben, mostly because you can, well, see it.  We ended up going the long way around, but we got to walk through Victoria Tower Gardens.  A sufficient amount of time was spent being touristy and taking pictures outside of Parliament House and Westminster Abbey.

Saying goodbye to Big Ben (and pondering over why there is a statue of Abraham Lincoln in Parliament Square), we headed off toward Buckingham Palace.  We came across a strange gathering of guards with marching instruments outside what may or may not have been the Royal Guards Museum.  We spend some time hanging around to see if they would play or march or anything, but they didn't, so we moved on to Buckingham Palace.

Here are my observations of Buckingham Palace:  It's big.  There's lots of gold.  You can't get anywhere near it, which makes it hard to take "I was here!" pictures.  We found two guards at a little side entrance that we could get close enough to take pictures of.  I was surprised at how young they looked.  Like, possibly younger than me, young.  After finding a park wall to stand on and get one good picture of the entire place, we started moving again.

Obligatory photo of Buckingham Palace - It's so big that you have to go pretty far away if you want a picture of the whole thing.  This was taken from the wall spot I found in the park.

It had been drizzling in the morning so the guards all had on rain gear instead of their usual red. :(

Next stop: Trafalgar Square!  It was really crowded with people eating lunch and families and loads of tourists, but it was still neat.  The big lion statues and Nelson's Column, the inexplicable giant blue rooster, the fountains - I was pretty excited, even if just for the fangirling I was able to do.  Also, the National Gallery is there.  I wanna gooooo!!!

After a quick pit-stop to take some pictures in front of The Sherlock Holmes Restaurant, we started the LOOOOOONG hike to the Tower of London.  There were several stops and detours along the way for pictures and various amounts of fangirling.  We saw Big Ben and The London Eye from several different angles.

The Tower of London was probably the highlight of my day.  I wish we could have spent more time exploring all of the buildings but it was all ready 3 PM when we got there and they closed at 5:30.  But we took advantage of the free guided tour from the Yeoman Warder and then waited in line to see the Crown Jewels.  It was dark and cold by the time we left, but we had to take what seemed like hundreds of pictures of the Tower Bridge.  Now, I've never really been an architecture fanatic.  I mean, I can appreciate old buildings and I've taken enough art history classes to get a wee bit excited about the history behind things like cathedrals, but oh my gosh, the Tower Bridge is beautiful.  I can't tell you what it is about it, but I love it.  I took a picture of it EVERY SINGLE TIME I saw it over the course of those two days.  I couldn't get enough...

Isn't it beautiful?  Do you blame me for loving it?

Both of us were practically dead on our feet by this point, so we started to make our way back to the hostel.  We stopped at a Chozen Noodle on the way for dinner and then once we finally got back to Lambeth we ended the evening with hot chocolate at Costa.  Sleep came pretty easily for me that night...

A rough outline of what we walked on Day 1 - according to Google Maps it's 7.7 miles.
It was probably a little more than that because of all the times we took wrong turns and detours and got lost :P

Day Two started early.  The hostel serves breakfast from 7 to 9 and we were out the door and on our way to the London Eye right around 9 AM.  We had tickets for the 10 AM ride.  I was really excited because it wasn't raining!  Yay for the London Eye sans rain!  I thought it was pretty great, but my friend was a little upset with the huge group of noisy people in the same car as us.  I think I was too euphoric to really care about anything besides the great views of London.

Big Ben and Parliament from The London Eye (You can also see Westminster Abbey - to the right of Big Bed and Battersea Power Station - to the left of the bigger tower of Parliament)

Our next planned destination was Madame Tussaud's, but we passed Shakespeare's Globe Theater on the way.  We also passed St. Paul's Cathedral.  It started POURING rain as soon as we got to Baker Street, but we got to see 221B anyway, which I was overly thrilled about.  Lunch was at a delicious Italian place on Baker Street.  I had cheese and spinach ravioli and then almost got lost in the labyrinth that was the way to the ladies room.

221B Baker Street - AHHHHHH!!!!

Finally we made it to Oxford Street and the shopping that we wanted to do.  Even though it was only November 1st, one of the department stores had their Christmas Emporium set up.  Of course, we went in.  After that was my first time in a Primark.  I'm sure that it's a great store, but it was a terrible experience for my first time.  It was loud and hot and crowded and messy.  I bought some pjs anyway.

We spent a long time in Waterstones where I bought the first two Sherlock Holmes novels.  We spotted a huge Disney store, so of course, we had to check that out.  It was pretty great.  It was decorated for Christmas and they had a lot of cool merchandise.  I could have spent a lot of money, but limited myself to a 20th Anniversary Nightmare Before Christmas key chain.  The last store we went in was a music and video store that reminded me of FYE, expect it was called HMV.  Isn't that funny?

After we were laden with bags, we started back towards the hostel.  We went by way of Piccadilly Circus and the West End, so that was pretty great.  We made a quick stop in the Waterstones in Trafalgar Square and then tried to find the train station we needed to use the next day since we had to get up so early.  A trial run never hurts, right?

Dinner was at a Thai place a few blocks away from the hostel.  I had chicken pad thai that was really fantastic.  Or maybe I'm just missing the Thai place in Wyomissing.

An even rougher outline of what we walked on Day 2 - 9.3 miles according to Google Maps, even though I know that's not 100% correct.  Things went a little wonky between St. Paul's and Regent's Park, so....yeah.

Wake up came at 4:40 AM on Saturday.  We somehow made it to Gatwick in one piece and in plenty of time for my friend to check in for her 9 AM flight.

My journey back to Colchester should have been straight-forward, but unfortunately, nothing around here seems to be straightforward.  I was supposed to take the train from Gatwick to Victoria Station and then the Circle Line to Liverpool Street.  I had my return ticket for Liverpool to Colchester.  I made it to Victoria without a problem.  But then the problems started with a vengeance.  The Circle Line was down due to track work and a derailment.  I was able to get the underground to Monument and then change to Tower.  In the station I met three other people having similar difficulties.  One was able to sort things out pretty quickly, but that still left three of us trying to get to Liverpool Street.  Long story short, we had to walk.  Luckily, one guy had Google Maps and the other was decently familiar with the area.  They were both international Masters students and one had spent his undergrad at Essex.  It really is a small world.

I was totally beat by the time I made it onto the train at Liverpool Street.  I tried to read, but ended up just staring out the window and taking pictures of the fields for most of the trip.  Luckily I was able to catch the bus from the train station that goes right to the Quays.  I had a great time in London, but boy was it nice to sleep in my own bed that night....

Now, since I'm sure you are tired of reading this mammoth of a post, I'll make the rest quick.  Things have been going well since that fateful trip to London.  My classes are insanely stressful, but that is to be expected.

I went out with the Travel Society on Guy Fawkes Night to see the bonfire and the fireworks in Castle Park.  The fireworks were great and even though I couldn't feel my toes or my fingers by the end of the night, it was still a lot of fun.

I signed up to be a course rep and a member of the Student Staff Liaison Committee.  I have training tomorrow and our first meeting is on December 4th.

Here's what I have planned over the next month:

• Cambridge
• Oxford
• Another trip to London :D
• Encore screening of the National Theatre's Frankenstein
• THE LUMINEERS live at Alexandra Palace on Thanksgiving :)

Add that to all my coursework and I have enough to keep me more than busy right up to term break.  For me, term ends on 10 December.  That's less than a month away!!

I'll wrap up now.  Thanks for sticking with this until the bitter end.  Hopefully updates will come more often in the future, but no promises!

-RJ