You Sound Like You're From London

The alarm sounded at 7:30. Grumpy, I quickly turned it off then said to Claire, "Why do we have to get up so early!?"

By 8:30, we leaving House 9 and walking toward the train station in Oxford headed for the city of London. I forgot to eat breakfast, so I grabbed a chocolate pastry and a cappuccino in the train station.

With a "chugga-chugga choo choo!" the train took us to Paddington Station in London. It was about an hour to the city, but it went by pretty quickly. When we arrived, we went to the British Library where we saw "Treasures of the British Library." The Magna Carta was there along with so many other amazing manuscripts. One display was a collection of The Beatles' drafts of song lyrics. One song was written on the back of an envelope--they had bad handwriting! but I suppose that's alright since they were geniuses.

I saw first editions of Shakespeare, Jane Austen's journal and her first draft of "Persuasion," a 10th century Bible, and many other antique documents. It was awesome.

I ate lunch at a nearby pub called O'Neils. I got a Tuna Melt--pretty tasty, but we had to eat fast in order to meet the group in time to go to the British Museum. Cole had told us that the British Library and Museum were very, very close to each, so it would be a very short walk. I'm never going to believe him again. It was NOT short, but I suppose if he told us it would be as long as it was we would complain. The British Museum is always fascinating and intimidating. Mummies, sculptures, artifacts, art, EVERYTHING you can imagine. I saw the Rosetta Stone which was fascinating. My feet were killing me after about two hours of browsing through the museum, so I found a bench and rested for the rest of our time there. At four, the group reconvened. I met up with Becca, Brittany, and Derko since we were the only four who would be returning to Oxford that same night. Brittany and Allison wanted to go see "Phantom of the Opera," but they didn't have tickets, so we walked down to the theatre district at Leicester Square, but they were not able to buy tickets for a good enough price; therefore, Allison and her group went to their hostel and we four day travelers headed to Piccadilly Circus to shop and explore. I bought a gift for Jason, and then we wandered the streets a bit. It was a freezing cold day with winds and light rain, so we tried to think of something that we could do that would be inside. So we hopped on the tube to Knightsbridge to visit the famous Harrods department store. We walked around in wonder at the ridiculous prices on everything. The jewelry didn't even list a price, instead the ticket said, "Price upon Request"--I don't even want to know what price they would give for a De Beers diamond necklace that contained 230 total carat weight! I did purchase some Rose-flavored Turkish Delight. I'd never tried it, but it's pretty good!

When we got hungry, we wandered the streets until we found a pub that wasn't too crowded. We landed at the Angel & Crown and went upstairs to eat where it was a little more quiet. I had a delicious Steak & Guinness pot pie that took about 30 minutes to eat because it was so hot. We stayed at the pub for a while talking and eating. Eventually, we hit the streets to do a bit more wandering and experiencing the city, and then headed back to Paddington Station to catch a train back to Oxford.

Exhausted, we arrived to our houses around midnight. It was a long day, but it was SO much fun!