Lots of Old Stuff and One New Stuff

One of my favorite things in London is the London Eye. Sure, it's expensive, doesn't have student prices and forces you into close proximity with people that you wish understood the meaning of 'personal space', but it's also relaxing and gives you lots of pretty views of London:

(Look! Parliament again!... Also, Westminster.)

St. Paul's in the distance:


Yesterday was the Tower of London, another favorite of mine. You can't take pictures of the Crown Jewels unfortunately, but they look practically fake anyway. Maybe they are...

ALV is scared of the Tower (or my picture-taking... whichever):

The British tell you that the Tower wasn't originally a prison, but I think the guys that had time to do this in their cell walls would disagree:

Okay, now this is, in fact, a bit scary. Bayonets on machine guns! Wtf?:

The Tower Bridge:

The White Tower looking imposing:


Today we went to Bath and Stonehenge, which was a bit on the lighter side. I wish we had gotten more time at both of them (particularly Bath), but it was only a day trip. There were delicious muffins involved at one point though...

The Roman bath with the Bath abbey in the background:

The "Sacred Spring":

Milsolm Street and the reason Brits hate tourists, most likely. (Next to me for this picture was a con artist playing Three-card Monte with some young teenager as her target. People, teach your kids what a confidence trick is!):

Stonehenge's burial mounds, with the Beeker people. I couldn't make that name up:

And we all know what this place looks like, right? Well, it's still pretty cool in person:


On the way back, our bus driver (who had repeatedly run lights and driven like a crazy person) got into a fender bender. Of course, being a bus, it was the other guy's fender. He freaked out on us, even though (shockingly, considering our driver's driving) it was actually his fault. It was kind of fantastically hilarious. Ah, I love this town.

As Promised

So I'm still jetlagged, but I'm rather enjoying my first week here in London. Notre Dame's campus in London is about a 30 minute walk from where ALV and I are staying (at the University of London) and, because we're cheap and London so is not, we take the walk instead of the Tube. The best part of the walk is the last bit, where we have to go through Trafalgar Square. It's like being hit with a sledgehammer of "You're in LONDON, by the way!" and it's fabulous.
Lord Nelson, who is facing away actually:

The National Gallery on the other side, which is full of paintings of the Virgin and Child, to the point that they bleed together. I preferred the Impressionists section - hooray for Renoir, Degas, Van Gogh and Seurat:

And St. Martin in the Fields to one side:

I might have to suck it up and pay a massive fee to go to a concert at St. Martin's, otherwise my orchestra teacher from high school might hunt me down and kill me for not doing so. We'll see. Right now, I'm more excited by the prospect of listening to foul-mouthed puppets in Avenue Q.

We took a bus tour on Sunday, during which I took a lot of pictures that included the tops of people's heads. Today, we went to the London Aquarium between class and a "strawberry and cream" reception (which is apparently some Wimbledon thing - obviously, I know nothing about tennis or its traditions). The aquarium is *gasp* overpriced, but also close to the London Eye and, across the way, my total obsession, Parliament and Big Ben. I did you the favor of not posting the 20 photos I have of Big Ben (and yes, I'm aware that that's the name of the actual bell, not the tower... blah blah blah, hush you).
Let's ignore the fact that I have a better picture of the Eye from a previous trip:

From when I was - in ALV's words - "all up in Big Ben's grill":

A terrible photo of me, but the only one I have so far - and THIS is why:

On Saturday, we're taking a trip to Bath and Stonehenge. And just to prove that I'm a total American tourist, when they called it a "coach trip", I had to think for several minutes before realizing that this didn't involve a team of horses and a carriage.

Check check check

I have successfully arrived in London, which is a huge relief. I'd forgotten how daunting it could be to travel alone and I've never been this far alone before. But everything was pretty much as I remembered, making it a lot easier. My room is the typical college dorm room at University of London and the law program is sharing the hall with people that are clearly younger and louder. When I signed in there weren't a lot of people here yet, but I expect to see more of them in the morning. Today wasn't going to be very social anyway - a baby on the plane kept everyone who didn't have earplugs awake and so I took a "nap" that lasted pretty much all afternoon. And soon, I'm going back to bed in an effort to get set on London time.

While I was on the Underground from the airport, I did see a bunch of people playing cricket in one of the fields (since, despite the name, the Underground isn't always under the ground, especially in the suburbs). It's the first time I've seen anyone actually playing when they weren't in a BBC miniseries about the 1920s.

I hope this will be the first and last London post without pictures. Tomorrow, I'll be a sane person with the right amount of sleep again. :)

Update on Nothing

Alright, so I haven't been exactly prolific with the blogging lately. But I haven't been doing anything that's very interesting - I got my hard drive replaced and then a few days ago, my OS got corrupted. I've been reading a lot, running errands and doing laundry. The computer problems are the excitement in my life these days. Oh, and I'm moving this weekend to... another apartment in the same complex, which means I'm basically picking my stuff up and scooting it 50 yards to the south. Don't ask. Long story.

I will be posting quite often once I get to London though - I've promised several people lots of pictures and detailed goings-on. It's 57 degrees there right now. My heat-addled brain might not be able to take it!