post for the whole weekend!

I didn't update last night because I didn't feel like doing anything after I got back from London. So here is a post for both yesterday and today!

Saturday morning I woke up around 8:45 to catch a bus to catch a train to London. There was blood all over the bathroom. Not asking. I left for the bus and startled a vicious looking mommy duck on my way... the entire campus was freaking erupting into springtime. There were yellow daffoldils everywhere, birds chirping, dozens of squirrels chasing each other, and even a bumblebee despite the chilliness. Absurdity.

I was way early for the bus, so I waited for a bit. Luckily, being early meant that the rest of the traffic wasn't out yet, so the bus to the station went pretty quick. I got to the station and asked a random woman if she was going to London. She said yes, so I got onto the train she got on to. The trains are nice. We're not talking South Shore here. Anyway, I was right on time for a train. It was pretty packed, so I sat down next to a girl about my age. When the train started, she called her boyfriend and proceeded to have one of the most inane conversations I've ever eavesdropped on : P I brought my DS, so I spent the train ride getting acquainted with the new Super Mario Bros. The train ride seemed really short. We arrived at Liverpool St. Station around 10:52.



Here's Liverpool Station! It's biiiig. It's filled with American chains - Starbucks, Burger King, and all of that. Lisa met me here, and we decided to go see some museums. We got on the Underground to go to the Victoria and Albert museum. The Underground is really easy to ride and not confusing at all, but very crowded.

When we got off the train, we decided we wanted lunch, and lo - as we left the station a cafe with all kinds of delicious looking things in the window presented itself. I got a Cornish pastry. Yummmm. Then we headed to the museum.

These are pictures of the museum. It's huge. It's basically where Britain put all the souveneirs it took from the countries it invaded, plus some British stuff for variety. We got through a sculpture room, Japan, China, Renaissance, tons of silver oddments, and the gift shop before having to leave to catch the show.

I did not take pictures of Phantom : P I mean really. But the show was amazing - and the Phantom was the most amazing! They definitely should have gotten him instead of Gerard Butler : P The show is much more intense live than on screen. Altogether, a great experience.

We weren't sure what to do when the show let out since we weren't hungry yet, so we wandered through Trafalgar Square, which looks much different when it's not filled with more people than it can hold, and along the Thames

Here's a picture taken from Trafalgar Square... just a general London looking scene, and a chance to use the "night scenery" mode on my camera : P

The London Eye all lit up at night.

The London Eye, me, and Big Ben waaaaaaaaaay in the back.

I must have taken ten pics of Big Ben, but most of them turned out blurry...

Anyway, walking around the Thames was really nice. There were hot dog and roasted nut vendors all over the place. It smelled like Comisky, which made Lisa and me hungry enough to go in search of food. We ended up at a little cafe where I got a toasted cheese and tomato sandwich. Then, we headed back to the Underground and parted ways.

Getting back to Liverpool Station was easy. When I arrived, I saw there was a train leaving for Colchester in about ten minutes, so I hopped aboard and settled in with my DS. I swear the ride seemed like it only took ten minutes, but I was distracted. When we arrived in Colchester, there was a bus waiting to go back to university, which was nice : ) I got back to the dorm around 10 and signed on to see Steph befre she left for turnabout. I got to talk to my mom and dad for a pretty long time - voice chat is awesome. I went to bed pretty early though because I was exhausted.

This morning I woke up, did some low-thought morning activities, and went to church. Then I came back to give my essays one more look over before submitting them to the online work database. Once I finished that, I went and printed copies and filled out the forms needed to hand them in on Tuesday. It's an awful lot of bother just to turn in a paper. Then I tried to pay off the rest of my fees online, but for some reason, could not. I must locate the place to pay in person.

Neither Pete nor Bashar showed up for archery tonight, so I spent the session listening to manbeast babble on about the novel he's never going to write. There have been better sessions.

And now, I am here.

The end.

oh there's no place like London...

London trip today! I woke up this morning at 8 feeling not too terribly tired despite the best efforts of my flatmates to not let anyone get any sleep at all before 4 in the morning. I put all my stuff together and went to catch the bus for London.

It was a long drive - took two hours to get to our drop off point. They played The Devil Wears Prada on the way. I was able to follow the gist of it but I'm afraid I missed the more subtle nuances... and I'm ok with that. When we finally got there, the bus dropped us off in front of a nondescript wall. No landmarks or anything nearby to let us know where we were... so I asked, and we were at Hay Market, and if we wanted they would show us how to get to Chinatown. Thinking that would be a more well-known place for Lisa to meet me, I went along and texted her. Turns out she knew where Hay Market was too : P In fact, that's where we'll be seeing Phantom in two weeks! Anyway, Lisa found me with no trouble and we began wandering about Chinatown. But it was really crowded and we couldn't see anything, though we could hear a parade. The place looked neat:



This is Chinatown all decorated for Chinese New Year!

But we moved on pretty quickly. There were supposed to be some interesting things happening in Trafalgar Square, so we went on that way. The square was even more crowded than Chinatown, though - approaching German Christmas Village levels. We went into the National Portrait Gallery instead and amused ourselves by making up stories for the people in the painting - the ones that didn't already have stories, that is.



This is one of my favorite paintings from the gallery, but it's hard to tell why from this image...



This is the upper right hand corner of the painting blown up. Even here it's hard to really see the maniacal glint in the cat's eye... trust me, it's really funny.

Anyway, from there we headed out for some lunch, and then to Piccadilly Circus:



It's basically Times Square, London, complete with McDonald's advertisments.



And it's got a fountain with huge horses.

We saw some odd telephone booths - they were black instead of red!!



Lisa decided that the phone booths were angry. I decided that they were sad.



Here are some normal, cheerful red ones!!

Next we went through Green Park. Very creative name... pretty accurate too.

This is a circle of trees in Green Park. I call it the Giant Ring.

Just through Green Park is Buckingam Palace! Or, as I like to call it, Buckingham Building-that-doesn't-look-like-a-castle.

These are the gates. Very impressive.

This is a guard. What happened to the red uniforms and big fuzzy hats? Possibly the same thing that happened to those black telephone booths!! O.O

Here's a shot of the facade between the bars of the gate.

And one taken from a distance.




You can see the Eye of London from the square in front of Buckingham Palace... physically, it's bigger than Sauron's, though not quite as scary.

This is a really tall monument to Queen Victoria in the square in front of Buckingham. This picture was me standing at the base and looking up. She's enormous.

The monument from a more reasonable distance

Here's me in front of a random weird looking statue. Lisa and I sat here for a while to rest.

Then we moved on, heading for Hyde Park.

This is a random arch on the way to Hyde Park. It is NOT Marble Arch, but if it was I'd have an interesting story to relate, thanks to Lisa. Marble Arch, which this is not, was built as an entryway to someplace for some kind of duke. But when it was built, the Duke's carriage was too big to fit through the arch. So they picked up the Marble Arch, put it down randomly somewhere else, and built the Duke's obese carriage a bigger arch. I saw Marble Arch... that carriage must have been HUGE.

Look, they put helpful signs in the street for us poor tourists who have no idea where to look so we don't get hit by a car.

Here is the Peter Pan statue in Kensington Gardens! We had to wait a while for a bunch of dopey people to stop climbing all over it, but we finally got a clear shot : ) While we waited, we watched some pretty amusing birds jump on each other... birds look funny when they pop back up from underwater like corks.

Here is me with Peter ^.^ I almost bought a copy of Peter Pan today to keep with my tradition of buying a copy from every country I'm in, but books are SO expensive here, I couldn't bring myself to do it just yet. Maybe when I have more pounds on my Waterstone's card.

The plaque in front of the statue. You can't really read it, but it says who sculpted the statue, and talks a bit about James Barrie.

This is a squirrel talking to a fairy on the back of the statue!! : )

We finished up looking around Kensington Gardens, and decided to catch a bus back to the Hay Market area because we were tired from all that walking! We decided to take the bus to Oxford square, and it turned out to be a bus painted entirely black with Phantom of the Opera adverts all over it! Neat! We rode the bus up Oxford street, and therefore got to see all the shops from a nice safe distance from all the people. There are many retail stores and lots of familiar brand names... Anyway, we got off pretty close to Hay Market, with about an hour and a half to kill before my bus came. So we went into a Caffe Nero and got tea and hot chocolate and sat and talked for the remainder of the time.

Look, a pic of the two of us together! : ) I'm bad at centering...

Then the bus came, and Lisa and I parted ways, but we will see each other again in two weeks.

On the ride back, they played a movie which I think was called The Perfect Man, but which only held my interest because I couldn't see anything out of the windows... when the bus dropped us off, there was thick thick fog. I couldn't even see the tops of the Towers. I went and got a panini because I was too tired to cook and I wanted something hot. I was planning on getting tea too, because my throat really hurts, but the shop was already closed. Ah well. Food and a hot shower made a big difference...

And that was my adventure for today! Tomorrow... class... wheeee

I thought adventuring was supposed to be done in parties...

Today I woke up with every intention of going and exploring Colchester. Then I looked out my window and saw the darkness and the rain and went back to bed.

Two hours later I woke up to sunlight and DID go exploring Colchester.

As I made my way to the appropriate bus station on the other side of campus, it began to mist. Still not a big deal, I didn't need the umbrella. I boarded the bus, which had rather comfortable seats, and rode into the Colchester Bus Station.

When I got off the bus it was well and truly raining. I took out the umbrella and began to wander.

Colchester is not really a tourist town like Cambridge seems to be. The shops they have are shops like The Gap and Wet Seal. It was sort of like being in an outdoor mall. I wandered toward the town center and ducked into a comic book shop along the way, just for the feeling of familiarity. Didn't buy anything because I'm so behind on Buffy now that what would be the point... but I did look longingly at the DnD stuff before ducking back out.

In my wanderings I happened across a free Museum of Natural History. So I went in there. It was a very small museum detailing the wildlife in the Colchester area (ie, it was a museum of ducks).

Further wandering brought me to a large public park (called Castle Park) that I'm sure will be gorgeous on some sunny day in spring. I went in and found another free museum called the Hollytree Museum. It was this really old house turned into a museum, which was neat enough for being free. It had a lot of information about Castle Park: the whole park had once been the grounds of this rich family and is now public space with lots of gardens and water features and things. I think there might be a zoo somewhere in there too, but I'm not sure.



This is a really big doll house in the Hollytree Museum



This is another one.

After that, I went to explore the grounds a bit.



mini palm bush



Oh, so THAT'S an arbor... maybe?



I thought this was pretty neat. I walked on, inhaled deeply.... and coughed out the cigarette smoke. I mean really...



Oh hey look... a castle.



A bridge leading into the castle! Let's go!



This is the castle well. It is very deep. A penny... or a 1 pence piece... thrown into this well takes about two minutes to hit the water. There is a sign encouraging viewers to see if a 1 pound piece takes as long... hey, I paid attention in physics. Thank you, no.



Ye Olde Wyndowe

I didn't take many pictures in this museum because museums actually sort of freak me out, especially when I'm alone. I did learn some interesting things though. Actually, I think I was reminded of some interesting things... I knew some of them before. Anyway, the site the castle was built on used to be a Roman temple, specifically to Claudius. It was also the site of Boadicea's rebellion, though they didn't go into TONS of detail on that because the details are a bit gory. Right, so blah blah Romans, blah blah Normans, poof it's a museum. And for some reason there's also an exhibit about a sanitarium, even though the castle never was one... yeah, I didn't really follow that either.

I left the museum and wandered a bit more. I came across



A great big church. This is St. James the Great, Church of England. There is also a St. James the Less somewhere in town, which is a Catholic church...

I was about to take a picture of the back end of the church when I got distracted. I went in, but did not find anything I was willing to purchase. It was nice to be surrounded by books though. Everyonce and a while I just step into the library or bookshop on campus to recharge... like a save circle in Kingdom Hearts.

Oh yeah, and there's the back of the church.

..... I had to. No one was looking. I did the touristy thing and took a picture of the big red phone booth. I'm so ashamed. At least I didn't try to fit twenty people inside...

Next I came across a visitor info center and picked up a map of Colchester and information on places to eat and shop, having in mind my parents' visit. Then I wandered about looking for somewhere to have lunch.

I went into a pub, turned around and went back out. Not somewhere I wanted to eat alone, though I'm sure it's great for people with large groups. I kept wandering. As you approach the Town Hall, the number of cafes increases exponentially. I finally picked one whose windows I could see into. It was called, rather improbably, The Lettuce and Slug.

It was actually a pretty nice place. I had a chicken wrap, which included both meat and vegetables and was actually rather tasty. The desserts looked good to, but by then I was sick of watching people eat with their friends and loved ones, so I left.

A little ways down the street from this cafe is a Pizza Hut. I make note of this because Stephanie is coming... (there is also a KFC, McDonalds, and Burger King)

A bit more fruitless wandering and I decided to call it a day. I made my way back to the bus station and waited for the 62 back to University. It came with minimal delay and I boarded and asked the driver how much to go to University. The driver, a small elderly Chinese man with a heavy accent (Chinese, not English), responded that he was going to the train station. Having memorized the route, I said yes, but after that, you'll be going to University.

Yes, but first he was going to the train station...

Ok, so how much to University?

Well, it's 1.10 to the train station.

And to University?

How bout you buy that one when we get to the train station?

I gave up. I bought the ticket to the train station. It took forever to get there. Traffic in Colchester is not pretty. It is because of all the roundabouts!! Nowhere is there to be found a normal intersection. EVERYTHING is a roundabout! I was talking to Sophie upon my return and I mentioned the hideous traffic, and she said "Yeah, it's because of all the roundabouts!" so it's not just me... she's from London and says that it's really just this town, not all of England.

Anyway.

We finally got to the train station and I went up to buy the ticket to University. The driver said

"Oh, I don't know if I am going to Wivenhoe" (which is where the University is). He made like he was going on break.

"Ah, I see, I should catch another bus." Suddenly it seemed to make some sort of sense... but...

"No. Wait." He pulled out a cell phone, made a call, said nothing, hung up the cell phone, sat back down in the drivers' seat, and opened the doors for the waiting people.

"1.80 to University."

Sure. Why not. Buses are ridiculously expensive out here. I mean, compared to the free ones at Purdue. The trip to University took about five times longer than the initial trip to Colchester. Cursed roundabouts. However, I did learn where to go if I do not want to walk back up the hill from Tesco. I can just catch this bus and it will cart me up the hill to University. I still have to walk up the hill to the tower. It is a steeper, but much shorter, walk.

The rest of my day was spent half reading for myth class, half dozing.

Tomorrow: Laundry!