Start of the weekend - Oxford and a day in London

Thursday:

Today Allie and I made a day trip to Oxford. We booked our tickets the night before on megabus.com and everything worked out fine. We left in the morning with what we thought was plenty of time to catch our 9:50am bus, wrong. Once we got to the Victoria Coach Station, where the website told us it was, we didn't see our bus on the departure board, so we asked the man at information who pointed us in the right direction. Wrong again. He pointed us in the wrong direction and we ended up missing our first bus. Now, I probably can't completely blame the information desk-man, although I really want to, because Allie and I probably should have left earlier. Anyway, we caught the next bus, which we had to pay for again, and then we were off. Also, the bus was not a 'megabus' it was an 'Oxford Tube' bus, how were we supposed to know?!

Our bus was a double decker bus so Allie and I chose to sit at the very front of the top of the bus. It was the best view in the house. At first it kind of made me feel a little car sick because the bus drivers can be kind of crazy, but once we got onto the highway it was really cool. Pretty much you can see everything. It took us about two hours to get into Oxford. First, we climbed up Carfax Tower to get a view of the city. Then we walked down the street to Christ Church College which is one of the oldest colleges that are part of Oxford University. I think it's one of the biggest too. Luckily, Christ Church was open and we got to go inside. The dining hall is where many scenes from Harry Potter are filmed so we checked that out and walked around the open area. It was really pretty and probably my favorite building of the day. After seeing Christ Church we went to a little market area where we got some ice cream shakes and then made our way to the Bodleian Library which was established in 1450 and is the oldest and one of the largest libraries in Europe. That was fun because we got to see some actual Oxford University students. I'm sure they get annoyed with all of the tourists, but it was fun for us! Then we went to Blackwell's Bookstore which is also very very huge. In the basement it has three miles of books. It was very overwhelming and impressive. We continued to wander around the city which has so many beautiful old buildings and also continued our mission to find a good Oxford University sweatshirt. Although you can buy Oxford sweatshirts in London, its just much better to say you've been there. As we continued walking down one of the busy streets in Oxford a low flying pigeon decided to run into my head. It flew up from behind me and definitely hit its wing on my face. It was disgusting, gross, sick. I dislike pigeons a lot. To top that off, two boys who looked like they were 14 years old came up to Allie and I with free hugs signs. No thank you. Our day wasn't very long, but it was good. We found our bus home and got our favorite seat again.

Once back from Oxford, our program went to a philharmonic orchestra concert at Cadogan Hall. This was my first orchestra concert and it was really good. I felt bad because it made me tired towards the end, but they were so talented. I do enjoy some good classical music every once and a while.

Friday:

This morning involved sleeping in, that is until the construction workers next door started. Usually the noise is bearable, but today it sounded like a jackhammer was going to come through our wall. I am not exaggerating, it was terrible. So once awake from that I got ready and our program went to for an Indian lunch at a restaurant on Brick Lane. It was... interesting. I was a little hesitant when trying the food, but I did try it all. We had some tortilla looking thing with a mixture of different sauces you could put on it first. Then we had, what looked like, a fried ball of onion that tasted like an odd mixture of onion and sausage. For the main part we had chicken with some form of orange colored sauce and lamb with some form of red sauce with rice and pita bread. The lamb wasn't my favorite and the chicken wasn't terrible. Luckily, they gave us some chocolate for dessert that was a little after eight bite size bar. I probably won't be eating Indian food again soon, but at least I've tried it.

After lunch, we wandered around Brick Lane a little and went into Whitechapel Bell Foundry where Big Ben, Liberty Bell, a big one in Russia, and other big ones were made. It was actually really interesting. Apparently they are working on some bells for somewhere in Massachusetts right now!

This afternoon we went on a tour of Parliament, unfortunately you can't take pictures, but the building is just gorgeous on the inside. It is all a replica of the original because of a fire in 1834. We went into the House of Commons and the House of Lords and saw where the Queen will sit when she comes once a year. Apparently the Queen isn't allowed into the House of Commons area (not just her, any King or Queen of England) because years and years ago one of the Kings tried to arrest members of Parliament. So today I was somewhere who even the Queen herself can't go. Crazy. The tour lasted about an hour and then Allie, Jenon, Erin, and I went to a Mexican restaurant in Covent Gardens for dinner. We ate a quick dinner of quesadillas which were very good and now we are hanging out in our room. Tomorrow a group of us heads to Winsor, Stonehendge, and Bath!