I had never actually gotten off the tube station at Baker Street, so it was awesome to see Sherlock himself standing outside the entrance!
Down around the corner was the Sherlock Holmes Museum and no I didn't go inside. I heard it was a bit of a waste of money for what you were able to see. Besides I had already had my fill of Sherlock history from the London Museum!
The evening of April 29th was an exciting day because our program had gotten us floor seats to see Romeo and Juliet at the Globe theatre! (While I was excited to be at the Globe, I wasn't very excited to watch R&J, it's my least favorite English play. I can thank Ms. Vaness, my 8th grade English teacher for that)
Also, do you know how hard it is to stand for a 3 hour play? If you don't know, it's really hard! I couldn't wait to sit down afterwards! Also, it was pretty chilly inside because there isn't a top to the Globe, so the wind and the cold came in and gave us all the shivers.
Although I don't love R&J, I had a fun time. The cast did a very good job (not to mention the guy who played Romeo was quite attractive!)
Afterwards, AR, AS, RT and I went to Nando's for dinner because they had never been there!
I don't remember if I've mentioned it before, but it's a pretty good restaurant that services different kinds of chicken. (It's making me hungry just thinking about it!)
Then we headed home to rest our weary legs (Can I also mention that there is not a tube station that's very close to the Globe, so we had to walk quite a bit aways to catch the tube!)
Friday May 1st, TP and I went on a merry little visit to Oxford England! Thankfully, there's a shuttle bus that travels from London to Oxford in an hour and a half or so. So both of us relaxed on the bus and read each of our books during our journey. Unfortunately, 20 minutes out from our stop, our bus got a flat tire and we had to change buses. (I was pretty worried because our tour started at 2 and it was already 1:45!) Thankfully, we made it, although I know we were both outta breath when we arrived.
Most of the tour consisted of talk of Oxford and the different schools that are in the university. But there were a few interesting stops along the way. One of them being the Divinity School which was used for filming the Hospital Wing in the Harry Potter movies!
This is how it normally looks during the school year!
This is the Duke Humfrey's Library, which was also used for filming! This was used as the library, particularly the restricted section of the library.
Fun fact! The library has very very strict rules on open flames in the library (Which is a very smart idea because some of these books are hundreds of years old!) Anyway, the filmmakers were the first to break these rules in hundreds of years!
These are just more pictures of some of the different buildings at Oxford!
This was supposedly the doorway that inspired C.S. Lewis to write the Chronicles of Narnia! If you look closely there's a lion head in the middle of the diamond and on the sides of the doors are fawns (Like Mr. Tumnus)
And surprisingly just down the alley from the door is the famous light post that the Pevensie children see upon entering Narnia!
Across from this building are large fields with a river that sits behind in the distance. It was here that Lewis Carroll begun his story of Alice in Wonderland! He was actually a maths teacher at Oxford and he begun telling the story of a little girl who fell down the rabbit hole to the headmaster's daughter (Alice), she like it so much she asked him to write it down! He was able to get her a handwritten manuscript Alice's Adventures Under Ground. Queen Victoria loved his story so much that she wrote to him demanding that he dedicate his next book to her, being a maths teacher, his next book was full of math equations, he ended up sending her a copy. Well she wasn't very happy about that, she simply wrote him back stating "We are not amused".
After our tour ended, we made our way back to the famous Oxford "Bridge of Sighs" which is just a small bridge that connects two of the buildings together. It is actually pretty similar to the Bridge of Sighs in Venice, Italy.
After getting our photos, we headed off to find some dinner and get back on the bus to London. Unfortunately, the bus was packed on the way back, so we weren't able to sit together. But I was grateful we got on the bus when we did because we filled up pretty quickly and had to turn away some passengers because there weren't any more seats.
The next day (May 2nd) was a HUGE DAY!!! Princess Charlotte was born! I received an update from Kensington Royal at about 6 in the morning stating that Kate Middleton had arrived at the hospital that morning and was in labor! At 8:34 Charlotte was born! Of course no one knew her name just then, we didn't find out for several more days to come. (Actually, many people throughout the country had taken bets to see what Kate and Will would name their new child. I think there was a total of £10,000 bets placed on the name of this royal baby.)
Most of my morning was spent sitting on the couch, with a cup of tea in my hand, reading a book and occasionally staring at the computer screen waiting for a glimpse of the baby!
They finally came out and took her home!
Let me tell you a little about the Lindo Wing of St. Mary's. This was were Diana had both Harry and Will and where Kate had had George almost 2 years prior. People go crazy with the birth of a royal baby! Kate's official due date was never released to the public, but people started to camp out in front of the Lindo wing a week and a half before Kate had Charlotte. In fact, one of the mornings the royal couple sent doughnuts and tea to the dedicated fans outside the wing. (Now waiting for a week! That's some serious dedication!)
Because of the birth of a new Princess, most of the monuments had lit up pink that night and I was desperate to go see them! So at about 8:00 that night I dressed warm and headed off to Tower Bridge to see the spectacle!
I actually met up with AS at the Tower and we walked along the south bank towards home admiring all of the pink lights that were in London that night.
In fact, we didn't just walk the south bank, but we ended up walking home from Tower Bridge! It was about a 5 mile walk, but both of us really wanted to do it! Plus while it was overcast, it wasn't quite raining, so the weather was perfect.
We made a stop by Buckingham Palace to take a look at the Royal Proclamation that was posted just inside the gates.
What is says is "Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Cambridge was safely delivered of a daughter at 8:34 today. Her Royal Highness and the baby are both doing well" I'm not sure who's signatures are signed below.
The next morning AS and I went to Little Italy. (I didn't even know that London had a little Italy until she mentioned it). There was a large houseboat festival going on and we wanted to join in the fun!
All of the boats had Union Flags hung up on them, there were quite a few people there and there was a live band playing on one of the boats.
A french stand was selling chocolate covered strawberries which we bought and ate!
There were lots of beautiful flowers along the canal, along with people.
On the other side of the canal, a puppet show was being put on. It was funny to see a British puppet show being displayed, although it was quite violent.
I ended up buying some pretty cheap candy floss because I hadn't had some in ages and we both munched on it while we walked around.
After leaving the canal, I thought it best to get the full royal experience and stop by St. Mary's hospital to get my own picture!
The fences were still up from the crazy fans who had been penned in.
Afterwards, we took a bus home and got some lunch and then left with TP, MC and AR to go to Hyde Park because it was such a perfect day! We grabbed some snacks to eat and a blanket or two and sat in the park and enjoyed the sunshine and perfect weather.
I really had an enjoyable day that day:D
No comments:
Post a Comment