London!

So for my first trip of the semester, I headed to London this past weekend. I've wanted to go to London for years so it was a natural first choice to make. I was really excited for the trip before it even started and it definitely lived up to expectations.

I was a little worried about everything working out before I left since I've never really traveled by myself before, but it was all very easy and I didn't have to worry about anything. On the day of my flight, I got to airport wayyyy too early. I think I need to learn from that. I sat at the gate playing pokemon on my gameboy for two and a half hours. Time well spent. Easy Jet is great. The plane left on time and everything was much simpler to figure out that I thought it would be. I lucked out once I got to London and just barley got onto the Tube before it closed. 


The whole weekend was a ton of fun and I got to do a lot. I loved the neighborhood Tim is living in. He is staying in the middle of Notting Hill, very close to Hyde Park. All the buildings are incredible. I'm a big architecture fan in general and was very impressed by how classy and up scale the whole neighborhood seemed to be. London in general was also much more diverse than I expected it to be. There were tons of ethnic restaurants and people from all different backgrounds. Also, British accents are one of my favorite things in the world, so I couldn't stop smiling whenever anyone said anything.

Some highlights:

The British Museum

Maybe the biggest museum I've ever been in. It was huge. I was there for a little less than four hours and I didn't even get to see everything. The museum was full of artifacts from all over the world and from a ton of different time periods. One of my favorite rooms was the one in the picture above. It had a ton of artifacts from the Enlightenment. I also really liked all the Mummies and info on ancient Egypt along with parts of the Parthenon that the museum owns. Apparently, Greece wants the pieces of the wall back and the museum was handing out little pamphlets defending their right to keep the parts they have.

National Gallery/ National Portrait Gallery

Also two wonderful museums. The National Gallery is close to as big as the British Museum. They have tons of art from places around the world. The Degas were my favorite, as always. It was pretty crowded when I went but not too bad. The Portrait Gallery was maybe more interesting. It was no where near as big but was filled with portraits of important people from England. Some of the art was incredible. I can't even imagine how some people are so talented. My favorite was a temporary instillation about British citizens living in New York. 

Oxford

So two of my friends from school are up at Oxford for the year and Tim hadn't been there yet so Saturday we decided to take the bus up to see them. Conveniently, there is a bus that runs from the end of Tim's block to Oxford every 15 minutes. Oxford is about an hour and a half outside of central London. I loved the city. The old buildings make the city look incredible. Some scenes from Harry Potter where shot in some of the buildings we saw. Oxford is a little different than I imagined since it is not actually one school, but 30 smaller ones with around 300 kids each. I loved the campus my friends are living on. The buildings were gorgeous and all the plants were so green and perfectly manicured. My also snuck into another college, Trinity. It looked very different but also beautiful. I also loved how important crew is at Oxford. As we were walking on the streets, we passed a ton of people wearing crew apparel. Both of my friends from school are also rowing for the first time up there. I was so happy to hear that. 


My hotel was adorable too and had a free tea and coffee room all day. I probably could have stayed somewhere a little cheaper but it was a good deal and was super close to Tim. I also got to see another friend from school, Frank, which I was very happy about. He is studying on the other side of London but seems to be having a great time too.


I also got a chance to see Buckingham Palace, Big Ben and the London Eye, a huge ferris wheel, but there was so much more I wanted to do. I'm definitely going to need to go back to explore some more very soon.