"Just touched down in Londontown..."

When you're so close to some of the best cities in the world, why not take advantage and explore as many as you can? This past weekend, I headed to England with my friend Laura, and we explored London and Oxford. (Note to future travellers: England is expensive. Try not to convert the prices you see into American dollars- its about a 2:1 ratio- or you'll never do anything. Just suck it up, pay and deal with your monetary balance later.)

We flew into London around late morning and, after discovering my ATM card didn't work in the UK because TDBank froze my account (wonderful people), headed to the hostel, which was pretty nice and didn't cost us a whole lot (always important to a college student on a budget). I was able to send out a few emails to try and take care of my ATM card situation (no worries- I had brought Euros to change over, just in case), and then Laura and I headed out for some exploring. I've been to London before so I've seen quite a few things there, but it was nice to go back and explore it at my own pace.

(Tower Bridge- NOT London Bridge)

(Globe Theater)

(River Thames, Big Ben, Parliament)

(London Eye)

(Westminster Abbey)

(Buckingham Palace)

We grabbed some fsh and chips for dinner (what else do you eat when you're in England?), then decided to call it a early night. We were both pretty tired from walking all day, and with the stress of the last week (lost phone, non-functioning ATM card, non-functioning calling card), I was ready to go to bed.

We started early the next morning, visiting Hyde Park and making the attempt to get into the British Museum. However, the line to get in was around the block, and we had a bus to catch to Oxford, so we decided to just have a full English breakfast instead andmake our way to the coach station.

(Hyde Park)

(Paddington!)

On to Oxford! Laura is friends with a couple, Laurence and Erol, who live near there with their 9 month old son Leon (cutest thing ever), and they were nice enough to invite us to stay with them for a night so we could visit the town and countryside nearby. They were the nicest couple, showing us some sites around the area and giving us tips on where we should visit, not only nearby, but across the world. They're travellers themselves and have visited every continent, it seems, with the exception of Antarctica. We arrived in the afternoon on Saturday, and they took us to Blenheim Palace, the birthplace of Winston Churchill and the home of the dukes of Marlborough. The palace and grounds were absolutely gorgeous!

That night, we all had a really nice dinner and just sat around and talked for a few hours, in both English and a little bit of French. The next day, we were able to sleep in a little (which I haven't done in about 3 weeks, save for this morning) and were greeted with freshly-baked homemade bread for breakfast- it was delicious! We were also greeted with the sound of birds chirping when we awoke- not cars honking, not sirens blaring, not people yelling- but birds. Nature. It was wonderful. We then said our thank you's and good-byes to Laurence and Erol for their hospitality and headed into Oxford to explore the town. Its not huge (good for a day trip or an overnight stay like we did), but it's a charming little place with a lot of character. Laura and I did our own version of a Harry Potter tour, since some scenes from the movies were filmed here, then checked out some of the sites where some of the masters of English literature- including Lewis Carroll, Tolkein, and C.S. Lewis- used to frequent.

(Christ Church University)

(The dining hall and staircase featured in HP 1&2)

(Bodleian Library, where more scenes from HP were filmed. And it's a really neat library, where they accumulate enough material each year to fill 3 miles worth of shelving.)

(The Eagle and Child Pubm which was a favorite hang-out spot of Tolkein and Lewis.)

We stayed in Oxford until later, then caught the bus back to London, then caught the bus back to the airport in Luton (about and hour outside of London) because our flight back to Paris was at 6am the next morning and we needed to be there by 4am and we didn't feel like figuring out a hotel/hostel situation. So we crashed at the airport for a few hours. It really wasn't too bad- but I did feel the lack of sleep the next day when I had a 3-hour class at the Louvre. Oops.

Overall it was a good weekend. I wish I was able to spend a little more time in London, but I really enjoyed my time in Oxford, away from the hustle and bustle of a city. Up next this weekend: Loire Valley with the ISA gang. Let's try for a repeat of Normandy, yeah?