Part II of a Week Off (very belatedly)

Yes, I know it's been two weeks since I posted. My apologies! Things suddenly picked up here as I started having basketball games, formal events, and visitors on top of the usual reading and essays. But let's start back at the second half of the week I had off a few weeks ago.

I saw Kyle off on Sunday night, did some resting and reading on Monday and Tuesday, and left for London to see Laura Getz on Tuesday afternoon! There is a bus called the "Oxford Tube" that leaves Oxford every 12 minutes, picking you up at any one of five or so stops. You just buy a general ticket, and then you can get on at any stop you'd like in Oxford and off at one of five stops in London. It takes about an hour and 40 minutes, which is longer than it takes on the train, but you get the added convenience of being able to leave when you're ready and getting on and off in a number of places. I was a little nervous about taking the bus by myself the first time I went to London, but the ride turned out to be uneventful, aside from me checking my bus map and my London map about every third minute. Hopefully I will be comfortable enough with London and with the transportation system by the end of the year that I won't need to do any paranoid map-checking anymore.

I got off the bus at the Victoria stop around 4:30, so my first views of London were in the near-dark. Luckily, the bus stop was on a busy street and near lots of tourist attractions, so things were well lit and I didn't feel unsafe at all being by myself. I got turned around a little bit when I got off the bus and started walking in the wrong direction, but I used my map skills and got going the right way pretty quickly. I had two hours or so until I was supposed to meet Laura at the Royal Theatre Drury Lane in the West End, so I figured I would give myself a little walking tour. Buckingham Palace was the first stop, and that was easy to find - all I needed to do to get there was walk straight up the road on which I got off the bus. The Palace is beautiful at night. In the pictures I've seen of it during the day time, there are always lots of people crowded around it, but at this time of the evening, there were only a few people around. There is a huge monument to Queen Victoria in front of it and both the Palace and the monuments were all lit up with spotlights. Everything glowed as it started to rain lightly. I was glad I was there by myself - there's a large square blocked off to cars in front of the Palace, so I just stood in front of it for awhile, drinking in the sights and sounds of a new city.

When I was ready to move on, I crossed the street with the intention of heading down to the houses of Parliament to see them and Big Ben. There are several streets which fork out from the plaza in front of the Palace, so I wasn't sure which one to take. I knew in any event that I needed to cross the street, but there aren't any crosswalks from the plaza directly across the street. I didn't see where any were, and in the dark by myself, I didn't want to risk wandering around too much to find them, especially if it meant I would look like I didn't know where I was going - which is fine in the day time and in groups, but not at night by yourself. So I decided to wait for a break in traffic and run across the street, which surprisingly didn't require too much waiting at all. I got safely across the street and on the sidewalk and figured I'd better look at my map to make sure I knew where I was going. But when I reached in my pocket, my map wasn't there. I looked back across the street frantically and saw my map lying in the middle of the road, being run over by car tires. I knew I needed it - I had no idea how to get to where I was supposed to meet Laura without it. I tried to think of ways I could easily get another map or make do without it, but I determined pretty quickly that I needed that map. So I made a mad dash back across the street to get it. It wasn't the smartest thing to do, and my map was sort of wet and smushed, but it was a map, and the inside part, the part I needed, was untouched. Victory! I ended up walking up the mall instead of going down to the houses of Parliament, ending up in Trafalgar Square. The fountains were all lit up with purple lights and there were still many, many people out and about - very different from in front of the Palace. I wandered toward the theatre where our show was, passing lots of the theatres on the West End. I think I need to see about six or seven more shows now, including Avenue Q and Les Mis, which aren't on Broadway anymore.

I got turned around again once I made it to the general vicinity of Drury Lane. I'm used to American cities set up on grid patterns with good signage - it's pretty much impossible to get lost in Philadelphia, if you ask me. But London isn't like that at all, of course. It's a European city with twisty streets, none of which are well-marked. The street signs don't hang from the traffic lights or sit on top of poles on corners - they are attached to the sides of buildings (and not every street is marked). But thankfully, I had my map and cell phone, and Laura had her map and cell phone, so we eventually found each other. (Later, Laura showed me her book that includes an index of all the streets in London with maps; apparently even Londoners don't know where everything is. That made me feel better about getting a little lost.) Laura was with her friend Becca from church in London, so the three of us went to Covent Garden and found a nice little Italian restaurant. I was so happy to get off my feet and come in from the cold and wet! We had a very nice dinner, then we took the short walk to the theatre to see Oliver! (the exclamation point is part of the title of the show). I love Oliver!, and this was a really fun production. Fagin was played by a man named Omid Djalili; people kept asking me when I told them I was going to see Oliver! if he was going to be in it when I saw it. I had no idea who he was, but it turns out he's been in a bunch of movies, including the third Pirates of the Carribbean. He was very entertaining, playing games with the audience and drawing out his scenes with funny asides and little musical interludes. Sally was also played by someone relatively famous, though she's famous for winning a television competition to get the part, I believe. The kids in the show were great, especially this one very small boy who imitated everything that Fagin did and almost stole a few of the scenes. The Royal Theatre Drury Lane is very old, and the stage is very deep, so they did a lot of cool perspective things with the set, especially for the street scenes. It was so interesting to be in London and see a show that's set in London - to think about how a city sees its own past. All in all, it was a great night!

Laura and I went back to the apartment she's staying in and chatted for awhile and made our plans for the next day. She showed me all of the guide books she's bought from her favorite places - I think she could start her own library about the history, art and architecture of England! On Wednesday morning, we went to see the Handel house. G.F. Handel lived in London in a nice little town house for a pretty long time toward the end of his life. There's now a society for the preservation of the house, and you can pay a few pounds to take a tour of it and learn about his life. Did you know that Handel went blind? There are volunteers in every room of the house to answer questions, and the woman in the first room likes to surprise visitors with that fun fact, apparently. Laura and I learned all about Handel's time in London, and I can now say that I've stood in the room where the Messiah was composed! Handel finished what is probably the greatest choral work of all time in only 23 days. The house itself isn't exciting architecturally or anything, but there was lots of good information, and Laura and I really enjoyed it. After we finished, we went back to Laura's apartment, had some lunch, got our things together, and got on the bus back to Oxford.

Highlights of our visit in Oxford and much more to come!