The Party's Over

Well the past week has been a whirlwind of my internship and my parents (and one class). I have barely had time to breathe, but I've had so much fun exploring London. I'm really happy my parents came; I was glad to see them, and it gave me the opportunity to do so many touristy things in a short period of time. On Sunday, my parents and I went to the British Museum. It was huge, and there were a ton of things to see, including the Rosetta stone and this famous cat sculpture of a god.

It was small and cute, but had ear and nose piercings. Weird.

After the museum, we did the London Eye. It was so much fun and the sights were beautiful. I'm really glad we decided to go on the Eye at night.

View of London from the Eye

Looking Down on the London Eye from a Capsule

Parliament and Big Ben from the London Eye

A London Eye Capsule

View of London from the Eye

View of London from the Eye

Parliament and Big Ben

Mom and Dad on the Eye

Mom and Me on the Eye

On Monday, I had class in the afternoon, but I met up with my parents to see a film called "A Secret" in the London Film Festival. The film was in French with subtitles. It was a great story and very well done. The only problem was that the film machine had broken, so they showed the movie in DVD format. Because of this, they offered everyone a free movie pass to see a show of their choice. My parents gave me their passes, so now I can go see 3 movies (or 1 with 2 friends). Score! (And I wouldn't have even noticed that it was DVD format haha.)

Today, my parents and I took tours of St. Paul's and Westminster Abbey. They were both huge and beautiful and ornate. At St. Paul's, we climbed to the top of the dome (well my mom only made it to the second gallery). It was a lot like the Duomo in Florence. First, you climbed to the top of the inside of the church and could walk around. There was supposed to be a "Whispering Gallery" where if you whispered against one wall, people on the opposite side could hear you. We couldn't get this to work, unfortunately. Then, we climbed up to the next gallery, which gave us a great view of London. (This was especially nice because it was during the daytime, as opposed to our nighttime trip on the Eye.)

View from the first gallery

View from the first gallery

View from the first gallery

Then my dad and I continued on to the top gallery, but my mom didn't like the open, rickety staircases, so she stopped. My dad didn't like the top gallery (it was high and very crowded), so we didn't stay there long.

View from the higher gallery

Me on the higher gallery (You can kind of see Tower Bridge to the left of my ear.)


Me on the higher gallery (You can see the top of the Gherkin (building shaped like a pickle) to the right of my forehead.

Lots of famous dead people were buried/memorialized at Westminster Abbey. We couldn't take pictures inside, but some people I remember seeing plaques to are: Charles Darwin, Charles Dickens, Isaac Newton, Handel, Lewis Carroll, Shakespeare, Winston Churchill, Rudyard Kipling.

Westminster Abbey

Side of Westminster Abbey

After the Abbey tour, we stopped in a pub for lunch/dinner and then we decided to go to King's Cross Station. What is at King's Cross Station? you may ask. Why, Platform 9 3/4, of course -- only the direct route to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry!

Platform 9 3/4

Me attempting to go to Hogwarts. I got the cart halfway in the wall, but it just wouldn't go any further!

The Platform (OK, so the cart is already halfway in the wall. You caught me; I'm a Muggle.)

After the disappointing attempts to break through the concrete and make our way to Hogwarts, we decided to try to find the British Library, so that my mom (who is a librarian) could at least tell her friends she had seen it. Now, it was about 7pm, so we assumed the library would be closed and we would snap a picture of it and be on our merry way. However, today was our lucky day because the library closes at 6:00pm everyday-- EXCEPT Tuesdays, which was today. So we went inside the library and they had a museum-ish room, which held, among other things, one of the 4 original copies of the Magna Carta, the papers upon which the Beatles originally hand-wrote some of their lyrics, and the original handwriting of famous authors' books (including the bane of my 9th-grade existence, Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. [Shudder.]). It was a cool exhibit and they had lots of famous people's work.

So it has been a very exciting few days! England lost the rugby World Cup to South Africa. I watched the game on Saturday night with some of my friends. It was a boring game; England didn't ever seem to have a fighting chance. But, the same night, the Red Sox clinched their place in the World Series, so all was well with the world. (Well, with my world, anyway -- I'm sure many Brits were disappointed.) Oh, and the water boiler broke in my building on Sunday. And apparently it won't be fixed for 2 - 3 more days. Originally, they told us they needed to replace a part, but now they have to put in a new boiler. So we'll all have lukewarm/low-pressure showers for the next 2 -3 days. Lovely. I can't help thinking that if this happened in Boston, it would have been fixed by yesterday at the latest. I miss the USA.

Well, tomorrow, it's back to work, maybe some grocery shopping, and then saying good-bye to my parents, who are leaving on Thursday morning. (They are going to Stonehenge, Bath, and Windsor Castle tomorrow.) I will miss them; we had a lot of fun. But I'm here for less than 2 more months, and there are still so many things I'd like to see and do. I know the time will fly by and I'm happy that I'll be home for Christmastime!