(Begun approximately 11pm, Thursday, September 9)
C and I went down to visit our mutual friend, D, in London yesterday. Now keep in mind that this is someone I have been IM'ing for round about five or six years, yet never actually spoken to IRL until yesterday. So on Tuesday, I made C call him to try to set up a time. He only managed to get ahold of D in the evening, about dinnertime. Of course they decided on the next morning, so we had a very quickly-planned trip, beginning with hitching a ride to the train station with C's dad on his way to golf.
Once we finally arrived, we had some drama trying to find D in the tube station, mostly due to us arriving in a different section, and lots of people causing us to miss each other. We spent a lot of time on the Tube, bouncing around the city. First place we went was Hamley's, which is, according to the guys, the biggest toy store in the world. And it is massive, six floors plus basement. But the toys were also massively overpriced, so only spent maybe an hour wandering through there.
After lunch, we hit the Tube again, this time going to the Natural History Museum. We spent several hours wandering through there and still only managed to cover half of it. The place is huge. At some point during our visit, we joked that D was our adopted child, since he is high energy and was bouncing around for most of the day.
(Continued Friday, September 10, approx 10:30am)
I was so exhausted last night, I couldn't think straight enough to finish my post. Such is the result of such a long day in London combined with lupus. I used up so many spoons that day, I didn't have very many left by the end of last night.
Anyways, to finish about London. After we got through half of the Natural History Museum, we walked around essentially to behind it, to the science museum. Unfortunately we only had about 45 minutes there before it closed, so didn't get to see too terribly much, but we did get to find out who the original Doctor Who was: the dialysis machine. Yes you read that right. The first woman to invent and use the dialysis machine named it Doctor Who. There is your trivia for the day.
When we finally got kicked out at closing time, we couldn't really travel anywhere. We had all bought off-peak travel cards for the day, and they got blocked off for two hours during what we in California would call rush hour. So instead we walked a couple blocks down to Royal Albert Hall and a corner of Hyde Park, with the Prince Albert Monument. Or Memorial. I can't remember which one it was right this minute. Chilled and goofed off there for maybe an hour, then started the walk down to the tube station to head home. Which was a lot longer than it looked like on C's iPhone map, but oh well. By the time we got there, we were allowed to travel again, so we rode together for a bit, then parted ways with D at his stop to head home. Took the tube back up to our stop to catch the train. I was so exhausted I fell asleep on the train home, which I so rarely do in any form of moving vehicle.
We finally got home about 9pm, and I spent a good bit of the evening soaking in the bath and resting, trying to prevent a pain flare-up for the next day. And it worked, I was only moderately achy. C's parents drove us down to Bletchley, where most of the charity shops are, to see what shopping I could get done for the dorms. For my US readers, that's a thrift shop. We only ended up going through two of them due to time, but got some good deals on cups and gloves. And, best of all, I found one of those boxes of ten puzzles for just over £3. Box is pretty beat up, but now I just get to work them and find out if any pieces are missing. I'm excited, normally you can't get even one puzzle for that little.
We'll be heading uptown in a bit to do some shopping. I move into the dorms on Weds. so there's a decent amount to get and do. But I will have time to settle in and get necessities before class, so at least it's not a major rush. In the meantime, I should finish getting ready to head out. Until next time!
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