London with a friend.

Well, Wednesday was an exciting day for me. I got to take the train into London and meet up with Victoria (she's a camp friend of Steven's and Paige's and Chad's and I have adopted her as my friend because I like her. And because I need a friend here and she's a good one). It was so exciting just to have something to do but then the fact that I actually got to hang out with a friend was absolutely marvelous!! I'm so people starved these days.

Since I've been feeling all "grown-up" lately, I took the train into London all by myself expecting it to stop at Vauxhall where I could catch the Victoria line on the Tube and meet up with Victoria at Victoria Station (yes, lots of "Victoria"s in that sentence. One is a friend. One is the name of a train line on the underground and the other is the name of a station for buses, trains and the Tube). Of course, the train bypassed the Vauxhall station and I ended up at Waterloo. Cool. I found the Tube station, got an Oyster card (this is basically just a card that you put money on so that you don't have to buy individual tickets every time you want to use the underground--it supposedly saves you money by always giving you the best rate or something, which is good), and navigated my way underneath the city to Victoria Station. Then I talked with Victoria on my mobile and said "I'm by the Starbucks." Well, just like Seattle, that sentence isn't incredibly descriptive, is it? I had also told her what theatre I could see from there but, alas, she could see the exact same theatre from yet another Starbucks that was quite close by. We managed to sort this out rather quickly.

Though I try to avoid looking too much like a tourist, Victoria insisted that I allow her to take my picture in front of various interesting sights that we came across -- here's Westminster Abbey. We walked around that area, towards the House of Commons, through a park along the river and then crossed over the Thames. And here we are with the House of Commons and Big Ben sprouting out of our heads...

I was thrilled to have a picture of me with a friend instead of just, you know, me, or, some buildings or something. It was really nice and made me happy.

We walked along the other side of the river for a bit and passed through a park where there were at least half a dozen people dressed rather oddly who had little baskets out so that people could pay to have their picture taken with them. There was Donald Duck and a man sitting underneath a table with his head all painted like a puppy or something and poking up through a dog kennel on top of the table and there was an odd sort of tin man and some butterfly woman and it was just bizarre. We were both a bit confused. We crossed back over the river again and just sort of started walking without much of a plan. We ended up in Trafalgar Square -- I was both surprised that we were there AND that I remembered what it was called.

That big building with the columns is the National Gallery. We went in there and walked around for quite a while looking at paintings. The museum is bigger than it looks but it's really just a maze of rooms filled with paintings. There were at least half a dozen different groups of kids on field trips there. I cannot imagine taking a bunch of little kids to a place like that (some of them looked like they were 6 years old). First of all, I can't imagine that they even care about the paintings, secondly I wouldn't want to keep them quiet for all that time.

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The paintings were pretty cool to look at. It's crazy how old they are. I can't believe how bright some of the colors are and I wonder if they have faded at all over the hundreds of years since they were created. I can't imagine them being any more vibrant than they are now. I like the still life paintings and the scenery paintings. I'm not so into all of the paintings of people. Doesn't mean a whole lot to me. Anyhow, it was great because Victoria had never been in there before either so we were exploring it for the first time together.

The picture above is the view from the steps of the National Gallery looking out over Trafalgar Square with Big Ben in the background.

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After we'd had enough of the old paintings (did that sound disrespectful?), we walked on toward Piccadilly Circus and found a little cafe type place to have lunch. It was about 3 o'clock at this point and neither of us had realized quite how hungry we were getting.

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Following lunch we walked on (Tara, this quote is for you) and we were "merrily on our way to nowhere in particular." We came across this super fancy sweet shop and decided to have a look around. It was the size of a department store and had such interesting things in it! There were all sorts of candied fruits like pineapple and kiwi and oranges (you can see the tiny candied mandarins dipped in chocolate in the picture below) and lots of different Halloween candies and just, everything really. We were looking in a case of desserts and noticing that the little cakes cost more than our lunches did. It was fancy and it was fun and it would be kind of cool to be able to shop in a place like that for special occasions.

It turns out that Victoria doesn't know the city a whole lot better than I do : ) Okay, well, that's not true, she probably does know it way better than I do... We pulled out the map quite frequently just to make sure we knew where we were and that we were headed in a direction that would get us somewhere that we thought we wanted to be. That was vague, but so was our plan. At the risk of looking like a tourist in her own country, Victoria donned her rain jacket and took charge of both map and camera. What a trooper.

This is, well, something. I'm not sure what exactly, but it's big and I'm standing in front of it (or rather, behind it, as the front is around the other side) with my cute little umbrella.

It didn't start raining until later in the afternoon. Anticipating the rain, I wore my tall black boots. This seemed logical at the time because my Pumas soak through very quickly and I just don't like walking around with wet toes. Plus, I didn't want to wear my rainboots in case we went into any museums--I didn't want to look like I belonged on a farm or something. So, I thought, alright, not the greatest walking shoes but at least my feet will be dry. Wrong. So wrong. after 5+ hours of walking my feet were both sore and wet. Turns out I've had my boots long enough that they have a leak in them. Darn it. This happened to my last pair as well. I just wear them too much. I think it's really the 24 nights of caroling through the mall that wares them down so much, but anyway, I really need to find some different shoes! I can't believe I have 5 pairs of footwear here and nothing that meets these three simple requirements simultaneously: comfortable, stylish and waterproof. Bummer. I didn't really notice until I was on the train headed back to Virginia Water so obviously it wasn't that bad. I got off the train and walked back to the house in the rain with my umbrella pulled close to me and the Garden State soundtrack playing softly on my ipod. That seems like a very appropriate rainy day soundtrack, don't you think?

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I had an absolutely fantastic time in London with Victoria and I cannot wait to go visit her in Oxford next weekend. Hopefully we'll get to spend another day in London together again soon -- there's just so much to see!