there's no place like london

7/2

I woke up at 4:30 to leave my flat by 5:30 to walk to the bus station for a bus to edinburgh at 6:50 and then a train from there to London around nine. The walk into town was beautiful at 5 in the morning going over the old bridges and such.

The train ride was pretty uneventful because i slept for most of it. Around 2 we finally pulled into Kings Cross, where I waited for a bit for my friends to show up so we could find platform 9 and 3/4. unfortunately they are doing construction for the games right now and the actual place was covered so we had to take pictures with the replica. Then we headed out into London to go to our hostel so I could put my stuff down and Julia could get ready for the theatre.

Our Hostel was in a really nice part of London. It was a residential area that had a little pond running through it. The hostel itself was also nice, we had booked a private six person room and the beds were really comfy.

We headed back out into london- Julia to th

e Theatre and Kim and I went to the National Gallerey and on the way there we happened to stumble through the pride parade at Trafalgar square. Then we went to find Kensington garden and the Peter Pan statue. We ended up wandering around there for awhile before heading to the West End to find food (we ended up splitting fish and chips.) Then we decided to wait for Julia and Jen to get out of Much Ado about Nothing with Catherine Tate and David Tennant. We waited outside a cute little pub around the back end of the theatre near the stage door. Sadly David and Catherine were only allowed to sign things pertaining to the show, so we stayed a bit back, but towards the end of their very short stage dooring, I got within about 6 feet of David.

We finally met up with our friends and were standing around talking and being hyper when we noticed Catherine Tate was standing really close to us, so we sort of nudged over, but then she had to leave.=( After that we headed back to the hostel for bed.

7/3

Woke up got all our stuff out of our room and into a locker to head to the Doctor Who Experience. This was absolutely amazing!!! The experience part was a little more aimed for 12 year old boys (as Julia termed it) but it was fun because in some ways i am a 12 year old boy at heart. And it was fun to have friends to geek with. After that was the exhibition which was amazing. I was literally a little kid in a candy shop. Especially at this one point: I had been taking picture with the inside of the tardis and was geeking about a sign that showed all the insides of the Tardises, when Julia tells me to turn around. And there across the room was the old inside of the Tardis!! It was so awesome just looking at all the costumes and monsters and the gift shop....

Then we had an adventure trying to get to the Globe from there, we made it to the show just on time. Dr. Faustus was amazing, the costumes were so well done. Lucifer's looked like the angel's costume only dingier (sp?). And Arthur Darvill? he was so good and at one point after intermission we were in the second row of people from the stage and so he was literally right above us.

After the show we wandered around the Thames a bit before heading to Westminister and saw Big Ben. Then we sat along the Thames while Julia got ahold of her friend so that we could meet up for dinner. We went to a pizza express which was really good (if slightly pricey) We all split two desserts between the four of us. We had a delicious ice cream sundae like thing and also a plate of dough balls with nutella. best decision ever!

Then julia and I headed off to the hostel to get all our stuff and get to the train station. We took a sleeper train back, but we bought cheap seats so we actually got large seats instead of cabins. But it was still okay I slept fairly well.

7/4

We got into edinburgh at 7:30 and back home to Stirling around 10, where I had to finish 500 words of my paper before two...oops. But I finished it and went to class where my professor had a fourth of july party for us!!! He gave us a whole bunch of sweets to munch on during class and had sparkling grape juice for us to drink! It was really wonderful!

After class there was a fourth of july party going on in the grass next to our building so we went to that for a bit before deciding to go out to eat. We ended up going to a sports bar called sportsers and for the sake of it being the fourth of July got something semi american. Julia and I split an appetizer platter with mozzarella sticks, potatoes and cheese, onion rings, garlic bread, curly fries and pieces of chicken. Then we all went and got gelato at this really good place in town before heading back to school. I stayed for a bit after that but was absolutely exhausted and so went to bed a bit after eleven.

7/5

Not much has happened yet today, just class and laundry and some small chores. We are going on the Darn Walk tonight and get icecream afterwards courtesy of the ISS.