Rule, Britannia!: London Calling cont.

So I've been settling into my flat in Kiddlington, where I'm living (Kidlington is 10 min away from Oxford - my college gives me a bus pass for free to get into town) and am now sufficiently settled enough to finish writing about my London trip.

On Friday Julie and I went to Covent Garden. It was so neat! There were street performers, booths selling crafts and jewelry, and on the surrounding streets were many lovely clothing stores that I couldn't afford to buy anything at. Fun fact: Covent Garden is where Eliza Doolittle was a flower seller in My Fair Lady.

We left Covent Garden and headed to the National Portrait Gallery (I saw the coronation portrait of Elizabeth I, a portrait of Anne Boleyn, and many other famous monarchs and British personalities). From there we went next door to the National Gallery where I saw "Virgin on the Rocks" by Da Vinci, a Vermeer painting, paintings by Monet and Van Gogh. Unfortunatly for Julie, I don't really have a long enough attention span for museums, so we didn't stay very long.

The National Gallery is located on Trafalger Square, so we took lots of pictures there and marveled at the beautiful architecture. We then walked to Parliament and Westminster. Parliament is GORGEOUS! Too bad Big Ben was shut off for refurbishment and upkeep. Julie and I waited for the clock to strike 4pm and then remembered that we both had been told/read in the newspapers that it was off. It was a duh moment.

Westminster Abbey was closed when we got there. It closed at 3:45pm, which is a bummer because we would have made it if we hadn't waited for Big Ben to strike. It was still very lovely and I hope to go back and see the inside.

We then walked down to the eye to see how much it cost. It was too much for our small budget, so we walked back and walked to Buckingham Palace. Buckingham is another very pretty place. It would be neat to live there. I couldn't tell if the Queen was home or not because I wasn't sure which flag would be flying. I think she wasn't home, though, because only the Union Jack was up. There were all sorts of guards patrolling the palace, including this guy with a huge gun (I don't know the type) who was, funny enough, posing for pictures with tourists.

Then we decided it would be easy enough to walk from St. James Park (where Buckingham is located) to Kensington Gardens. Wrong. Especially after walking everywhere else all day. We made it to Hyde Park and then Julie and I had to lie down on the grass for a little bit. We finally got the strength to walk along the Serpentine (a man-made lake in Hyde Park) back to our hotel, where I fell asleep at the shockingly late hour of 9pm.

Saturday we went to Portobello Rd, which is so neat and interesting! There are all sorts of antiques (I don't know if they were genuine or not) and there were flea market type booths and a huge section of just fresh food. Julie and I bought baguette sandwiches and cool scarves. They are sort of Indian looking, but I could have the nationality wrong.

We were at Portobello Rd for a few hours before we had to go get our suitcases and go to Paddington Station. We got there and Julie asked about our train. The woman said it was on time. Then we realized we didn't know our platform. So I asked a different person. Mind you, this is only a minute or two after Julie's first inquiry. The person told me to run to the platform because our train was boarding right then. So we ran as fast as we could and the man at the platform told us our train was cancelled. This was about 5 minutes after the first person said it was on time. It was the oddest thing.

So we hopped on the next train to Oxford (apparently you can do that without buying a different/new ticket) and made our way up.