During my eighth week in London, I not only explored the city further, but I also visited my family in Sevenoaks, Kent and took a day trip with CIEE to Oxford. Here is a recount of my recent travels.

Saturday, February 25, 2017

On Saturday, Erin and I went to Hyde Park. Our intention when going to the park was to see Kensington Palace, but when we arrived we learned that it would take 40 minutes alone to get a ticket and then we would still have to wait on line to get into the tour. Since the weather was fairly dreary, we decided to forego that and leave it for another day. Instead, we improvised and chose to walk through Kensington Gardens, admiring the gradually blooming foliage and the different types of birds wandering through the bushes.

After we were satisfied with what we saw, we wandered out of the park and visited Albert Memorial, also seeing Royal Albert Hall across the street. Both sights were ones that I had heard of prior to coming to London, and we spent time admiring the intricacy of the design on Albert’s Memorial that represented the different lands ruled by Britain. Afterwards, we hopped on a double-decker bus and made our way to Harrods, a spot that Erin was particularly interested in seeing and I was also interesting in exploring.

To put it simply, Harrods is huge. You could spend days in there and certainly find more to do if you returned the following day. Between the clothing department, the footwear department and the toy department (let’s be real, the last one is the reason worth going), you can practically hear your wallet whimpering. The extravagancy of the items for sale in Harrods is also unbelievable — a pair of glittery Uggs actually was going for £2400. It wouldn’t even be an acceptable price tag if they were cute and trust me; they were not.

I have not even gotten into the food there, either. They have numerous restaurants and cafés, not to mention markets that had all types of delicacies, sugary treats and fruits imaginable. There was also a milkshake bar that we had to physically drag ourselves away from so that we wouldn’t make the biggest mistake of the day. Ultimately, we ended up going to the market once we had finished exploring and I bought a Fish Pie, which resembles a Sheppard’s Pie and to the common outsider likely sounds revolting. My only recommendation if you ever try one — be like me and enjoy seafood and be willing to tolerate potatoes. The pie consisted of salmon, tiger prawns, cod, haddock, and was in a cream sauce, topped with cheddar mash.

After we left, since it was starting to downpour and we were exhausted from our adventures that day, we decided to return to Chapter to eat. The bus ride back (and then tube ride because it was taking too long) was largely uneventful, sans the couple fighting from opposite ends of the bus. The girl decided that she wanted to call her boyfriend out about talking to her about some other girl while they were on a date and since she wanted to go to a museum and he to the park, if he got off and left her, then she would leave him permanently. You can’t make this stuff up. Spoiler alert: he got off and she ran after him.

Sunday, February 26, 2017

The following day, I met up with my cousin Ben who goes to University College London and he showed me around the area. In addition to seeing the university buildings, Ben also showed me where the exterior of Sherlock’s famous 221B apartment is filmed. Afterwards, I also saw a church, outside of which sat a bench where one of the Sherlock scenes from the latest season was filmed. Then, the final place we stopped was the location that Benedict Cumberbatch was recently for the shooting of his new film.

After we stopped at his flat, we then walked to Charing Cross, which we were planning on taking to Sevenoaks, where my uncle lives since it was his girlfriend’s daughter Martha’s birthday. However, we quickly found out upon arrival that Charing Cross was not running its regular trains, so we had to go to the nearby Canon Street instead. Afterwards, the rest of the journey was smooth and it was great to see not only my family, but also Martha and her family since I have not seen them since I believe the summer before my senior year of high school.

Tuesday, February 28, 2017

Tuesday brought about another walking tour organized by CIEE. It was a tour of Westminster, which we had wanted to go on last block, but our schedules did not accommodate the time then. We met bright and early at Green Park, and once we all gathered together, made our way toward Buckingham Palace. The palace was stunning and when we arrived, we noticed that the Royal Standard flag was up, not the Union Flag, which meant that the Queen was home. After taking our customary photos and some videos of the guards marching behind the gates, we moved on with our tour. The next two places we passed were Clarence House, where Prince Charles lives, and the Duke of York Column. As we broke off for a moment to observe the column, all of a sudden we heard a commotion and saw police cars driving by. Not realizing what was happening at first, I heard Erin ask from behind me, “Is that the Queen?” Spinning around, I didn’t see her face clearly, but I saw her general profile and definitely recognized the shape of the hat. I’ll admit that we all started carrying on afterwards in absolute shock. After we settled down from that excitement, we continued talking about the column, only to be distracted when guards on horseback rode by for the Changing of the Guards. Talk about #squadgoals. We eventually went in that direction and saw the build up to the change — really, the guards were just staring at each other for a long time as their horses carried on.

The next places that we visited were Westminster Abbey (*Joey Tribbiani voice* “Hands down, best Abbey I’ve ever seen!”), Elizabeth Tower and Trafalgar Square. Finally, once our tour ended, Erin and I went to Westminster Cathedral, which was also beautiful and there happened to be service going on at that particular time of day.

Thursday, March 2, 2017

Thursday was largely uneventful besides my trip to Oxford Circus so that I could bring my phone to the Apple Store on Regent Street. As I waited for my appointment, I wandered a bit and then afterwards, went down as far as New Bond Street. Thankfully, the weather was beautiful that day, so it was well worth walking around and I would eventually get to also see it at night when I returned the following Tuesday to get a battery replacement for my phone.

Friday, March 3, 2017

Friday was another low-key day in anticipation for our busy day on Saturday. Since Lent began and we couldn’t have meet, we decided that it would be an ideal time to have our first experience with fish and chips in London. We went to a restaurant called The Golden Hind, where we got the typical meal with a side of mushy peas — the side being an aspect that Americans seem to have erased from the meal, and I can’t say that I’m opposed. Nevertheless, the meal was delicious and I am more than willing to return and try the other options at the restaurant, such as their calamari.

Saturday, March 4, 2017

Saturday rolled around and we lucked out tremendously with the weather. What was supposed to be a dreary and stormy day turned out to be brisk, yet beautiful. We left around 8:30 a.m. on a bus to Oxford — only about an hour and a half or two hours away — and for the first part of the ride, I spent it sleeping and listening to Ed Sheeran’s album that was released the previous day. When I finally woke up again, though, I did get to enjoy the sight of sheep grazing in the open fields. Also, as a side note, we arrived, we passed BBC Oxford, which I thought was pretty cool.

Once we got something to eat and used the restroom, we met up with our tour guide and for our first stops went to St. Mary the Virgin Church and Christ Church. Both were exceptionally pretty and as the sunlight kept disappearing and then shining through the clouds, the light that it cast one it was breathtaking. We learned from our guide that the latter is actually where Alice Liddell lived. Liddell was the inspiration for Lewis Carroll’s classic Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and her father was the dean of Christ Church, where Carroll — otherwise known as Charles Lutwidge Dodgson — worked and was asked by Liddell to tell her a story while on a boating trip in Oxford. Additionally, Christ Church was also used in the early “Harry Potter” films as one of the backdrops — similar to the Bodleian and New College — that became recognizable as Hogwarts. Unfortunately, many of these buildings and locations that were either used for filming or inspiration are either private property or were closed that day since there was a graduation ceremony.

The last major place that we visited and stopped at for a while was Radcliffe Camera, which is a library, and our guide made a point to mention was named for John Radcliffe, “not the actor from ‘Harry Potter.’” The outside of the library is perhaps my favorite place of everything we saw that day — the architecture is unbelievable and I can only imagine how beautiful the inside must be.

Once our tour was finished, we all were given the afternoon to explore and after visiting the marketplace and determining that we would be getting milkshakes later (guess it’s a good thing we didn’t get any the previous weekend from Harrods), we walked over to a rowing competition that was happening. The competition took place on the Thames River and different colleges had men’s and women’s teams competing. The atmosphere was really relaxed and since the weather was so nice, many people had folding chairs if they were not sitting on the balcony of the tower devoted to their college’s team. All of these towers also featured the individual college’s flag, which felt incredibly “Harry Potter”-esque and I loved it.

After hanging out and watching the competition for a little over an hour, we then made our way to The Eagle and Child, a local pub where we could grab some lunch. The decision to go to this pub was made before the day trip when Erin’s father told her that we had to check it out since that is where the Inklings met up. The Inklings was an informal group that met at The Eagle and Child to have literary discussions, and two members of the group included C. S. Lewis, author of The Chronicles of Narnia, and J. R. R. Tolkien, author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. The pub itself was incredibly cool, decorated with posters and designs having to do with both fantasy novels, and the food was delicious.

Finally, after walking around for a while longer we made our way back to Covered Market where Moo-Moo’s, the milkshake stand, was located. The stand is exclusively in Oxford, run by a local husband and wife team. The toppings that one can get are endless and when you tell the people working what you would like, they crush it into a milkshake (Erin got banana and peanut butter, and I got M&M’s). Having those in hand, our day then came to a close as we made our way back to the bus that was waiting to collect us.

My eighth week spent in London and Oxford was incredibly fun and certainly memorable. Stay tuned for next week when I will talk about the Shoreditch Walking Tour I went on, as well as our trip to Dublin, Ireland only a week before St. Patrick’s Day!