London in the rain

They're changing guard at Buckingham Palace
Christopher Robin went down with Alice
Alice is marrying one of the guard
"A soldier's life is terribly hard,"
Said Alice.

I went to Buckingham Palace on Saturday, and they were changing the guard shortly after we got there, but seeing and hearing everything in the rain with all the tourists around was terribly hard.

Buckingham Palace

It was so lovely to finally get to London! It seems that all my friends were there this year: Elizabeth, Danielle, Dane Davis, Josh... even Anna and Amanda visited from Edinburgh at one point, and John Grigsby is there right now. Having seen so many pictures on Facebook, I was definitely excited. I left Aix on Friday, took the navette bus to the Marseille airport, waited, checked in, went through security, waited and drank some rosé, went through passport control to my gate, waited, got on the plane and drank the rest of my rosé on my way to Gatwick. I flew Easyjet, so I didn't get to pick my seats; I ended up on the aisle both times. I like looking out the window, but I don't know how much I would have seen since the weather was quite gloomy. However, my rosé was delightful (seriously, it's nothing like what passes for rosé back in America) and I made good progress in Manon des Sources. I landed in Gatwick airport and, after a long line and a bit of an issue at passport control, I was officially in London!

In case you're ever traveling to the UK, you need a permanent address or point of contact for your time there before they will let you in.

But it was worth it (I finally got away with giving them Rachael's name and phone number), and then I was in London! Rach met me at the gate and we took the train to Redhill, where she lives. It's right by London, but is technically in Surrey. Little Whinging, where the Dursleys live in Harry Potter, is in Surrey. So basically I was right by Little Whinging; be jealous.

Privet Drive (not really)

I met Rachael at the most magical place on earth the summer of 2009. It was the year I was head of archery, and she was one of the British counselors who come every year to work with kids and experience American summer camp. She was so amazing at her job that they came up with an award to give her. Rach came back to camp last summer, but I was doing my Shepherd internship teaching English to refugees in Richmond, which was quite the experience. We'd stayed in touch, and when she heard I was coming to France she convinced me to fly to England for the long weekend. I'm glad I did!

Rach and me at camp in 2009!

This past year, Rachael has been working as a sort of dorm mom at a state boarding school in Redhill. School just let out, but she was still living there, so we had tons of space to hang out in the dorm. So yes, I spent the night in a real British boarding school. It was basically Hogwarts. It was out in the countryside, which was really pretty, but a decent enough walk in to town.

For dinner the first night, we got fish & chips from a place in town and hung out at the boarding school until it was time to go see HARRY POTTER! I'd already seen it, because apparently it came out in France before it came to England, which makes no sense. The movie theater was in Reigate, which was just a few train stops away--it was very small and brick and cute. The manager came in and gave two speeches about how it was the end of an era with the final movie. It was so good to see it again, and I cried at all the same points. Absolutely brilliant.

Saturday was the big sightseeing day. I'm not even sure where to start. We saw everything: Buckingham Palace, Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, Kings Cross, Hyde Park, Trafalgar Square (one of my favorites), the London Eye and the Thames, St. Paul's, Tower Bridge, the Tower of London, London Bridge and the HMS Belfast. What a list! We also stopped for tea and a kind of delicious cake called chocolate tiffin.

Look at my cute umbrella!

The rain put a bit of a damper on the day and the wind bent my cute umbrella out of shape, but we took the Tube everywhere--yes, it really is as amazing as everyone says. I have some strong loyalty to the New York Subway system, but the Tube is very well done. Plus, it played host to three of the most memorable moments:

1. We overheard a teenager (unfortunately American) explaining what a majestic cow is like. He then went on to say: "Well, more people get attacked by sharks, but you're much more likely to survive a shark attack than you are a cow attack. Have you ever seen a survivor of a cow attack?"
2. We--or rather, Rach--helped a very nice older lady figure out which train to take to meet a friend. I'm pretty sure she was American, possibly from New England. And now she'll go home to America and say how nice everyone is, which is lovely.
3. I saw Clara, from IAU! She was headed to St. Paul's from the Tower of London, and Rach and I were heading the opposite way. This is the third time I have run into someone I know in a major international city. (I saw some church members in the Musée d'Orsay and a friend from camp on Fifth Avenue.)

The cloudy weather did make for some cool-looking pictures! Here are some of my favorites:

I'm very talented.

London was beautiful, even in the rain. Even though by the end of the day I'd seen so much and walked so much, I can't wait to go back for longer and really get to know it better. Even though it was packed with tourists and souvenir shops, and felt just like New York in that way, the politeness set London apart. All the signs say things like "please don't play your music too loudly through your headphones; it may disturb the other passengers." How pleasant!

Rachael and I both zoned out on the train back; we were absolutely shattered from the long day. We had a nice chill evening eating pizza at her place and watching a British sitcom called Outnumbered. It's about a family with brilliant, smart-aleck kids who are always proving the parents wrong. There's an episode where they go sightseeing in London, and they saw many of the same places that we'd seen earlier that day, so that was fun.

On Sunday we got "Sunday lunch" for, well, Sunday lunch. It's basically a Thanksgiving dinner, with a roast (I had turkey), gravy and all the vegetables you can imagine. Just looking at the picture again makes me hungry, even though I ate absolutely all of it and couldn't have gone back for seconds.

Yum! We had a little more time to kill after lunch so we wandered around the local mall. I learned that there's this pedicure treatment where fish bite the dead skin off your feet. Terrifying. Anyway, then Rach put me on the train to Gatwick. My time in Gatwick was again a lot of going through lines and waiting. I had two pots of tea and finished Manon des Sources. I wandered through the duty-free shops and ended up in a bookstore, where I found books by my French professor! Domnica Radulescu has published Train to Trieste and Black Sea Twilight, but more importantly she is an absolutely amazing professor. She wrote my recommendation for Aix, and has actually taught theater at IAU in past summers. I hadn't read her novels yet, although I knew about them, so I bought them for in-flight reading. I'm already about 3/4 of the way through Train to Trieste--I just devoured it on the flight, and it was beautiful. It is really fascinating to really know the author whose work you're reading. I've read my dad's book, Whose Kids Are They Anyway? Religion and Morality in America's Public Schools, which I highly recommend, but it isn't quite as poetic. Professor Radulescu's book is about a love affair and fleeing from the Communist dictatorship in Romania and re-making yourself in Chicago as a political refugee, and it's just incredible. There are so many moments in the book where I hear her voice coming through, and it's just really cool that I found something my professor wrote in an airport in London.

I found my second W&L connection once I was back in Aix: a poster advertising an exhibition of Cy Twombly's work! (He lived in Lexington, attended W&L and visited often.) And it was interesting: I had a strange, sweet sense of homecoming when I got back to Aix. Mia said she felt the same way. I couldn't help thinking, "Bonsoir, la Rotonde!" when I saw the famous fountain. Everything felt comfortable and peaceful, like coming home in the summer or getting back to Lexington for O-week. It's amazing how in five short weeks this has become home.