So I made it to and from London with relative safety and what ought to have been the ease of long practice but wasn't.

The train ride down was very long, but the five hours served as ample time to begin the paper due the day after tomorrow and by the time I hit Kings Cross, I was half done. Now, anyone who know the tube should know that getting from Kings Cross to West Brompton where we were staying ought to have been easy- only two changes and nearly direct. Oooh no. That would be far far too easy. They were doing work on a bunch of the lines, so Victoria wasn't running, Jubilee was only running half its line, and District and Circle weren't running between Edgware Rd and Earl's Court. So we had to go a bit out of the way to get where we were going. Eventually, however, we made it to the tube stop and got soaked by the lovely rain storm that hit as we exited the train. The hotel, thankfully, was only a block away from the station, so we didn't have to go far.

We found out when we got there, however, that the hotel didn't have our reservation on the books. I had the confirmation from the travel agent, though, so they gave us a triple room for the two nights. After we changed, we met up with a friend of mine who lives in the City and a friend of Dana's, who happened to be in the City for the week. We had dinner at an Italian place near the British Museum and then went for drinks at a pub not far from there. It was a lot of fun, but Dana and I passed out just about as soon as we got back to the room, which was just about the most ghetto place I've ever been indecently.

Sunday morning, we set an alarm for very early am and got moving. We went to Notting Hill and walked around there until lunch time and then we went off to Covent Garden for the afternoon. After that, we walked around Parliament Square, where I probably annoyed the hell out of Dana with my London Fun Facts while we walked around the Houses of Parliament and stood in line to get tickets for the Eye for Monday morning. We had dinner at Garfunkles in Trafalgar Square and then I climbed the Nelson Monument. Again. The pictures sucked just as much this time as they did last time, but it was lovely all the same. I didn't even mind that it was raining.

Monday morning, we got up and checked out, then went back to Parliament Square and crossed the bridge at more or less a dead run to make it on to the Eye at the time we booked. It was nice, but I could wish it had been a sunnier day. From there, we walked up to Buckingham Palace and ran into (very nearly literally) the changing of the guard. We were too far back in the crowd to see much, but the band was good, so I'm going to call it a success. We got lunch at Pret and I couldn't find the Starbucks that's near Victoria, which is irritating, but so be it.

We then had to take off (at more or less a dead run) to get back to the hotel to get our luggage and then hop back on the tube to make it to Kings Cross in time to make the train. Which we did, with a margin of five minutes. Another five hours on the train saw my paper finished, and we got off in St Andrews in another soaking rain. The pictures are here, and I rather like most of them.

I now have two days of "free time" during which I shall write my PhD proposal-finally- before I have to start getting ready to throw Easter dinner for fifteen people. And then another paper. And another Latin translation. And then another palaeography assignment. And then a dissertation And on it goes. :)