Travel Week- LONDON!!!!

Saturday was a whirlwind- Capree, Shannon, Lindsey and I all left for London around 9:30 am. We arrived in London in about an hour and a half, but it ended up taking longer for us to find our hostel once we got to the city than to actually get to London from Oxford. In addition, we missed the first 15 minutes or so of the Les Miserables matinee. Regardless, Les Miserables turned out to be one of the most memorable experiences of my life; I cried the entire second act! The music, staging, costumes, acting, dancing- it was all so beautiful! Afterwards we had dinner at a local pub, where a nice Jamaican man bought us all a bottle of red wine, and finished the night at a nightclub, where a nice young man of Jamaican decent bought us all Coke Lights.
I noticed a couple things about London transportation that night. Capree lost her day pass for the Underground to the ticket machine just before we arrived at Picadilly Street. When she pointed this out to the station attendant, he simply stated that there was nothing he could do about this. Capree was upset because she had just purchased the ticket at the last station, and in the States she almost surely would have gotten a refund. This is not the case for the unique English service sector, and she was simply going to have to purchase another one the next time she rode. In the States I am also used to the bus driver announcing each stop every time we arrive at one. However, we found out that this is not the case with the London bus system, and with our feet throbbing and exhaustion sinking in around 3 am, we unfortunately got off the bus way before the hostel and had a miserable mile or so to walk.
The next day we went to Stomp and walked to some of London’s famous attractions. The British History and Culture class of the last 3 weeks actually enhanced my experience at some of the sighs I’d been hearing of. Knowing the significance behind Trafalgar Square or Waterloo Bridge, for example, gave me a greater appreciation for them beyond their architectural aesthetic. Coincidentally, we ran into Melanie and McKenna on Waterloo Bridge, who had also gone to Stomp that day. They were also scheduled to fly out of Stansted that night, so they, along with the Mexican student Capree and I had met earlier that day, all had dinner at an Indian restaurant.
At the bus stop that night, my presupposition about the American way being everyone’s way got me in trouble again. I had booked the bus ticket to Stansted online and planned on picking up the ticket at the box office. At 2 in the morning, though, I did not realize that everything would be closed- including the ticket office. We sat anxiously in the cold and drizzle of that night wondering what we would do when the bus pulled up. Not a bus official was in sight to assist us. It all worked out, though, because when the bus pulled up they had mine and Capree’s names on a list.