Foggy London Town

Actually, it was warm and sunny in the Southern UK today. jrandall arrived in Oxford at about 10AM this morning, having driven straight from Heathrow. We walked around the Oxford city center and I showed him Brasenose and some of the other stuff that I actually know anything about. A little past noon, we decided to drive to London and check out that scene (neither of us had ever actually been to London city proper before).

We drove to his hotel and dropped off the car. We hopped on the tube and went to the tower bridge and the Tower of London. Let me tell you, the "tower" of London is a disappointment from outside. It was built so long ago that they had much lower standards for towers. It's really a squat castle, that couldn't tempt us to pay to go inside. We grabbed lunch and then called an English friend of Josh's back in the USA (ahh, the irony of the information age; calling Cambridge, MA from London to find some tourist advice). We crossed the Thames and walked along the other side in hopes of finding Westminster Abbey and some other stuff.

While walking we saw signs for the restored Globe Theatre, so we decided to check that out. It was pretty cool to walk around inside the theatre, which is quite a convincing replica of the original (which burned down in 1613, was rebuilt, and the pulled down for good by the roundheads in 1644). Unfortunately I forgot to bring my camera along, so no pictures of the trip. After the Globe we took the tube to Westminster and saw the abbey and Big Ben. It was after closing time by then, so we didn't get to go inside.

I went back to Josh's hotel to look up the locations and times for the bus to Oxford and it turned out one of the stops was right outside his hotel. I headed over and took the bus back to Oxford. As it turns out I may have missed the best part of the day according to Josh, when he and the other FT blokes had dinner at a fancy Indian restaurant in London.