Flat and the Weekend

First off, let me introduce you to my home-away-from-home.

This is where I am living this summer, Manson Place:

One of those windows at the top of the frame is mine.

This is my dorm room, and you can see my lower bunk there. Hidden out of the frame in the corner is the other bed in our room.


Here is the common room of our flat. It's small for 13 people, but it does the job.


And here....is our local tube station's scarecrow. I'm not sure WHY our local tube station has a scarecrow, but it's pretty awesome:



My first "proper" weekend in London is now over, and honestly, it's been a bit chill. We came to the conclusion that the weekend is a BAD time to be doing touristy things, because all of the sights are just BUSIER on the weekend. So we mostly tried to stay in less obvious parts of town this weekend.

The only exception was Friday morning, when we decided to hit up the Tower of London earlier in the day. I had been to the Tower before, and a few little things had changed in the past six years.

The biggest difference this time was the Beheadding Memorial on the spot where all executions happened at the Tower. I believe it was just a plaque of some sort the last time I was there. This time, this memorial has replaced the plaque:



Here is the group of us at the Tower:



Of course the tours are still preformed by the Beefeater guards, and they are still as fabulous as they were the first time. Lots of tales of blood and gore and bad jokes. Fantastic.



This is Traitor's Gate, where Anne Boleyn and other "traitors" were rowed from the Thames into the Tower of London for their executions:


And of course, the ravens are still prominent in the Tower of London. It's said that if the ravens leave the tower, the kingdom will fall.



And of course we have the oldest part of the Tower of London, the White Tower, which currently holds the arms and weaponry exhibits. As you can see by my crappy camerawork, it was raining by the time we left the Tower of London.


Much of the rest of the weekend we spent roaming around London and window-shopping. Primark is apparently the cheapest clothing store in existence. Evans is Lane Bryant with cuter clothes and some cheaper prices. It was kind of fun getting out and into the shops. I haven't really BOUGHT myself anything on this trip yet - nothing worth talking about. I'm still pinching pounds a little bit while I wait for financial aid to sort out their issues, but hopefully today or tomorrow that will become less of an issue.

Our other big excursion for the weekend was Saturday night, when at my behest, we all went down to Westminster to watch the sun go down and the lights come out. It was fantastic. The weather was nice. The lights were gorgeous. We just walked around and took pictures and it was utterly lovely.

Here are some of my favorites:











Seeing as it's taken me three days to write THIS blog entry, I'm going to leave it there. But tune in later for more from me! Monday I went ON the London Eye, and to Westminster Abbey, and tonight we're going to see Twelfth Night at the open air theater in Regent's Park!