Terenzi and Sam take London by storm

I've been pretty much studying non-stop for almost an entire week straight. Exam period is upon us all and we're all drowning in revisions, essay writing and practice exams. I put in an extra effort to study all week long because Terenzi came to visit me from Scotland on Sunday and Monday, and my exams are all on Tuesday and Thursday. We had two full days of London to fill up and it was the perfect study break from endless learning about the endocrine system.

We of course started at Parliament Square.

This statue of Nelson Mandela had been turned into a memorial overnight and was laden with flowers and beautiful cards.

We took a walk through the park on our way to Buckingham Palace and did some bird watching!

These beautiful black swans were some of my favorites.

This pelican just took the cake, though.

We tried to catch the changing of the guards--we missed most of it, but did see them come marching in playing music!

We then took a stroll down the river and admired the architecture--he especially loved this building above.

Of course, a walk across Tower Bridge was needed.

We also popped into the Tate Modern to take a look around, and then caught a glorious sunset across the Thames.

We hopped on the tube to head over to South Kensington to check out my favorite museum, the V&A. It was all sparkling with Christmas decorations!

Harrod was also looking festive, and we of course had to take a quick look around.

This ultra HD TV boggled our minds with its insanely crisp picture.

We then headed over to the Winter Wonderland in Hyde Park, where Terenzi had a go at the ladder-climbing game.

Hyde Park was overflowing with people, as usual.

However, we were feeling exhausted--he rode an overnight sleeper bus from Glasgow to London and I hardly slept the night before because all I could think about was the process in which the kidney filters urine (finals were making my mind reel all night long). We headed back to Mile End for a home cooked meal and an early night.

A Day in Cambridge

3 months has certainly been flying by. There have been lots of plans that have gone out the window because time simply is ticking. I had hoped to visit a few more places in England while here, but since exams are fast approaching, it seemed like we would really only have time for one more day trip.

So, we picked Cambridge, and it was definitely the right choice.

 Getting betwee Cambridge and London is pretty cheap, only around 10 pounds roundtrip. So, Sunday morning, we all made our way over to King's Cross station to hop on a train and visit this old, scholarly town.

 

Lucky for us, Anna's friend from the ranch in Montana she works at happens to study at the University of Cambridge, and was around to give us a little tour of the town and explain a bit about how the college system works, as well as show us a bit of her campus (which I believe was St. Mary's college).

The University of Cambridge is composed of 31 constituent colleges that together comprise the university. When a student applies to study at Cambridge, they apply to the specific college, but they will usually take classes with students from the other colleges as well.

Cambridge is old, and with age comes prestige. There's a huge rivarly between Cambridge and Oxford, another of the places I had hoped to visit--but everyone in Cambridge assured us that we had made the right choice (of course).

Olly, Anna's friend, brought us to a pub for lunch, which for sure had the best view of any pub I've ever been to.

After our delicious lunch, she brought us over to the waterfront to hook us up with an afternoon of punting.

Punting basically involves a long, gondola-type boat and an extremely tall stick. The stick is used to dig into the shallow water and gently push the boat along. The guy running the tickets ensured us that we're better off taking the guided tour first, as we had all never punted before, and then he would give us a free voucher to take a boat out on our own and give it a shot.

We had a cheeky British man as our tour guide, who gave us an overview of the University and all of its colleges, which were the most prestigious and how it's better than Oxford.

 Cambridge is actually breathtakingly beautiful. The building above is actually a residence hall for students--you can imagine the looks on our faces when our guide told us that.

 The view of this bridge is one of the most famous views in Cambridge. Poems have been written about this gorgeous little bridge.

After our calm little tour of the river Cam, it was our turn to try punting. This was anything but calm, but actually quite an effort on all of our parts. Nevertheless, it was extremely entertaining.

You're supposed to stand on the flat top of the back of the boat, but we all decided it was in our own best interests to stand in the boat because it's very very common for people to fall in. It being the first day of December, this was on none of our agendas. While it may look (sort of) easy, that pole is actually really heavy! Either way, punting was great fun and I would definitely give it another go!

After perusing through the market in the city center again, we made our way back to the train station to rumble back on home to London.