All About Towns

I'm wearing smelly socks in Oxford.

Yesterday Jo and I went off to London. Anne gave us splendid breakfast then packed us off with all our stuff to the city. Two trains and a little confusion later we were in London. Hooray!

We whacked our backs in some locker service thing then headed out to "do London". And did we do London. In the space of about two hours we saw, at least from the outside, Buckingham Palace, Piccadilly, Leichester Square, some gallery place, Westminster Cathedral, Trafalga Square, Big Ben and the Houses of Parliment, the Millennium Eye and Westminster Abbey. It was a rather whirl wind tour of the city seeing all this stuff that I've seen pictures of, and heard about, and then there is all was. It was lots of fun.

We also bought tickets to see the Billy Elliot musical for Friday night. We'll be back to see the city in a little more depth that day too.

That afternoon we jumped on a bus to Oxford. There were some French girls on the bus who thought my accent was very funny. They went into hysterics every time I answered the phone. The bus should have taken about 1 hour 40 minutes but took about three hours because they're building a new round-about just outside Oxford. Because of the round-about we missed church. Sad.

We were picked up at the bus stop by James in a little red Mini Cooper. Which, when we traveled in it with all our stuff was, cool on the outside, and rather resembling a vacuum sealed bag of people on the inside. When you take out a few people and all their luggage it's cool on the inside.

James is housesitting for his Uncle and Aunty in a little place just outside of Oxford. It's cool it used to be a pub and a Methodist chapel but it's been turned into a house. Very funky. We're staying here with him.

Hanging out with James and Bec (his girlfriend) has been cool. It's funny because I've only met James once before we arrived and I'd never met Bec but I feel like I know them quite well because of reading their blogs over the years. It's the power of blogs, new people seem like old friends. Although it probably has something to do with James and Bec being real friendly too. I remember once when I was 15 or something I went to the birthday party of a girl I knew only exclusively through ICQ. We got on well in ICQ but when we met we had nothing to say. It was rather sad.

Anyway, it is fun to be here with friendly people our age.

I'm staying in the room of a kid names Jono who is about 11 I think. It's weird because I don't know this kid at all but I'm sleeping in his room and staying in his bed. I'll probably never meet him, but I've lived in his stuff. I'm like Goldilocks.

Today Jo, James and I went for a walk out in the Cotswolds. It was very typical English country side. It was very cool. We wandered through fields, forests, over stone walls and into and out of tiny villages. We met friendly locals and got lost a little. We scaled 2 metre walls, almost got hit by cars so climbed back over again. We ate lunch as a quaint little pub and wandered back to where we started. It was most lovely.

Today was about 30° and England got a heat-wave warning. National Crisis! It's been a source of amusement for us hardened Aussies. But you should see us reaching for the jackets on these cold summer nights. Brrr. Gets cold here.

Anyway the sun was hotish and good.

We ate stir-fry for dinner.