London

Date: 22 April 2007 22:54:47

I realised I hadn't blogged for a while, so I thought I'd come and tell you about my recent trip to London over the past few days.

I arrived on Wednesday evening and because John had an essay deadline on Friday, we spent the first couple of days together mostly working. But by Saturday lunchtime we decided we deserved a break, so we travelled into central London and went to Regent's Park for a picnic.

After a stroll through the park, we decided it would be fun to hire a rowing boat and row around the lake. It was great fun. We discovered that I can't row... When we first got into the boat, we had one oar each and tried to coordinate sharing the load, but that didn't work because we had different strengths, so we just went round in circles. So John took both oars and got us into the middle of the lake. Then I decided he deserved a break, so took over. We went round in a circle one way, and then in the other way, and then we stayed exactly still - despite me rowing with both hands, as best as I could. After a couple of minutes of not moving John said (as tactfully as possible) 'Its amazing!!! - I don't know how you're doing this, but we're not moving anywhere, even though you're doing everything right'. I did my best to take this as a compliment...

After an ice cream, we walked back to the tube station and went onto Westminister via Green Park twice (don't ask - was a v.amusing misunderstanding). We saw Big Ben and walked down Whitehall where a crowd of cyclists were protesting about a nuclear free Middle East, or a nuclear Middle (depending which photo you look at...).

We then headed down through St James' park and saw all the setting up of the end of the Marathon and then Buckingham Palace at the end, before turning into Green Park. We then made our way to the Science Museum for the last hour before they closed and went to see the Medicine Through the Ages, which was mostly surgical techniques. Highly interesting, especially as I have recently observed several major operations, although really quite scary - examining what people used to do, without the current medical advances we have now.

After that we made our way over to meet Alice M after she'd finished work, and after collapsing in the pub for a quick pint, we went to Hyde Park and had (another) picnic! It was really good to see Alice and it was amazing sitting by the lake in Hyde Park, eating the random food we'd bought.

Once we'd finished eating and said goodbye, John and I then went to meet a friend of his, that he wanted to introduce me to. Except that when we got there, I discovered I already met this person several years ago!! The Methodist world is too small... It was cool though - we turned up to find a living room full of about 10 random Methodist students. I immediately felt at home - so much so I was coming out with classic Jen comments such as 'that cork screw only has one arm...' (apparently it was an amputee) and 'wow!!! its a metal frog!' among practically complete strangers!

Overall it was a pretty great day, although I was more than a bit knackered by the end of it. Speaking of which, I'd better go to bed...