After the late night, this Friday morning definitely began with a burnt cup of coffee.
After class, Kathleen, Liz and I began the journey to Buckingham Palace. We took the high speed train to Paddington in London, then the metro to very nearly the Buckingham basement. There began the spending of our reserves of patience, because lines were long and the systems were down and we had to change our vouchers for tickets before we could even wait in the ticket line, which was before the baggage checking line, which was before the audio tour head-set line.
Luckily, we all three had vast reserves ready and at hand. I amused myself by snapping pictures, and Liz amused herself by smiling for them.
We weren't allowed to take pictures in the Palace, one of the few working Palaces left in the world, so I took a few of the outside. This is the back, where we exited.
Not very much of the Palace would fit in a picture because the place is so large, so we had to walk several minutes away and try again.
We got to walk about half a mile through the Buckingham gardens. The rest was roped off; what we could see was pretty, though.
After Buckingham, we wandered the streets of London for a while. There were monuments in every direction. Every time I put my camera away to try to pretend that I wasn't really a tourist, whatever the Buckingham Palace gift shop bag on my arm might say, I would see another monument that really needed to have a picture taken of it.
Trafalgar Square: monuments in all directions, and crazy traffic careening from all the monuments. Traffic rules, backwards or foreign or otherwise, do not seem to apply in this Square.
So, after walking about for a while, Kathleen and I left Liz to try to make it back to Oxford and our three course dinner. We left ourselves two hours; the high speed train only takes one, and we had forty minutes to get to the train station. More than enough time. More than enough.
You know already where this is headed.
First, a line was down, the Baker-Loo line, the line we needed. So we had to run around the Underground like rats in a warren with a whole stream of other harried passengers to the Northern Line, which we THOUGHT would take us to the proper change for the Circle Line, but instead took us to the change for the Victoria Line, so we had to get on a different metro to take us to King's Cross, where we finally achieved our Circle Line metro.
One stop, one sweet, sweet stop from Paddington, the metro stopped for nearly ten minutes. Of course we were all squashed against one another like sardines in an airtight can, and we were one station away from Paddington, and so that is why the driver's shift ended. That is why.
Those ten minutes made us miss our train, something we should perhaps have accepted as inevitable from the moment a cheery voice announced over the speakers that, so sorry for the inconvenience, but the Baker-Loo is temporarily down.
We caught a train to Oxford ten minutes later, but it was not high speed and took two hours to get us home. We arrived in the Oxford train station, a half hour walk from the college, as the starter course was served.
This sort of situation is what McDonald's were created for.
