February Half-Term Break...Gallivanting around England

Hello Wonderful People!
Our February Half-Term Break! Week off! Woot woot.

Friday, we've got to hold up our tradition, so girls' night on the first Friday of break! Meghan, Marina, and Cierra came over for it.  Meghan got here first and we made a couple pizzas and crawled into Sam's bed to keep warm and eat our pizza.  We made another pizza when C and Mar got here and they climbed in with us.  We had tea and ate junk food and chatted.  It was really fun. 

All cozied in

Candy

Saturday, our first official day of break, and Valentine's Day.  We decided to have a lazy day and we finished Hart of Dixie.  My wonderful SFLR got me Valentine's Day stuff (we alternate years apparently).  We had a date with Meghan and Harry Potter at Meg's place Saturday night, so we headed up there, met at the grocery store to grab stuff for dinner.  We made taco salad and ate a TON of junk.  We took about 20 mins to decide on a Harry Potter movie to watch, got about 10 minutes into the movie and then decided to watch an interview/discussion between Daniel Radcliffe and JK Rowling.  It was about an hour, then we decided to watch a few other videos and YouTube videos.  It was a lot of fun. 

Best SFLR ever

Couldn't get anymore perfect

Cheers to my Galentines <3

Sunday, I went for another run.  Went around Tooting Common Park and up to Clapham and around part of that park and back.  I've hurt my foot and it started to bother me so I cut my run a bit short.  Sam and I decided to go up into Piccadilly to get postcards and wander a bit.  We got a cinnamon bun and then headed back to the Primark by our place.  We found some cute things then headed back home.  We decided that we were on a roll, so we headed to a nearby pub that had a Pub Quiz.  We got there a bit early so we got a drink, played a couple rounds of Jenga (or Tumbling Tower) and a few games of Snakes and Ladders.  There was a cute lounge area that they do the quiz in.  There were a bunch of different teams and most were regulars apparently.  There were 6 rounds with a half-time break.  There was random trivia, pictures, songs (60s, 70s, 80s), then half-time where there were 3 speed questions for drinks.  One guy got them all.  3 free drinks and the caller didn't even get through the whole question before he answered!  Second half was random trivia again, then numbers, then songs again (90s, 00s, 10s).  Then there was a final question for 440 pounds that you had to answer exactly.  Nobody got the question.  And we sucked at the quiz (at least 10 points behind the next lowest team).  It was a lot of fun though. We would like to go back with more people…possibly some British people.

Monday, we did a big grocery shop, went by Primark again (woops) and then a friend I made at the school the week before break, Shien, came over for a while.  She’s from Toronto.  We had stir-fry and chocolate and tea and girl talk.  It was good.

Tuesday, we got up early and hit the gym.  We had breakfast then headed out and met Mar, Meg and C at Clapham North to head to Cambridge.  We had a very spacious new train to ride up on.  It was a great day.  Sunny, not too cold.  We decided to head straight to the punting place to find out about it.  We ended up getting a really good deal on a private boat.  Our driver/guide was really funny.  He was young and told us fun, random facts and answered our questions and chatted with us.  We saw the colleges and got to try punting ourselves.  It was not as easy as it looks and quite cold.  We had a lot of fun.  After punting we headed to eat lunch at a cool little café thing Mar found online.  It was retro and great food.  After that we wandered a bit and went to a cool candy shop and bought way too much candy.  Then headed home; older train, less room, but sat together. 

Wednesday, we had an easy morning.  Meghan, Sam and I met up and headed out to Greenwich.  We saw the Cutty Sark, a big ship, then walked through the Naval College to get to the park where the observatory is.  There’s a movie being filmed there and we found out that it’s Now You See Me 2.  We got to the park and it’s really big and pretty.  We walked up the big hill and wandered a bit to find the Meridian Line.  We ended up at a ticket area to get into the observatory.  We asked if there was somewhere to see the Meridian Line and the woman said we needed to pay to see it.  So we paid and went in and there was a stupid long line to take a picture with the cool statue thing on the Meridian Line.  We knew there was a plaque thing on the wall that shows the line so we walked around to find it.  We walked through the museum part and asked someone in there where the plaque was, she told us there was a free section. Of course.  So we went and found it and got all our pictures.  After we walked back down through the college (found out Daniel Radcliffe was going to be there later). We found a pub that was recommended to Meghan, called the Cutty Sark pub.  We had awesome burgers and fries and stuffed ourselves.  There was an adorable puppy there.  We walked it off after by walking through the underwater tunnel (under the Thames).  Kinda cool.  We went to Liverpool St Station to get our train tickets to Oxford the following day then made our way to the Royal Albert Hall.  We had to walk across Hyde Park and got a gorgeous sunset.  When we got there we tried to exchange our groupons for our Cirque du Soleil tickets but there was some issue.  Took a bit of sorting, but we managed to get our pass.  Looked like they weren’t going to be bad seats.  We decided to go get some snacks and a drink until the show.  When we got back we found our seats and they were AMAZING!  Just to the side of the stage.  Only a few rows back, starting to go up the side so we didn’t have to crane our necks to watch the stuff happening up high.  The only problem with our seats…the idiots sitting behind us.  About 10 of them.  The men didn’t stop talking, which includes calling down the whole row to talk to the person sitting at the other end, the women had crazy strong perfume on, that we think they reapplied halfway through, and they kept trying to take videos and getting yelled at by the staff.  Oh! And they showed up late and hit us in the heads with their bags getting to their seats.  But Cirque du Soleil-Kooba was phenomenal, mind-blowing.  We had a great time.  Headed home after, exhausted and needing to be up early the next day.

Thursday, we were headed to Oxford.  It was supposed to rain most of the day, which sucked after 2 gorgeous days.  We got to Paddington Station during rush hour, which is just brutal, then ended up having to sit separately because it was so busy. We got to Oxford and headed straight to the meeting spot for a free walking tour.  We walked through and saw lots of the colleges and there are some really cool buildings there, just like Cambridge.  We got to see some of the filming locations for Harry Potter, a place where C.S. Lewis might have gotten his ideas for Narnia and The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, and the place where the author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland worked and may have written it (apparently he was a math prof).  By the end we were FROZEN.  It had rained steadily, although not heavily, and was to the bone cold.  So we went into the first pub we saw, which turned out to be a good idea.  We got a pot of tea each, sandwiches, and I got a small mac’n’cheese as well.  It was delicious.  We had finally regained feeling in all our appendages so we headed out to see the Covered Market.  It wasn’t as cool as we thought it would be so we decided just to make it an early day and caught the train home.  When we got home we cuddled up and had some tea and made soup for dinner and just relaxed. 

Aslan

Fawn-Mr Tumnus

Lamp post

A kissing gate-stupidest things ever

Cold and bundled

Train home

Warming up

Today we did quite a bit but nothing major.  We had an easy morning then hit the gym for a great workout and showered after.  Then got home and cleaned the house and made wraps for lunch.  We then tidied our rooms, put laundry away, dealt with money and wrote the blog.  Very productive. 
Just the weekend left of our break and it’s looking like it may be quite full.  We will try to be better about posting…I was putting the update off because so much had happened. 

If you have questions about any of it please ask!  Always open to comments or questions about what’s happening with us.

We out!

Sam and Lisa

PS.  Some interesting things we learned about both the University of Cambridge and the University of Oxford.  There isn’t a University building, per se.  They are made up of colleges around the towns and those colleges make up the universities and all have different stuff going on, students living there, events, tutors, etc.  Also random fact about Cambridge…you can’t work while you’re attending school there. It was quite interesting to hear about them.