Oxford and London

Cheers! (yes, I did get excited when the man next to me on the train told me "Cheers" yesterday.)

It's been a busy couple of days. I hardly know what today is, actually. 

We got to England early Sunday morning. Hutton and I said bye to our Kenya group and made our way to find Heather to begin the next part of the trip. After a bit of confusion and plane delays/cancelations, we met up with Heather outside of customs and got on a bus to head to Oxford. 

We arrived in Oxford a little earlier than we had planned to meet the rest of the group, so Hutton gave us a little tour of Oxford (he studied abroad here) and we ate at On the Hoof (I got a Cole Bennett, just for you, Syd and Cailee). We walked past the ACU houses and went to a park for a bit. 

We met up with the rest of the group (Bradyn, Kyle and Sarah) at our hostel and began our little trek around the city. We saw just about everything Hutton, Bradyn and Sarah remembered to see (they all three studied abroad at different times). We went to Evensong at Christ's Church. It was lovely. I may have struggled to stay awake after a semi-restless night's sleep on the plan from Nairobi, but I managed, no worries. 

After Evensong we had dinner and went to the Turf Tavern then headed back to the hostel. 

The next day we got up to see a little bit more of Oxford then headed to London. We took a train back into the city and walked around there a bit. Saw many of the sites and then found ourselves back at another park hanging out and enjoying the calm. I would be okay with living here... Well, Oxford. I love how active the residents are. Everyone runs and spends their time outside. Not many people have cars, so bikes and walking are the common modes of transportation. It's great. Full of history, great buildings/architecture, interesting people and some pretty good food (that I could tell from my limited experience). 

Anyway, back to the day... We had all wanted to see Les Miserables, so we found the cheapest tickets we could find and went to see that in the evening. It was so good. Really. I had seen it before the last time I was in London and it still had me at the edge of my seat. I have been playing the soundtrack on repeat in my head since then. If you haven't read the book or seen the musical, I highly recommend it. As Kyle will tell you, it's very "inspiring."

After the musical we walked around for a very long time until about 1am when we took a bus to the airport. We "slept" in the airport last night for our 6am flight this morning to Cork. (We just got here so I'll post about it later. I may actually want to move HERE instead. The flight in was breathtakingly beautiful.)