London and a Bop!

Well, today was London day! I had a great time!!
Juliana and I woke up around 8am, got on a bus by 9, and around 10 we were in London, walking towards Victoria Station.

First stop: Buckingham Palace. So here we were--two unassuming, somewhat inconspicuous young American women walking down a perfectly normal street when BAM, right around the corner we are unexpectedly dodging our way through a very crowded mass of tourists in front of the Palace. After five minutes of searching the wandering eyes of our neighbors in the crowd, and following fingers pointing to various things around the square, we realized that most people, including us, had no idea why everyone was hanging out in front of the palace (see photos for our unrehearsed facial expressions).

But, being curious and stupid Americans, we stuck around for another half an hour, waiting to see a bearded lady or maybe the flying elephant. Just when we were running out of curious-juice, we heard the faint sound of drums and a flute. Yes, dear friends, 'twas exactly what you expected....the changing of the guard. It was pretty cool and somewhat parade-like. Maybe today was a special day. I still don't know. But yay for massive fuzzy hats.

After the Palace, we took a walk down to Westminster Abbey, which was overwhelmingly gaudy, to say the least. Thoroughly impressive, but my god they packed a lot of stuff in that place. I felt like I had wandered into Henry VIII's private attic, filled with statues, tombs, gold, and more tombs. That place is huge, by the way. Lots of the stained glass was shattered during WWII (very typical of Europe) so there were a lot of cool restoration things going on, which was totally my thing. A good time was had by all.

The rest of the day, we headed out to Oxford Street (haha...yes...still in London) to do a massive, though impromptu, shopping spree. We refueled on Subway sanwiches (ooooh by the way, there's no partially hydrogenated oil in England. Didya know? Yay chips), then kept shopping. I got a couple of shirts, Jules got a few scarves for her mom. We sat and had coffee and gabbed about boy drama for a while. It was girlie, it was great.

After massive amounts of public transportation, we were on our bus again, in heavy traffic, heading home...to the BOP. A "Bop" is a college party at Oxford. The bop this evening was a halloween bop, full of costumes and cobwebs. The English still can't dance, so it wasn't as fun as it is back at Stanford, but we made it work. The men's rugby team got kinda crazy for a while, but then again, meatheads are always pretty entertaining.

Well, I'm exhausted. The day trips I've been taking are definitely my favorite parts of being abroad thus far, so look out for more updates on those (and feel free to suggest places to go!).
Thanks to everyone who's been commenting, too--I love getting notes!

Cheers!