Back in England

Hello out there!!

Yes, i made it back to London yesterday, with decidedly more luggage than I left with! Oh well, it was all in a good cause, and some of it will be consumed anyway. For Scott I bought some apfelwein (apple wine, kind of like cider), some Darmstadt beer, chocolate, some cherry chewing gum, pink grapefruit chewing gum (yes, Scott likes his weird chewing gums!!), and some tea bags that make gluhwein, which is the hot spiced wine that Gremans drink at Christmas time.

The flight back was good. I was very early to the airport, but I would much rather be early than late. So i checked in, said goodbye to Gisela who had kindly dopped me at the airport, and went through security. I was warned about there being two security checks, and that i should leave 40 minutes. Ok, fine. I went through the first lot, then had a look at some shops. I sat down in an empty gate lounge and drank the fruit juice I had bought myself. Then I wandered towards the British Airways end of the terminal, to find that there was another security check. My stuff was x-rayed again, and this time there was no walk-through metal detector. So I had a metal detector run over my body by some lady. Nice. I made a comment that it was a bit personal, but her English obviously wasn't good enough to understand what i said! The woman x-raying my bag picked up something metal in my bag and wanted to have a look as it was a strange shape. It was my flying pigs hair clip. She thought it was very cute, and proceeded to show it to her collegue. I don't understand why they needed a second security check. It was only if you were going through certain gate lounges.

While I was sitting in the gatelounge, before the second security check, I walked over to the window. And guess what? It was snowing. So on my trip to Germany it snowed the day I got there, and the day I left (but only after I was safely through immigration etc). Unbelieveable!!

I made it back to the house, Scott met me at the tube station which was nice. It's always handy to have a porter!! Went back to the house, unpacked a bit, wrapped Scott's pressies up. He made dinner for me which was lovely. We had our Christmas celebrations, well, we opened our presents anyway! I got three novels (all by Dan Brown who wrote The Da Vinci Code), two pairs of earrings, an Eeyore phone cover, and a lovely gift set care of his workplace as they miscalculated and had one male and one female gift for two male employees, so Scott chose the female one for me. It is really expensive stuff too!! A nice shower gel, eau de toilette and a body lotion are in there. Yum! Then it was to bed, as I am still a little unwell and the plane flight wreaked havoc on my ears and i was a bit deaf... what?? ;-)

Today, we got up early, as it was our "Christmas Day". We caught the tube to Notting Hill Gate, changed to the Circle line to Paddington. Got off there and made our way to the main line station (ie the long distance, overland railway system). We bought tickets to Oxford, and hopped on a train pretty much straight away. And it was an express train too, stopping only twice on the way there. We arrived at Oxford at 10am, and jumped on a sight seeing bus. Got off at Christ Church College, and wandered in. We had been told that the dining hall had been used in the filming of Harry Potter, but when we got there the sign said it was just used as inspiration. Nevertheless, it was interesting to see inside one of the colleges though. The buildings are beautiful. And coincidentally, when we were there, a group of school students from St Peters in Indooroopilly (for those of you outside Brisbane, it is a school near my university). The group was a choir doing a tour of Europe, and they were there to give a concert.

From Chrsit Church College, we jumped back onto the sight seeing bus. We had read in the Lonely Planet Guide that there was a really "cheesy" attraction in Oxford called The Oxford Story. So, we went and checked it out. I tell you what, I am so glad Scott decided to treat me, as it was so bad! Basically, the whole experience was us riding on a train, in carriages shaped like scholars desks, looking at models of people doing scholarly stuff, and listening to commentary. I can see you rolling your eyes from here!!

After that experience, we grabbed some lunch in the covered market, and had a wander around there. It's like a very mini version of the Victoria Markets in Melbourne. Very very very mini!!

After that we walked to the Pitt Rivers Museum and the Natural History Museum (they are joined really). So, again, Alex was in heaven! The Pitt Rivers Museum was great. It was a bit like the Horniman Museum in London (which I think I neglected to tell you about!!). Basically it is quite old fashioned in the museum world, in the display techniques. But I think theat is the appeal of the place. The cabinets are crammed full of stuff (like shrunken heads, baskets, knives, guns etc), all sorted into categories. It was fantastic. Although, the labels left a little to be desired (...Nic??).

From there we jumped on the bus again, and went all the way round to Christ Church College again, where we had a look at Alice's Sweet shop. it's basically just a small shop that is amking money off the fact that Lewis Carroll had something to do with Christ Church College. They had some cute stuff, but I bought nothing.

Then we wandered to Blackall's Bookshop, which is supposedly famous etc. Had a good look around. There were so many archaeology books, I had to stop myself from looking at too many as I would have wanted to buy them. It is very dangerous to take me into a book store!!

From there we managed to jump on the last bus back to the station and got on the next train to London. It turned out to be to non-express one, so it took forever to get us back. But we were able to jump off before the train went all the way to Paddington, and change to the tube. And now you are up to date! I am sitting in Acton after our day in Oxford, feeling still a little unwell, but I will have a quiet next few days, then it's New Years! Then I start a new job on Monday for two weeks for so. But, it's a change, it's money etc.

:-)

Me