Every fall all the UK vet schools get together for AVS, a sport competition weekend. The general idea is to get drunk before you get on the bus Friday morning and stay drunk till you get off the bus on Sunday. Somewhere in between you play (or watch) a few rugby, football, field hockey, and tug-of-war games. This year Glasgow was hosting and I decided to get out of town.
Since there aren't any classes that Friday, my flatmate and I decided to take a long weekend in London and see a show. Sounded like a good idea, and it was fun, but it was an up close and personal review of Murphy's Laws. Just about everything that could go wrong did... including missing our flight home (see the bit at the left for the full story).
Despite that, we were able to take in Shakespeare'sRichard II with Kevin Spacey playing the role of Richard II. Wow! They did a great job placing it in a modern setting (normally I don't enjoy that) and drawing out Shakespeare's great sense of humour. The three hours flew by in heart beat. The theatre was relatively small so we could see the actors quite clearly and hear with no problems.
We also did quite a bit of window shopping ranging from Harrods, to Regent Street, to a market in Covent Gardens where street performers were thrilling the crowd.
My flatmate, Tiff, is vegan so we had a list of vegetarian restaurants in London and happened to stumble on one of them in Covent Gardens. It was in a cute, brightly painted little courtyard and the restaurant owned space on all sides of the courtyard so there were little cafe's, delis, and restaurants on all sides. It was warm enough that we ate outside and enjoyed people watching.
Our second night we had dinner with my second cousin (he lives in Reading just outside of London and was awesome enough to let us crash in his spare bedroom) at a cute little pub in Reading called The Griffin. I had good fish and chips and got to try ale (tasted just like fingernail polish remover smells).
We even managed not to get lost on the tube. Quite an accomplishment.
Murphy's Law
Our first day in London we bought a day travel pass at the train station in Reading which covered the train into London and train and underground travel all day. However, when we came back out to Reading in the afternoon to freshen up before going to Richard II, the ticket guy took our travel pass and wouldn't give it back! That meant that when we were ready to head back into London we would need to buy new tickets.
In the meantime, I was trying to iron my trousers and dropped the iron on the floor. It managed to melt a nice iron mark on my cousins carpet in about 3 seconds. Right in the entrance to the lounge! But of course, before I realized that there was melted carpet on the iron I proceeded to get it all over my new trousers, too. Well, at least my cousin has something to remember me by!
By the time we made it back to the train station, I wasn't in the greatest mood. We went to buy our second set of tickets and when we told them we needed to get to Waterloo, they sold us train tickets for the slow 1 1/2 hour train. By this time, we only had 1 1/2 hours till the play started!. After asking at the information desk they tell us we had to go back to the same ticked agent to change the tickets, which, with the long line, could take half and hour. Since the fast train was leaving in about fifteen minutes we ended up having to simply buy a third set of tickets into London! Three sets of tickets for what should have taken one! Do we look like tourists or something?
Oh, don't worry, that's not all. I'm always a bit paranoid about missing flights so I made sure we had plenty of time to get to the airport on Sunday. It was just a short domestic flight and you could check in up to 30 minutes before departure so I figured getting there 2 hours early should cover any unforeseen problems. We made it into London and to the train station all right, only to find that the train to the airport was being replaced by a bus service. After waiting in line for almost an hour, we finally got on a bus which proceeded to get caught in traffic. It was fun watching all the other airport buses flying right by us. Of course, the bus took longer than the train and Tiff and I literally ran into the airport to find we were 10 minutes late for our flight. Thankfully, £40 and ninety minutes later, we made it on the next flight and arrived back in Glasgow safe and sound. We didn't even lose our luggage!
