Elyse's first weekend

Hey
So this post is basically about Elyse, and her first weekend in England. For those who do not know, Elyse is my best friend from Maine. I met her my first day in Maine, she lived in 503 Dickey, and I lived in 501 with the sisters, and the following year I moved to 502 just to be next to Elyse. And I complained every day to her for making me move from the 1st floor to the 5th floor, and having to go up all the stairs. At first we were going to come to London at the same time, but with Monica going to Oxford, and that being a year long program, I knew I had to follow my heart and go for the year. I could not allow Monica to be in England without me either, since she would be mean and send me e-mails about what a wonderful time she was having... oh wait, that's what I would do to her. Oh well. Elyse is more of a homebody, while me, well I think I'll just keep going. I've been really looking forward to her coming, I wish she had come for the year with us, but she didn't want to be away from home that long. But anyway, Elyse and I are just a bus ride away from each other, it's not that far at all. We thought it would be closer, but it's still easier, and much closer than Oxford.

But our day together in London. It was fun. Elyse and I went to London on Saturday, she had been the day before, but what does that matter? She and the other kids from Roehampton did a tour of London by themselves, they had to find certain things, this tour took them all over Westminster, and as far as Tower Bridge. But I got a call about noon asking where Trafalgar Square, 10 Downing Street, and the London Bridge were located. I just laughed, and told her all I knew.

But Saturday, I went to Roehampton and picked up Elyse. I brought her a gift- Seasons 1 and 2 of Hogans. I know she has missed it. But we walked to the bus stop, and got on. This bus 72 goes to Hammersmith, but somewhere I saw that it goes to Shepherds Bush, which is on the Central line I believe, so I thought, hey why not go there. Note to self: Stay off buses as much as possible. Traffic. But it was fine, we took the Underground from Shepherds Bush to Nottingham Gate, and haha, we started walking and I realized, wait, we were going the wrong way. I saw a sign for Holland's Park, and thought, um no. So we turned around, and walked to Kensington Gardens, which as always is so beautiful. People were out laying in the sun, playing both types of football, it was a nice spring day. Elyse said to me a few times, "Bowl, we're in London." I just laughed. Oh can I say, I LOVE MY NICKNAME! I have so missed it, and for those family members who have not heard my nickname, yes it's Bowl, yes it refers to the thing you eat out of, and it's my college hockey nickname. I was named this shortly after getting to USM, and though I was first introduced to Elyse as Courtney, that was soon forgotten. I dropped the nickname upon coming to England because they would not understand it. But Elyse calls me Bowl, it makes me happy, and we are good. Back to London.

I wanted to go to Kensington, one to show Elyse it, but also I thought what a perfect time to retake pics of the Peter Pan statue! I did not go to James M. Barrie's house even though I know it's on that road basically, next time. But I did get my pic taken with Peter, and now I have good pics during the day, and not when it's rainy and gross out. From there, we were both hungry so I started thinking of a place to get food. We hopped on a bus, but I got off almost at once at the Marble Arch, one because I wanted to see it up close, two I thought, hey there should be food around here. I wanted to introduce Elyse to the world of pubs. Yeah, I didn't find one. So then we went to Oxford Circus, where we found a pub... woohoo. It was pretty good, and Elyse liked Oxford Circus. Of course it's all shopping, and was really busy, but she found one store that she really liked.

From there, we walked to Trafalgar Square, which was not that far at all!!! We turned onto Charing Cross Road at Tottenham Court Road (also an Underground station for the British Museum), and just walked through Soho, and came to Leicester Square, and there we were. On the way we stopped for ice cream, yes ice cream in February. It was warm enough outside to walk around with ice cream, which of course we did. Elyse did complain that her tongue was cold, but I reminded her that she was eating ice cream! LOL! So we walk to Trafalgar Square, one of my favorite parts of London, and Elyse reveals to me that she and her friend (forget which one), thought Nelson's column was ummm Napoleon. I'll give you a minute to laugh. I looked at her, and just asked, What country do you think you are in? First of all it was at the Battle of Trafalgar that the British fought Napoleon, and was the critical battle that Napoleon decided, well maybe I don't want to invade England, and also where Nelson died. Oh boy. So that day whenever I mentioned Nelson's column, I would call him Napoleon.

From there we went to Buckingham Palace, where I really think Elyse expected to meet the Queen. LOL, just kidding. She liked it though, we took pictures, but one thing that I think disappointed Elyse was lack of guards. She wanted like 20 guards outside just hanging around, waiting for her to take a picture of. Oh well. On the way, we were passing by St. James Park still eating our ice creams, when of course I finished mine, and Elyse was laughing at me because she still had hers, when oh yeah, it broke!! I laughed at her. Serves her right. Oh well, we had a good time walking around, it is so great to see Elyse again, I really, really missed her. But it feels like no time has passed, we just picked up where we left off.

So from Buckingham, we went to Harrods, I know, I know, we completely did one big loop, but you know it was a fun loop! Harrods of course is always fun, there was some protest going on outside, about Harrods killing animals for their fur, and I really thought they were trying to stop people from entering. They had a guy dressed up as a rabbit or something, it wasn't that cute. Oh well. We walked all over Harrods, first to the food halls, and then I showed her the Diana thing, and then to the woman clothes. It was fun, Harrods is such a cool place, but yeah can't buy a thing. Oh well.

We actually went home after that, well back to Roehampton. We watched A League of Their Own, upon getting to Elyse's flat, which was fun. Love that movie, and then I went back to Kingston. Elyse had been going pretty hard since arriving in England, and was ready to crash.

The next day was the Superbowl, so she was over with Emma, Dominique, Suzie, um yeah that's it. I picked them up at the bus station and brought them to the Bridge House. That was an awesome day, well until the Superbowl. I was not impressed with either team, and of course I was very much like a Masshole that night because I dislike A LOT Peyton Manning, and the kicker who I will not name. I was going for the Bears, just because I do not like Peyton Manning, and though I guess they had a really good season, he does not deserve to win a Superbowl, especially the way he played. But um without American commercials, the Superbowl wasn't that great. We had a great party, though Nye and Baz retreated to Nye's place because they couldn't take my insults. Nye was being an idiot, showing off in front of the all the girls, cause there was a lot of us, so I told him to stop being an idiot. Martin then asked me if he was being an idiot, and I was like Oh Martin, you could never be an idiot. Martin is too nice. Stupid boys though, we bought food for our party, and they bought Hot Dogs in Cans! It said American Hot Dogs on the can, and they expected us to cheer and rush at them just to get a hold of them. Ummmm excuse me? They showed it to me, all excited, and I asked if they expected me to eat that. ICK! Then they started reading the ingredients, rule number 1, hot dogs do not come in cans, rule 2, never read the ingredients of hot dogs. Just eat them! Ick. Thankfully Kathleen had sense to buy real hot dogs, because every American was like, "What, why would you buy a hot dog in a can?" ICK. Jenna came over, and brought this girl Danielle, who um, well she argued with me about Rome. Not smart. We were talking about America, and how awesome it is, and she said, "Well in 200 years we are going to be conquered by some second rate country." I just looked at her, and she went on to say, 'Well it happened to the Greeks." So I quickly did the math, and at 1am, the Roman Empire did not completely fall to me until Constantinople fell, in 14 something. So I said no we actually have a while, and we argued. I guess this is the girl who 'accidentally' double majored, and thinks she is soooo great at history.

But I went to bed around like 3am, and Dominique and Emma slept over. It was so tough waking up the next morning, I had to be up at 9am for my 11am class. Ick. I know tough life. So that was Elyse's first weekend, pics are up on Webshots of our adventure. She did not go as camera crazy as I did my first few times in London but oh well. I also redownloaded all my London pics, and split them up, so now I have different albums for when I first went, to when Sammy and Mary were here, and all the other times.