Adventure Is Out There!

Wednesday! Or, as I like to call it, yesterday. We went to the Tower of London! Toured the grounds, saw some torture chambers, took pictures of some ravens and some ancient Roman walls, and stared at the crown jewels. (Of course, I was thinking of Sherlock the whole time, imagining Moriarty breaking into the case!) There is a legend that if the ravens ever leave the Tower of London, then England will fall, so they always make sure that they have at least six on the property. We saw some in cages, but was saw a great deal more around the grounds. Ravens are big. And fuzzy. We learned more about the two princes that Richard III supposedly killed and we walked around looking at old armor and fake animals like horses and elephants. The rest of the group left for Paris shortly after the tower, so Marie and I set out on our own little adventure: navigating the tube and buses to locations we'd never been before. Our tube cards only work in the innermost two of London's six zones, so we had to use buses anywhere we traveled outside of Central London. The destination was the Who Shop, located inconveniently in Zone 3. Miraculously, we got on a bus that took us to a giant bus stop like the one at University Mall, where we were able to locate the exact bus we wanted and get there safely. I would like to take this moment to say that I had my picture taken with a real, life-sized Dalek yesterday. It was completely awesome. Marie wanted to go to a store some of the other girls had found on Oxford Street that sold clothes and shoes for cheap, so we hunted that out too and spent two hours walking around looking at stuff. I am now of the opinion that US department stores grossly overprice everything, as first Penney's in Dublin and now Primark here in London has sold their merchandise for significantly smaller prices. (I'm talking 3 pounds for a purse and 5-6 for a shirt. translate that into dollars and it's still cheaper than most of the clothing and accessories you find in America's department stores! No word yet on whether quality suffers because of the price, though. And now we're up to today, which I have spent doing more hoework and ctching up on my blog. I'll do my best to update again tonight, after I've actually done some stuff. :)