Goodbye London, Hello Hogwarts! ...Sort Of

So London didn't want us to leave. At least, that's what I'm going to tell myself for the rest of my life. We were checked out of our Kensington flats around 9:30, expecting to board a new coach and leave by 10:00, but London had other ideas. The Olympic hype has kicked up several notches, and with the sudden appearance of summer weather last week, the tube has had to shut down a line or two when it gets too hot. And then there are the sheer numbers of people! Every train that passes is packed full; you're lucky if you can squeeze into the door, let alone find a seat! And the roads are extra crowded because they've turned all the bus lanes into "Olympic" lanes and forced all the buses and taxis into the normal lanes. So our coach got sideswiped en route to us and lost a mirror. We were waiting until almost 11:00 for him to get a replacement mirror attached somehow before picking us up, and then we had to brave the inching traffic on our way out. We were all sitting around outside with our suitcases and backpacks, but it was nice because Alexis and I had time to run past the crepe restaurant Dad recommended and to buy a couple cookies from Ben's Cookies. Our new coach is nice and big and (thankfully) doesn't smell like cigarette smoke like our last one did. Our driver lived in Inverness for several years and has grandchildren in the area that he is excited to visit while we're there. At this point I realize I have made an egregious error in that I completely forgot to mention that we saw The Lion King Broadway last night! It blew me away, though they cut a few songs and a few dance numbers and added a dance number in the middle of "Be Prepared." Rafiki and Mufasa were the stand out performances vocally and the puppetry was absolutely mind-blowing. Unfortunately, the rest of the cast wasn't quite up to snuff, and Rafiki was the only one who could authentically pull off the clicks found in African languages. Simba's only big number is supposed to end with this soaring, hopeful note that is easily my favorite musical moment on the whole soundtrack, but they cut it out almost completely. The pit was goosebump-raising and they had one of the boxes filled with the African drums needed for the performance. I have been wondering if the cuts and changes were made to appease a British audience as opposed to an American one. This is one show that makes good use of all the space available to them, including the aisles in the audience and the boxes on either side of the stage. I think I'm going to have to see it in America now. So, coming back to today, I was in an understandably Disney mood so I put in my headphones and napped for an hour and a half while we drove to Oxford. Our first stop was at the Oxford University Press, where we learned about the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary. I spent some time looking up words on their online database and came across something rather cool. My name comes from a flower that grows mostly in Scotland. There are a lot of different kinds of heather, and one of them is called lyng. Heather-lyng, Heather Lynn. :) Also, "set the heather on fire" means to make a disturbance and "take to the heather" means to become an outlaw. I had a little too much Next we took a walking tour around Oxford. Our guide showed us a ton of different buildings and told us plenty of stories about famous people who have attended Oxford over the years. He also took pleasure in telling us about all of the riots that happened between the students and the villagers, especially how much the street was covered in blood. I saw the room where Halley discovered Halley's Comet and I walked over the top of a library filled with eleven million books.  But the best part? Many of the Harry Potter movies filmed scenes at Oxford. I walked around in the courtyard where Harry tells Cedric about the dragons in Goblet of Fire (and stood under the tree that Malfoy was randomly sitting in during the scene!) and I walked up and down a staircase that they used for several other scenes throughout the series. We also saw the dining room that they were considering using for the Great Hall but eventually decided against because it was too small. It had four long tables going along the length of the room and one long one up front on a raised platform. And to finish it all off, we saw the room where they filmed all of the infirmary scenes! I'm going to have to watch these movies again when I get back. :) Well, I can't post this tonight because of the lack of internet that plagues me now that we're on the road again, but I'll have this up as soon as possible. We had a fun day!