L O N D O N

 Yesterday, dad got us up early and we drove into Guildford with him. He dropped us off at the train station and went on in to work. Transportation in the UK is wildly expensive. Petrull, which is the British pronunciation of "gasoline" is about $8 a gallon. Rail is not much cheaper. A round trip ticket to London and a day's underground pass runs about $30. The center of London is perhaps an hour to 45 minutes drive from where we are out here.

The upside is, London is amazing to just be in, and they have some of the best museums in the world, which cost absolutely nothing. Which is what we took them up on.

First stop was the Victoria & Albert museum, also known as the V&A. Although they have collections which span time and the world, the exhibits seem to be organised mostly through the lens of design and style. What did people design, and why seem to be primary questions driving the exhibits and the collections. They had an amazing middle east collection, and some fantastic work from the middle ages. Interestingly, they also have collections of particular materials, such as glass, although my favourite was the architecture hall, which featured scale models of architecture from around the world, and cases of drawers with original drawings and sketches from famous architects- contemporary and historic, Palladio to Foster. 

After the V&A we followed Tay to a place his phone recommended, a really tiny hole in the wall kebab place. It was so small, the lamp on the spit brushed both sides of the restaurant, and people had to duck underneath the kitchen counter to get by it. We ordered just kebabs (they were out of french fries) and attempted to find someplace to sit.

I voted for a few seats we found at the back, regardless of sharing a table with strangers, but it was warm, very cosy, and I could really feel myself becoming more like a local, jammed into the back of this tiny place. Tay, however, does not share similar sentiments regarding personal space, especially while eating, so we ended up sitting outside, despite the fact it was about 40 degrees and the wind was so vicious it blew away our pita bread. Our kebab meat froze instantly.

We really needed to warm up a bit after our polar lunch, so we stopped into a nearby cafe/bakery and I got a cappuccino and a delicious walnut creme coffee cake. It's nice to be in London where cool cafes and windows full of wonderful looking baked goodies are on display every ten meters.

After our coffees, we walked over to the Natural History museum. I had intended to only go for a quick spin, but it ended up turning into two hours as we were both sucked into the depth and breadth of the exhibits. It's a huge, elaborate, and labyrinthine building, branching off like the tree of life into smaller and smaller sections. We saw perhaps a quarter of the museum. As we left, Tay described it as "the Louvre of natural history museums." That ate a lot of our time, so we took the underground back up to Oxford street.

If London is the shopping center of the UK, Oxford street is the shopping center of London. The street is about a mile long, lined on both sides with a combination of boutiques, larger stores, overpriced pubs, tiny tourist crap stores, and giant department stores behind neoclassical facades. I'd say 90% of the street is apparel. Shops from around the world. Aldo from Spain, Muji and Uniqlo from Japan, American Apparel and Quicksilver from America, on and on. It's a fun place to be, especially with the British going nuts for the after New Years sales. 

It was dark when we got there, but all the buildings were lit up with their Christmas displays, and the giant department stores had beautiful light displays cascading down the facades. Tay was looking for a new pair of boots so we stopped in at an Aldo, and I popped over to Muji. We ended up walking the full length of the street before catching a the tube back Waterloo. Caught an hour long train that conveniently dropped us right at the Milford station. We were so wiped that we didn't even mind the long ride.