Oxford Town

the temple at Battersea Park
Gwen, Kirsten, Sarah and Ricky at Battersea Park
Hogarth Street, the location of my flat
Gwen, Hannah, Reyn and I in Oxford at the regatta


So our shower is leaking water from some unseen place underneath the base. Water keeps mysteriously trickling out of the mat and accumulating into puddles. Quickly dissolving footprints are being made every time someone enters. We hung out with some girls from the fifth floor Saturday night, which up until then I had never climbed beyond the first flight of stairs. As you ascend, it gets exceedingly narrower and the stairways get more and more crooked for some reason. But according to the chorus of "This is so unfair!" and similar phrases from the top-floor girls upon stepping into our flat, I think that the leaking shower is a minor issue from the rather cumbersome list of problems they've faced. Not to mention the guys in the basement flat and their week-and-a-half long supposed septic tank leak that left their apartment wafting with unimaginably foul odors. Ricky described it as "a slap in the face" every time he entered. I think we got a pretty sweet deal.

Oxford on Saturday was all I expected aside from the hidden regatta we stumbled upon on accident. Many participants were wearing horned hats and a riverside party stretched on where all the surveyors gathered and lots of "Pimms," a mystery beverage (beer of some kind?) was served. Gwen, Reyn, Hannah and I all took a seat in the grass by the river to eat paninis and watch the long boats pass by. Oxford I learned is not a single university but it is actually made up of many small colleges all clustered together, one after another. It was otherwise pretty with old architecture and a long strip of shops and street performers. I can't imagine what it would be like to go to school there.

My favorite part of this week was Battersea Park. Three tube stops away, and what a gorgeous find. You get to cross this long bridge over the Thames and the entire park runs alongside the river. We went at around seven at night so we got to see the park during its last few hours of daylight. The sun seemed to illuminate everything so beautifully. We were lured to the park by a description I read of live music and a barbecue. It took awhile to find these things, but on our hunt, we found a temple that sort of emerged out of nowhere. It was huge and I don't really know its significance, but we couldn't move on from it without staring and circling around it a few times. It was mesmerizing. It was there that we could hear faint sounds of music in the distance and we followed it to the restaurant we had been looking for. Although the sound machine and "Macarena" failed to meet my prior expectations, it was a whole lot of fun to laugh at. And the scenery and weather were just so brilliant that evening that we couldn't have had a bad time even with the terrible music. Five of us shared a bottle of red wine by the duck pond and took a lot of pictures twirling by the river as the sun went down.

I ate at O'neills with Hannah and Gwen Saturday night when we got back from a sleepy busride from Oxford. All three of us got fish 'n chips, so now I can say I officially have had London pub fish 'n chips and I officially can claim that I loved every bite. We later that night ended up at a different O'neills at Piccadilly Circus that was quite a lot cooler than the previous one, complete with three floors of bars and dance floors and outdoor patios. It was a fun club experience. We all danced late into the night to a bad cover band who played a lot of Killers and a painful rendition of "Sweet Home Alabama." I was mostly amused by two of the girls from the fifth floor flat who were up in the front row dancing like mad, clearly on the prowl for the lead singer (God knows why). A British guy standing next to me started laughing at me at one point and said something like, "You don't like the music, do you?" I guess I wasn't too great at hiding it. As always, it was a challenge figuring out which bus to take home at the end of the night.

A trip to Paris in July is booked, complete with a hostel. I can't wait. But until then, I plan to keep finding my way around London.