~ ANNE! ~

Been having a great couple of days in London. I thought maybe I would find it lonely travelling by myself, but it's actually great. Yesterday I spent most of the morning walking around - went to Regent Street and shopped around (managed to keep myself from buying anything due to money and space limitations, but I think it's only a matter of time... as if I'm not coming home with at least one pair of Union Jack knickers!). Then I walked through Hyde Park in the rain (and picnicked in the rain, which sucked a little) past the Albert Memorial and down to South Kensington.

I meant to go straight to the Victoria & Albert, but got distracted by the Natural History Museum. I ended up in the Earth section, which I wouldn't have thought I'd be too intersted in - but they had some great exhibits. Lots of interactive things, including footage from a Japanese earthquake (the security camera from a convenience store) in which the floor under you actually moves in time with the quake! Also lots of gems and things, and dinosaur skeletons.

Then I finally went on to the V & A. Someday I will have seen all of it... but yesterday I was tired and just focussed on the photography, the fashion area, and a great section on 20th-century design (which I need to spend more time in!) Very interesting stuff, as always.

Made an early night of it and slept like a log, after the people in the hallway stopped shouting. Today I spent with Sharon, who I'm sharing a room with. She's very much into dead people and graves and serial killers and things (hence the PhD on children's grave goods), so we started at Madame Tussaud's because we thought there might be Jack the Ripper stuff there. Wasn't, though. It was horribly expensive and terribly lowest-common-denominator, but I enjoyed it anyway. (Just call me the lowest common denom, I suppose). It was neat seeing what all the people look like, especially the historical figures. Got a picture of Alfie Hitchcock for my brother Sam.

Sharon of course dragged me through the Chamber of Horrors. They have a little live-action section where actors jump out at you - and we all know how much I like being jumped out at! But I made her go first and it wasn't too bad.

Then we made a quick stop at the Sherlock Holmes museum (which was just a little shop, not even a museum!) and headed off to my choice for the day, Highgate Cemetary. Sharon was overjoyed to have someone who actually likes cemetaries to hang out with, and I was pleased because I meant to go there last year but didnt' quite get to it.

Highgate was amazing. The tour guide was a German living in London and she really knew her stuff. It was this overgrown, falling-down cemetary with miles of amazing old Victorian graves, most with moss growing on them or vines climbing around them. I got a ton of pictures. Defintely a trip I will do again in the spring, when the flowers are out.

Tonight we're realizing Sharon's dearest wish and doing the Jack the Ripper's London tour. (She really didn't want to go alone, since it's after dark). Should be interesting.

You would think from her list of interests that Sharon would be some black-eyelinered Goth kid, but she's actually a Native American happily married mother of two, doing her PhD at Cornell. She just happens to like really dark things. She's had a pretty interesting life of it and it makes her really fun to talk to.

Oh, and one more thing - I tried the Pile o' Grease breakfast today... and it included Fried Bread! Unbelievable. And I thought nothing could be worse than McDonalds...