Spring in London

I am slowly recovering from the sickness that ruined my birthday but I have a persistent phlegmy cough that is probably going to stick with me for a while. On Sunday, I went to the Oxford University-Cambridge University boat race on the Thames. This is an annual 8-man rowing event and the exhibition of the rivalry that exists between the two universities. Close to 300,000 Londoners crowd the banks of the Thames between Putney Bridge and Chiswick Bridge (that's us there in the photo at left). The race lasts about 18 minutes and we saw them come by us just past the halfway point to much cheering and yelling. And the sun was even out for the occasion! It was the first time I’d worn my sunglasses for quite a while. Oxford was the unexpected winner, much to the disappointment of the Cambridge-heavy crowd I was standing in.

We continue to battle with noisy European travelers at all hours of the night. Sunday night brought about 50 Italian 12-year-olds (whose leader lied to the owner of the hostel and said they were all 18…) who were in the room across the hall and several others along our corridor. They were honestly running up and down the hallway, yelling and screaming and making monkey noises ALL NIGHT Sunday. Attempts to ask them to be quiet resulted in doors slammed in our faces. I even woke up their leader (who was blissfully sleeping in a room three fire doors away) but he seemed to care less than the kids themselves. At 5am, they all left the rooms with all of their luggage making even more of a racket than before. Turns out their airport bus was picking them up so instead of going to bed early and getting up early like most normal people, they’d stayed up all night. (Although I do recall a time or two in South Africa on a Bel Canto tour that we did the exact same thing although hopefully not at that decibel level.) I finally fell asleep around 5:40am – not good for my sickness. I had a few words with the owner (who knows us all pretty well by now and is generally pretty great about things) in the morning and was just about ready to pack my bags and go stay at a hotel just so I could get some sleep and start to get better. This hostel sucks.

Naturally, we are trying to finish up all of our work and this week has been beautiful with mostly to partly sunny skies nearly every day so not much work is getting done during daylight hours, which now extend until nearly 8:00. London is at her best right now under a blue sky and with her flowers in bloom. I’ve been eating my lunch in various parks and squares and have had some great conversations with the people on the surrounding benches. Deck chairs have appeared in all of the big parks and for a small fee, you can sit in one for a couple of hours. The Science Museum has a great exhibit on Pixar animations right now, it has a lot of great drawings and models from the developmental stages of the movies and a couple of great interactive visual installations. I took in a London Symphony Orchestra of Elgar, Mozart and Brahms at the Barbican Centre on Thursday night and spent a day wandering around the Docklands where I got yelled at and chased away for taking pictures! The photo above is of the St. Katherine's Estate in the Docklands, a recently completed Richard Riogers building. It looks like the sky is inside it!

I spent Friday in Cambridge which felt a lot like Oxford but a little bit smaller. It is a city inundated with bicycles and has the narrowest sidewalks I have ever seen. King’s College Chapel is breathtakingly beautiful and I was extremely disappointed that my visit did not coincide with term time so I could partake in evensong. It’s so amazing to have read about and studied these places in books and then finally get to experience it first-hand.

I’m getting excited to leave London next week and see some new cities and VERY excited to see my dad in Oslo! I miss my family.