Tower Bridge, Big Ben, and the London Eye -- a brief look

I'll start with where I left off last night: The Hollins Library (well, mini library. I want to see the real ones very soon. I intend to make a bucket list. Anyone have ideas? Leave them in the comments!).
After I'd written my blog post, two of the girls in my year came in. I wound up chatting with both of them -- particularly the taller of the two, who I'd met before. It was a very nice conversation and at some point the girl who had already been in the room before me joined in too. We talked about all kinds of things -- everything from books, Shakespeare, and religion, people (human nature, to be exact) etc. It was refreshing as well, since both girls are extremely academically smart (meaning only that they are extraordinarily bright and like to discuss intellectual subjects more than the average person). Our conversation lasted for several hours, and by the time we were finished it was time for the faculty-student dinner.

That was really fun too. They had egg roll-ish things, mini burgers, and fishy looking things. The burgers and egg rolls were quite good. During the dinner, I spoke to the Professor of my Acting Shakespeare class. He seemed excited about the class and wore a yellow tie. That is all I recall. After that, I spoke a lot to one of the girls from before. This time, we really spoke in detail about favorite Hollins profs in the English Dept and fantasy novels, which we both have an interest in. Once again, it was a great conversation and I enjoyed it tremendously. At the end of the night, we all headed back together to the metro and turned in for the night.

This morning we met at our school to go on a bus tour of London. Our tour guide was pretty fantastic and we saw a bunch of major sites along with a smattering of history.

We started out by talking about how in the academic district, where our school is, there had been a lot of writers, most notably, (and closest) Virginia Wolfe and Charles Dickens.

I won't go into all the details, (because honestly, lots were fun facts and I don't remember all of them) but here were some of the highlights --

Tower Bridge. I really loved seeing this and we got out and walked around for this one. It just seemed so majestic and imposing. I loved it.  

Across the River, was the Tower of London, which apparently wasn't as bad as people made it out to be since it hosted other events other than beheadings. According to our guide, there was 35 such beheadings. The most famous being Catherine Howard, Henry's 5th -- and 19 year old -- wife. Still, if you ask me, that's too many beheadings for one place. And it's a shame. It's so pretty from the outside. Fun fact? Elizabeth 1 and Mary, Queen of Scots were both kept in the tower as political prisoners. 

The water was so pretty . . .

We got to drive past the London eye as well.

Personally, I thought it was really beautiful. Very symmetrical.

Another thing I really enjoyed seeing from the Bus was the Big Ben, also for its majestic quality. 

And that's all for now folks! We saw plenty more today, but as I'm sure you all have google I won't post any more of those pictures here, since it was more of a glimpse of the city.
Hope you've all enjoyed! Until next time!

~ E