2/2/12
No Class today!! Haha, now I am a little saddened by this, because classes have been awesome so far, and I adore my Professors, but there is just something spectacular about wandering about a city and not having to focus on one specific thing. It just so happens that this city which I have the pleasure of exploring is London (I know that everyone who has read this had already deduced the fact about where I am currently living, but I like to restate this fact over and over for myself).

Now I should really be more clear, exploring the city is a great treat, but the hussle and bussle of the city was not my calling today, today was a great day for the park, no not a park, THE park, Hyde Park. Home of the Peter Pan statue, Hyde Park has been my favorite site so far. More on this later.

The day started off a little slow for me. Once again I slept in quite a bit later than my fellow ACM students, and my roommates once again were up and moving before I was, lucky for me I get ready fast and was all set to go at the same pace as the other girls.

Our first stop today was a place where we all, as I believe I can speak for everyone, have been wanting to be since about the age of 11 as we (some not so) patiently waited for our acceptance letter to Hogwarts on our birthdays. Sadly that day never came for any of us, but that did not stop us from attempting to commandeer the train...

Almost made it!

 Unfortunately my cart only made it halfway through the barrier before the spell wore off and I missed the Hogwarts Express :( Sad day for me. I tried to force my way through on my own but that only resulted in a slightly bruised shoulder. Oh well, I was able to build a memory which I will hold fondly with me along with all of my other dreams of being Harry, Hermione, and Ron's best friend.

When the group was done being disappointed about missing our magical adventures we split up to explore other areas. And now we are back to the story of Hyde Park. Jenna, Hannah, and I got to the park around noon. When we walked out of the tube station we saw some pretty awesome buildings and statues

As well as some pretty horsies

After a little bit of wandering we finally came over to the main gate leading to the park...

And this park was beautiful!!! I love it so much, I have already decided I am going to have to spend a bit more of my free time here just wandering around and absorbing everything it has to offer. We didn't have all the time in the world and it was really cold out so we only went to check out one side of the park, but we still found so many wonderful things.

Fountain of Boy and a Dolphin

Fountain of Artemis

Bridge over the Serpentine

Princess Diana Memorial Fountain

Closeup of Peter Pan

The happiest person in the world by her Peter Pan statue

The park was just amazing. If I lived here I'm pretty sure I would go there everyday, I want or more need to spend more time there. I have waited as long as I can remember to see the Peter Pan statue and now that I have I feel drawn to that spot. It is my new area of tranquility. Alas, the day goes on and we eventually needed to leave, but I will be back.

We took a different way out of the park than we did to enter which is such a great thing, because there was a beautiful surprise waiting for us just a short walk out of the Park.

This is Albert Memorial, obviously made in honor of Prince Albert by his wife, Queen Victoria. It was just breathtaking, this picture and every other picture I took does not do it justice, and believe me I took a lot of pictures of it. Another surprise we came across when we turned around was...

Royal Albert Hall. There is a Cirque du Soleil showing here, which sadly we are not scheduled to go see. We finally made it back to the tube so we could go back to our  flat and relax, and for the first time since I got here I took a nap, it was AMAZING!!! It felt so great and I woke up in time for some dinner before we all left for a puppet show that we had tickets to. It was a bit of an adventure getting out there since we couldn't decide which tube line to connect at to make it to the theatre but we eventually got there, with 5 minutes left to go in until they locked us out. Yay us!

The show that we saw was called The Devil and Mister Punch and it was very interesting. It took a lot of thinking in order to keep up since there were a few side stories within the play but overall I enjoyed it very much.

That is all for me today. I need to attempt to sleep tonight and recharge for another great day in the city!!