Three day weekend... And then some.

The weekend started out so lovely, and spiralled downhill rather quickly. I flew to London Friday afternoon to meet my sister, with whom I took a coach bus to Birmingham where she is currently studying. I was supposed to be back in Montpellier by Monday morning but here it is late Wednesday and I've only just gotten back, by a couple of hours. To blame is the worst snow storm to hit London in 18 years. This paralysed the city, stopping all trains, planes, and coaches, and frightening other drivers out of going anywhere. This left me stranded at Victoria Station, with no way of getting to the airport to even check the status of my flight.

I'll start off with the good parts of my trip. We got into Birmingham late Friday night, and took a bus back to her flat. Saturday she showed me around Birmingham during most of the day. We saw mostly the famous shopping areas and parts of the city halls and medieval churches. Part of this included Bullring, a large shopping mall which attracts many visitors. We saw a film and had dinner at a Japanese restaurant before going to the Birmingham Hippodrome for the main reason I came: the Pantomime. Panto is quite a popular form of theatre in the UK, and Brum is supposed to have one of the best, if not the best. Adding to that was the fact that the star of this year's show (Robin Hood) was John Barrowman, an excellent singer and actor, whom the nerd in me absolutely adores for his roles in Doctor Who and Torchwood, two of my absolute favourite scifi shows. This was the closing weekend, and therefore my last and only chance to see it - my sister had already been four times! The show was absolutely amazing, and we ended up buying tickets for the closing performance on Sunday evening as well! Since it's Panto, the show is slightly different every time so it's worth it to see it twice.


Sunday we started out by going to Selly Sausage, a restaurant near the University of Birmingham campus that serves American style pancakes - "pancakes" in Britain are actually crêpes. It was a nice treat, and thus I was quite full as we headed towards our next destination: Cadbury World. Birmingham is home to the main factory of Cadbury chocolate, and they offer factory tours with plenty of exhibits on the history of chocolate and the company itself, as well as free samples. This is honestly the only kind of milk chocolate I will eat - I'm usually a dark chocolate snob. I'm not sure what they do here, but they have such unbelievably tasty chocolate! And of course, there's a little shop at the end so I bought some crème eggs and jelly babies. After that we had a little time to kill before going to the theatre, so Sam took me to the local comic stores so I could totally nerd out: they have so many Doctor Who toys here (which makes sense, since it's British) which are nearly impossible to find in the states! It was a great time killer, just staring at them all... Panto was great again, and after the show we went back to her campus, where we joined with other people from her programme to watch the Super Bowl. I was a bit disappointed in the outcome but overall it was a good game and I was glad to have the chance to watch it, even if it meant no sleep Sunday night.


So I took a coach back to London Victoria in the wee hours of the morning, expecting to get there just in time to hop on a train for Gatwick airport. The bus was running just on schedule, but I was a little surprised looking out the window as we were getting into the city to see it snow - I had heard it didn't snow much in England; but it was still kind of pretty, especially since I won't be seeing it again in Montpellier. We got to the station with plenty of time to spare so I ran towards the platform. Imagine my surprise to find what was pretty much a ghost town, save a large mob of people around a few screens. All services were suspended, the screen said. I was shocked. Back in Minnesota, this tiny amount of snow wouldn't even faze us, and here they were cancelling trains, schools, flights? Amazing. The people working at the station were just as lost as the rest of us, and any alternative transport was unavailable as well, but finally around noon a single train left for the airport, and I was on it. The problem of course, is that my flight was supposed to have left before that, and I had no idea whether it had been cancelled or if I had just missed it. I did know that I had already missed my Monday class, no hope for that one. Getting to the airport, I found queues miles long, and employees telling me my flight was one of the few that had not been delayed or cancelled, and had indeed left (I later found that this wasn't the case - after shelling out €100 on a new route.) The next flight for Montpellier wouldn't leave until Friday morning, being a flight that was only offered 4 times a week. I ended up booking the first flight to the south of France, 7am today to Toulouse, and reserving a train ticket to get back to Montpellier. There was absolutely nothing I could do about any of it, so I decided to stop worrying about the classes I was going to miss and instead enjoy this extra day in London I had been given.


I took a train back to Victoria, getting there around six. Since I hadn't slept in almost 36 hours, I decided just to find a cheaper hotel or B&B in the area and crash for the night. There are a lot of hotels nearby, but they are all quite small and it took some doing to find one with vacancies that wasn't too expensive. I finally found one and settled in, watching the BBC for a few hours before falling asleep. Tuesday morning I had breakfast at the hotel, then returned to Victoria to make sure I was able to get back to Gatwick (luckily I was able to use the same ticket on account of the weather delays) and leave my bag at the left luggage counter. This left me free to explore the city. I walked first to Buckingham Palace, then Wesminster Abbey and Parliament where Big Ben is, which is also near the London Eye. I had no real aim after that so I ended up walking all the way along the Thames to the Tower of London. It was quite a long ways, and I was exhausted! By this time, the underground was again running normally so I took the tube to Canary Wharf, where I basically just hung around a while, then again to Piccadilly circus. I had been there once before, but that was over ten years ago and I didn't really remember it. It's probably changed too, I'm sure.

I decided to walk back to Victoria from there, which took me near Hyde Park and past St. James Park. Unfortunately, by this time it was dark and the park was closed, but I was amazed at the statues and such I did see at Hyde Park Corner. I took the train from Victoria around 10, getting to Gatwick just before 11. Since I could check in around 4am for my flight it was easier just to wait at the airport trying to sleep a little there than to get a room anywhere. After that my trip was uneventful... Early morning flight to Toulouse, from where I took a bus to the train station and a train to Montpellier. I had only about half an hour in Toulouse, which is too bad because I probably won't get back there. I tried to enjoy what little of it I saw - it is a nice looking city, but so are most of the cities I've seen in the south of France. I got back into Montpellier only to find out that from today there is some sort of strike; the classes I thought I would miss were actually cancelled! That of course doesn't help with the ones Monday and Tuesday I did actually miss, but luckily I know other people in my programme who are able to help me catch up. So I guess now I've had quite the travel experience... Even if it disrupted what I was supposed to be doing and horribly deprived me of sleep, I still managed to have fun in London!