After getting off the plane and going through customs at London Heathrow (which thankfully went off without a hitch), I got on the Tube and rode an hour to King's Cross Station in central London.
Once I got there, it was absolutely packed. See, instead of printing the time and platform of departure of your train right on your ticket, they have this huge electronic board in the station, and everyone stands around it, waiting for their train info to show up.
Mine finally appeared after about 45 minutes, and gave me possibly the worst news I got all day: while there is usually a train that runs straight to Cambridge, it was not running today. (Evidently this is pretty common on Sundays.) Instead, I needed to take the Peterborough train to Stevenage, then catch a connecting bus to Royston, and then get back on the train to Cambridge. It sounded like a pain, but not all that bad. I caught my train out of King's Cross, which was unfortunately under construction, but I could still see some vestiges of it's Harry Potter glory as I waited on platform 6.
But, boy, was I wrong. WHAT. A. NIGHTMARE. There were so many people trying to so the exact same thing as me, and I had two very heavy suitcases to deal with. Fortunately, however, I arrived in Cambridge a few hours later, tired but still atleast still alive.
I arrived at the porter's gate of King's College, where I was directed on how to pick up my keys and such. I went and registered and then made my way to my room. I have lots of pictures of King's and the gorgeous architecture here, but I'm not going to post them quite yet. I need to pace myself (otherwise there's just wayyy too much to say in this post), so I'll do a post later about the college and my room once it's in a photographable state. I went up to my room and dropped my stuff, but I didn't really want to stay and unpack. I had been told there would be a welcome dinner at 18:00 (that's 6:00 for all you Americans), but I knew I desperately needed a shower before then and I hadn't brought shampoo, a hairdryer, etc. So I set off into the city to go for a walk and try to find a Boots.
The city is absolutely beautiful, and looks exactly the way I imagined it would. It actually reminds me a bit of Edinburgh (where I will be going on Thursday!!!)....
On my quest for Boots, I happened across a farmer's market in the town square, and was actually surprised to find that they have pretty good looking fruit around here, so I will definitely be making a return trip. I also located the grocery store and some other handy places within walking distance... although really, the whole town is within walking distance, which I love. The weather is also gorgeous ( a lot like Palo Alto), and because we're so far north, we get a lot of daylight. The sun didn't set until well past 9:00 last night, and rose at about 5:00 this morning. Anyways, I found Boots and bought my stuff, and went back to my room to get ready for dinner.
They didn't tell us the name of the hall we ate in, but I'm going to just refer to it as the Great Hall for obvious reasons.
It was very pretty, but also way too small to fit all of us. Tons of people (including me) had to eat outside, but it was cool to at least go in and look around while we waited in line for food.
And then there was the pub. A group of girls had decided to go out to the pub for a drink, and though I was exhausted, I knew I'd regret it if I skipped out on it. So we all got dressed and went out around quarter of ten, and ended up at a pub just around the corner from King's called the Eagle.
We ended up having a great time, mostly thanks to our new BFF, Shane the barman. I didn't feel much like drinking, but I didn't really want to look back on my first real pub visit and think "Why didn't I get something?!" So I ended up ordering a half-pint of an ale shandy, which is basically ale and carbonated lemonade. It was really good, but Shane tells me it's so low in alcohol that in some places it's considered nonalcoholic and kept telling me I should get a pint. But we stayed at the pub for about two hours, just jabbering away at a steadily increasing volume and having a great time.
We had to leave because the pub started closing (it closes kinda early on Sundays), but we promised Shane we'd be back. The first formal hall is tonight, and all the girls want to go out afterwards, so I have a feeling I know where we'll be ending up.... :)
We left the Eagle and walked the grueling two minutes back to King's, where we all promptly passed out from exhaustion. I had been up for almost 33 hours by that point, but it was well worth it.
Lectures start today, and, like I said, the first formal hall is tonight, so there will probably be another post quite soon about all of that. Until then, cheers!!
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