The Royal Wedding

Royal Wedding pictures!

Amsterdam!

Wohoo! Figured out how to do slideshows! Be forewarned: there’s a lot of pictures.

May Day!

I don’t think I have ever before thought, Oh hey, it’s the first day of May! Lets go out drinking, stay up all night, and in the morning listen to a choir sing on top of a tower and watch the police try and keep idiots from jumping off of a bridge into gross, bacteria-infected water.

Apparently, I’ve never experienced May Day in Oxford before. This is actually an annual occurrence.

This is after a week and a half of spring break in Rome and Ireland, a weekend in Amsterdam, and a weekend in London. Whew. Okay, another all-nighter. I can do this.

Around 9pm I headed over to Beth and Mark’s apartment for a late dinner where everyone was gathered and casually talking or helping with the cooking. Wilson was throwing spices around in the kitchen “Hey! I’ve improved the Amsterdam pasta recipe!” Ally was in the dining room and had improved the Amsterdam garlic bread. And this time there was an actual oven! Ohh this was going to be good.

A full stomach later, and after some good conversations about cigars, Bourbon, and high school acting careers, we headed out to the city center. We walked around for a bit and most everyone wanted to go to a nightclub. I’m not a huge clubber, (especially when I’m in my jeans and chucks, well prepared for a night of potentially sleeping in a park, but not so well prepared for a night of  being crammed in a room where you can neither move nor hear.) Judy didn’t want to go either, so we walked around quiet streets in between high stone walls, dimly lit by old fashioned street lamps where we talked. We met up with Robert, and the three of us started walking. By this time, it’s one o’clock in the morning, and my adventuring spirit had kicked in. “Quick this way!” I pointed towards a dark path nearly overgrown with foreboding trees. Robert and Judy glanced nervously at each other. “Come on! Where’s your sense of adventure?!” For some reason, they followed me, and we spent the next few hours wandering around residential areas, watched ducks on the Thames, and trying to scare Judy with ghost stories. We also stopped to pet Reginald the hedgehog, who was quite the gentleman.

Hedgehogs feel like soft twigs.

Around 4am we found Alex, and headed back to Cornmarket street to meet the rest of the gang. We found a spot near Magdalene bridge (pronounced Maudlin. Don’t try and ask why – you’ll just get blank stares. “Because it is” has been the best answer so far.)

We listened to the choir, and spent a good half hour trying to get through a solid wall of people. I was too tiered to wait for the bus, so a few of us walked home, and made it to our beds by 8am where we slept for the rest of the day.

It was quite the eventful May Day!