Parting is such sweet sorrow

Alright, so we're now writing about Tuesday, my last day in London.  At least with all of my friends and the Center, which at this point is what I'm concerned with.

So I was planning on going to hang out in Hyde Park in the morning to walk about and maybe read my scriptures on the grass, but somehow my phone managed to not go off.  Or maybe it did and I didn't hear it because I was so deeply asleep.  My body woke me up at the usual 8:00 instead, which was a bummer, but whatever.  I had breakfast, showered, and got ready to go.  I was planning on going with Amy, who wanted to do some shopping before going to the British Museum.  But then we're standing there ready to go and Corey casually mentions that he's going to the zoo.  Sydnie and I jumped at the idea and said forget the shopping that we didn't really want to do anyway, and we headed off to the zoo.  Took a nice walk through Regent's Park on the way, so I did get my park walk in after all.

Me at the reptile house.  Of Harry Potter fame.  The very same.  

We spent about four hours at the zoo, and it was one of the best things ever.  We just walked around and looked at all of the animals and watched a lioness stalk and pounce at a duck, otters jumping inside of logs and playing, walked through a tunnel filled with butterflies that tried their best to bowl you over as they fluttered about looking for nectar, and watched penguins stand at attention as a procession passed between them.  It was just a lot of fun.  Probably one of the just plain old funnest things that I've done in Europe.  It wasn't ultra historical or intellectual, so we could just enjoy ourselves and be young people.

Anyway, when we were done with the zoo we were absolutely starving, because it was 2:30 or so and we hadn't had lunch.  So we went over to Camden Market, as it was the nearest food source at hand, and bought lunch and sat down for a while.  Then we went to go look for fruit of some sort, and who should we find walking past the fruit stall we're at but Amy!  She was looking for a bag, so we stopped and chatted for a minute.  But then I realized that it was getting nigh onto three thirty and that I really needed to go to the British Museum.  So I parted company with all of my dear sweet friends (who are usually very sarcastic and not sweet at all, which is one of the reasons that I love them so much) and went off to the British Museum, which is probably the least British place that I've been this whole time.

It's a big blueish-green man with a strange looking goatee.  I'm guessing that's significant.

Props to whoever gets that movie quote first (although I'm not sure what you need a prop for).  Yeah, but for those of you who don't know, the British Museum is full of really cool historical stuff from other countries.  Chunks and broken statues of the Parthenon, random mummies from Egypt, a really cool room full of pictures from an Assyrian lion hunt from sometime around 400 BC, you know.  That sort of stuff.  I saw the Rosetta Stone, which was kind of cool.  It was the only thing, just about, in the whole museum in a case.  Okay, not true, the mummies were in glass cases too.  Everything else they kind of trust that you aren't going to touch.  I spent some time just wandering through the rooms, because I frankly didn't have the energy to get super excited about whatever aspect of history I'd be learning through the plaques next to the objects.  That's what happens when you go to millions of museums in just a couple of weeks.

Anyway, the museum closed and I went on back to the Center, stopping at one of those stupid touristy shops on the way to get some souvenirs.  They're stupid, but we're all getting them.  After dinner we kicked around the Center for a while before going to Paul Rhodes to get brownies, which were good but definitely not the most amazing thing I've ever had.  Anyway, eventually Sarah and I mustered up the energy to go for one more nice stroll.

Beautiful lights!  That's London bridge behind my shoulder.

It was seriously one of the most beautiful things that I've done.  Walking along the river, just enjoying London and reminiscing about everything that we had done was so incredible.  We walked past St. Paul's, and the Globe, and London Bridge, and the Tower Bridge, and the Tower of London, and all of these things that I love so much.  The first week that I was here in London I did essentially the same walk, and it was beautiful then.  It was so much more beautiful last night, and it was a very cathartic sort of thing to do.  Nostalgic one of the girls at the center called it.  And the best part was that we were still discovering corners and nooks and crannies that we didn't know about before.

Anyway, we caught the very last train home on the Tube (we were worried there for a minute that we weren't going to make it, but London's just too beautiful to tear myself away from).  Because it was so late (past midnight) there wasn't anyone else in the Tube car with us, so we took pictures.  Yes, so I've got pictures of my on the Tube!  It was totally fun.

Reading the newspaper, because that's what everyone does on the Tube.

It was the perfect end to my London experience.  It's terribly sad to leave the Center and all of the beautifully wonderful people that lived here with me.  It's sort of like leaving Girl's Camp for the last time right before I moved to Utah.  You're never going to get this same group dynamic again, and never back in London.

However, what I've learned most from London is that Emily's statement of "but you HAVE to.  We're in LONDON." can apply to lots of different things.  Why not say that we're on Earth, so we have to?  Seems sad to stop living and loving just because I'm leaving London.  Which is why, ladies and gentlemen, this blog is going to be revamped whenever I reach America again ('Merica Sydnie) under the new title of Living and Loving Life.  Because really, isn't that what it's all about?