Adventures of an Anglophile: Oxford and Cambridge

Today was...very tiring. I didn't get to sleep until 3.30 last night, and after that I was woken up by drunk, belligerent people outside my window at 4.30 in the morning yelling at each other. I had to wake up by 7.30, hurriedly get dressed and go down to breakfast to meet the others. We managed to leave on time, but it took me the entire ride to Cambridge to finally gain some consciousness. The weather, thankfully, was very good and I was able to enjot being outdoors. Cambridge was a fantastic college town. It reminded me incredibly of Boston, minus the paved roads and skyscrapers. Cobblestone streets everywhere, ancient yet beautiful architecture for each one of the colleges of the university and tourists were what met our eyes. We took a sightseeing bus tour that gave us a brief history of the place, including information on the University system at Cambridge. It sounded very serious (all students get a private tutor), but very exciting. It was at Cambridge that Watson and Crick found DNA, and Rutherford opened up the nucleus of an atom to discover its contents. We didn't have very much time planned for Cambridge, because Oxford was going to be the focus of the two places. We got t-shirts, walked by the River Cam and ate Indian food for lunch, after which we left Cambridge to get to Oxford. Unfortunately, it was 2.45 by the time we left Cambridge, and for some reason there is no train that runs between Cambridge and Oxford. So we had to come back to London King's Cross, take the underground to London Paddington and then go to Oxford.
We didn't get to Oxford until almost 5 and proceeded to walk fast to the city centre to try and make it to as many attractions as possible. I really wanted to get an Oxford sweatshirt, which I did get, so that was one thing off the list. I wanted to go to Blackwell's Bookstore, which is 3 stories of amazing books for really cheap prices. I had been saving diligently so I could splurge here. Unfortunately for me, the bookstore was closed when we got there. That kind of put me in a bad mood for the rest of the trip. We didn't get a proper tour, but one of our group had been to Oxford before and gave us a brief introduction to the buildings that we saw. It was very similar to Cambridge, except there didn't seem to be much else to Oxford than the university itself. There were two main streets, but perhaps because of the lateness of the hour, we couldn't witness much of town life. We walked to Christ Church, which was used for filming the Great Hall in the Harry Potter films. Again, it was closed to tourists, and we could only see the exterior of the building. I was thoroughly disappointed. Oxford had been something I was looking forward to incredibly, and we only had about 2 hours there, and we couldn't do anything to improve the experience. So we boarded the 7pm train back to London Paddington, at which point I promptly fell asleep. We got back around 8pm, got back to Hampstead and ate at a local joint- Wetherspoons. By local, I mean very London. It's a chain all over London, but it has really good, really cheap food and drinks. All of us were incredibly tired at this point and finished our dinners only to come back to campus to relex for the night.
As of this minute, I have less than 36 hours left in London. There is still a lot I want to see, in spite of the fact that plans are in place to see and do a lot of things tomorrow. I am very sad to be leaving, but the fact that I have unfinished business here only warrants my coming back to London some other time. For now, I'm going to do some packing so I can relax with my friends tomorrow and enjoy our last day in London.