The Best 24-Hours Yet

Harry Potter was amazing. My friend Sarah and I started the line for the 8pm showing of the movie and were consequently the first ones in the theatre, grabbing spectacular seats. The atmosphere, needless to say, was electric, and the experience of watching a movie in a British theatre was fantastic. They show a lot more trailers than they do in America, but other than that nothing was different. Everyone laughed and cheered and cried at the appropriate parts so it felt like I had not one, but at least 200 other friends with me.
After getting done with the movie at around 10.30, we made it back to campus. I decided to keep an account of my expenditure thus far and I am pleased to report that my spending has been minimal. If I continue at this rate, I will have saved about $800.
I had to be up by 6 am this morning for our much awaited trip to Hampshire, which is Jane Austen Country. We took the tube to the Waterloo Station, boarded the train to Alton and alighted at Alton. The English countryside, needless to say, is breathtaking. The villages that we passed were quaint and charming. Alton is about an hour outside of London, so the train ride was rather short. At Alton, two taxis took us to Jane Austen's house. It is supposedly a cottage, but it would more than do for a house, in my opinion.We watched a brief video about Jane Austen's life, and then we were free to explore the house. The gardens that surrounded the house are magnificent. They impressed me marginally more than the house itself.I mean, look at that. And it was like that all over. It was amazing. They had spice bushes growing too.
The house is ancient. The floorboards creaked terribly and I was afraid of falling through them. The experience of being in the same rooms where Jane Austen wrote most of her books was...exceptional. Everything in the house is set like it would have been during Austen's time. It has displays with information cards; however, they were pertinent to the rooms. I even got to see a lock of Jane's hair! Although it was faded to a blonde from the original auburn. This is the most famous writing desk, where all the magic happened.I had seen it many times on television but to see it in front of me was mind-blowing. This is where she sat and wrote. If she were alive, and there, I would have given her no elbow room. That's how close I was. Anyway, there were several family heirlooms on display, the bedrooms were done up as if it were back in the day.
After the house, we walked to Chawton House, which belonged to Jane's brother, Edward Knight. Edward also owned the cottage in which Jane lived, but upon the death of Reverend Austen, Edward let Jane, her sister Cassandra and her mother live in the cottage for free. Chawton House is claimed to be the inspiration of Austen's novel, Mansfield Park. The grounds are expansive and very beautiful. We then had lunch in the gardens (a cheese and tomato sandwich with pink lemonade). A friend and I went across the street to the Greyfriar's Pub to kill time, and I tried a real ale (London Pride) upon the suggestion of a professor back home. It was...nasty. If I never have to have beer/ale in my life, I will be happy. After lunch, we headed to Winchester to see the Cathedral where Jane Austen is buried. It was a true Gothic cathedral and it was phenomenal. We saw where Jane Austen is buried. There's a gold-plated plaque on the wall commemorating the spot. That was the last thing we did for the field trip. The train ride back to Waterloo was very crowded owing the evening rush. A quick errand to Marks & Spencer on Oxford Steet later, I was back on campus. The computers are working again, thankfully, and so a friend and I were able to research hostels in Scotland. After about 30 minutes of searching, we are booked at a Brodie's Backpackers Hostel for £12 a night along with 3 other friends. We leave to Scotland at 7 am tomorrow and we plan to be back in London by 6 pm on Saturday. I am very, very excited and I doubt I can get much sleep tonight. The hostel is supposed to have an internet cafe, so I may be able to update things from there.
I was planning on having pictures along with this post, but the image uploader is malfunctioning, and I will have to postpone displaying all my beautiful pictures until a later time.