London Alives, Bookstores, and Covent Garden 7-5-08 & 7-6-08

My first London Alive was with the Children's Lit. professor, who seemed to have a bit of an obsession with Harry Potter, so she was a good choice for the Leaky Cauldron tour. I met some Children's Lit students on this tour that are in my flat at the dorms. We walked across Waterloo, into Trafalgar Square, up Charing Cross, to Cecil Court, where there are a bunch of second-hand bookstores. Another library student and I decided to try and find 84 Charing Cross Rd., so we went to where it should be, but there is now a Pizza Hut there :(. So we were going back to meet the group and we kind of got lost, but found our way back to them in time to continue with the tour. We then went to Foyle's Bookstore, which is the largest in London, and I think, in the UK. I got a couple of handy pocket maps, and then we had coffee in the coffee bar on the top floor of Foyle's. By then, the London Alive tour was over, but I stayed with the professor and two Children's Lit students, and we went to the Border's across the street from Foyle's, and then we made our way to Covent Garden, went through St. Paul's Covent Garden (also called The Actor's Church), where there was a symphony practicing, and then we went to a nice Indonesian/Mediterranean restaurant for dinner.

The next day I was supposed to go on the London Alive Towering Spires, Creepy Crypts tour with the Shakespeare teacher, but only made it to St. Paul's with her. She apparently has a morning routine everyday that involves speed-walking, but half of our group could not keep up with her, so we got left. It ended up being nice though, because it gave me the chance to use the map I had bought at Foyle's and figure my way around. I was with 3 Children's Lit students, 2 of which I had been with the day before, so we walked down Fleet Street, passed Lloyd's of London, the Royal Courts of Justice, and found our way back to Trafalgar Square and St. Martin in the Fields Church, which was the last stop on the London Alive tour. We then ate lunch and went to Oxford Street in search of cell phones, which we found.