I guess it’s been about a month since I last updated. The first week or so of April I was still recovering from the chest infection, but it was a darn good excuse to stay in and rest, but also to get work done. We’re now fully into the dissertation period, and I have my second meeting with my supervisor next week. A lot of time has been spent in the library! Spring is in full swing, which means lots of rain, which inadvertently helps me focus on work. I’ve also gone to a few Indian dance classes in the evenings, like bhangra and bollywood, just to change things up a bit.

And come Saturday April 21^st, Mom & Dad arrived in Leicester! This was the vacation I was waiting for. We spent the weekend in Leicester and I showed them some of my favourite places around town, including the open market and Mrs. Bridge’s Tearooms. This allowed them to get over jetlag before we headed off to our next destination, Oxford. Oxford has plenty of museums to explore (Ashmolean, Pitt-Rivers, Natural History), we toured through one of the many colleges, and ate at the same pub as CS Lewis and Tolkien, ‘The Eagle and Child’ (apparently they nicknamed it ‘The Bird and Baby’). We took a day out to visit Blenheim Palace, home of the Duke of Marlborough, and although it rained on and off all day, we still agreed it was our favourite day.

We celebrated my birthday the night before we left for London, with dinner at a Jamie Oliver restaurant, and banoffee pie for dessert (an English thing with bananas, cream and toffee). The rest of the trip we spent in London, seeing the sights. We attended a service at Westminster Abbey, and visited the amazing Churchill Museum and Cabinet War Rooms. We of course visited many other museums, and I enjoyed the ‘Dickens and London’ exhibit celebrating 200 years since his birth. We spent a day in Greenwich, devoted to astronomy and all things maritime. Dad and I sat in the public gallery at the ‘Old Bailey’ to see the men in white curly wigs and black robes. And possibly best of all, I got us some £10 theatre tickets for ‘The King’s Speech’ at the Wyndham Theatre. I wish I could go to the theatre every weekend…

The beautiful Blenheim Palace