Five Guys and Fries

So, I'm rooming with five guys. There are three other flats: a group of four guys, a group of five girls, and a flat with both professors and Dr. Mitchell's son. All said, it's a good group.

Overall, my flat works pretty well together. All of us eat surprisingly healthy. All of us are trying to exercise regularly. All of us are reasonably clean, reasonably quiet, reasonably amusing, undeniably attractive, etc. While the last is a joke, the point is we seem to be a pretty good team, which is rather nice and somewhat unexpected.

Dr. Gritta really likes to play tour guide, so he takes us out a lot and points things out while giving us a brief history. Yesterday we went to the Sherlock Holmes pub where almost all of us proceeded to get a Sherlock Holmes Ale. We also walked past parliament, Westminster Abbey, and Buckingham palace. Apparently we will be touring Parliament and Westminster Abbey at some point, but Buckingham palace isn't open to tours except in the winter because the crowds get too large for them to be manageable during any other time.

We have Oyster cards with unlimited Tube rides for zones 1-3 while we are here which is really nice. My flat is five minutes from the Warwick tube stop, which is in zone 3. I'm pretty well right in the middle of London though so it's pretty easy to get most places. Consequently, I managed to go dancing Thursday night and it was only 5 or 6 tube stops away. Dancing was fantastic, although a little bit expensive. On the other hand, everything is really expensive here. I cringe when I think how much money I've already spent, but on the other hand my burn rate is decreasing as a number of my initial expenses won't immediately reoccur. For instance, with food I had to buy a number of things like olive oil, some herbs, ginger, etc - so the expense is heavier up front but the use of that expense is over an extended period of time. Nevertheless, everything is really expensive :-(

Anyway, I'm off for now. There's plenty to do before we head out at 10:00 to travel around Greenwich.