Every time I write a blog, I think, “Wow, this has been my favorite week so far in London.” And this week is no different!

 

It’s been a stressful time at work right now for the magazine. The staff was originally told that press week, the week where all our finished pages must be turned into the printers, was next week until we got a call saying it was this week. Lovely. After everyone had a mild heart attack, we got down to work. I have been calling jewellers furiously all week doing our monthly survey of their best selling watch and jewellery brands. All I can say is, some people are quite rude. Oh, and it didn’t help that nobody was in at work on Monday due to the massive amount (4 inches) of snow that made all of Great Britain complain for days.

 

Wednesday our class trip took us about an hour and half outside London to the beautiful town of Oxford. We took a tour of some of the colleges and then had some free time to wander. Oxford University has about 20 or so colleges, all named differently. There is no specific building that you can pinpoint as “Oxford” which I found interesting. It is also interesting that up until 8 years ago, attending a university in Britain is free. Yes, free. Until Tony Blair decided paying £3000 pounds a year was good enough. In other words, I could potentially save my family a whole lot of money by moving to Oxford, meeting some smart lawyer and calling it a day. Sigh.

 

We also ate at a pub called the Eagle and Child, which was frequented by many famous authors. One of them was the guy who wrote Lord of the Rings (I think). Anyways, I was too busy devouring my fish and chips (in a lady-like way, of course) to pay attention to anything of historical value. After our 3 hour tour of Oxford beforehand, I was just ready to relax.

 

Upon returning to London, I called more jewellers and collected lots of numbers for our survey. By Friday, I was sick of people telling me to stop calling, so my friends and I decided to go to the HAHA bar. All we knew that it served American drinks (martinis, margaritas). We stumbled in to find all cocktails were £3 until nine. After that, we went to the university pub, relaxed and headed home.

 

Saturday morning I was woken up by my near and dear friend Hayley at 8:30 AM. I was very cranky, but we ventured out to find cheap theatre tickets. Once I realized how much “cheap” really meant, I decided not to buy any. We spent the rest of the afternoon in Portobello  Market and it was the most amazing market, full of jewellery, food, veggies, flowers, antiques and anything you could imagine. We then stopped at a café for a traditional English breakfast. (If you want to see what this entails, click through the links to my pictures at the end of this post.)

 

Sunday included sleeping in, lounging, complaining about how our flat never gets internet and going to the Tate Modern Museum. I love Modern art and had a wonderful time enjoying some great exhibitions.

 

Monday, I went to Pure London, a huge exhibition show for fashion stores, jewellery shops, shoe and accessory retailers and even some food samples (yum!). I walked around, talked to jewellers about how they felt the show was going, collected press packs and handed out our new February issue of Retail Jeweller! It was nice to get out of the office for the day and take on a project for the magazine.

 

In the mean time, CHEERS!