We're In!!!

Possibly the most exciting part of our third day in England was finding out that:

WE HAVE MADE IT THROUGH THE QUALIFIER!!!!!

Yes, the Bowdoin men will officially be competing in the Prince Albert Challenge Cup. What does this mean for us? It means that the for next week, instead of worrying about Friday's qualifier, we will be practicing daily on the Thames river with our sole focus being on our first race which will now be July 3rd.


But besides that, we had a wonderful time traveling around London! We left by train From Henley on Thames bound for Paddington station at 10 this morning. We split into multiple groups for the early afternoon. Coachie, Edie and Cal went off to do some shopping and dining, while Tucker, Trevor, Chris, Jen and Mark made their way through London. At just before 2, the lot of us met at the Coat & Badge, a wonderful little pub nestled just along the Thames River, in the heart of London. The Coat and Badge is just next to the Putney Bridge, the start of the Oxford Cambridge Boat Race. There, we found out through what little Wi-Fi we could scrounge that we had been waived through the qualifier. We were then able to celebrate with some wonderful London Bowdoin Alumni who had come to join us in enjoying some heavy hors d'oeuvres.

 



Afterwards, Coachie and Edie headed back to Henley, while the boat wandered around London. We took the Overground rather than more of the Underground (which I've been told is a very Londoner thing to do, although we did have the help of a couple Bowdoin alumns...), stopping at Waterloo station, a block or so from The Houses of Parliament, Big Ben, Westminster Abbey and the London Eye.

 

 

We ended our adventures in London by walking down the mall to Buckingham Palace, and were able to see the guards ornate in their solid-gold embroidered coats and bear-skin hats. Sadly, we then had to bring our adventures to an end so that we could be sure to catch the 7:40 train back to Henley on Thames.