"Nothing is certain in London, but expense!" - Shakespeare

This weekend, we headed off into London, and since I finally had a camera again to take pictures with, I was probably slightly more enthusiastic than I may have been otherwise. The journey there was particularly enjoyable because of the leather seats with extra leg room on our coach! This was welcome, because our coach left at 7:15, and thus we were able to fit in some much missed sleep from the night before. When we finally arrived, it was about 11:45, a significant delay from our itinerary, but we didn't really seem to have minded the extra hour of shut eye. The city was pretty much as any city is, especially close to a major center of transportation: loud, busy, and unforgiving. We made our way towards the nearest tube station, which also happens to be the busiest. After about a 20 minute queue, we purchased our three day tube pass (one of the smarter things we have managed to do), and headed out towards our hotel. The tube is the easiest way around the city, but can be enormously expensive, if you do not have some sort of discount: £4.00 per journey. The card we bought, for £16.50, allowed us to travel unlimited for three days, in zones 1 and 2, which covers anything you would want to see- a real bargain!

We opted for a hotel this time, since there were four of us, and splitting the cost of one room four ways was actually about the same as staying in a hostel. Of course our hotel was a bit stripped down, and we still had to share a community toilet and shower, but on the bright side, we didn't have to share a room with twelve of our closest strangers, and the hotel actually included a full English breakfast each morning! Once we had checked in and settled, a bit, we headed out towards the major sites. Coming out of the underground, we were amazed to see the London eye right there, in front of our faces, until we turned around and saw Big Ben literally towering over us, a mere 500 meters away! After recovering from the shock, we walked a bit further, past Parliament, and towards Westminster Abbey. We decided to go inside, and have a look around, despite the £7.00 price tag! The abbey is amazing, and unfortunately you are not allowed to take pictures inside. This is the case with most cathedrals in Europe, but Westminster was unusually diligent about enforcing this rule. Inside are monuments to almost every famous and significant person in British history, not to mention the graves of people such as Queen Elizabeth I, and her sister, Bloody Mary, as well as authors like Dickens, and Composers like George Frederick Handel. There is so much in the abbey, that it is literally just piled up on itself, in every crease and crevasse left inside! After wandering around for a bit, we made our way towards Piccadilly Circus, or London's version of Times Square, but far less impressive. It was interesting, but defiantly over rated! We soon met one of Justin's friends from high school for dinner. Dan is actually studying in London for the semester, just a few blocks from where we were staying. We opted to head to china town, where we had the most expensive bad Chinese food I have ever had in my life. At £10.00, this should have been excellent, but I think the bad Chinese food in mall food courts would have suited us all better. It was now that we decided that London defiantly lives up to its name as one of the most expensive cities in the world! The rest of the night we just hung out with Dan, in his flat. We attempted to head out with him later, but we were rejected for the first time since being in England, to a bar, and instead we opted to go the local pub for a quick pint before heading off to bed.

Saturday we took one of Dan's recommendations, and went to the Tower of London. He had warned us about the cost, but said it was well worth it. After dishing out the £12.00, we headed inside and waited for the tour to begin. One of the coolest things about the Tower of London, (apart from its history of torture and death), its its rich tradition. The tour guides, are actually known as Yeomen Warders, or Beef eaters, members of the Royal Armed Forces, for 22 years, and trained in history. The Beef eaters are all incredibly charismatic, and enthusiastic, and actually live on the premises within the Tower of London! It was really interesting to listen to the history, and see the arms stores, the old palace, the chamber of Anne Bolelyn, and Queen Elizabeth, as well as other tyrants. You also get to see the various methods of torture known to the towers, and the crown jewels, not to mention an amazing view of the Tower Bridge. Once we had finished there, we headed across the River Thames, to the Globe, and the Tate Modern Art Museum, where we just looked around, before getting back on the tube towards Harrods. Harrods, was crowded, hot and over priced- not to mention there was demonstration going on out-side against Harrods selling of real fur products- making the area even more chaotic. Even still it is cool to be able to say that I was there, and I wish that I had bought something small to bring back-maybe when I am back there in June! The inside is, as well magnificent, and the most interesting thing we saw, was actually a memorial to Princess Diana, and Dodi Al Fayed, with her engagement ring, and the wine glass she drank from the night she died at the Ritz. After a stroll through Hyde Park, we went back to the hotel for a quick rest, before heading out to meet some of our fellow exchange students from Wolverhampton for dinner on the other side of the city.

Sunday, we went to the Imperial War Museum, which was thankfully free. It was incredible! There was so much to see and do, that we could have spent all day in there, but instead, we hit the highlights, so that we could meet Dan again for the British Museum before the left. Outside the museum is a chunk of the Berlin wall, while inside are thousands of artifacts, including hundreds of planes, tanks, submarines, and trucks from throughout the twentieth century. We went to the exhibits on WWI, WWII, British Espionage, and the Holocaust. All of it was really well done, and I wouldn't hesitate to go back again. Later we went to British Museum, which was enormous, to say the very least! It basically holds all of the items that Britain has pillaged throughout its years of conquest. There are items from Africa, Ancient Egypt, the Americas, Asia, everywhere. There is so much, it is truly daunting to try to see it all. The highlights were probably the Rosetta Stone, which unlocked the key to deciphering the Hieroglyphics from Latin and Hebrew, and the Parthenon. Yep, thats right, the Parthenon, a huge ancient Greek Temple is in the British Museum! Well, sort of. Most of what is significant is in the Museum, including all of the sculptures, and arches and such. It is really incredible, and much more controversial than I had realized. Apparently, the Greeks aren't particularly happy that the British have such a significant part of their heritage and history on display in their national museum- who'd of thought. After the British Museum, we were exhausted, and made our way towards our hotel to pick up our things, and grab some dinner before we met our bus back at Victoria Station.

London is definitely a dynamic and fascinating city, with a lot to do and see, if you're willing to dish out the cash. Personally, I think Paris still remains my favorite, but that does not diminish the outstanding character and history and London, and I am excited to go back!

Liverpool

On Saturday, we made our second trip through the international office here at Wolverhampton to Liverpool, home of the Beatles. Although a really fun little city, we didn't have enough time to truly explore it intricacies- but maybe a second visit is in order. We started out at the Beatles Story... a museum dedicated to Liverpool's contribution to pop culture. It was a must-see since we were in the Beatles hometown, but it left much to be desired. It was crowded and poorly planned out, with few true artifacts of the Beatles careers. Even with this, it was cool to see some of things that contributed to their fame, and success, as well as their eventual demise.

After that, we headed to some place Justin had read about for lunch. It was hard to find, and although the prices and food were great, the smoky atmosphere, and crappy service sort of ruined that. Once we were done, we headed to the Cathedral, the second largest in England, which boasts the worlds largest, and highest bells. It was ENORMOUS to say the very least. I wish I had pictures to show, but even that wouldn't do it justice. We roamed around for a bit, and then decided to pay the £2.50 to get to the top of the bell tower. The way up was claustrophobic, but once at the top, it didn't matter. Because it was a beautiful day it felt like we could see forever, and the view of Liverpool was amazing! Well worth the money, far more so than the £7.00 spent on the Beatles Story.

Once we were done with the Cathedral we headed to the Tate Gallery, a modern art museum close to where we were meeting our bus. Modern Art is over-rated...thats really all I have to say about that experience. Overall, Liverpool was a very cool city though, and I hope we get a chance to go back, because there is so much more to explore, and I feel like we didn't come close to seeing the best of it.

This weekend we are heading to London, and I am supposed to get my camera tomorrow, but thats what they have been telling me for a month now it seems, so we'll see. Hopefully, I will have pictures to share with you in my next post- and therefore I will perhaps be more motivated to write something, with images to go along with my descriptions. Cross your fingers folks!

Bath

So, I have been negligent of my blog, and for that I apologize. As many of you already have figured out, about a week and a half ago, we made our first weekend trip to Bath and Stonehenge. We were nervous about being able to leave, because Wolverhampton had a 'major' (for Wolverhampton 2" is major) snowstorm in the few days before we left. We were all (Heather, Justin, and I) looking forward to getting out of town though, because the rareness of the snowstorm left people a little nutty, throwing snowballs, and eggs (one of which managed to bounce off of Justin and explode all over my coat, resulting in a desperate search for a dry cleaner). In any case, when we finally left, Saturday morning, I was happy, despite needing to trek through the slop on the roads, to get out of town. (Let me remind you that because the two inches was so significant, the city had no real feasible way to take of the white stuff.) Luckily, once on the train, everything went smoothly, with the exception of a short delay in Birmingham, and a noisy family on the bus.

Once in Bath, we found our hostel, and headed inside to check in...easier said than done. Apparently there was a rugby match, leaving the pub below our hostel packed, and impossible to get through to check in at the bar. It took a while, but we checked in, and dropped of our things in our 12 person room, then headed out to find some food. Unfortunately, because of the game, every pub was packed, and subsequently, every place with a cheap meal. We finally found a Pizza Hut, and settled for some good American fast food, and some shelter from the rain that was now falling. After we were sick of the Pizza Hut, we decided to venture out, and explore a bit, which didn't last long, because of the weather. Luckily, the hostel had a living room type place in the attic, with lots of movies, and internet access- needless to say, we opted to stay there until we were ready for bed.

We headed out early on sunday, taking advantage of the continental breakfast at the pub downstairs (whose coffee was questionable at best), before heading out to the Roman Baths, despite the rain. The baths, are really more like ancient spas, a luxury only available 2000 years ago thanks to the natural hot springs in the area. It was incredible to see the roman aqueducts and drains still working 200o years later! The complex was enormous, and there are so many artifacts left over that we can still see. There was a counter where, for 50pence, we could taste the water. It was nothing special I promise, but nonetheless, something I suppose we had to do. Supposedly it gives you good luck, which was why it was so popular in roman times...because of its healing power...but I don't know about that, since I stayed pretty sick the rest of the weekend.

After the Baths, and a quick lunch, we headed off on our tour to Stonehenge. The drive was really pretty, and we stopped at a small town called Lacock, which had an old abbey, and is supposedly where Harry Potter's parents house was filmed or something, it was cute, but small. Once we got to Stonehenge, I was pleased to see that it was exactly what I had expected- a bunch of rocks in a field. Not to be cynical by any means, but every poster and printing of Stonehenge depicts it exactly. It was cool to see first hand, and amazing to think that it was build so long ago that we don't even know why...but nonetheless, it was rocks...in a field. It was worth seeing, but I don't know that I would ever really feel the need to go back. There really is nothing around it, but grass, rolling hills, a lot of sheep, and a small tourist shop and ticket counter. After taking probably 75 photos of the rocks in different angles in different lights, and listening to the audio tape headset, which every destination in Europe seems to provide,we headed into the little shop, where they had everything you would ever need, including a do-it-yourself origami scale model of Stonehenge. If it wasn't so damn cold and windy out, it would have been a toss up as to which was more amusing, the shop, or the rocks.


Monday was our last day in Bath and we reserved it for a free walking tour of the city, and some shopping. We made it to the tour by 10:30, and followed the delightful older man around in the mist for about two hours, seeing all of the sights, including the house where someones cousins uncle once lived, or something...really this guy knew it all. Despite the sometimes meaningless fact, the tour really was quite enjoyable, and it was interesting to see how the city had evolved since the Roman times. Once our tour finished we made our way to the Bath Abbey which is in the center of the city and where most believe the first King of England was crowned! We got in for free, because the man collecting "donations" felt bad for us poor college students and we wandered the church for awhile. After the brief tour of the abbey we grabbed some lunch and walked around several over priced stores, and starbucks. (this part I'm stealing from Justin- sorry) By 3:00 we were completely bored and very tired, so we grabbed some pre-made sandwiches from the supermarket for later and headed to the bus station to catch and early bus back to Bristol (which has a brand new station) to wait for our bus back to Birmingham and Wolverhampton. Once the bus finally arrived and loaded at Bristol, about 30 minutes late, the 2.5 hour bus ride from hell began! Lets just go through the list:
- switching seats with a couple with a baby
- kids screaming and jumping over the seats
- a group of people (who made the bus late to begin with) yelling across the bus at each other
- after be so nice to switch seats, the drunk Scottish ex-con woke up and talked the whole way (even with headphones on!)
- 20 min smoke break after being on the road only an hour
- not getting to Birmingham to catch another bus till 10:30pm
But, we finally made it home safe and sound to our beds which could never have looked sooooo good!

In general our first trip was success, I wish I hadn't gotten sick but it was successful. Hopefully, by this weekend, I will have my camera, so I can post some picture of the exciting places we have seen!

So it's been a while...

Well I know it haven't updated in a while...so here it is:

Classes started last week, and after much debate and confusion over my classes, my schedule is finally settled, and I have a lot of free time on my hands. I started off last week thinking I was taking courses that are completely different than what I ended up with, but I am excited about my semester a head of me now. I was planning on taking french here, but their language department is so confusing that I really couldn't figure it all out on my own. I thought I wanted to be in a certain class, and went to the first class meeting, and no one else came. No students, not even a professor. So I emailed a woman whose name I received from the exchange office here, and she filled me in a bit more, but once she sent me the work for the course, I decided that French maybe wasn't for me this semester. Let me explain. EVERYTHING was grammar, there was nothing even on the agenda for the semester about culture, or literature, or spoken french, it was all grammar, somethings I had finished with my third year of French: and to add insult to injury, on top of the three hour lecture each week, there was a mandatory two hour tutoring session. No thanks. So now I am taking a course on the impact of Vietnam on the United States, a course on Terrorism: its many forms and the complexities of understanding why people do it, as well as how terrorism is defined (something I thought was straightforward, but after three hours of a professor explaining that every society and culture has a different understanding of, I understand is not so straightforward.) My last class is a bit less intellectually taxing, and it is a class called Being Bad. It is a philosophy course that talks about the way society views certain actions and activities to be bad. We are not talking about major crimes, just slight habits, like smoking, gambling, tattoos, etc. The class is also supposed to discuss why people do things they know society sees as bad. Each week we are supposed to discuss a new "bad" activity. It should be interesting to say the least. I am still getting used to one day a week classes, but I enjoy how in depth you can get in one three hour session, instead of two hour and a half long sessions, like we have at home. I also like that I only have class on Tuesday and Thursday night....but thats another story. One thing I am nervous about is that there are so few assignments, a mid term and a final basically, and not knowing how the grading works, and having so little direction in when to do things makes me happy to know I only need to get a C for the credit to transfer back to Keene.

On a lighter note, this Saturday, Heather, Justin, and a Swedish girl named Frida went into Birmingham for the first time. It is much larger than I had imagined based on the airport, but then again, it is second largest in Britain, only behind London. There is a tram that runs from Wolverhampton city center to Birmingham city center, and takes about 20-30 minutes, and we opted to take that over the train, mainly because of the location of the tram station. It also costs £3.80 and comes every 8 minutes.

Birmingham may be known as an industrial city, but there are also some pretty older buildings too, which look cool next to the ultra modern newer architecture. One of the most notable places we saw this, was at the Bull Ring shopping center, an enormous three level indoor/ outdoor mall larger than anything I had ever seen. They had a store in the mall that not only had food from the states that we can't get here, like Fluff and Aunt Jemima pancakes (way over priced), but they also had a Krispy Kreme restaurant! The line was too long, so we stuck to our starbucks, which we were happy to see were everywhere! Some of the stores, like the gap, were American, but some where new and Heather, Frida, and I enjoyed peeping into them. Justin on the other hand was more excited when we walked down to Victoria Square, and there was a HUGE screen playing an England v. Ireland Rugby game! I have to admit it was pretty cool to see people standing around and watching this game, that is impossible to explain to anyone back home. That night we had dinner in a pub, and went back home exhausted from the walking.

On Sunday, we tried to watch the Super Bowl, but with the time difference kick off was at 11:30 at night, and needless to say I didn't make it through the game...I'm not sure if Justin did or not.

This weekend we are planning to visit Bath, and Stonehenge. Hopefully I will have pictures of this trip to post for you all!