It’s been a crazy week! I’m sure it’s not the last time
you’ll be hearing this from me but it honestly was incredibly busy. I’m not
quite sure where to start so I’ll just take the easy way out and go
chronologically. (This one’s gunna be long, guys, sorry).
Tuesday was another disappointing Performing Culture class
followed by an amazing outing for my Theater Arts class. We went out to St.
Alban’s (a city that’s close to but not actually inside the realm of London) in
Hertfordshire. It’s one of the oldest (if not THE oldest) cities in England
because it was one of the first places the Romans established when they
invaded. We got to see the remains of an excavated roman amphitheater and some
of the surrounding area along with a brief tour of the little museum. It was
really neat to see how things first started out and man, those Romans were
SMART. Unfortunately, I forgot my camera that day so until Bree can post those
pictures on facebook, I don’t have any. But after our tour we were allowed to
take the city by storm and head back whenever we wanted. Of course by this
time, all the walking had made us all starving so we found a pub with one of
the best deals we’ve seen yet: 5 pounds for steak and a drink. We filled up the
tiny 18th century pub and ate our fill of 8oz steaks. Contrary to
what I was told, British beef tastes exactly the same as American beef to me…It
was by far the best meal I’ve had here…That was, until today…More on that
later.
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| Roman Temple Remains |
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| Quintessential British Man-Dr.Fosdal |
Wednesday was boring class work but Thursday was a bit more
interesting. There was another painfully boring Music, Culture, and Identity
class in the morning directly followed by a walking tour with my British Life
and Culture professor. And this time I even had my camera. We visited the
remains of a Roman temple that was found in the heart of the downtown financial
district when they were laying the foundation for a new building. It’s quite
odd to be walking between all of these really modern and quite frankly,
impressive buildings and then suddenly stumble upon a blocked off area of
temple remains. I’m continually amazed by the age of this country. Coming from
a place where new is better, it’s nice to spend some time in a country that
appreciates and celebrates the old. The tour was really interesting and we got
to see a lot of things that weren’t touristy but that were genuinely
interesting things that I’m glad I learned. For example, there’s a wall in
Postman’s Park set up as a memorial to everyday people who died doing heroic
things. It just had their name, occasionally an age, and how they died. It was
started in the late 1800’s and still has plaques as recent as 2007.
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| Hero Memorial |
After the tour, we had to rush back to our rooms to get
dressed for a show. One of the girls who works for CAPA managed to get us FREE
group tickets to a new show in town but failed to mention that it was over an
hour away. So naturally we all rushed back to get dressed, skipped eating, and
ran out to the show. We were ten minutes away from the theater when we realized
it had started fifteen minutes earlier and there was no way they’d let us in.
We felt bad but at the same time, it was a chance to explore a part of the city
which we had yet to venture to. We ended up having dinner at a pub and getting
some information about a comedy pub across the street. It was pretty nice to
have a somewhat relaxing night out with everyone together.
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| Stonehenge |
Today, though, was probably my favorite day of the trip so
far-our excursion to Stonehenge and Bath. We had to be at CAPA at 7:50 this
morning which wouldn’t have been so bad if the tube hadn’t had a twenty minute
delay. We waited for about ten before deciding to half walk, half run the
distance to CAPA. We were told the bus was leaving promptly at eight and would
not wait for any stragglers. We made it roughly on time and boarded the coach
for our two hour journey during which we mostly just slept. We got to
Stonehenge relatively fast considering we were unconscious for the majority of
the drive. I don’t have too much to say about it other than it’s much bigger
than I had expected. I don’t even think my pictures to it justice. It was
definitely interesting and very surreal. We had forty-five minutes there before
heading off to Bath, another hour drive away.  |
| For more of my new favorite city, please see Facebook |
Let me just say, the hour drive
was worth it. Bath is officially the prettiest place I have ever seen. It truly
feels like some sort of utopian city. If I ever win the lottery or marry rich,
I will most definitely be visiting Bath more often. I wish I could have gotten
a shot of the city from the bus because it’s built in a valley and the city is
actually owned by a conservation program to keep it as historical as possible.
Driving in, you can see down into the valley and because they want to keep it
looking historically accurate, every building and house built in the city
limits has to be made of the same kind of stone. Literally it’s a valley of
honey-colored buildings with spots of the most beautiful gardens. I could go on
talking about this city for hours. For Katie-Jane Austen lived there when she
wrote Persuasion and Northanger Abbey. For everyone else- The Romans came and
occupied it for the natural springs (hence “Bath”). We did actually go see the
springs and the bath and everything but I was probably more impressed with the
city. Roman artifacts start to blend together and if you haven’t noticed, we’ve
been seeing a lot of roman stuff this week.
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| OMM NOM NOM (Except the tomatoes) |
We got to split up and do whatever after a quick walking
tour of the city. The group I was with headed toward probably the oldest café in
the city- Sally Lunn’s. It started out in 1680 with this older lady who learned
how to make crescent-like hamburger buns, for lack of better terminology. The
picture should help me out a bit. We had high tea there and some really expensive
but incredible food; my BLT definitely topped the sirloin steak. Afterwards, we
headed out to the Jane Austen museum but since not everyone wanted to pay the
price of admission, (dumb) we stuck around the gift shop which will be making
Katie extremely happy come Christmas time. And since we had some time left
after that, we did what we like to do best-shopping! I found an old ice cream
parlor and wondered in looking for Nutella but came out with a double scoop,
chocolate-dipped cone of Chocolate Truffle ice cream. Let’s just say that Dad
and I have some experimenting to do because that stuff was AMAZING.
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| Delicious ice cream |
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| Dancing with my new friend Isaac |
Afterwards we danced to an amazing street performer and
headed into the Roman Baths. They were pretty neat as far as baths go.
Personally I just wanted to jump in the giant bubbling pool. But I definitely
thought it was interesting walking through the rooms of the temple itself. They
were still intact so you really were walking through Roman rooms from way back
when. That was definitely more interesting than just more artifacts. At the end
of the tour, we got free glasses of the spring water which, by the way, was
disgusting and smelled of rotten fish. But now I can officially say I’ve tasted
nasty natural hot spring water that the Romans used to bathe in. Not everyone
can say that, you know.
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| The main pool |
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| The indoor pool |
We got back pretty late-it’s actually 12:15 now so we must
have gotten back about three hours ago. We’re all pretty drained but I think we’re
going to explore Camden Market in the morning and China town for lunch…Possibly
hit some museums up tomorrow afternoon. We’ll see.
On a random side note-My Pride and Prejudice dvd is officially
history. It’s five years old and it’s lived a lovely, well-used life but since
it’s refusing to get past the first ten minutes without freezing, I think it’s
time that we part ways. That being said, my Christmas list this year is just
cash but if anyone feels weird about that, I’m now in need of a new copy of the
2006 version of Pride and Prejudice.
I think that’s all. Sorry guys, you’ll just have to get used
to long essays! Have
a good weekend!
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