I’m back in France after a long week traveling in England and Wales, and I saw lots of exciting things so get ready for a very long entry. My photos of everything that follows can be found here:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2010037&l=946ea&id=1158900089
and here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2010038&l=d91f1&id=1158900089
Now, the traveling. I left Avignon Friday, February 15th. I took a train to Marseille, then a bus to the airport there to wait for my plane. Another girl from my program was leaving around the same time, so we did check-in, security, and then lots of waiting around together. She left a little bit before me, and then I waited another half hour or so until my plane left. It was the first time I got to walk out of the airport and then climb the stairs directly into the airplane (instead of just walking down the terminal into the airplane), so that was very exciting. The flight was on time, which I very much appreciated, and it was a quick flight, only about two hours. Once I arrived and gathered my luggage, I exchanged a traveler’s check, which was a very painful experience. For $50, I was given ₤20.10. ₤3 had been part of the commission, but even so the exchange rate wasn’t exactly good. I had a few hours until my bus left for Wales, so I bought myself a salad and two pints of real, refrigerated, non-UHT skim milk for dinner. The milk was delicious. J There was a little confusion with my bus, since they had me changing buses at Heathrow and both arriving and leaving there at the same time. However, it turned out that the bus I was going to change to stopped at Gatwick, so I just boarded that right away and no change was necessary. We got stuck in London traffic, so it was an even longer bus ride than expected, but after almost 6 hours I arrived in Swansea, Wales.
In Wales I was staying with Ruth and Padraig, friends of my family. It was wonderful to see them, since I don’t think I had seen them in over a year, and it was even more wonderful to speak English while I was there. Despite being the rainiest city in the UK, I actually had sun every day that I was there. All the signs in Wales are in both English and Welsh, which I thought was very neat. Of course, my understanding of Welsh is non-existent, so it all looked more or less like Parseltongue to me. On Saturday, they took me to the cliffs along Swansea bay, and it was absolutely beautiful. It looked like I imagined Ireland must look like: very green, with the sound of the waves quite peaceful. We drove down to Rhossili beach after that, which is also along the coast. There’s a shipwreck from the 1700’s buried in the sand there, along with a long beach. We stopped for tea there (the British really do love their tea, and I discovered while I was there that I’m quite fond of it as well) before heading back to the house.
On Sunday I went to church with Ruth and Padraig. It was my first time at an Anglican mass, but the mass felt infinitely more familiar than the Catholic masses in France. I suppose the fact that it was in English helped. Ruth and I walked down to a shopping center that afternoon so she could show me the way to the bookstore. I can entertain myself for hours in bookstores, which was my plan for Monday. After dinner that evening Ruth went to work and I baked banana bread. I’ve missed having a stove that I can cook with, so I was very excited to have the chance. I also watched a skating show called Dancing on Ice, which is a skating version of Dancing with the Stars. It was entertaining, and I have to give them credit for doing lots of lifts to hide the fact that really, none of the stars could skate at all. I saw maybe one double three turn sequence and that was the extent of the footwork; some of the stars couldn’t even handle crossovers. I also watched a Snooker game on TV with Padraig. Snooker is generally like pool, but with much more complicated rules and much more strategy involved. I got quite interested in it, and Mark Selby came from behind to beat someone O’Sullivan.
Monday I did return to the bookstore, which was a lot of fun. I spent several hours there browsing around and had a terrible time narrowing down my book selection, but I eventually decided to get Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook. I had fun looking at the British versions of the Harry Potter books, and they also had a Latin version of the first Harry Potter. At first I thought it had to be a joke, since the title had something about “Harrius Potterus”, but no, the whole thing really was in Latin. I also looked around at some clothing stores. I really liked the styles, but due to the whole exchange rate problem, even the clearance items were out of my price range. For dinner that evening we went out to TGI Friday’s which, while not exactly Welsh, was still delicious.
Tuesday morning I had to leave for London, and I was quite sad to leave Wales. I felt like that was as close to home as I would get until May when I go home, and I felt homesick as I was leaving. I took a bus to Heathrow to meet up with my cousin, Annie, who was flying in for a week. Based on pure luck I managed to find her without too much trouble—I had randomly picked a terminal to try, and as I arrived there I saw her walking by. We took the train to Paddington Station, and as we were walking to our hotel for the first night, I saw a store with a big stuffed Paddington Bear. After checking in, we went to go find food, and then we walked around Kensington Gardens, which weren’t far at all from our hotel room. There are several of parks and gardens in London, and they’re all HUGE. Chicago probably has more in quantity, but theirs are much larger and have many more statues and fountains. It was really impressive, and it was all beautiful. London has flowers blooming already, as well, so apparently the whole snow concept is a strictly North American thing. I found a Peter Pan statue, which was pretty cool. By this time the sun was starting to set and it was getting cooler, so we went back to our hotel room to get coats. Afterwards we took the Tube to a bookstore, where we browsed for quite a while until we were overtaken by hunger and we got dinner. We ate at a place called Hummus Bros, and the hummus was delicious. When I get myself out of debt from this trip and earn enough money to go back, I’ll definitely be making another stop at that restaurant.
Wednesday we got up early to start our first full day in London. We were going to take the Tube, but it was still the peak hours (tickets are more expensive before 9:30a), so we walked through Kensington Gardens towards Buckingham Palace. The palace itself wasn’t that exciting, but there was a gorgeous statue across from it. We then walked through another garden towards the Houses of Parliament. We soon stumbled across Big Ben, which was very cool, and then we went into Westminster Abbey. Once you get over the creepiness of Westminster Abbey essentially being an indoor cemetery, it’s very cool. It’s amazing to see how old it is, and to see tombs of so many famous people. I loved the Poet’s Corner, which is where tons of famous writers are buried. At one point I glanced down and saw a sign that said Chaucer was buried there, which felt very surreal. I also recited part of Tennyson’s Lady of Shalott over his grave, and that was just awesome. There’s another church that’s connected where Winston Churchill is buried, along with several other Prime Ministers. The gift shop, which had outrageously priced items, was also entertaining—they had Christmas tree ornaments for each of Henry VII’s wives, and I was sorely tempted to buy those. After Westminster, Annie and I made our way over to a Tube stop to go to a used bookstore. As we walked by Big Ben again, we got to hear it strike noon!
On our way to the bookstore we looked around a market for a little bit, and they had some really cute things for sale. The bookstore was very cool (and things were actually in my price range!), and we enjoyed ourselves there. We then stopped over at Hummus Bros again for lunch (hey, when you can find a delicious and cheap meal in London, there’s no reason to look for other restaurants), then took the Tube further outside the city so that I could see the house where Sylvia Plath lived. Yeats lived there as well, and then later Sylvia Plath moved in. People still live there, so we couldn’t go in, but I was really excited just to see the outside. We walked along Regent’s Park to get back to a Tube stop, and the park is absolutely beautiful. The gardens are gorgeous, and they had tons of statues and fountains there, as well. We walked by the London zoo, where I saw an ostrich for the first time in person. I had always thought they were larger than they really are! Once we got to the Tube stop, we took the train to King’s Cross, where we had a photo op at Platform 9 ¾. That was exciting, too! After that it was back on the Tube to Covent Garden (which is actually not a garden, more like an outdoor shopping center with some public spaces as well). Covent Garden is where they filmed the opening of My Fair Lady, and although I thought I saw where that was, everything in the area looked like it could’ve been a part of the film, so I wasn’t sure that I actually saw the specific location. There was a street performer there juggling, doing tricks, and riding a unicycle. He was really funny, and I enjoyed watching it. We browsed around the shops before deciding they were all out of our price range (it’s a very touristy area), and then we left for St. Paul’s, where we were hoping to hear the boy’s choir sing Evensong. Unfortunately, it turns out it had been at 17:00, not 7:00, so we missed that. The church was still beautiful, though, and I was excited to see it. We went to get dinner, then went back to the hotel and fell over exhausted from our long day.
Thursday morning I woke up still quite tired out, but I was determined to get a run in. I was glad I went, since I ran around Kensington Gardens so I could see more of that, and it was absolutely beautiful. I loved seeing all the statues and monuments—so much that I rather lost my sense of direction, and in true Katherine style, got lost. I suppose I’ll just be glad that I can say I’ve been lost in both France and England now. I wasn’t actually that far out of my way, just a bit further West than I thought, but one woman I asked for directions scared me and told me I was miles out of my way. She also sent me in the wrong direction (South instead of East), but I saw a lagoon I recognized on my way there and turned around. It just ended up being a much longer run than I had planned—a little over an hour. On the up side, I now know that I can run that long, which I didn’t know before. Annie and I ate breakfast (it’s included at the hotel) and then checked out, since we were off to spend a night in Bath. We took a bus from Victoria station, and the ride was pretty uneventful. The driver did give us a lot of background information on the cities leading up to Bath, so that was interesting to hear.
We arrived in Bath and had no sense of direction, so we took a taxi to our Bed & Breakfast. I absolutely loved it there. It was absolutely beautiful. We stayed in the Pink Room, which was decorated in pink and complete with a drawing of the view from outside our window, entitled “View from the Pink Room”. Pictures of the room can be seen at the links above; I was so excited that it had to be photo-documented. After getting settled in, Annie and I headed to Sally Lunn’s for tea. Sally Lunn’s is I believe the oldest building in Bath, and it’s named after a woman from the 1500s or something who was a famous baker. Her recipe for buns is still used today, and according to everything we read, it was an essential visit in Bath. We got tea with the buns, and the tea was absolutely delicious. The buns were quite good, as well, but the tea was incredible. I’ve discovered that I really like tea with milk in it, and that will probably become a habit once I get back home. I’m really not a fan of the French tea—it’s very bitter and doesn’t have much depth of flavor. We had a nice time at tea, then wandered over and found a half-price bookstore that kept us entertained for another few hours. There were some amazing deals, and I had to restrain myself from buying out their entire section of classics, all priced at a reasonable ₤1.99. After leaving there before we could spend all the money in our bank accounts, we did some wandering around Bath, which is an absolutely beautiful city. The architecture is amazing. There’s a bridge with shops over the length of it, lots of old churches, beautiful stone work, and then the Bath Abbey. The Abbey is incredible, and I discovered that I had retained some knowledge from my history class freshman year when I was able to correctly identify part of the architecture as flying buttresses. We stopped for dinner at a pub where I had delicious baked cod, and then we went back to our gorgeous room for the night.
Friday morning I got up early so that I could take a luxurious bath—I was, after all, in Bath, plus I was just really excited to have access to a bathtub. It was quite relaxing and enjoyable. Annie and I went down for breakfast, which began with fresh fruit. The fruit tasted incredible, and we also had some tea, then an omelette. I was in heaven, and I will recommend this place to anyone who goes to Bath. It’s absolutely a fantastic place to stay, and it wasn’t that expensive at all. It was the same as the hostels we stayed in while in London, and infinitely nicer. We then checked out (sadly), but left our luggage there for the day and set out to walk around Bath more. It was just a bit cloudy, and though it looked like it might rain at any second, it didn’t. I successfully survived my time in England without getting stuck in the rain once, and that was pure luck on my part. We saw the house where Jane Austen lived while in Bath, which wasn’t at all far from where we stayed, and that was very neat. We wandered around the Royal Crescent, a curved row of houses behind a huge grassy area, which was beautiful. We did some window shopping (and stopped in another used bookstore) after that until the Jane Austen Centre opened at 11am. The Centre was pretty cool, and it had a bunch of costumes from the PBS version of Persuasion on display, so that was cool to see. That said, the exhibit wasn’t as thorough as I had expected. It focused mostly on Jane’s time in Bath and afterwards, and while I suppose that makes sense considering its location, I was expecting more details. I suppose I’ll just have to go to Chawton, where she lived for quite a while, next time I’m in the area!
After visiting the Jane Austen Centre, Annie and I walked back to get our luggage, and the owner of the B&B very kindly gave us a ride to the bus station. Given that it was windy and a bit chilly, we appreciated that quite a bit. The ride to London was quite long, especially since we hadn’t eaten lunch. We finally arrived around 7pm, about 9 hours since we’d eaten breakfast, and we were quite hungry. We took the train to our hostel for the night, which was sadly not as nice as the B&B in Bath. Then we set off in search of a restaurant we’d found in one of Annie’s travel guides. It was called Jakob’s, and it had Indian and Persian food. De-licious, as was most of the food I ate while traveling. I had chicken and eggplant parmesan, with an eggplant salad and a Greek salad. For anyone who may be in England and who is fond of eggplant, you will appreciate knowing that eggplant is known as aubergine there. Aubergine bewildered Annie and I during our entire stay until that last night when it finally clicked. The meal also came with delicious bread, and we got dessert since we hadn’t had dessert the entire time we’d been there. It was getting late, and we were tired, but I was determined to accomplish something my last night in England, so we went down to see the Tower of London, where Anne Boleyn was killed, along with many others. It’s more like a series of impressive buildings and fortresses than a tower, but it was awesome to see it. We also walked across Tower Bridge, which is absolutely beautiful (as long as you don’t think too much about the fact that it’s a bridge—I’ve always been rather terrified of bridges over water). From there you can get a nice view of the Tower of London as well as a view of London Bridge, which was not falling down, but instead lit up. Finally giving into exhaustion, we went back to the hostel, where I very promptly crashed.
Saturday morning I had to get up early to catch my flight back to France. *sigh* I was sad to be leaving the country of English-speakers, but it had to be done. I took the Tube to Victoria station, then took an express train to Gatwick. I entertained myself in the airport by (surprise, surprise) spending most of my time waiting in a bookstore. They didn’t announce our gate until 30 minutes before the plane was supposed to leave, and we ended up leaving about 45 minutes late, which didn’t make me very happy. There was another American sitting next to me on the plane who was studying abroad in Aix, and it was interesting to talk to her. I caught a bus from the airport to the train station, then took a train to Avignon, then walked to another bus station and took a bus to my house. By the end of the day I had been on three trains, two buses, and a plane. Quite a bit of traveling!
The rest of my weekend was pretty low-key, just getting ready for classes today. I decided to drop my Political Science class after a lot of thought on the subject. I really wasn’t enjoying it at all, and it wasn’t even about the subject that it was supposed to be on. Since I’m no longer double majoring in Political Science (instead it’ll be Women’s Studies), the class wasn’t even going to count for anything. I felt like a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders—the class was canceled for just today anyway, and one of the other students started jumping for joy around the room when he heard. If that’s the case for getting a break from one class, imagine how relieved I felt to be getting a break from all future classes! I was kind of beating myself up for thinking about dropping the class, but it was the right decision. If I didn’t have to go through all the stress and anxiety, why should I?
I don’t have too many plans for this week. My roommate from Marquette might be coming to Avignon this weekend, so it’d be nice to see her. Other than that, I’m looking forward to more traveling around. We have a tour of the Palais des Papes through l’Institut next weekend, and the weekend after that there’s an excursion through l’Institut to Baux de Provence. I’m hoping that I’ll be able to go to Rome for Easter; I had such a fun time during my day trip to Italy that I really want to go back. Some students are also talking about planning a trip to Normandy, and I would love to do that. We have another week off of school in April, and I’m going to be going to Norway with another girl from the program. I’ve really wanted to go there for a while, so I’m looking forward to that trip.
I’m off to do some reading for my Economics class. I hope that everyone at home is doing well. Please send e-mails, I love to hear from people!
No comments:
Post a Comment