Days 18-24

Bloody 'ell! It's been a week since I've updated! This is due to A) being super busy B) having loads of fun and C) our first group weekend trip and no internet!

Day 18 aka mannequins are creepier underground
Monday we went to the Cabinet War Rooms with the Media and Politics class. This is where Winston Churchill ran WWII as Prime Minister from 1939 to 1945. So the museum shows all the rooms in this tiny bunker... and they have mannequins in quite a few of them.... super creepy. But it was cool to see the museum about his life and the working/living conditions of the people working down there. Then for theatre class we talked about School for Scandal (which seems SO long ago) and Macbeth (which we would see the next Thursday in Stratford Upon Avon). Then we had our first social activity at Mad House... the bakeoff!!

It got pretty competitive over facebook between the flats... but we all know flat B was the CLEAR winner.

We made Shame Truffles-- the recipe Emma and I created for Shane when he was going to drive us to VT but then didn't. Basically they are SO DELICIOUS.

But then all 4 of us were in a chocolate coma for the rest of the night. Bleh.

Day 19 aka what is going on.....
Tuesday started off with a normal trip to an art museum-- or so we thought.

What is going on #1: The Saatchi Gallery is owned by an advertising company and houses a lot of modern, VERY contemporary works. Some were cool, like the oil room, which is literally a floor covered in used fuel.

the oil room. it isnt that deep, but it reflects the ceiling.

Some were not, like the large orgy sculpture and the statue covered with real dead horse hair.

Ok so then we got back and got ready for the film we were all seeing as a group with the film class. It was called Cria Cuervos and it is a Spanish film from 1975... supposedly very critically acclaimed.

What is going on #2: This movie was SO WEIRD. This little girl thinks she's poisoned her father because she thinks he was responsible for her mother dying. Pro tip: he wasn't. and she didn't. So then she tries to poison her aunt who is trying to take care of her. Oh and this is after she almost shoots her. The dead mom also keeps showing up every five minutes. And they keep flashing forward to the future, but never say why she's there, or where she is, or who she's confessing only HALF of the story to. And they kept focusing on this girl's big, beautiful brown eyes. But the actress who plays her when she's older as well as the dead mom has blue eyes. Only redeemingish quality of the movie was the soundtrack. Oh by the way, the whole movie only had TWO songs in it. The piano song that the dead mom played and then this really awesome song called Porque te vas, which definitely got stuck in my head.

Then we went to the LONDON EYE!!!!! FINALLY!!!!!! It was so cool-- first there was a 4d experience where they snowed and sprayed and had things flying at you. We got into a pod just in time to see the sunset as we reached the top of the Eye. It was beautiful. On the way down all the buildings started to light up and we were over the river and it was marvelous.

just chillin over the thames

Day 20 aka 3 H&Ms in less than half a mile
I woke up late on Wednesday because it's my free day. I spent most of it doing homework and reading. Once the flat mates got home, Pam and I decided to go shopping on Oxford Street. Mostly because I needed a bathing suit for the spa in Bath. But then we ended up buying clothes. Anyway, we were looking for an H&M that had a particular line of clothes, but only one of the three in the area had them. Literally, you could SEE the third H&M from the second one. And of course, we started at the wrong side of the street and had to find the right one. Once we got there, we accidentally lost each other, and I ran out of minutes so I couldn't call Pam and then lost service in the basement of the store so when she called me it didn't work. Crazy. So we finally found each other and went home. I got a cute bathing suit from a store called Marks and Spencer, which is basically a Marshalls-ish place... but it also has a food market in the bottom.

Day 21 aka STRATFORD UPON AVON
Thursday was soggy and gross... we had to walk for our outing all the way to the National Portrait Gallery. That's a place I have to hit again, because we only saw one exhibit- Ida Kar's photography. It was very interesting to see what you can tell about what a person wants you to know based on their portrait. After we tried to figure out how to get home and ended up going a super long way, in the rain, we had just enough time to make sure we had everything we needed for our weekend trip! We were on our way to Stratford Upon Avon, home of Shakespeare, by 2pm! Once we got there we headed to Cox's Yard, a pub on the way to the RSC (Royal Shakespeare Company). I got fish and chips and a pimm's lemonade. Quite British. Although this one put cucumber slices in the pimm's lemonade, which I was not really a fan of... they're better with mint. Then we walked to the RSC and saw Macbeth!!!! It was a fantastic production that I won't even go into details right now because it would take FOREVER. After the show, Jonathan Slinger, the actor who played Macbeth, came to the Craig Cleeve House (where we were staying) and talked with us for about an hour! He was really nice and a very down to earth guy.

Day 22 aka where are we again? aka the day we did stratford, oxford AND bath
Friday was CRAZY because we toured a million places all in one day. Geography-wise, they were all west of London. Stratford is about 2 hours northwest of London, Oxford about an hour south of Stratford, and Bath about 2 hours south of Oxford. So we really traveled around. In Stratford, we went to Anne Hathaway's house. Highlights: getting to sit on the bench where William Shakespeare courted her, and pics in the beautiful garden. Then we went to Holy Trinity Church, where Shakespeare was baptized as well as buried with his family.

holy trinity church

He has a cool epitaph.

"Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbear to dig the dust enclosed here.

Blessed be the man that spares these stones, and cursed by he who moves my bones."

Then we walked around the town to see all the original homes and finally the house in which Shakespeare was born. Also cool: they had a window pane that visitors in the 1800s had etched their names on, including Ellen Terry, a renowned English Shakespearean actress.

We left almost right after that in order to get to Oxford for our tour of the town and some of the colleges.

these statues were built to keep out the townies... i think jmu should get some of that.

Those were amazing. They all looked like Hogwarts... and that's because a lot of the colleges were film locations of outside scenes in the movies. Some members of our group got to see the set of the hospital wing from the Harry Potter movies since it is in Oxford. Sadly, I was in the other group. After the tour, we went inside the market and bought Ben's Cookies, which are SO GOOD, then almost everyone bought an Oxford tshirt or sweatshirt and we got on the bus to head to Bath.

Bath was founded by the Romans in the third century AD around a hot spring. We got there on Friday night and had free time to explore. We tried to go to a Thai place but it was super crowded, so we ended up going to Strada, an Italian food chain in England. It was very delicious. Afterwards, we went to a pub called Flan O'Brien's. Don't go there if you are American, because they jacked up the prices for us and laughed about it. It was raining miserably, but we tried to go find another pub. We didn't find one, so we just went home and Sarah and I watched Made in Chelsea for a while. Made in Chelsea is like a British Laguna Beach/The Hills etc. Hilariously cheesy rich people having rich people problems.

Day 23 aka the day the weather needed to MAKE UP ITS MIND
We went on a city sightseeing bus tour of Bath. It started POURING halfway through, so everyone tried to come downstairs. Then someone puked so it was gross and we didn't pay attention to any of the tour. BUT I got a free pair of headphones out of it! After the bus tour ended, we went to the Bath Abbey. It was a beautiful church and full of lots of historical stained glass and churchy things. After that, we toured the Roman baths.

same water that's been there since the 200s... gross.

They were built in the third century as the center of the town. The hot spring provided water for the like 8 baths in the one area. It was very cool but a shame that we were inside the entire time it was nice outside. Then we went shopping for a bit in the town and checked out the flea market. It probably would have been better if it hadn't been raining, as most people had packed up their stands already. After the markets, we went to lunch and afternoon tea at Sally Lunn's. The Sally Lunn house is the oldest known house in Bath, dating back to 1482. Which was before America was even an idea. Crazy. We had delicious chicken sandwiches and tea, as well as splitting some famous Lunn Buns, which we had covered in cinnamon butter and clotted cream.

yummmmmmmm

It was so so so good. Sam needs to make this pronto. We spent half of lunch trying to read our tea grounds ala Harry Potter. Apparently mine looked like a kangaroo.

P.S. Speaking of food that I want my family to try, we had traditional English breakfasts at all of these B&Bs. The components: a fried egg, a tomato, a sausage, 2 pieces of very thick ham-bacon, baked beans and mushrooms. All served with toast, butter and jam, as well as English breakfast tea. I am making that for all of them when I get back.

After lunch, we went to the Jane Austen Centre. Apparently, Jane Austen lived with her family in Bath for a few years. Both Northanger Abbey and Persuasion take place in Bath, and it is believed that many of her superficial characters in all of her novels may have been based on the people she met in Bath. She didn't like it there very much. We went into the exhibit, which had a lot of info about her life and her novels. We also learned the fan language. It was adorbs. Following the Jane Austen exhibit, Sarah and I did some more window shopping and headed back to the room to nap before our (failed) pub crawl. We went a cool live band place called Market, which was fun. We tried to go to another place called The Porter, but Sarah only had her student ID, so she couldn't get in and we decided to get dinner. We looked for open places all over, and eventually decided on a place called Southern Fried Chicken, which actually was awesome. The burger was HUGE and the fries were delicious. They even made it plain for me! Then we went back to the room and ate it there while watching Notting Hill, which was such a cute movie!

Day 24 aka the second day we did three places and returned to London!
The day started with another traditional English breakfast and then we were off to Stonehenge! Well, kind of, because first we had two stops to make. The first was Castle Combe, a beautiful medieval town that has had very little alterations on the exterior since the 13th century. It was small and quiet and lovely.

tiny door on a house built in like 1200something

Then it was back on the bus for Wilton House, which is the home of the 18th Earl of Pembrooke, as well as the filming location of the recent Pride and Prejudice movie and some other movie of which I've never heard.

how come my dad wasn't born an earl, huh?

It was a gorgeous estate, and I really enjoyed walking around in the garden pretending I had the lucky accident of noble birth. But alas, I don't even fulfill the nationality requirement for that.

After lunch and ice creams for pretty much everyone, we got back on the bus for Stonehenge! Did you know that it costs £6.50 to see some rocks-- and that's the student price! It was kind of dumb, because even though there was an audio guide, there is so little known about the reasons behind Stonehenge that all that information was speculation. But we had fun doing the photo op portion!

the whole jmu program at stonehenge!

We finally got back on the bus once it started raining (again) to go back home. Which is weird that London is now home. But I love it.

Also, on a weird note, this trip made us all a little cranky. i think this is because we have all known each other for three weeks now, so people are starting to rub other people the wrong way, and that we were all suddenly taken out of our brand new comfort zone of London and given a lot of free time and a very misleading map. Tensions were high for a while, but everything worked out in the end. I think we're all excited to be back in our city and ready for Paris next weekend!!!!!